NOTES 633 



discipline, and consequently owe but one allegiance. A member 

 of a civil State has a duty to his family and a duty to his State, 

 and the two sometimes conflict — they would conflict more 

 often were not secular statesmen (who are usually heads of 

 families) scrupulously careful to respect the dignity of the 

 family. But by doing so, they limit the power of the secular 

 State, The Church has no such calculations to make. 



The communist State is therefore radically different from 

 the ordinary State. It is not faced by the necessity to com- 

 promise at its very threshold ; it is more disciplined, and its 

 method of selection, and consequently of promotion, is more 

 strict. It has manifestly many advantages in the struggle for 

 life, which is as keen between States as individuals, and these 

 advantages have helped it to survive longer than any secular 

 organisation. 



But these advantages are not transferable to the secular 

 State. The Church is recruited from the secular stock of 

 population. If the whole population took hoty orders and the 

 vow of celibacy, the triumph of the Church would indeed be 

 complete. But it would be short-lived, for it would have no 

 further recruits, and within a generation humanity, the State, 

 and the Church, would be extinct. Communism can only exist 

 as a parasite on the family ; so long as it only selects a few 

 individuals from the mass, it can thrive, but when it kills the 

 host it kills the guest. 



The secular State, then, is thrown back on the individual 

 and the family, and it cannot restrict their liberty as the Church 

 can restrict the liberty of its voluntary associates. Since 

 partnership in the State is involuntary, the chain must not be 

 made too heavy, or it will snap. 



The Late Professor Rdntgen. ' 



Prof. Wilhelm Konrad von Rontgen, whose death at 

 Munich was announced on February 10, was born at Lennep, 

 in Rhenish Prussia, on March 27, 1845. He was educated in 

 Holland and at Zurich, where he obtained his doctrate in 

 1869. Soon afterwards he was appointed assistant to Prof. 

 Kundt, and worked in that capacity first at Wiirzburg and then 

 at Strassburg. In 1875 he was appointed professor of mathe- 

 matics and physics at the Agricultural Academy, Hohenheim, 

 in 1876 he returned to Strassburg as extraordinary professor, 

 and three years later went to Giessen as professor of physics 

 and director of the Physical Institute. In 1885 he was elected 

 to the corresponding chair at Wiirzburg, and it was during 

 his tenure of this office that his recognition of the X-rays as 

 a new type of radiation and his investigation of their pro- 



