Girl Scout troops under Catholic auspices can be as thoroughly Catholic, and enjoy as complete a Catholic atmosphere as if the entire national movement were organized solely for them."

Indications point to a remarkable growth in interest on the part of Catholics in this movement. And yet it is not what it should be. Our Catholic young men and women who wish to be of service to others can find a most profitable use of their time acting as Scout leaders. Parents and teachers can support the movement and encourage girls to join. Pastors and Directors of Schools can provide facilities for meetings of the Scouts.

His Eminence, Cardinal Hayes, is evidently a warm friend of Scouting. On the opening day of Girl Scout Week, Sunday, November 16th, St. Patrick's Cathedral was filled at the 8 o'clock Mass with Catholic Girl Scouts. Perhaps nowhere in the country was there a more solemn and impressive gathering and surely nowhere were Girl Scouts more happy, for the Cardinal imparted to all present the Papal Blessing.

JAMES BRITTEN, K.C.S.G.

JAMES BRITTEN, K.C.S.G., known throughout the world for his activities in connection with the Catholic Truth Society, died suddenly in London on October 8th. Born at Chelsea in 1846, Mr. Britten was educated for medicine, but forsook that for his favorite study of botany when a post at the Kew Herbarium was offered him in 1869. In 1871, he was appointed to the Botanical Department of the British Museum. There he rose to the rank of senior

assistant and remained until his retirement in 1909. At the age of twenty-one Mr. Britten became a Catholic, and with his conversion began his long series of activities in the cause of the Church. The chief of these was, of course, his work in behalf of the Catholic Truth Society, which from its foundation always claimed the lion's share of his interest.

Nothing that we might say in memory of this ardent champion of the Faith could be more appropriate than the following tribute contained in a letter of Sir Bertram C. A. Windle to the Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD:

Wherever in English-speaking countries there is a Catholic Truth Society, the parent of that society is James Britten, K.C.S.G., and today, be it remembered, there are but few of those countries where there is no such organization for spreading the truth about the Catholic religion. It is true that, before the present body was formed, there was a Catholic Truth Society confined to the Diocese of Salford in England, which was then under the charge of Dr. Vaughan, subsequently Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. The society was started by him; consisted of himself and a few friends; published perhaps half a dozen excellent pamphlets, mostly by the Bishop; and then expired. Some years afterwards Mr. Britten and very few friends, moved by the reading of some papers issued by an active Protestant society, put up a few pounds of their own money and started the society under the name which it still has. Those four or five members have now extended into over fifteen thousand. That

beginning was more than forty years ago, and shortly after its foundation I made the acquaintance of Mr. Britten and became a member of the society. First of all I met its clerical secretary, Father, afterwards Monsignor, Cologan, a mild but quite firm little man who was the oil in the salad in which Britten was the mustard and pepper. For Britten, of whom I can speak after these many years of close acquaintanceship, was pugnacious and at times irritable, and did not get on with everybody as Father Cologan did.

most

But he was a man of great force and driving power and so obviously single-hearted and unselfish that men forgave what rough edges there were to his nature. He was an earnest botanist, and might have been Head of the Department in South Kensington, but declined that coveted position, simply because it would have cut into his C. T. S. work. That was a rifiuto which reflected honor upon him and shows how deeply the society and its interests were planted in his heart.

As I remember it in its early days, the entire plant of the society was a back attic in Britten's house, then in a rather dingy street in Southwark-an untidy street and an untidy house, for Britten was a lifelong bachelor and lived in chaos, a chaos mostly of books, which were everywhere, even piled in heaps in various unexpected parts of the house. In the attic were a series of plain deal shelves, divided into compartments in which were the pamphlets of the C. T. S. And that was the C. T. S., for it had no other habitation or offices. Britten saw to everything, even to the posting of the bundles of tracts when

they were ordered. Time went on, and the society grew, and that state of affairs could not continue. Yet even then the office must be fixed in an obscure street in Southwark so that Britten might have it, as he did, continually under his eye. If ever there was a "one-man job" it was the C. T. S., and Britten was the one man. That explains why the great developments which the society has made within the past three or four years-inaugurated by Mr. Reid-Lewis, a citizen of the United States resident in Englanddid not quite meet with Britten's approval.

