Notre Dame Alumnus, Vol. 30, No. 02 -- March-April 1952 - Archives ...

Glee Club Returns
From West Coast Tour
Returning from their longest tour
in history, the Glee Club has just
completed .a 6100-mile trek to the
western and southwestern areas of the
country. Starting at their semester
vacation, thirty-six songsters and
their director, Mr. Daniel H. Pedtke,
completed the journey in ten days.
Also accompanying the group was
their chaplain, Rev. Charles Carey,
CS.C, Vice-President in Charge of
Student Welfare.
Concerts were given in St louis,
Missouri; San Francisco and Stockton,
California; Phoenix, Arizona;
and El Paso, Texas. The arrangements
for the concert in Stockton
were master-minded by Jim Jones,
'33. The activities in St. Loiiis and
Phoenix were handled by the Alumni
Clubs in those areas. There's more
news on these last two in the "Alumni
Clu'--'' section.
The newspaper reports and the
personal comments acclaiming the
fine showing of the Glee Club on this
tour proves the fact that their efforts
were a great success. It also promises
an East Coast audience another
excellent opportunity to enjoy this
traditionally fine choral group during
their Spring tour. For the Easter
holidays the Glee Club will travel to
New York, April 10-13; Philadelphia,
April 14; Summit, New Jersev. April
15; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, April
16; Greenburg, Pennsylvania, April
17; Buffalo, New York, April 18;
Erie, Pennsylvania, April 19; and
Tiffin, Ohio, April 20.
To welcome the Glee Club to Phoenix are
Glenn McDonough and Al Picks, Phoenix
Club President. Rev. Charles Csirey acted
as chaplain for the group.
Honoring the Glee Club m Stockton, Calif., arc Rev. O. Moriarty; Jim Jones, '33, Gen'I
Chainnan; Bill Toomey, Glee Club Pres.; Bob Mosher, '33; Rev. Charles Carey, C.S.C;
Frank Myers, Business Manager; Daniel Pedtke, Director; ami Rev. Lester Ehrman.
Review of Polities Commands Attention
Alumni who are interested in serious treatment of international affairs, will find the
"Review of Politics" ($4 a year), published at Notre Dame, an outstanding source of scholarly
material. Several excerpts from the current issue are indicative.
From an article on "Totalitarian Religions"
by the Editor, Dr. Waldemar Gurian
"... Secularism in its totalitarian
form becomes a secular religion, putting
a human doctrine in the place of
Revelation, a visible worldly society
in the place of union with God as the
aim of life. Not utilitarian calculation
but demonstrations of faith in
the unlimited power of the doctrine
and its representatives really matter.
Utilitarian calculations would limit
the policies of expansion and the urge
to absolute domination. The totalitarian,
immanentist faith cannot be
met by an optimistic secularism which
is not aware of the fundamental crisis
of our time or by an apparently religious
attitude for which religion is,
despite theoretical denials,. indissolubly
bound to a particular social order.
The pseudo-certainty of totalitarianism
which establishes by terror and a
refined system of pressure a closed
pseudo-real world can be opjxjsed only
by the true certainty based ujjon belief
in true revelation and by the
realization that man is infinitely more
than an instrument for life and societ)'
in this world, that there are
rights and duties of the human person
which cannot be sacrificed to a
doctrine about political and social
development. The conflict between
the Church and totalitarianism is,
therefore, much more than a conflict
between Church and state, for totalitarianism
tries to establish a reality
in which all human forces and beliefs
serve only this world, an earthly society,
which is self-sufficient and has
no other end than itself. The world
leading to God, totalitarianism replaces
by a self-sufficient world which,
throu^ the effort and struggles of
men, makes God appear merely as a
superstitious creation of men before
they were able to master their life
and society or siinply as a mythical
symbol of the power exercised by their
social or racial elites."
And from "Politica] Power in (he Soviet
Union," by N. S. Umashcff, Fordham professor:
"... Since the end of the last
war, the men in the Kremlin have
started building an empire which, by
the very nature of their doctrine, must
become universal. In the beginning,
they were rather cautious. But the
March-April, 1952 13