Life — September 2, 1926 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SEPTEMBER 2, 1926 “While there is Life there’s Hope” Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY 598 Madison Avenue, New York Cuartes Dana Ginson, President R. E, Suerwoon, Editor F. D. Casey, Art Editor EYWOOD BROUN in the World quotes William MeFee, the novelist, as writing to him: “Not one of you news- paper men seems to have the slight- est inkling of what is going on in Mexico.” Perhaps not, and how about Brother Supreme Knight James A. Flaherty of the Knights of Colum- bus, who makes demands on our Gov- ernment to protest against the policy of President Calles, and confers with Scerctary Kellogg on that sub- ject? One reads that the Knights are raising a million dollars to fight “Russianism” in the Mexican re- public, but docs Brother Flaherty really know much about the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico? Has he any information about it that does not come out of clerical sources? One may suspect that the main thing Brother Flaherty knows about the Catholic Church in Mexico is that it is the Roman Catholic Church, Does he know the story about the Spanish friars in the Philippines as told by Herman Kohlsaat in his political memoirs published by Charles Scrib- ner’s Sons? Mr. Kohilsaat tells how one day he got an S O S from Roosevelt and dutifully packed a bag and went to Washington to the White House. He found the Presi dent in trouble. Since we had taken over the Philippines, reports had been coming through the State De- partment of the misbehavior of the Spanish friars. They kept coming and coming and they leaked out Cram Maxwett, Vice-President Lanonorne Ginson, Secretary and Treasurer into the public prints. “John D. Crimmins has been down here,” Roosevelt said to Kohlsaat, “and as good as shook his fist under my nose and told me that if these slanders on the friars did not stop he would see that I would be beaten the next time I ran for office. Now, what am I to do?” Kohlsaat told him that he knew an Army chaplain, a Cath- olic priest, who was a suitable man to send to the Philippines to investi- gate. They sent him. He came home and reported that the half had not been told about the friars; that they had three or four concubines apiece, lived dissolutely, and were unconscionable tyrants. Forthwith they sent the chaplain over to see Cardinal Gibbons. Cardinal Gib- bons was appalled at his storics and sent him to Rome. The upshot of it all was that Congress appropriated seven or cight million dollars and our Government bought out the friars’ lands, shipped the friars all Spain, sent over a lot of teachers, and American priests so far as was necessary, and saved the face of the Catholic Church in the United States. Mexico is not as far off as the Philippines. It is much easier to get information about that country. But whether Supreme Knight Flaherty knows any more about the Catholic Church in Mexico than Mr. Crim- mins did about the Spanish friars in the Philippines is quite an interest- ing question. Knowledge of Mexico is not necessarily implied by Brother Flaherty’s job as Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus in the United States. HE record of August with its wet heat, wind storms and mon- strous rainfalls should have notice from the authorities. Dog days are all well enough but they should not be overdone. Any one who thinks that our behavior about the foreign debts has so dis- turbed the human mind as to bring on the violent storms and extremes of heat that we have had is entitled to that opinion and should be encour- aged in it. Either because it has been so hot and so wet and uncom- fortable or for other reasons the American mind docs seem to have forged ahead considerably towards a wiser attitude about the forcign debts. One thinks with satisfaction of Mr. Mellon at Evian on Lake Geneva turning over in his mind what he has gathered in his discourses with European financiers. © What looks more likely than it did is that the United States will be a party to a general agreement that will take care of all the war debts together. Much better support could be had here for a scttlement that would clean up all the debts than for such partial scttlements as we have had up to now. Mr. Borah, even, might favor that. PUBLIC opinion is moving about those forcign debts and also about poisoned alcohol. As a detail of the Methodist «Inquisition it has gone along prospcrously, killing five or six hundred people a year, but the recent round-up of thirty deaths in Buffalo and_ the made quite a scandal. Mr. Coolidge is a Congregationalist and the Con- gregationalists have no bishops to punch them up and get them excited and organize them for political ac- tion as the Methodists have. Mr. Coolidge keeps quite cool and there has been evidence, though he has said little, that poisoned alcohol as a means of law enforcement does not look as good to him as possibly it does to the Methodist Board of Morals, S. Martin. comicbooks.com