vide schools and shortly even a college for the education of their leaders. And if these men and women have sometimes been praised for qualities they either did not possess or did not esteem, it is equally true that they have been blamed for faults which were peculiar to other men of their time as well as to themselves.

The period was not one of large tolerance, either in politics or religion, and in these matters they fought fire with fire. They were undoubtedly serious and some of them presumably hard and sour, like certain of their descendants; but they were also certainly brave and

wholly conscientious. Their domestic life may have been bleak, but at least it was sturdy and pure. Surely these traits have some meaning for us to-day. We do not see God with their eyes, but we know that justice and mercy shall endure forever. We do not apprehend Satan in the material forms which they made so vivid, but we do know that, with nations as with men, injustice breeds strife and loose morals spell national decay.

We can never return to their literalistic interpretation of the Scriptures, nor to the austerities of their daily life, but we may well inquire whether something

of their sense of the deeper, spiritual values of experience would not soften the hard and cynical gaze with which so many a modern looks out upon life, would not make for a deeper and more enduring foundation for our social relations and our National vigor.

Is it too much to hope that those superb impulses of high spiritual purpose which possessed our entire Nation during the late war may once more sweep over our people and embed themselves forever in our National fiber? Such a moral victory would indeed be a fitting tribute to the dauntless men and women whose memory we honor to-night.

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FOT since the days of Luther has the Vatican faced a situation so full of uncertainties-of possibilities as that which greets the successor to Pope Benedict XV. The choice of Cardinal Ratti is in itself significant. His rapid promotion, his athletic physique, his mountaineering zeal, mean that here is a Pontiff who will broaden the Catholic appeal. He becomes Pope not as an ecclesiastic merely but as a man of muscle and individuality. He blesses the people from the outside of St. Peter's, not from the inside. He is the prisoner of the Vatican who intends to escape.

Many are the evidences of a counterReformation which might substantially change the balance between Catholic and Protestant. The war has not turned people into atheists, but has led them, rather, to mistrust a modern progress away from religion. "Pure reason" as developed in Prussia did not keep the peace, but produced poison gas, and science seemed to be summed up in submarines. Hence we see Bernard Shaw returning at least to Methuselah, while for the sake of argument H. G. Wells concedes God. Sir Oliver Lodge, once agnostic, delivers other-worldly lectures; and in Scotland and northern England there has been a spontaneous revival, evoking comparisons with the life-work of the Wesleys, Whitefield, Fox, and Moody, or with the spiritual experiences of Wales. Finally, we have had a President of the United States inaugurating a Conference of the Powers, and among them Japan and China, with the Lord's Prayer.

In this atmosphere the Roman Church has displayed a world-wide and careful activity. Sir Charles Dilke, who was in his day a high authority, considered that the diplomats of the Papacy were the ablest in the world. If diplomacy can restore a faith, assuredly Rome is once more formidable. With exquisite timeliness, Joan of Arc has been canonized and France in victory receives a

BY P. W. WILSON

THE SHRINE OF STE. ANNE AT THE CHURCH OF STE. ANNE DE BEAUPRÉ, QUEBEC

This is one of the most celebrated shrines of the New World. Thousands of people annually make pilgrimages to this place to pray before the shrine, which contains a relic of the saint

patron saint. Canonized also is Bishop Plunkett, of Ireland, hung, drawn, and quartered during the Popish Plot. It is doubtless an undesigned coincidence that both these saints were martyred by England! The Protestant halo which surrounds Nurse Cavell is reflected by a Catholic halo around Cardinal Mercier, also revered by mankind. Organizations like the Young Men's Christian Association are not only denounced as subver

sive of faith and morals; they are challenged by rivals like the Knights of Columbus. And in these days of the camera the Church of Rome has this further advantage-she photographs admirably. Not only does she paint pictures she is one. In the movies her ceremonial reaches to the ends of the earth. Of her pageantry she makes no secret. Her mysteries are frankly displayed. If a great ecclesiastic dies, his body lies in state, without reserve. His face is seen. In the inner life, let us say, of the Quakers, there is nothing for the film. It is like leaven hidden in three measures of meal. It is a kingdom that cometh without observation.