But he did a great work. He insisted on a high literary style and good appearance in everything published by the society, and was extraordinarily successful in securing first-rate writers, who, of course, gave their services gratuitously. Moreover, he kept the society out of debt by never giving an order for which it could not pay, and the departure from that rulefor excellent reasons, no doubt, and fully justified by the result-met with his strong opposition and his scathing sarcasm, and he had a biting tongue when he chose to use it.

Britten was ever a fighter and fought on to the end, for he was making some purchases in view of an early visit to his old friend, Sir John O'Connell, in Dublin, in order to attend the Conference of the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland, when it was noticed that he sat down in a chair as one who was tired and seemed to fall asleep. It was the sleep of death.

Against sudden and unprovided death the Litany includes a prayer, but that of which we speak was not unprepared, for Britten had received the Blessed Sacrament every

morning that week, and so the end, being painless, was perhaps as desirable a termination of life as can be imagined.

Seventy-eight years he had lived, and during fifty-seven of them he had been a valiant soldier in the ranks of the Church Militant. If his ways alienated some of those who had been his friends, as indeed they did, let such be forgotten in the memory of the great services which he rendered to the Catholic cause. R. I. P.

BAN AGAINST PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS

REPUDIATED.

ONE of the gratifying results of the balloting on Election Day was the defeat of the proposition to close the private and parochial schools of Michigan. The proposed amendment was beaten by a vote of more than two to one, and that in spite of the campaign waged for it by the Ku-Klux Klan. Incidentally, it has been remarked that the Klan was unknown in Michigan when this proposal first appeared on the ballot. Four years ago the same proposition was defeated in Michigan by a vote of slightly less than two to one.

A FELLOW OF HARVARD-AND A
"SILENT" GRADUATE.

NOT even at Harvard, it seems, have they succeeded in laying the ghost of religious prejudice. John Jay Chapman, well-known author and publicist and a graduate of that venerable institution of learning, is much wrought up over an address recently delivered by Cardinal O'Connell at the dedication of a

church in Cambridge, Mass. The Cardinal is reported to have declared that if Harvard to-day "had the old faith of Christ for which she was supposed to have been erected, her influence would be supreme, tremendous, and we [Catholics] would be the first to gather round her." By a process of reasoning worthy of a Klansman, Mr. Chapman finds in this statement a suggestion that in the Cardinal's opinion "Harvard was once a Catholic college," and an evidence that "the outspoken purpose of the Roman Church is to control American education."

In a letter written October 31st to Right Rev. William Lawrence, Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts, Mr. Chapman says: "The historic learning of the Cardinal may be at fault; but it is not to this point that I would call attention, but rather to the customary submissive silence in which such statements by Roman prelates are received in America. It is thought unkind and subversive for any Protestant to resent the claims made by the Roman Curia, or even to call attention to them." In view of the violent attacks that are persistently made upon the Catholic Church in this country, it is absurd for any intelligent and informed person to speak of "the customary submissive silence of Protestants" where statements by Roman prelates are concerned. As for calling attention to the claims of the Catholic Church, Catholics would rejoice if those claims were better and more widely known among Protestants. It is only when their claims are misrepresented that Catholics find fault.

But Mr. Chapman has a deeper grievance against Catholics than the Cardinal's reference to Harvard.

Continuing his letter to Bishop Lawrence, who, by the way, is one of the Fellows of Harvard, he writes: "I venture to ask your views on this matter because at the last election of a Fellow-one of the seven who control Harvard's destinies the choice fell for the first time upon a Roman Catholic." The Catholic Fellow referred to but not named here is taken to be James Byrne, A.B., LL.B., LL.D., New York attorney and a Regent of the University of the State of New York. "When this official dies," the letter goes on, "it may be urged that a precedent has been created and that as his successor a man of the same faith should be appointed. The practice would be recommended upon grounds of liberalism." As a reason for opposing such an idea, Mr. Chapman offers a refrain-like repetition of his unwarranted assertion, that "the outspoken purpose of the Roman Church is to control American education."

Mr. Chapman's protest against the election of a Catholic Fellow of Harvard will serve only to injure his own reputation. Fair-minded people of all classes were glad to applaud when Harvard, pursuing a really liberal policy and disregarding the question of religion, elected a Catholic to a place among her Fellows.

