The Press: After All is Said

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The pledge card said: "Recognizing the tremendous importance of your final appeal for assistance in defeating the Roman Catholic Clerical Party* and to burst up the solid south, as a solemn rebuke to Rome's meddling in our political affairs, and to show the world that America stands firmly against RUM AND ROMANISM, I RUSH TO YOU the sum of $...., with my earnest prayer. . . ."

The campaign having closed and the advertisers of quack cures and medicines in The Fellowship Forum having reported tidy profits, the paper will doubtless continue in the even tenor of its oldtime ways, running such stories as "POPE CAUGHT RED-HANDED."

In the Doric columns of the New York Times, in the tabloid New York Daily News and in many another U. S. daily, during the last fortnight of the campaign, was spread an eye-arresting advertisement. Half of it was an olla-podrida of press clippings, some of them from The Fellowship Forum. Specimens:

SMITH'S CHURCH TEACHES THAT YOUR PROTESTANT WIFE IS A CONCUBINE AND YOUR PROTESTANT BABY A BASTARD*

THE POPE CONVERTED THE VATICAN INTO A HOUSE OF ILL FAME†

LET IN THE LIGHT—OPEN THE NUNNERIES AND SAVE THE GIRLS

TO MURDER PROTESTANTS AND DESTROY AMERICAN GOVERNMENT IS THE OATH BINDING ROMAN CATHOLICS There was also a poem, entitled "Alcohol Smith's Platform," of which this verse was typical:

The ignorant wop and the gangster, too,

Are the trash I expect to carry me through,

And when I land in the White House chair

They can all be damned for all I care.

Extended across the advertisement was the gigantic headline: IS THIS GOOD AMERICANISM? GET THE FACTS—LEARN THE TRUTH. It was difficult to tell at first glance whether the advertisement was pro-or anti-Catholic. Caught eyes read on. The explanation: "Many sections of our country, particularly where there are few Catholics, are being flooded with millions and millions of pieces of literature of the type exhibited here. . . .' Then there were quotations from the U. S. Constitution, William Jennings Bryan, President Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt on the subject of religious liberty. The entire advertisement was the work of the Calvert Associates, publishers of The Commonweal, liberal Catholic weekly.

The Calvert Associates were chartered in 1922 under the New York State laws as an educational society. Their leader is Michael Williams, convert to Roman Catholicism, editor of The Commonweal. Profits made by the Calvert Associates from the sale of their books, etc., are applied to the promotion of religious liberty, more specifically to the dissemination of honest information regarding the Church of Rome. Among its directors are many famed non-Catholics, such as Maj. Gen. Robert Lee Bullard (retired), Architect Ralph Adams Cram, Nicholas Murray Butler, Dr. Henry Van Dyke, Louis Wiley, Gen. Lincoln Clark Andrews. Also there is Rev. T. Lawrason Riggs, smart Catholic chaplain of New Haven, Conn.** The name of the organization is in loving memory of George Calvert, founder of Maryland Free State. Better than any other Catholic organization it has reached non-Catholics. But its GOOD AMERICANISM advertisement was criticized for using bad taste to combat bad taste.