ADVANCE SHEET– APRIL 16, 2021 President’s Letter In this issue we present two texts with cautionary lessons for an age of political polarization. The first is George Savile, Lord Halifax's The Character of a Trimmer on the virtue of using an individual's weight to balance extreme movements in politics. Halifax was born in 1633 and died in 1695. The second is the Edwardian Liberal politician John Morley's Essay on Compromise, one of Justice Felix Frankfurter's favorite texts. Morley was born in 1838 and died in 1923; he resigned from the British cabinet in opposition to Britain's entry into the First World War. In lieu of a judicial opinion, and in a similar spirit, we tender a Papal Encyclical, the Quadrigesmo Anno of Pope Pius XI in 1931, generally regarded as the clearest exposition of Catholic social doctrine. The child tax credit in the current infrastructure bill, which appears to enjoy some bipartisan support, owes something to the family allowances of Western European countries, and the encyclical was not without influence on the postwar Christian Democratic parties in Germany, Italy and France. The length of the texts and magazine is excused by the fact that they are not readily separately found in libraries George W. Liebmann A Hero For Our Times On August 20, 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill uttered those immortal words “Never was so much owed by so many to so few.” France had surrendered several months earlier and with Germany’s invasion of Russia almost a year away and December 7, 1941 many months in the future, Britain was in fact standing alone. War does in fact almost always result in instances of many owing much to a few. Such is the case in our current war against a relentless and cruel enemy that has cut a worldwide path of death and destruction. Our Royal Air Force has been the health care workers who have risked all as they have undertaken missions too innumerable to count. The courage and devotion to duty that they have exhibited is more than we could have possibly hoped for. In trying to express my gratitude I find myself at a loss for words. Sometimes, even the most sincere thank you does not seem to be enough. We here at the Bar Library are proud that two members of our family are amongst these individuals. M. Abbott Bolte, R.N., M.P.H., has been a nurse for 40 years, the majority of them at Johns Hopkins Bayview. Over her career she has worked in emergency rooms, ICUs, operating rooms, and burn units. During Covid she has worked as an OR nurse and a trainer for new OR nurses, and she occasionally staffs the Bayview vaccine clinic. She is married to Library Board of Director John J. Connolly. Their daughter, Maggie, is a cardiothoracic surgical resident at Massachusetts General Hospital. M. Abbott Bolte Anne Henderson, BSN, spent more than twenty years at the University of Maryland Medical Center’s Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where she treated patients after cardiac surgeries, both routine and emergent, as well as caring for patients with chronic and severe cardiovascular ailments. She precepted, or served as a trainer and mentor, to a generation of new nurses in the ICU. In 2019, she transitioned to Sharecare, an organization that partners with patients with chronic health issues to develop wellness plans and lower the incidences of their acute health emergencies. She is married to Library Board of Director Hon. John A. Henderson, and is the mother of three children. Anne Henderson The North Atlantic Cities On Wednesday, April 21, 2021, at 6:00 p.m. Charles Duff will speak on his book The North Atlantic Cities. The lecture will be presented by way of Zoom. We invite those that will be watching to participate by contributing their questions. Zoom is an interactive platform. Charles Duff is a planner, teacher, developer, and historian. He combines scholarship with practical work as a developer and a community planner. Since 1987, as President of Jubilee Baltimore, he has built or rebuilt more than 300 buildings in historic Baltimore neighborhoods. Known as an expert in historic architecture and urban history, he has also pioneered in the development of residential and commercial buildings for artists and arts organizations. A graduate of Amherst College and Harvard University, he studied at St. Andrews University in Scotland and has walked every city and neighborhood to which he refers. He is a past President of the Baltimore Architecture Foundation and has served on the boards of many community and professional organizations. He lectures widely and has taught at Johns Hopkins and Morgan State Universities. Mr. Duff co-wrote Then and Now: Baltimore Architecture in 2005, contributed to The Architecture of Baltimore, and has translated two books about the tragedies of Sophocles. Why do London and Baltimore have row houses while Paris and Houston do not? This was the question that led Charles Duff to explore the world’s row house cities, a remarkable group of cities in four nations, and find that they form an urban family, bound together by architecture, commerce, and politics for more than 400 years. The result is The North Atlantic Cities. A loving but critical portrait, it starts in Amsterdam in 1600 and ends in the present. It covers Dutch, British, Irish, and American cities that house more than 100 million people. Baltimore figures prominently, as do London, Amsterdam, Dublin, and many other cities. The North Atlantic Cities, a work of lively prose and 180+ pictures, provides a wonderful window for us to watch as the North Atlantic cities grow, become beautiful, and invent many of the things we take for granted today: parks, mass transit, downtowns, even suburbia. These are great stories, well told and well illustrated. If you would like to join us for what should be a fascinating evening, please e-mail me at [email protected] and I will forward the Zoom Link to you the week of the program. If technology is not your cup of tea, do not let that stop you. Zoom is incredibly easy to use and we will send you the very simple instructions to use Zoom should you need them. Stay safe and we hope to see you with us on April 21. Time: 6:00 p.m., Wednesday, April 21, 2021. Reviews of The North Atlantic Cities “It has been some time since I enjoyed a book so much, one that takes a topic that spans 400 years, 4000 miles, and 20 cities, and still manages to drive home a clear and simple point. The only other book I’ve read that accomplished such a marvelous feat was Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.” Bruce Laverty, Gladys Brooks Curator of Architecture, Athenaeum of Philadelphia “Charles Duff’s story is elegantly constructed around the principal features and innovations of a family of great cities. These cities have a very special character. Duff helps the reader to understand what they are, how they came to be, and what they should do next. Above all, he has a remarkable ability to help a reader see streets, squares, buildings, and ports – and see them as a physician might, with a view to their well-being, or the weakening of it.” Orest Ranum, Johns Hopkins University "Duff loves cities, Glasgow, Delft, and Dublin, say, and even more likes to visit them. He speaks of Hampstead Garden Suburb (North London) as he does Highlandtown [Baltimore]. He is full of insights, and is amazing that he has been able to compress so many of them within these pages." Jacques Kelly, Baltimore Sun The Project Gutenberg EBook of On Compromise, by John Morley This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: On Compromise Author: John Morley Release Date: March 13, 2004 [EBook #11557] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON COMPROMISE *** Produced by Garrett Alley and PG Distributed Proofreaders ON COMPROMISE 'It makes all the difference in the world whether we put Truth in the first place or in the second place.' WHATLEY ON COMPROMISE BY JOHN MORLEY MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1908 This Edition first printed 1886 NOTE. The writer has availed himself of the opportunity of a new edition to add three or four additional illustrations in the footnotes. The criticisms on the first edition call for no remark, excepting this, perhaps, that the present little volume has no pretensions to be anything more than an Essay. To judge such it performance as if it professed to be an exhaustive Treatise in casuistry, is to subject it to tests which it was never designed to bear. Merely to open questions, to indicate points, to suggest cases, to sketch outlines,—as an Essay does all these things,—may often be a process not without its own modest usefulness and interest. May 4, 1877. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Design of this Essay The question stated Suggested by some existing tendencies in England Comparison with other countries Test of this comparison The absent quality specifically defined History and decay of some recent aspirations Illustrations Characteristics of one present mood Analysis of its causes (1) Influence of French examples (2) Influence of the Historic Method (3) Influence of the Newspaper Press (4) Increase of material prosperity (5) Transformation of the spiritual basis of thought (6) Influence of a State Church CHAPTER II.