his gifts, as in the extraordinary vicissitudes of his experience, he is the most remarkable personality in the British Empire today-statesman, law-giver, warrior, orator. In him thought and action are in perfect adjustment. His vision of the new order that is emerging from the chaos of the war is clear and sagacious, and his idealism is rooted in a hard practicality that carries with it the sense of conviction and authority. He is too complex and subtle a mind to go straight to the heart as Botha went, and for long he was regarded with some suspicion. His powers were apparent, but his purpose seemed obscure. The suspicion did him injustice, but it was a tribute to a character far too spacious and cautious to be read offhand. There is about him a sense of wide intellectual hinterland where he does not exactly invite you to trespass and where you feel he is taking council with himself alone. His face, typically Dutch, is not revealing. The light blue eye searches you with a singularly penetrating gaze, but it does not easily yield up the secrets of that calculating, self-possessed mind. He loves letters, has, or had long ago, a passion for Whitman's poetry, is deeply versed in philosophy and the things of the mind and finds his deepest pleasure in the life of the country and of his own family circle. His emotions are real, but are under the discipline of the mind, and he yields to no impulse either of fear, weakness or even human sympathy without the deliberate sanction of his judgment. He is friendly, but not expansive, loves a good story, is free from personal animus and in public speaks clearly and unaffectedly, without rhetoric but with real fervour and a governed emotion. His career is the most romantic story in contemporary history. His future is one of the world's capital potentialities. CARDINAL MERCIER THE MAN PATRIOTISM IN THE CHURCH By REV. THOMAS M. SCHWERTNER, O. P., S. T. LR., Editor The Rosary Magazine HE great cataclysm of the World War threw TH up on the horizon of public notice many men whose names had been known previously only in restricted circles. And of these, none has loomed greater, or maintained his place in the popular heart more securely, than the Primate of Belgium, Desidere Cardinal Mercier. And the reason of this is not far to seek. For during those first fateful weeks of the war it soon went abroad like wildfire that the Germans, under Von Bissing, had intercepted and suppressed the Christmas Pastoral Letter which the Cardinal, as a good Catholic bishop, had sent according to his custom to his faithful children. It was without doubt a powerful and trenchant arraignment of the conduct of the Germans during their first weeks on Belgian soil. And because it was so unimpeachably |