and Father Tyrrell said, 'The Montagnini and Benigni revelations have extinguished every spark of respect for the present personnel of the Roman See.'*

The codification of the Canon Law was projected, but not carried through; a few unimportant disciplinary reforms among the clergy, chiefly in Italy, were effected; the Ne Temere decree of the Council of Trent, against clandestine marriages, was extended, with much inconvenience and some scandal, to mixed countries; children of and even under seven were admitted to communion, and encouraged to communicate daily; the use of plainsong was enjoined. The good sense of the clergy made the two last injunctions a dead letter.

The main achievement of the late Pontificate was the dissipation of what may be called the illusion of Catholicism. The Church of the 19th century embodied the inevitable recoil from the excesses of the Revolution. Romanticism clothed it with light as with a garment; it was adorned by the genius of Newman and governed by the wise opportunism of Leo XIII. But under this fair surface lay a stubborn core of reality, which the charmer, charm he never so wisely, could neither expel nor disguise. This was the arrest of life, and of the forces which make for life-an arrest which was felt peculiarly, though not exclusively, in the province of ideas. Religion is not a philosophy. It is seen at its best-Catholicism in particular is seen at its best-among simple people, or where the primitive and elemental facts of life come to the fore. But it connotes a philosophy which underlies its various manifestations, though it need not be consciously held. In the case of Catholicism this philosophy is that of absolutism. And the evermoving mind of man objects to Catholicism not that it is wrong in presupposing a philosophy, but that the philosophy which it presupposes is wrong.

For absolutism, i.e. authority unchecked by reason, means stagnation; to stereotype the status quo, fix it where we will, is to exclude the movement of life. The ecclesiastical forms of Christianity are peculiarly exposed

*Life of George Tyrrell,' ii, 340.

to this danger; and in modern Catholicism it is accentuated. The Medieval Church represented its periodthe Middle Ages; the modern Church not only does not represent, it is a standing protest against, the modern world. From time to time the key in which this protest is pitched is lowered. Catholicism is on too large a scale not to be affected by its environment; our own generation has witnessed a notable example both of this attempt at adaptation, and of the inevitable reversion to type that follows it. Leo XIII left the Church respected-a power to be reckoned with, not only politically (this it must be for long under whatever rulers) but in thought and in life. It attracted the static elements of the body politic-men who put unity and action before speculation, and who saw in the Church the centre of gravity with whose removal or decay the various elements which compose society would lose cohesion. The instability of French politics has made this point of view more familiar to French than to English thinkers. It does not necessarily imply religious belief, but it involves the support of religious institutions; 'Paris vaut bien une messe.'

It was not, however, politicians only who ceased to despair of Catholicism; it was thought possible to graft the methods and conclusions of science upon its venerable traditions, and so to make the centuries one. These aspirations took shape in Modernism, which was an attempt to naturalise history, criticism, and the philosophy of spirit in the Church. It was a dream. But it was a dream dreamed by the wisest and best men in Christendom-a dream which it was, and is, well to have dreamed. Its Achilles' heel was that it overlooked what is the distinctive feature of Roman, or Latin, Catholicism -the unique development of the conception of authority which has taken shape in the Papacy, and the consequent relation of the Church to life, which is that of a residuum left behind when the freer and saner elements have broken away. The dilemma presented is one from which there is (it seems) no escape. A reformed Catholicism would cease to attract the social and cultural levels to which, in its actual shape, Catholicism appeals so strongly. Those who occupy them do not think, and do not want to think. 'Abide ye here with the ass, while I and the lad go yonder and worship'; they are children of the

bondwoman, not of the free. This is the obstinate fact against which a reforming Pope, could a reforming Pope be conceived, would be broken. Yet Modernism was a development of the human spirit which, if the Papacy could ill afford to admit, it could still less afford to repudiate; a Church incapable of movement will be left behind by an onward-moving world.