As an example of the emotions which are stirring the world, one may mention faith healing. Whatever may be the troubles of Christian Scientists in Boston, their crusade continues in England. Shrines like Lourdes or Sainte Anne de Beaupré in Quebec have never been more popular. Even the Anglican Church has developed its healing ministry; and a glance at the Report of the Rockefeller Foundation, with the news that never has the death rate in New York fallen as low as it is to-day, suggests that medicine also is working its scientific miracles, and so carrying forward the first main task of the Saviour when on earth. Under such circumstances, signs and wonders are to be expected. From Ireland we have reports of cripples being cured through bleeding statues and holy pictures, while Cardinal Newman, who was so interested in ecclesiastical miracles, would have noted, had he been alive, the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples, which happily foretold the failure of revolutionary troubles in Italy.

If, however, the influence of the Catholic Church has sometimes tended towards superstition, that influence has also made for sober manners. Pope Benedict XV declared that "on the domestic hearth woman is queen." He denounced extravagance of dress; and

in Spain, the United States, and other countries the hierarchy emphasized his message, even interrupting the rite of marriage unless the company were clothed according to "Christian modesty." Against divorce the Church stands so firm that there are cities in the United States where moving pictures in which the stars have figured prominently in matrimonial suits are not easily shown. Certain incidents which accompanied the campaign for birth control are part of the same Catholic policy. With a profound discernment, the Papacy has appealed for conservatism in manners and morals as well as in theology. It is essentially the appeal made by the black coat of an American President. It is also the appeal deliberately enforced against the smart set by the British Court. Catholicism is now no longer identified with bull-fights, the Continental Sunday, absinthe, and the stiletto! Catholicism is, or seeks to be, mid-Victorian.

Hence what has been called "the procession to the Vatican" as, to a steadying factor in the world's affairs. The cynic may say that statesmen, afraid of Bolshevism, were glad of any port in a storm. Be that as it may, with the world becoming republican, we have the amazing fact that the number of countries with representatives accredited to the Holy See has doubled. Before the war it was a dozen; now it is more nearly thirty. Even Britain and Holland are included. Hitherto the Papacy has cultivated the good will of monarchs. Now it must deal with democracies; and it fell to the lot of Pope Benedict XV to recognizeindeed, to welcome-the inevitable. After all, even Catholic monarchs have not always acted as obedient sons of the Church. There was Henry VIII. There

was Napoleon Bonaparte. There was Louis XIV. There was the veto of the Hapsburgs which prevented Rampolla being Pope. And among Protestant "despots" there was Bismarck, there was George III. What the Papacy is now organizing is no longer the divine right of kings, but voting power among the peoples. In France Catholics are released from the royalist allegiance. In Italy they are no longer warned against elections but urged to record their suffrages, with the result that there has been formed under Don Luigi Sturzo, a Sicilian priest, the Italian Popular Party, which, it is hoped, will become the nucleus of a White Internationalthe Christian alternative to the Red International. In the United States there have been various pronouncements on social reconstruction of a liberal character.

The policy of winning the people instead of merely cultivating the friendship of their rulers has had results. There were tens of thousands of priests in the French army, and as soldiers they were infinitely more powerful for the Church than they would have been if they had claimed the privileged exemption allowed by Britain to her clergy. France is not Catholic. But she no longer holds what Catholicism she has merely "for export." In Italy the active quarrel between Church and State is at an end. The theory that the Pope is a prisoner of the Vatican, that he is restrained by some civil usurpation from exercising his office, that his letters are opened, and so on, has always been a polite fiction. The Pope can at any time go anywhere or receive any one or anything that he wants. But his attempt to forbid Catholic sovereigns visiting the King of Italy-he even objected to the

discretion of Theodore Roosevelt-was by no means unreal. It was almost a cause of war on one occasion between Austria and Italy, and it has been most wisely abandoned. Indeed, cardinals today drink tea with the royal house of Savoy, and an Italian Minister formally presented condolences at the Vatican on the death of Benedict XV. It is true that no panegyric on him was pronounced in the Italian Parliament. But it is also true that the Italian Government which desired this without securing it fell from power. The Catholics have become a force in Italian politics.

