In June, 1914, when he had been six years an active member of the Dominican community in London, Father Bede’s brethren elected him their Prior. He was unusually young for such an office—only thirty-three. To his other duties was now added the heavy responsibility of governing a community of religious men, priests and lay-brothers, and exercising authority and jurisdiction over them according to the Dominican Constitutions in all matters spiritual and temporal.

‘As you can guess,’ he wrote to a friend who had sent him congratulations, ‘it is all rather distasteful to me, so that I should be grateful for your prayers when you have any to let.’

Scarcely had he entered upon this new phase of his life when the European war broke out. England entered into it on the Feast of St. Dominic, August 4th.

He published in the Rosary Magazine a translation of the prayers pro pace, ordered by the Cardinal, and added:

‘All our thoughts are preoccupied with the war. Waking, it is perhaps our first thought, and sleeping our last. We have each of us friends and relations who have gone off to their ships or regiments to do battle for their country’s cause, and there are the far larger number of those who, at home, live the more difficult life of peace. Prayer, of course, must take a very large place in our energies. But we must add to that the activities of practice.’