In the history of the Church there are many examples of the Faith ‘persecuted in one city fleeing to another’ and eventually finding its way back from the second to the first. The Faith may be sent by one country to another and lost in the sender and sent back by the receiver. A remarkable example of this is the history of the conversion of the British Isles and their subsequent sending of missionaries into Europe.

In South Africa it is heard that when the Apostolic Delegate visited the late Holy Father last year, the Supreme Pontiff, the undying Peter, of whom Newman wrote that ‘in the history of the ages his words have been facts and his commands prophecies,’ said to his representative that the foreign missions represented now his chief hope for Christendom in view of the present outlook in Europe.

And the Church has an inarticulate as well as an articulate voice. It is not without significance that the Foreign Missionary Orders are now overflowing with vocations. Both Voices represent the Infallible Spirit, which may well be stirring the Church to develop rapidly elsewhere before the work of the new vandals be done—if it is to be done. It may be that the trusteeship of the Kingdom of God will pass to other races than the white, at least in part.

Among the various Missions in South Africa at the moment there is one, recognised as one of the most prospering in the world, which suggests very strongly the hope of a new way round. While, to leave violence out of our calculations, it can be said at least that problems and prejudices in Europe are too mixed to allow of any very rapid evangelisation without quite extraordinary miracles, the Basuto people in South Africa are giving an example of mass conversion to the Faith recalling that of first evangelisation of Ireland, the most peaceful and triumphal in history.