Even so stanch a Whig as Macaulay has admitted that "it is better that men should be governed by priestcraft than by brute violence, by such a prelate as Dunstan than by such a warrior as Penda." What Pope Benedict XV aimed at was to be the Dunstan who restrains the Penda. He supported the principles underlying a League of Nations. He asked to be represented at Versailles, but Italy would not have it. He has pronounced against conscription and the worst horrors of war. His voice materially contributed to a settlement in Ireland. But it must not be supposed that his record has commanded universal assent. At a time when the Protestant and Eastern Churches are drawing together, when important conferences are held and contemplated to discuss either reunion or intercommunion, Rome stands aloof, as haughty as ever. She will join with no other body of Christians. All Christians must first join her. The Papacy has still to emerge from that terrific scene in 1870 when, with France tottering, and tottering also the Temporal Power, Pius IX, undeterred by peals of coincident thunder, signed his own infallibility amid a daylight dark

ness which was only relieved by candles held above the challenging manuscript.

The future of Roman Catholicism, though brighter than before and, some would say, of a dazzling prospect, is by no means free from perplexity. Statistics are published showing hundreds of millions of Catholics even in Europe; but these figures are nominal. In no real sense are there, for instance, thirtyfive million of the faithful in France The Vatican is, by admission, in need of funds. Not only have the revenues of the Papal States come to an end, but contributions from Austria, Hungary, Poland-to mention only three Catholic countries-must have most grievously declined. This means that the Pope is now dependent more than ever before upon the tribute which he receives from the New World, and especially from the United States. This country is one where, as England discovered to her cost, taxation without representation, and especially taxation by the Old World, needs a good deal of defending. Hence it must be considered a serious question whether the existing constitution of the College of Cardinals can be maintained. From a recent book of reference I gather the list which is printed in the adjoining column.

That means a clear majority for Italy. And at a Conclave the under-representation of the New World is the more noticeable because time is not allowed for

the four non-European Cardinals to arrive and vote. In other words, the Catholics of North and South America at present exercise no influence over the choice of the Pontiff. The explanation of the anomaly is of course curious and interesting. The Pope is not only the Holy Father of Catholic Christians. He is Bishop of Rome. The Cardinals are in a technical sense his local clergyhis suffragan bishops, his priests, his deacons. Each has his parish in the Eternal City. But, however keenly the antiquarian may appreciate this tradi

tion, one must face the fact that the election, let us say, of the Bishop of New York, in which the laity participate, in which the whole Church concerned has a voice, in which the proceedings are public, seems to be more in line with equity and the custom of to-day than the picturesque proceedings in the sealed chambers and chapels of the Vati

can.

What the Church has to guard against is another breach between her Italian body-guard and her faithful beyond the Alps. The country which bred Julius Cæsar, Dante, Michael Angelo, and most of the Popes deserves a world-wide empire over men's minds. But, after all, the predominance of Italy in the Papacy was at least a contributing cause of the Reformation in northern Europe and in Britain. And the Italian view on many subjects, particularly the relations of the Papacy with other Christian bodies, may not be at all the real and considered view of Catholics outside Italy and Europe. A large increase in the propor tion of non-Italian Cardinals would seem to be needed by the circumstances of the case, and with it a somewhat more elastic arrangement for their attendance. when summoned, at Rome. The situation is, if one may say so, somewhat similar to that of England and her Dominions. More and more she has found it wise to recognize the sentiments and the susceptibilities of her distant adherents.

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BY DOROTHY CANFIELD

OST personalities get pretty well blurred and dimmed by the time they are handed down through the indifferent, inattentive stories of several generations. But the personality of my Great-Uncle Giles has suffered no such partial obliteration. It has come down to us with outlines keen and sharply bitten into the family consciousness, with the acid of exact recollection. And in his case family stories are by no means indifferent. To this day you have only to mention Uncle Giles to one of our name to see our bristles rise.

