St Louis University - Archive Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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THE ARCHIVE Marx, Lenin, Stalin . . . take do vn the crucifix, raise the sickle and ham mer . . . Fascist Italy . . . government on horseback . . . totalitarian state . . . the plowshare cultivates the land, the sword protects it . . . corporate state . . . concordance and the Vatican . . . Naziism . . . anti-Semitism. . . Aryan domination . . . Versailles treaty. Confusion is the characteristic of the age, solution the -watchword. Russia founded her revolution on the basis of a Western materialism, and upon that fundamentally false foundation has reared a frame ' vork of con- tradictions. She has wandered into a ma2,e of mirrors where relative progress is mistaken for absolute ans-sver and vhere the absurdities of communism and the nonsensical religion of anti-religion assume an halo of seeming truth. Fascism, conservatism ' s last stand and stronghold, has created a state with a personality superior to that of the individual, has stressed the ideal of complete control over that of democracy, has made rampant nationalism a much-praised characteristic, has foisted a ne- v eco- nomic order upon an eager but unsuspecting German and Italian people, has proceeded blithely along the descent to destruction. Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Naziism — each clamors for attention, each presents itself as ti ' Uth. There is a mad vhirling and a constant rush, life in a stage of flux, life insistently questioning. Abroad, the problem and the misdirected solutions of it are evident, but dimly seen as at a great distance. But the United States, too, stands in the current of change. Even as an old order has rotted in countries far from our shores, so has it here. Halcyon days with the opiate of seeming plenty are as completely gone for a smug America as for a confused Conti- nent, and the claims of contradictory systems cannot be ignored vhether we will it or not. No one can discount the facts of chronic unemploy- ment, of basic maladjustment in the economic order, of the very real suffering of a very real people. One can not, if he be educated, shift the responsibility to other shoulders, neither can he shut his ears to the demands for enlightened action, nor plead incapability or disinterest. One either fights the current or floats vith it; he does not stand still. And where shall we turn in the search for solution? No longer can any system of reform be labelled and promptly disregarded; proposals vhich vere once dismissed as nonsense no-sv demand evaluation, careful and intelligent evaluation. Conceived in restlessness and confusion by a confused generation, those isms which others have adopted in their attempt to find the way out have failed — failed, not in improving the

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H AO I ONG centuries ago the tribes of earth attempted to build a tower to I the heavens, to reach God, and to make themselves equal to Him. Man must ever be rearing towers of Babel, hisolently, egotistically, foolishly, he builds, even as he built the materialist machine age in which we gloried. It took years of careful planning, of gradual exclusion of the supernatural, years of development of invention after invention, until man and machine ruled together in a world devoid of God. We have only to go back in history to explain our world of today and yesterday. Back to the birth of reason, the Renaissance, and see the ugly thread of matei-ialism vv hich once lined the tapestry of life now dominate its very fiber. Men lost a clear vision in those days and were cursed vith a near- sightedness which made the things of touch seem all important, those of the spirit distant and useless. To such as these the hidustrial Revolution came as a logical step; improved methods of production seemed a natural means of enslaving, not of freeing, man. Conjure now with great names, names of pseudo-scientists and foolish philosophers, because sage thinkers, high priests of the new religion, arose to justify existing conditions by vapid theorizing. And thus we improved and approved our system, moved steadily away from the bed rock of honesty, of charity, of depend- ence on a Deity. The entire order gained inomentuiTi — mass prodviction; no consumption by the masses; capital into more factories, fewer mouths; industrialism and capitalism and materialism and atheism and . . CHAOS. America dates her crash from October of 1929. But America — and the world vith her — had been crashing for years. The World War was the last mad moveinent in a symphony of destruction, for capitalism com- mitted suicide when it ran a world into a crowning commercial conflict. It has not yet died; in fact, it is displaying sudden vigor and seeming new life in its death-throes. But capitalism — classical capitalism — has all but disappeared. And what is to take its place? The little crystal ball that w as the vorld of the old order has been shattered; man must pick up the pieces of that little globe, and with his usual colossal ignorance he has done just that, attem,pted to reconstruct. Every corner of the earth teems w ith activity — mad, furious activity. Action and reaction, force and counter-force play in Russia, Italy, Ger- many, Mexico, in the entire changing world. In wild stacatto come the mingled cries from chaos. . . Union of Socialistic Soviet Republics. . . proletariat over the bourgeoisie . . . class war and world revolution . . . machinery and the common good deified . . . Five-Year Plans unending . . .

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conditions of those living under them, but in seeing the true problem and in even approaching the answer. For, to a world rudely shocked by the disintegration of all it once thought holy, there has come a revulsion from effects without a consideration of cause; the demand for change and more change has produced a complete upset of old forms without the slightest revision of fundamentals, hi materialism was chaos born and in material- ism it continues. That the problem we face is spiritual— spiritual in the broader sense of the term— seems never to have entered the minds of the blind leaders of a blind following. Surely, if such be the cause, the solution can not lie in an increased clinging to matter, in a denial of God or a return to a virile paganism, yet to these modern nations have turned. Our world, then, wanders in circles. And herein lies our problem, a problem of decadent social, political and economic order, a problem fostered by futile attempts to blunder out. Hei-e hes a problem, here is a challenge, the challenge of change. We live today in a whirling vortex. Standards we have long accepted as self-evident are not only questioned but flatly rejected. Belief in the Godhead is subjected to search, held up to ridicule; the principle of private property is made an inherent evil; orators on soap-boxes — literal and figurative — hold forth panaceas traced -with a denial of practice and reason — all this and more, not mere words but actual fact. An old order is passing, passing swiftly, and into its place are rushing new forms, new policies, new precepts. The movement may have been slow in inception; it is unbelievably sw ift in execution. Democ- racy or dictatorship; individual or community; status quo or change, Christ or chaos — these are problems which have left the classroom and entered the arena of practical conflict. To select wisely from that conflict should be the desideratum of every Catholic college graduate; to be aware that change is taking place is his duty. It is no simple matter to vie-vv with equanimity a world when one stands on shifting ground. It is difficult to see with dispassionate eye, to enter into no rash judgments, to follow no popular prejudice. That, too, is part of the problem. The times demand wisdom in careful analysis, force in proper solution; the times demand intelligent action from intelli- gent men. And here, within the following pages, is the Catholic university ' s answer to the problem. In the labyrinth of claims and counter claims it traces the one bright path to a successful conclusion. Harking back to those days when catastrophe first threatened, though quietly, in the material- istic humanism of the Renaissance and seeing there the key to the problem, the Church works for a return to sound philosophy, a return to sound living. We do not stand in siege today, but neither are we freed from conflict; the enemy have laid down their barrage in ne v fields, in new guises. They have flung the gauntlet; change challenges. And from the confusion of the masses rises the gigantic figure of Christ ans vering, I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Light. In hoc signo vinces '