To those who write
Media
Part of Green and White
- Title
- To those who write
- Language
- English
- Year
- 1930
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- 120 GREEN AND WHITE _ Whether this be asking too much or expecting too little, the problem may be simplified still further. We can always turn to that flower of English culture, John Ruskin, for a truly simple test. "A well-educated gentl1 eman," he tells us, "may not know many languages,-may not be able to speak any but his own,-may have read very few books. But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly. . . (An uneducated person) has only to speak a sentence of any lai1guage to be known for an illiterate person: so also the accent, or turn of expression of a single sentence, will at once mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively admitted by educated persons, that a false accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of any civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree of inferior standing forever." You have but to apply this simple test to verify that the mass of so-called English-speaking classes in the Philippines, and particularly in the universifies of the Philippines, speak anything else but English, and are anything else Lut educated. The whole country is a vast nursery of stunted minds, with here and there a pair of seeing eyes timorously peeping out. The charge of libel will not lie. ---«»--To Those Who Write Will those persons who intend to write for our future issues kindly bear the following remarks in mind: 1. That it is not the office of the Editor to correct manuscripts. His business is to read all the matter submitted, to make judicious selections, and (what is most painful to both Editor and Contributor) to reject matter unfit for publication. Too often have we been accosted-by young writers who doubtless mean well-in this wise: "Here's a story I wrote last night. It's not so good. You'll have to correct it. Won't you?" If we had a heart of stone, these things would hardly cause any trouble. But we have not. How, then, could we refuse? Should we be justified in turning them down thus: "You have nerve! You know your story is not good, and yet you would give it in! Correct! Indeed! Do you imagine we have nothing to do but read your story and try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear?" That, certainly, would not be proper. For we want to give every encouragement to our well-intentioned budding storytellers. To avoid, therefore, any further occasion of perturbation of mind on this account, we beg leave to re~om mend, to our younger and more inexperienced writers especially, that they submit to the Editorial Staff only such compositions as they can look upon as the satisfactory result of their best efforts. 2. That the plots of the stories written ought to breathe a Catholic spirit. We do not mean to substitute for detective tales, adventure stories, sporting incidents and the rest, a new kind of story, devoid of all excitement, tame and vapid, and dripping with sirupy sanctimoniousness, and then call it the expression of the Catholic ideal. Heaven forfend! 'Twould be doip_g an illservice to Catholicism so to parade it under false colors. The Catholic spirit is manifested in a story when the principal character or characters are made to act as good Catholics would GREEN AND WHITE 121 act in real life. They don't have to be Saints or people of extraordinary holiness. They don't even have to do all that a good Catholic does-at least, not in public. They are not supposed, for instance, to go through their devotions before their readers. But they are expected to avoid whatever is unworthy of the dignity of a good Catholic. If hero and heroine agree to get married, the wedding should be celebrated in a Catholic Church, and not before the Justice of the Peace. If a baby is born to the happy couple in the story, the parents see to it that baptism is administered as soon as possible. A short sentence or phrase is sufficient to indicate this. It may be that on a Sunday a gay party of young men go out on a picnic. This, the author might mention, took place after the boys had heard an early Mass. lt1s these little touches, scattered here and there, wherever needed, that reveal the all-pervasive Catholic spirit. Little casual (yet not casual) touches like these are not obtrusive, and they tend to make a good Catholic reader feel at home in the reading of the story. It naturally would be ·the cause of a jolt to the minds of many sensitive and sensible Catholics to read ari account (written by a Catholic student) of a good man gone wrong, persisting in wrongdoing, and when the end comes, concluding his life with a dramatic gesture of heroic impenitence. Of course, our student writers do not deserve severe censure for this. That they have committed similar· mistakes before, we may attribute to inadvertence on their part, and to their quite understandable youthful strivings after dramatic effect. Stories of despair, r~venge and the like are easily dramatic, but often also morbid in their effect. If the essays and stories, submitted to us, do not breathe this wholesome Catholic air, at least their lesson ought not to be antagonistic to Catholic sentiment and thought. This is even more important than local color, technique, etc. 3. That readers are already weary of listening to stories like this : "John was a tall, handsome youth. . . Mary was a pretty girl of sixteen summers .. They met. . . Wedding bells. . . . dingdong !" An ingenious and not too improbable story is always read with interest. 4. That slang is not good English and deserves no place in a department consecrated to the fine arts of Shakespeare, Scott and Macaulay. 5. That the Editor's ~isual comfort should be consulted in presenting articles for his perusal. Would it be too much to ask our contributors to hand in their articles, essays, stories or verses, neatly typewritten in double or triple-spaced form? The Editorial Staff trusts that these swrgestions will not be misconstrued. and- that they will be received in good part by those to whom they are addressed. ---«»·--Catechism There are two La Sallites of excel- dertaken the laudable task of instructlent standing in their respective classes ing ignorant children in the vital truths (the Commercial Class and th.e Fourth of our Faith.. They have assumed Year High) and worthy· members of charge of about one hundred boys in the Sodality of our Lady, who have un- the district of Tondo for the pll'I'pose