This is not at all because Uncle Giles ever disgraced the family or did any evil or wicked action. Quite the contrary. Uncle Giles thought that he was the only member of the entire tribe with any fineness or delicacy of feeling, with any aristocratic distinction of person or manner, with any fitness for a higher sphere of activities than the grubby middle-class world of his kinsmen. Yes, that is exactly what Uncle Giles thought, probably adding that he often felt himself a gentleman among canaille. intense prejudice of all our name against any one openly professing to be a gentleman may be laid to this. If he adds, or any one adds for him, “among canaille," you can see the froth begin to show white at the corners of our mouths.

The

No

A gentleman should not be forced to the menial task of earning his living. Uncle Giles was never forced to the menial task of earning his living. power on earth could force him to it, not even the combined and violent efforts of a good many able-bodied and energetic kinspeople. The tales of how Uncle Giles blandly outwitted their coarse attacks on him and succeeded to the end of a very long life in living without work are endless, infinite in their variety, and for three generations now have wrought the members of our family to wrath and laughter. He was incredible. You can't imagine anything like him unless you have had him in your family too.

Uncle Giles was preparing for the ministry for many years-years when his people did not know him so well as later, and still believed that with a little more help Giles would be able to get on his feet. He was a great favorite in the theological seminary where he was a student for so long, a handsome, wellset-up blond young man, with beautiful large blue eyes. I know just how he looked, for we have an expensive miniature that was painted of him at the time. He paid for that miniature with the money my great-grandfather pried out of a Vermont farm. It had been sent him to pay for his board. So of

course more money had to be sent for his board. You can't abandon a son just on the point of becoming a clergyman and being a credit to the entire family. Great-grandfather had no more money to send at that time, but his other sons, hard-working, energetic, successful men, clubbed together and made up the amount. Uncle Giles thanked them and forwarded with his letter, to show them, as he said, "that their bounty was not ill-advised," a beautifully bound highpriced little red morocco note-book in which he had written down the flattering things said of him by his professors and others-especially others. He underlined certain passages, thus: "A very worthy young man, most pleasing in society." A model to all in the decorum and grace of his manners.”

His board bill had to be paid a good many times before Uncle Giles finally gave up preparing himself for the ministry. The summer vacations of this period he spent in visiting first one and then another member of the family, a first-rate ornament on the front porch and at the table, admired by the ladies of the neighborhood, a prime favorite on picnics and on the croquet ground. He always seemed to have dropped from a higher world into the rough middle-class existence of his kin, but his courtesy was so exquisite that he refrained from commenting on this in any way. Still, you could see that he felt it. Especially if you were one of the well-to-do neighbors on whom the distinguished young theological student paid evening calls; and you admired his quiet tact and his steady loyalty to his commonplace family.

The effect which his quiet tact and steady loyalty had on his commonplace family was so great that it has persisted undiminished to this day. Any one of us, to the remotest cousin, can spot an Uncle Giles as far as we can see him. We know all about him, and it is not on our front porches that he comes to display his tact and loyalty and the decorum and grace of his manners. As for allowing the faintest trace of UncleGilesism to color our own lives, there is not one of us who would not rush out to earn his living by breaking stone by the roadside before sinking to that. We are, just as Uncle Giles felt, a very commonplace family, of the most ordinary Anglo-Saxon stock, with no illuminating vein of imaginative Irish or Scotch or Welsh blood; and I think it very likely that if we had not experienced Uncle Giles we would have been the stodgiest of the stodgy as far as social injustice is concerned. But our imaginations seem to have been torn open by Uncle Giles as by a charge of

dynamite; and, having once understood what he means, we hang to it with our dull Anglo-Saxon tenacity. We have a deep, unfailing sympathy with any one who is trying to secure a better and fairer adjustment of burdens in human life, because we see in our plain dull way that all he is trying to do is to eliminate the Uncle Gileses from society and force them to work. And we are always uneasily trying to make sure that we are not in the bigger scheme, without realizing it, Uncle-Gilesing it, ourselves.

