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is pleasing to find the author indicating as useful, and, sometimes, as indispensable, some of our classic authorities, St. Thomas, Suarez, Petavius, and even some of our modern text-books, like Franzelin, Schouppe, and Wilhelm and Scannell's Manual of Catholic Theology. In many parts of the work one is surprised to find that the method of treatment follows closely the lines of our theology. The book contains a copious bibliography which will be of service to students engaged on questions of Natural Theology. One is somewhat surprised, on inspecting this extensive and representative list, that, while it includes Newman's Development of Christian Doctrine, Idea of a University, Arians of the Fourth Century, and Tracts, etc., there is no mention of the Grammar of Assent.

THE ITALIAN IN AMERICA.
By Lord and Others.

Those who affect to see in the enormous flow of immigrants towards our shores a danger to our political institutions, our industrial welfare, and our moral standards, usually agree to point out the Italian as the most menacing figure in this hostile advance. Following a Massachusetts Congressman, they insist that the Italian race is not suited to our civilization; it will not, or cannot, assimilate with the "Anglo Saxon." Degraded by centuries of oppression, it is incapable of appreciating our free institutions. Besides, the greater part of those who come here are illiterate; and, satisfied with a standard of life far beneath that to which the American workman is accustomed, they are able to work for lower wages, and thereby crowd the American out of the field of labor. Much of their earnings they send out of the country. They, for the most part, congregate in the slums of the great cities, and thereby aggravate the prevailing evil conditions. Finally, they furnish an undue proportion of our criminals and paupers. This estimate the gentlemen, who have jointly put forward the present powerful vindication of the Italians, prove to be grossly unjust, and to have no other foundation than ignorance or prejudice.

This volume offers the results of a candid examination into the facts of the case. After a brief introductory survey into

*The Italian in America. By Eliot Lord, A.M., Special Agent of United States Tenth Census' Social Statistics; John J. D. Trenor, Chairman of Immigration Committee, National Board of Trade, Annual Session, 1904; Samuel J. Barrows, Secretary of Prison Association of New York. New York: B. F. Back & Co., 160 Fifth Avenue.

the conditions of life in Italy, and a consideration of the causes which induce this home-loving people to emigrate in such numbers, the writers discuss, successively, the social, economic, and moral features of the Italian settlements in the great cities, in the mining fields, and on the farms and plantations, chiefly in California and the Southern States. Abundant statistics are offered to demonstrate that the greater proportion of the Italian immigrants are young, of fine physique, industrious, energetic, peace-loving, and intelligent, quite capable of making headway in the keen competition of this country. Again in the matters of pauperism, disease, and crime, compared with other elements of the population, the Italian shows up very creditably. As to assimilation, education, and progress, though nothing, or almost nothing, is done by the adult immigrants, their children swiftly assimilate American ideas and education, and are seldom wanting in ambition and persevering industry to make the most of the chances offered to them to rise in the social scale.

From How the Other Half Lives, of Mr. Jacob Riis, which Mr. Lord has drawn upon copiously, he quotes, concerning the advance of the Neapolitan immigrant: "Starting thus, below the bottom, as it were (in the congested heart of New York City), he has an uphill journey before him to work out of the slums, and the promise, to put it mildly, is not good. He does it, all the same, or if not he, his boy. It is not an Italian sediment that breeds the tough. Parental authority has a strong enough grip on the lad in Mulberry Street to make him work, and that is his salvation. In seventeen years,' said the teacher of the oldest Italian ragged school in the city that, day and night, takes in quite six hundred, 'I have seen my boys work up into decent mechanics and useful citizens almost to a man; and of my girls, only two I know of have gone astray.' I have observed the process often enough myself to know that she was right. It is to be remembered, furthermore, that her school is in the very heart of the Five Points' district, and takes in always the worst and the dirtiest crowd of children." And what the Italians of Mulberry Street succeed in doing is done, we are told convincingly, by their brothers and sisters everywhere in and around the great cities, in the fruit and vegetable farms. of the Middle West, the orange groves of California, and the sugar plantations of Louisiana and Alabama.

Apart from its value as an important contribution towards

a correct statement of the immigration problem, this volume is well worth reading. The burden of the messages delivered to us, just now, by the students and observers of social and economic conditions in America, is somewhat depressing, with its denunciations of present evils, and complementary prophecies of impending disasters. So one is thankful for an occasional treat of cheerful optimism, such as the contents of this book offer. And one feels the better for having come in contact with the spirit of broad-minded philanthropy which has impelled this distinguished trio of " Anglo-Saxons," with their wide information and semi-official prestige, to vindicate, against prejudice and narrowness, the sons of sunny Italy.

LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS.
By von Suttner.

