said: It is not good for Ireland, it is not profitable, neither in mind, nor in purse is it profitable, that young Irishmen shall lose hold of these languages of the continent. Ignorant in this, the Irish will be at the mercy of what is English; they can neither hear, nor make themselves heard in the world; they can neither fully know nor clearly understand; not even if they travel; because, to quote Bacon's longestablished wisdom, he who goes travelling without knowing the language of the foreign country, goeth to school and not to travel. A remedy must be found for this, and found quickly; else we shall be handicapped, we shall be fooled, and shall see ourselves befogged; we shall be the fretful provincials we have been often led to be; we shall not be fit to claim respect even of the England we cannot forget, whose presence haunts us, and who, if we ourselves have no more in us of real life than a playtoy, will surely continue to use us as such. And were England to be blamed? For she, too, forms but part of this poor, bewildered, blind and erring race, of Adam.

Germany is noted as the land of congresses, organized in wondrous fashion. Germany's 'Catholic Truth Society's meeting, last year in Munich, meant nigh 120,000 people assembled on a great public square, while Mass was celebrated by the papal nuncio, and university students rode on horseback to their places as guards of honour, others of them on foot bearing huge banners, they themselves gaily attired in the gorgeous if not beauteous uniforms of their student societies. And Germany is the country where there are more practising Catholics than in any other country in the world-as we are reminded, by Father Keating, S.J., editor of the Month, in his account of his experiences at this Munich congress. But also in Paris, that year, was a great Catholic gathering, and from every country in Europe-shall we have to say, except Ireland? -students and professors assembled. And the German professor who described the Paris scene to me, lodged at the house of that enthusiastic and chivalric French friend of Ireland, M. Marc Sangnier, who was planning a visit

here to us, when a truce came to the 1921 militarism that he longed to expose more openly, to his French world at least. At that Catholic Congress in Paris, no one got quite such an enthusiastic reception as the German philosophy professor, Dr. von Hildebrand, son of the great sculptor, devoted in his whole-hearted conversion to publishing greater works of Catholic mystical theology and religious life.

But here was a sign, of the unifying power, of the humane internationalism, making even Germany and France lie down in peace, even in this last year-here was the sign, from the only force that can draw Europe together and save her from internecine nationalism, the force of Christianity, organized in the Church, making the same appeal, giving the same support to action, in one nation as in another. All over the half-ruined war world, there is a seeking for some principle put in practice, to make possible what the world said it raged for in war-justice to weak as well as strong; no more torturing of the helpless ones, to make them shape their national life according to the wishes of those who have power to impose religious, moral, social, political notions; tending always to the aggrandisement of the powerful, and the suppressions of helpless victims. It has all failed, lamentably failed.' And Bolshevism is the present horror of the conservatives, wise or selfish. Roughly, they mean awful rising efforts, at renewing ruined Europe, by some revolution; and the consequent resistance thereto. And those who have, are dismayed, and propose repressions. And those who have not, are distracted, and care not what they do, for they have

In the words, last December, of an English priest writer of home-truths: A century of industrialism, an army of unemployed, empire-building abroad and cinema-building at home, and the land a portion for foxes, pheasants, factories, airsheds and garages; and now, with dramatic swiftness, Ionia is over-run and laid waste, and the Turkish special chivalry have put Smyrna to fire and sword. But what does it matter, as long as we have gamepreserving, hunting, sensational films, screaming headlines, journals of vast circulation with illustrations of half-clad women, empty granaries, and full workhouses; briefly, all those advantages of civilization which we are so anxious to bestow upon those unenlightened natives who happen to be living where gold and oil are available?' 'Well, we've done Greece,' gloats one English Innocent Abroad, (according to one vastly circulated London daily, last November); ' what other land is there?'

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nothing to lose. And there is no common moral law sanctioned by religion. And yet, to repeat, on all sides the instinct for self-preservation seeks such a law. Hence the passion of a more idealistic Socialism. Hence the antisocialistic idealism of the university students in Germany, who distrust an internationalism wasting itself in words, neglectful of local and personal traditions, tending to break up the family as well as the nation. Materialism is done for in the German universities,' we read there, in university words. And this, just after hearing, from some wretched young ignorant Irishmen who have bobbed up into some power, that we are all materialists now, professor.' 'I tell you,' these added to me, 'what is wrong with this country is, that we are all too d--d religious.' They tell us, said the Lord Mayor of Cologne, in my hearing, that there has been a collapse of Christianity. I tell you, what there has been a collapse of, is materialism and murky materialistic world-policy. No-as I then heard German university students speak out, before great audiences-in the war, we turned to God, and learned Our Father from fallen com rades, friend and foe, all children of one Father. Certainly as said a priest, speaking before Germans of the various states, concerning the longing to believe, there have beer varying thinkings and wild thought since the war, and even desperate if impossible questioning whether there b any good, any right; but amid all the facts of sin and horror, there is a vision of the Church (as a Chesterto has envisaged her), on her rough and rugged way, dashe hither and thither, yet pushing on through the storm crushed yet not stayed in her path, maimed, yet risin again, ill-used and misused, half blinded and yet knowin her goal:

Like as a ship, that through the ocean wyde
Directs her course unto one certaine cost,
Is met of many a counter winde and tyde,
With which her winged speed is let and crost,
And she herselfe in stormie surges tost;
Yet, making many a borde and many a bay,
Still winneth way, ne hath her compasse
lost;

The Church is seen as the guide; and many men, in their great need for saving even society, are asking, with growing hope: 'Is this too good to be true?' The war has emphasized the necessity of political independence for the Church, even when men as Christians had to take special part in national struggles. Such the impression on the American Protestant bishop, Dr. Kinsman (a Catholic, since 1919), after seeking a religion, teacher and guide of man; not a personal, or local, discovery or fancy.

At congresses in 1922 Germany, things like that were to be heard. And in church, a war-priest, a Jesuit, maimed in the fighting, now, when preaching to 2,000 men, called on his hearers to answer him with 'Yes, we will '; as he put them questionings as to what their faith is to mean for Europe: Will you stand for family life? Will you stand for Christian education? And for the Church? 'Yes, we will.' And I thought of corrupt Irish warriors and their stuff about being too d-d religious,' and their added nonsense that we in Ireland don't care a d--n, whether we are a light or a help to other nations. Every man is for himself now, they said, in their cheap chat. They're puir creatures, they're puir, wratched, meeserable creatures—as said the Scots' soul of Thomas Carlyle. Or the English contemporary churchman to teach them :

The wicked passed-the wicked age, the wicked men; passed with the evil they had done, with the good which they had frustrated, with the righteous whom they had silenced or slain. And when they were gone, when the tyranny was overpast, the unforgotten law of right, the inextinguishable power of conscience, were found to have survived unweakened through the hour of darkness, ready to reassert and to extend their empire.

Life is not void or stuff for scorners.

This idealistic youth movement in wiser Germany, as in France, as in Italy-where but yesterday even the new Fascisti Prime Minister, Mussolini, declared that I am against all anti-clerical and atheistic democracy; that game is played out '-this better youth movement is hearing the all European cry of Back to the Land, rising from the horror at what, there, has come, in the accursed great cities

of competitive commercialism.

It means something of following the sound of Wandernlied-and Volkslied. And whereas 'Volk' had a note, in the very sound of the word, of primitive and stupid-to the nineteenth-century votaries of pretended progress-now 'Volk' spells the people in its real life, with traditions, with individuality, and strength of character, life natural and life real. What country more than Ireland, without many big slum cities, with a population still chiefly on the land, is more fitted to respond to such thoughts of civilization, simpler, truer, more fruitful?

There was one great congress of university students, of allconfessions' or of none, in Germany, last summer. The Socialist corporation of Würzburg, where it was to be held, refused the young men permission. Of course, the congress was held, with éclat, elsewhere-in Frankfurt. So, one knew of how in another city, Socialist demonstrations took care, it was said, to put off the day of celebration until the university students had scattered to their homes. That was in South Germany. It means that the students, who certainly are not mainly from classes aristocratic or capitalistic, have an idealism, a religious enthusiasm, a moral striving, which, to repeat, sees under Socialism (in practice, anyway), a cheapening of life, an indifference to their country's past, a hostility to Christian marriage, a hardhearted theoretic intellectualism-Burke's Jacobinism

in the educated, and a general materialism below. There can be no question that the collapse of international Socialism at the outbreak of the war, and its uselessness as a hindrance to the war, together with its dreary, hopeles irreligion and its instinctive spirit of persecution of school where religion is a basis, and its desire to shackle all Churcl life, in the interest, as is said, of liberty and worldl comfort, and care for the tangible; there can be no questio that all these features of what roughly may be called th democratic movements on the continent-as, truly, almos ever since the French Revolution-are strengthening a re action not only from the altar, but from the fireside; an