After a while Uncle Giles stopped preparing for the ministry and became an invalid. He bore this affliction with the unaffected manly courage which was always one of his marked characteristics. He never complained, he "bore up" in all circumstances, even on busy wash-days when there was no time to prepare one of the dainty little dishes which the delicacy of his taste enabled him so greatly to appreciate. Uncle Giles always said of the rude, vigorous, hearty, undiscriminating men of the family that they could "eat anything." His accent in saying this was the wistful one of resigned envy of their health.

It has been a point of honor with us all ever since to be able to "eat anything," and any one, even a legitimate invalid, who is inclined to be fastidious and make it difficult for the others feels a united family glare concentrating on him, which makes him, in a panic, reach out eagerly for the boiled pork and cabbage.

Uncle Giles's was a singular case, "one of those mysterious maladies which baffle even the wisest physicians," as he used to say himself. A good many ladies in those days had mysterious maladies which baffled even the wisest physicians, and they used to enjoy Uncle Giles above everything. No other man had such an understanding of their symptoms and such sympathy for their sufferings. The easy chair beside Uncle Giles's invalid couch was seldom vacant. Ladies going away after having left a vaseful of flowers for him, and a plateful of cake and two or three jars of jelly and some cold breasts of chicken, would say, with shining, exalted countenances: "In spite of his terrible trials, what an inspiration our friend can be! An hour with that good man is like an hour on Pisgah."

They would, as like as not, make such a remark to the brave invalid's brother, or cousin, or, in later years, nephew, who was making the money to keep the household going. I am afraid we are no longer as a family very sure what or where Pisgah is, although we know it is in the Bible somewhere, but there

is a fierce family tradition against fussing over your health which is as vivid this minute as on the day when the brother, or cousin, or nephew of Uncle Giles turned away with discourteous haste from the shining-faced lady and stamped rudely into another room. Doctors enter our homes when there is a broken leg or a confinement case to care for; but seldom for anything else.

When the Civil War came on, and Uncle Giles was the only man in the family left at home, he rose splendidly to the occasion and devoted himself to the instruction of his kinswomen, ignorant of the technique of warfare. From his invalid couch he explained to them the strategy of the great battles in which their brothers and husbands and fathers were fighting, and when the letters from hospitals came with news of the wounded who but Uncle Giles was competent to understand and explain the symptoms reported? As a rule, the women of his family were too frantically busy with their Martha-like concentration on the mere material problems of war-time life to give these lucid and intellectual discussions of strategy the attention and consideration they deserved. The war, however, though it seemed endless, lasted, after all, but four years.

And when it was over, Uncle Giles was free to go back to discussions more congenial to his literary and æsthetic tastes.

By the time he was past middle age, "a butterfly broken on the wheel of life," as he said, it was of course out of the question to expect him to think of earning his own living. He had become a family institution by that time, too, firmly embedded in the solidly set cement of family habits. The older generation always had taken care of him, the younger saw no way out and with an unsurprised resignation bent their shoulders to carry on. So before any other plans could be made Uncle Giles had to be thought of. Vacations were taken seriatim, not to leave Uncle Giles alone. In buying or building a house care had to be taken to have a room suitable for Uncle Giles when it was your turn to have him. If the children had measles, one of the first things to do was to get Uncle Giles into some other home, so that he would not be quarantined. That strange law of family life which ordains that the, person most difficult to please is always, in the long run, the one to please whom most efforts are made, worked out in its usual complete detail. The dishes Uncle Giles liked were the only ones served, since the other men could "eat anything;" the songs Uncle Giles liked were the only ones sung, the houses were adjusted to him, the very color of the rugs and the pictures on the walls were selected to suit Uncle Giles's taste.

Looking back through the perspective of a generation and a half, I can see the exact point of safely acknowledged middle age when Uncle Giles's health began cautiously to improve; but it

must have been imperceptible to those around him, so gradual was the change. His kin grew used to each successive stage of his recovery before they realized that it was there, and nobody seems to have been surprised to have Uncle Giles pass into a remarkably hale and vigorous old age. "Invalids often are strong in their later years," he said of himself; "it is God's compensation for their earlier sufferings."

