Out of the pall of gloom that hangs over Ireland to-day there has emerged a gleam of light. The Archbishop of Tuam, in weightiest words, has urged a Truce of God : a cessation on both sides of shooting and raiding in order that, in an atmosphere of calm and peace the foundation of an understanding between the two nations may be laid. On both sides of the Channel the idea is being eagerly canvassed, and men have at last been brought to see that a truce of some kind is an urgent necessity unless murder and violence and ruthless destruction of property are to be prolonged with ever-increasing bitterness, Somehow moderate men in either camp must be got together in spite of Dublin Castle on one side and the Irish Republican Forces on the other. But how? At the moment of writing, in Dublin, amid daily shootings, raids, arrests, and re-arrests, the prospect would appear utterly black were it not that the very intensity of the evil compels men to seek desperately for a solution. .

Readers of Blackfriars (Nov.) have already been given by an able pen all the main features of the situation. Nothing has changed since then save an intensification of the horror. There is little to be gained by summarizing here the melancholy events of the last few weeks. It is more to the purpose to try and put before English readers something of the mentality of the Irish people in this crisis of their history.

In many respects the rapid growth of the Catholic Church in the United States is the most remarkable spiritual phenomenon since apostolic times. The adequate account of that astonishing achievement has yet to be written ; but I can flash a light upon it by saying that in a little over a hundred years Catholic America has increased its dioceses from one to a hundred, and its membership from practically nothing to twenty millions of souls.

I have been staggered by what I have seen, for though I have generally small faith in the efficacy of efficiency, I was profoundly impressed by the kind of organization I found established. Catholic high schools were familiar enough ; but Catholic colleges managed by nuns were portents. Yet there are a very great number of these, and their success may be estimated from the fact that the Sacred Heart Order alone has produced in the late Louise Imogen Guiney the best woman poet America can claim, and in Agnes Repplier the best American essayist since the passing of the great New England literary group.

Moreover, the practical spirituality of American Catholicism is proved by the huge crowds flocking to the Sacraments week by week. And while the methods of a New York parish may strike an easy-going Englishman as a trifle bureaucratic, they no doubt are necessary to a people accustomed to clockwork regularity.

Madrid is a very modern city. There are, doubtless, ancient things in it, and certainly its palaces, its churches, and its squares are harshly called modern by a colonial visitor. But for all that, Madrid is, I repeat, a modern city. You feel it so. True, you have not to wait long to see an ox-cart pass across the Puerto del Sol and block the traffic of electric cars and automobiles, and there are folk in the Buen Retiro whose souls plainly belong to mediaeval Spain ; but still for all that Madrid is modern. You may be very lonely in Madrid, and that is the real hallmark of a modern city. I do not see how anyone could feel lonely in Toledo or Cordoba, for their very stones cry out, and there are thin ghost voices in the wind, and their bridges and walls are haunted. But it is not so in Madrid. Therefore shall I go to Madrid again for but two things and a third : to visit the Prado once more ; to feast my eyes on the sword of Pizarro ; and to leave with speed for Toledo, Cordoba, and the warm-scented South.

Now of the Prado I do not find that I can write. It is, of course, one of the great European galleries, and I love Spain. Moreover, it is a homely picture-gallery, and there are sixty-seven Velasquez pictures admirably and chronologically hung in one room. But enough : Cook’s Handbook of Spain is written so.

Few more saddening confessions of religious change have ever been made than those of Renan, in his Souvenirs d’Enfance et de feunesse. The emotional appeal of his forsaken Faith was never silenced, although he came to regard its foundations as unsound. He felt cut off from those social acts of worship which mean so much to most of us.

“Quellien,” says he, speaking of a young friend— “Quellien a tres bien compris ce qui fera toujours defaut a mon Eglise, c’est I’enfant de choeur. Ma vie est comme une messe sur laquelle pèse un sort, un éternel Introibo ad altare Dei, et personne pour répondre : Ad Deum quil aetificat juventutem meam. Ma messe n’aura pas de servant. Faute de mieux, je me la repondrai a moi-même; mais ce n’est pas la même chose.”

It can never be the same thing to a nature naturally religious, exiling itself from a Community with worldwide activities, and sustaining its life by practices in force during centuries. Leaving the great Family of Faith he paid the penalty entailed.

He goes to the Eucharist to find an illustration of his companionlessness. He cries—but catches no response. He intones the prayer ; but that prayer has been emptied of the meaning which alone can call forth the swift reply of an answering love.

Within the last year two, at least, valuable books have appeared on the spiritual life— Abbot Butler’s Benedictine Monachism and Mr. Watkin’s Philosophy of Mysticism. The first of these has been so much noticed that I need not stay over it, save to remark on its sweet reasonableness on the question of mortification and austerities. Herein the Abbot contrasts with Mr. Watkin, who explains and defends with enthusiasm the path of utter detachment up Carmel. This difference, at first sight merely one of emphasis, does, I think, depend ultimately on divergent philosophies, and therefore raises several problems. Does, for instance, a philosophy of mysticism or sanctity require one definite way to God, and is that way necessarily one of ruthless austerity and detachment?

That this question is worth asking is proved by the fact that nowadays there is a desire to portray saints as gracious and lovable persons—not after the manner of the Oratorian lives, which even in the fifties were ill received—but as intensely human and aided to love of their fellowmen by a passionate love of God. A good example is the life of Soeur Thérèse. On the other hand, no amount of explanation can disguise the severity of a St. Gerard Majella, a Père Ginhac or a Father Doyle. The life of the fatter is especially interesting because his biographer quite clearly loves the human element in Father Doyle, but is too sincere to hide the extremes which his asceticism adopted, extremes which might have come straight out of the pages of Surius and are somewhat at variance with the ideal cherished by Abbot Butler.

Not the least of the many obstacles that prevent the English people from getting at the truth of things concerning the history of the Catholic Church is the method of the Protestant historian—a method employed with conspicuous success from Foxe, with his Book of Martyrs, until our own day.

Various simple devices, which may be detected by the student or general reader, are the signs of the Protestant method in history. Similar devices are employed by all writers engaged rather in making out a special case for a person or cause than in telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

i. The selection of facts to establish a theory or bolster up a prejudice, accompanied by a discreet silence where the known facts do not fit the theory, This suppressio veri rarely fails to effect its purpose, and is the distinguishing mark of all our popular Protestant history books.

2. The attachment of epithets, often question begging epithets, always epithets that stick, to the names of prominent persons or events : irresistible this to Carlyle, too often sacrificing truth to picturesque description. By styling Henry VIII “bluff King Hal,” Mary Tudor “bloody,” and Elizabeth “good Queen Bess,” lively but quite unrecognizable portraits were presented, suitably framed, for the Protestant parlours of John Bull.

3. The citing for reference as authorities non-Catholic authors only. This is doubly effective, for it implies either that no Catholics have written on the subject, or that the non-Catholic writers alone are trustworthy : both conclusions may be drawn where anti-Catholic prejudice is strong.