War is on every horizon to-day—a black cloud that, coming nearer, resolves itself into a swarm of enemy aircraft bringing death from the skies.

Fear of that black swarm is hypnotising half the civilised world, and there is no decent man or woman but detests the new horror it has brought into warfare, the Massacre of the Innocents. A dead or dying soldier on the battlefield is an ugly sickening fact, but it is possible to cover it with the decent cloak of duty or even to dress it with glory. The woman or the young child dying in torment amidst the ruins of a home is plain, unvarnished, abominable evil, beyond palliation, beyond glorification. Yet it is an inescapable part of war to-day. Spain has seen it; China has seen it; and where will modern war be waged without it?

The Catholic feels the utmost aversion from taking part in warfare that involves such horrors. If it be a necessity, it is a most evil one. But is it a necessity? There are Catholics who say it is no longer so, that modern warfare can never be justified. ‘War has become impossible,’ says Eric Gill, Catholic artist, writer and craftsman; ‘a just modern war is unthinkable,’ writes Father Gerald Vann, O.P.; and Father F. Stratmann, O.P., in a book, The Church and War considers that ‘modern warfare with the all-round ruin it brings must be immoral.’ The Catholic hating the barbaric methods of war to-day reads these and similar denunciations with sympathy but in growing perplexity of mind.

We have seen that the liberty of the Christian is, by definition, something super-human, absolute, inviolable. But if all this be so, how are we to set any limits to it? What room does it leave for rules and law? Are we not being so carried away with our idea of Christian freedom that we are being led to an anti-social anarchy, an anarchy all the more dangerous for being an anarchy of the Spirit? And in point of historic fact, do we not find throughout the history of the Church an abiding suspicion of such an exaltation of the liberty of the Spirit? How can we reconcile such claims with the demands of social law and order, with the well-being of the human community?

All liberty has both a personal and a social aspect, because liberty and the common good are bound up with one another. But does not this present a serious difficulty so soon as liberty be considered, not on the natural but on the theological plane? And is not this only to be expected when one passes from the order of the natural philosophy to that of faith? Is not the Christian, who measures his standards by God alone, free from the clutches—in his most intimate liberties at least—of every social obligation? Are we not to expect here a sort of supurnatural logic in direct opposition to the logic of nature?

People, and peoples, will often act, and still more often claim to act, because, as they say, their honour demands it. If a war be engaged in, whatever be the immediate motive of economic interest, imperial ambition, or fears for national security, members of the nation are encouraged to believe that the national honour is at stake, and examples in plenty are not far to seek in our own and other countries of the strong appeal which this motive makes to the heart of man. History indeed is not wanting to show that the defence and preservation of honour can become, under the subtle habituation of artificial convention alone, a most powerful influence even in private life. Intermediate between that and the actions of the public person of the State, the military and in their own way other professional corps have, and have always had, what are known as their codes of honour, for which men who have been bred in them will risk their money, their social standing, their very lives. At times, undoubtedly, the keeping of his honour undimmed is the only motive present to a man’s consciousness, so trained can one become to act in that light without hesitation, and as it were by instinct. But if we want to see the full power of attraction which it can exercise, we must look at the book where human aims are writ large, in the political sphere, in which the motions of desire are more striking, the risks run more easily appreciable, the effects more widespread, than in the lives of individuals.

A war to end war. So they said in 1918, and at Versailles was planned a new settlement and a new start. This, they said, would involve a peace based on forbearance and sacrifice all round. But the peoples, said the statesmen, were not ready for such an enlightened peace. And so the pips had to be made to squeak, and in England there was a khaki election.

The new Criminal Justice Bill which was introduced to the House of Commons towards the end of last year is now ploughing its way in some form or other towards the Statute Book.

Its provisions, which have provoked a good deal of discussion up and down the country, have at any rate served to draw the attention of people to the system under which our prisons are being administered.

With every effort at reform there is always the fear present that we may be in danger of taking the sting out of the punishment of imprisonment; there is always the fear that we may be turning our prisons into homes from home.

The history of English prison administration this century has been one of concession, amelioration and improvement to the point where people have begun to wonder whether the reforms have not been carried too far, having in mind the vicious nature of the crimes which our prisons are frequently called upon to handle.

Marchenoir in Le Désespéré is generally taken as the prototype of the writer. In this character Léon Bloy draws the portrait of a man of intense and burning faith, but given to passion and governed not by reason, but by feeling; he gives the picture of an unrecognised and embittered artist, of one who with the vision of a saint could not practise even ordinary virtue, and who, driven to despair by the consequences of his acts, becomes almost insane through his capacity for suffering. This portrait, however, is neither exact nor complete; Léon Bloy himself was far more of a Christian and far less of a lunatic than Marchenoir.

Round this saint manqué, this vagabond accompli, this grotesque figure surrounded by poverty and degradation, the prey of passion, and yet dispenser of spiritual gifts, a peculiar interest centres to-day. To deny Léon Bloy’s spiritual influence would be not only injurious but unjust. He was responsible for some of the most remarkable conversions of the last fifty years, those of Jacques Maritain and de la Meer Walcheren among others.

The unity of Christians, Our Lord implies, is a necessary condition if the world is to accept His mission from His Father; He prays that His followers ‘may be one . . . that the world may believe that thou hast sent me’ (Jn. xvii, 21). The scandal, the futility, of the continuance of Christian divisions whose origins and meaning have been long forgotten is plain for all to see. Yet nobody with any sense of realities can be blind to the immensity of the obstacles which hinder Christian reunion, nor to the theoretic unsoundness and the practical hopelessness of the various well-meaning but man-made solutions that have so far been offered to the problem. Meanwhile, with bewildering rapidity, the alignments for what looks like becoming the final struggle between Christ and secularism for the soul of civilised man are being formed, leaving those who profess the name of Christ hopelessly divided among themselves.

Anglo-Saxondom has much to answer for in originating and continuing the divisions of Christendom, and it alone is responsible for most of the subdivisions of those divisions—the final atomisation of Christendom, the reductio ad absurdum of schism. But to Anglo-Saxondom is due also the origin of many of the efforts of recent years, however pathetically inadequate, to undo the damage. Faith and Order, Life and Work, the Branch Theory and the Bridge-Church Approach, all these are of British or American origin. And to all these, and to most other reunion schemes or dreams, ‘Rome’ has appeared as the great obstructionist.