He passed into the full rewards of the most rewarded old age. It was a period of apotheosis for him, and a very

In an early issue The Outlook will publish Dorothy Canfield's "Colonel Shays" and later "Uncle Ellis," two more of her "excursions along the byways of human nature."

lengthy one at that, for he lived to be well past eighty. In any gathering Uncle Giles, erect and handsome, specklessly attired, his smooth old face neatly shaved, with a quaint, gentle, old world courtesy and protecting chivalry in his manner to ladies, was a conspicuous and much-admired figure. People brought visitors to town to call on him and to hear him tell in his vivid, animated way of old times in the country. His great specialty was stories of the Civil War. At any gathering where veterans of the war were to be honored Uncle Giles held every one breathless with his descriptions of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville; and when he spoke of Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, and Sherman's march, how his voice pealed, his fine eyes lighted up! Strangers used to say to themselves that it was easy to see what an eloquent preacher he must have been when he was in the active ministry. The glum old men in worn blue coats used to gather in a knot in the farthest corner and in low tones, not to interrupt his discourse, would chat to each other of crops and fishing and politics.

Somewhere we have a scrap-book in which an ironic cousin of mine carefully preserved and pasted all the newspaper articles that were written about Uncle Giles in his old age and the many handsome obituary notices which appeared when he finally died. I can remember my father's getting it out occasionally and reading the clippings to himself with a very grim, stern expression on his face; but it always moved my light-hearted, fun-loving mother to peals of laughter. After all, she was related to Uncle Giles only by marriage, and felt no responsibility for him. I have said that we are not a remarkable family in any way, but perhaps I ought to take that back, for we are strongly

marked, all of us, with the greatest distaste for what is rather a big temptation to many such ordinary people as we are. We have the liveliest aversion to newspaper mention of our names, especially connected with praise for any good works we may happen to be attempting. So far from any satisfaction in such personal publicity, we all feel a hangdog shame. Perhaps you can understand why.

The other day in looking over some old legal papers I came across a yellowed letter, folded and sealed, as was the habit before envelopes were common, with three handsome pale-blue seals on its back. The seals were made with the crested cameo ring which Uncle Giles always wore, bearing what he insisted was the "coat of arms" of our family. Have I mentioned to you that we are all marked with a fierce hatred for any form of hereditary claim to good birth and aristocratic connections, and all that nonsense?

The handwriting of the letter was beautiful, formed with an amorous pride in every letter. It was from Uncle Giles to one of his uncles, my great-greatgrandfather's brother. I had never seen it before, as it had lain lost there for half a century or more; but every word of it was familiar to me as I glanced it over. It began with Uncle Giles's polished courtesy, with inquiries after every member of his uncle's family, and a pleasant, condescending word for each one. He detailed the state of his health, which, alas! left much to be desired, and seemed, so the doctors told him, to require urgently a summer in the mountains. Then, leaving this subject, he jumped to the local news and told one or two amusing stories of the town where he was staying. In one of them I remember was this phrase, "I told her I might be poor, but that a gentleman of good birth did not recognize poverty as a member of the family." Through a neat transition after this he led up again to the subject of his health and to the desirability of his passing some months in the mountains, "in the pure air of God's great hills." Then he entered upon a discreet, pleasant, whimsical reference to the fact that only a contribution from his uncle's purse could make this possible. There never was anybody who could beat Uncle Giles on ease and grace and pleasant, pungent humor when it came to asking for money. The only person embarrassed in that situation was the one of whom Uncle Giles was expecting the loan.

I read no more. With no conscious volition of mine, my hand had scrunched the letter into a ball and my arm, without my bidding, had hurled the ball into the heart of the fire.

But as I reflected on the subject afterwards, and thought of what a splendid influence Uncle Giles has always been in our family, it occurred to me that I was wrong. Uncle Giles ought not to be forgotten. I ought to have saved that letter to show to my children.