This remarkable work of fiction has obtained a world wide reputation, which may prove as enduring as that achieved by Robinson Crusoe, The Sorrows of Werther, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. Chiefly through it the author obtained the Nobel Peace Prize for 1905. It has already been translated into almost every European language. More than twenty years ago the Baroness von Suttner became interested in the work of the Peace and Arbitration Association, and resolved to aid the movement by writing a little tale that should set forth the wickedness and the horror of war. In an interesting article in the Independent of February I she relates the repulses with which she met from editors and publishers when she submitted her manuscript. "The story would not interest the public." "It would offend many readers." "It was impossible in the existing state of military affairs; and would meet with the disapproval of the powerful."

Certainly the classes and individuals who look upon war as an element of civilization, a heaven-ordained school for the training of a people in the virtues of self-sacrifice, courage, and patriotism, could not but regard with disfavor this work, which strips war and soldiering of the fine feathers and fine phrases in which convention and tradition have disguised the ugly and ruthless monsters. The tale purports to be the autobiography of an Austrian countess who, at eighteen, marries an officer, shortly before the outbreak of the war between Austria and

Lay Down Your Arms: The Autobiography of Martha von Tilling. By Bertha von Suttner. Authorized Translation by T. Holmes. Revised by the Authoress. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.

Sardinia in 1859. She tastes war's first bitterness in the separation of herself and her husband, as he proceeds to Italy, where, on a bloody field, he is destined to lay his bones. As the story develops, we are carried, successively, through the campaign of Schleswig-Holstein, the Austro Prussian War, and the siege of Paris, where the autobiography closes in a climax so sad and tragic that the reader feels tempted to expostulate with the author for being too cruel.

Regarded merely as a novel, the book has fine qualities— the reader's interest never flags, and the realism is so vigorous that one who does not know the facts will continually feel inclined to suspect that the autobiography is fictitious only as far as the names of the personages are concerned. Fifteen months after the publication of Lay down Your Arms, the author tells us, an elderly gentleman called at her residence in Venice. "Does the Baroness von Suttner live here?" he asked. "Yes; she is my wife," was the answer given by her husband, who had opened the door. "What, you are the husband of Madame von Suttner-Bertha von Suttner?" "I certainly am." "You are not dead, then ?" "With your permission, I am still living." "But were you not shot at Paris ?" "It seems not."

o war.

This incident conveys in a nutshell the graphic vividness with which the story is written. In the conversations and discussions, in the family scenes and in the development of the various characters, the writer cleverly brings in, and refutes, all the stock arguments and prejudices that are enlisted in favor Yet this is done with such grace and ease that the reader never feels that he is being cheated into listening to an essay or a thesis under the guise of a story of life. The battlefield with the carnage of the fight and the suffering of those who are left behind when the wave has rolled onward, the agonies and tortures of the improvised military hospitals, where disease stalks in to aggravate suffering and swell the death roll, are depicted with striking force. Not a detail of the dreadful tableau has been forgotten or omitted, except the nameless infamies— which no woman's pen could write-that are recorded by the historians of such scenes as De Bourbon's sack of Rome, or the storming of Badajos by the English. In the personal side of the story, in which there is many a page of exquisite tenderness, the author enforces with equal skill the text that if men must fight, then women must weep, and the passing tra

gedies of the battlefield are permanently installed in the sanctities of the home, with its vacant chair and desolate fireside.

To quote a detached passage from this book is something like extracting a single pebble from a fine mosaic and offering it as a specimen of the whole. Yet we will reproduce a few lines from the page or two that relate a visit paid to the battlefield of Sadowa on All Souls' Day: "It was twilight already when we got to Chulm, and from thence walked on, arm in arm, to the battlefield near at hand, in silent horror. Crowds of graves, and the grave of crowds, were all around us. But a churchyard ?-no; no pilgrim weary of life had there been invited to rest and peace; there, in the midst of their youthful fire of life, exulting in the fullest strength of their manhood, the waiters on the future had been cast down by force, and had been shovelled down into their grave mould. Choked up, stifled, made dumb forever, all those breaking hearts, those bloody, mangled limbs, those bitterly weeping eyes, those wild shrieks of despair, those vain prayers.

I

had heard for several hours weeping and wailing going on around me. 'Three sons-three sons, each one more beautiful and better and dearer than the others, have I lost at Sadowa,' said to us an old man, who looked quite broken down. Many others, besides, of our companions, mingled their complaints with his for brother, husband, father. But none of these made so much impression on me as the tearless, mournful 'Three sons-three sons' of the poor old man. We

had now come to the spot where the largest number of warriors, friend and foe, together lay entombed. The place was walled off like a churchyard. Hither came the greatest number of mourners, because in this spot there was most chance that their dear ones might be entombed. Round this enclosure the bereaved ones were kneeling and sobbing, and here they hung up their crosses and grave lights. A tall, slender man of distinguished, youthful figure, in a general's cloak, came up to the mound. The others gave place reverently to him, and I heard some voices whisper: The emperor.' Yes; it was Francis Joseph. It was the lord of the country, the supreme lord of war, who had come on All Souls' Day to offer up a silent prayer for the dead children of his country, for his fallen. warriors. He also stood, with uncovered and bowed head, there, in agonized devotion, before the majesty of death. Long he

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