ESKIMO UNITY.

KNUD RASMUSSEN, Danish explorer, arrived at Seattle, October 25th, on the steamship Victoria from Nome, Alaska.

Rasmussen's party traveled more

than 20,000 miles along the Arctic Coast of Canada and Alaska by gasoline schooner, dog team, and on foot, studying Eskimos and taking motion pictures.

Upon his arrival at Seattle, Rasmussen made known his intention of writing a complete history of the Eskimo race.

"I have positive proof of the origin of the Eskimo race," he said, "but regret I cannot make public my discoveries at present. I have proved one can travel from Greenland, through the Canadian Arctic, Alaska and to the coast of Siberia, and be understood by all Eskimo tribes in a common language.

"There are not more than 40,000 Eskimos in all the tribes from Greenland to Siberia. In the vicinity of the North Pole I found several tribes which had never been visited before by white men. More than 2,000 feet of motion picture film were taken, together with a number of 'stills.' Among some of the things experienced was the thrill obtained from studying the faces of Eskimos at Point Barrow, Alaska, as they viewed some colored motion motion pictures I flashed on a makeshift screen for them and the filming, after three months' effort, of the Aurora Borealis."

Speaking of the proposed flight to the North Pole by the navy dirigible Shenandoah, Rasmussen said it would have every chance of success if a fuel base were established and mooring mast erected at Point Barrow. "The prevailing east wind would not trouble the big airship and the crew could easily stand the fifty degrees below weather, which is less cold than in some parts of the Dakotas."

MARGARET MUNSTERBERG ("A Ballad of the Christmas Tree"), daughter of the late Hugo Munsterberg, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, studied at Radcliffe College, from which she holds the degrees of A.B. and A.M. Her books are two novels, a volume of translated verse, and a biography, Hugo Munsterberg: His Life and Work, all published by D. Appleton Co. She has also contributed articles, poems, and stories to various magazines.

REV. F. JOSEPH KELLY ("Christmas and New Year"), a frequent contributor to the columns of THE CATHOLIC WORLD and other publications, is a native of Ohio, and at present the head of the Music Department of Sacred Heart Seminary, Detroit. He made extensive studies in European universities and schools of music, and was the first musician of American Catholic parentage to receive the degree of "Fellow of the Royal College of Organists" from the Royal College of London, England. He studied with the renowned monks of Solesmes, France, perfecting himself in the chant of the Church. He is also an alumnus and Doctor of Philosophy of several Roman universities.

MICHAEL MONAHAN ("Thomas Moore"), born in Ireland in 1865, son of a classical teacher, has had a varied career as journalist, editor, lecturer, author. He has published about a dozen books, including Palms of Papyrus, Adventures in Life and Letters, Nova Hibernia, At the Sign of the Van, Heinrich Heine, New Adventures, An Attic Dreamer,

etc. Emile Legouis, Professor of English Literature at the Sorbonne, Paris, thus compliments Mr. Monahan's work: "You have helped to correct my ignorant and much too narrow idea of the American Essayist. I did not think there was such an 'attic' in the whole United States as the one in which your book was penned. I fancied that such a loving care of thought and style, such subtle graces of feeling and form, were incompatible with the hurry and bustle of life in that great country. I was surely mistaken unless those choice virtues only found in old liquors were brought by you from ‘Antique Hibernia,' the isle of immemorial poetry." Road to Paris, a book dealing with the author's travels and observations in Europe (1922), is on the eve of publication. Mr. Monahan now resides at New Canaan, Conn.

The

MYLES CONNOLLY ("The Simpleton"), whose writings appear frequently in our pages, is the Editor of Columbia, the organ of the Knights of Columbus.

REV. F. CONRAD WALMSLEY, O.F.M. ("An English Franciscan Centenary"), Friar Minor of the English Province since 1911, is an M.A. of London University, member of the Modern Humanities Research Association, Vice-Director of the Brentwood Diocese Catholic Evidence Guild, author of The First Province in the series of the Franciscan Seventh Centenary Booklets and of various articles in the English press, Editor of the Franciscan Monthly, and Vicar of Forest Gate, London.