For many minds the sharp outlines presented by dogmatic systems affirmative or negative-the two are near of kin—have an attraction. The position is clear; it is, or seems to be, straightforward; it commends itself to the plain man. But these hard and fast lines are not found in nature; they exist for thought, not in things. 'They see not clearliest who see all things clear.' For things are not clear; and to see them as if they were so is to see them as they are not, not as they are. Nor can professions be safely taken at their face value; achievement does not necessarily correspond to aim. The aim of Pius X-'instaurare omnia in Christo'-was admirable; his achievement was less so; it was to widen the gulf which separates the Church from the life of Europe, and to make Catholicism impossible for many whose natural place by birth and inheritance was within its fold. To sensitive spirits the position was intolerable: the iron entered into their souls. The years 1903-1914 were in truth

'Tempora saevitiae, claras quibus abstulit Urbi
Illustresque animas impune et vindice nullo.'

'The look of suffering and desolation that marked him,' it is said of Father Tyrrell, 'during the first months after his severance from religious life and the rights of the priesthood, was impressed, not on his face alone, but on his entire frame, and will not easily be forgotten by friends who saw him at the time. There was something of the child in his nature and appearance; and in seeing him one thought of a child cast adrift in wind and rain and cold.' It is past; but even to-day it is difficult to think without indignation of the blind and cruel tyranny whose record is written in wrecked faith, oppressed consciences, and broken lives. Ride your ways, ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan; ride your ways,

Godfrey Bertram! This day have ye quenched seven smoking hearths; see if the fire in yer ain parlour burn the brighter for that. Ye have riven the thack off seven cottar houses; look if your ain rooftree stand the faster.' There will be, there is, a Nemesis for these things.

The present age is not one in which it is wise to put a strain upon faith. Even by those who retain them, the traditional beliefs are acquiesced in rather than held with conviction or fervour; and their external framework-Churches, creeds, religious observance-is increasingly regarded as a matter of circumstance and expediency, conditioned by place and time. Ethical conceptions, on the other hand, have extended and developed; their content is greater, their foundations are stronger, their horizons are larger than in any previous age. Were a Pope, even at the eleventh hour, to throw off the pitiful pretence of neutrality,' were he to preach righteousness, to proclaim brotherhood, to do battle with 'spiritual wickedness in high places,' to denounce public crime, the conscience of the world would be with him as it has never been even with his greatest predecessors. He dares not and will not-the fault is in the system, not in the man; and this is why the conscience of the world is falling away from him and from the conception of religion for which he stands. The root fallacy of this conception is that it substitutes the outward for the inward, identifies the changeless idea with its changing clothing, and forgets that religion is neither system nor enactment, but spiritual life. Piety divorced from ideas is pietism. For the intellectual virtues have their place in religion as well as the practical; these, taken apart from the former, degenerate and run to seed. And a fundamental truth underlies the two apparent paradoxes of the philosopher: 'Virtue is knowledge'; and, Virtue is one.'

ALFRED FAWKES.

Art. 13. THE ARCHIVES OF THE WAR.

1. Reports of the Royal Commission on Public Records (1912, 1914), Cd. 6361, 6395, 6396, 7544-7546.

2. Report of the Committee on Local Records (1902), Cd. 1333, 1335.

3. Guide to the Manuscript Materials relating to American History in the German State Archives (Carnegie Institution of Washington), 1912.

4. Books on the Great War. An Annotated Bibliography of Literature issued during the European Conflict. By F. W. T. Lange and W. T. Berry. Vols I-III. Grafton, 1915.

5. Lists of Publications bearing on the War. By G. W. Prothero and A. J. Philip. Published by the Central Committee for National Patriotic Organisations (62, Charing Cross), 1914-17.

WITH the progress of the war, the task of the historians who have been selected to compile an official record of its vicissitudes grows more formidable from day to day. Fortunately, in the domain of History, guarded with the precautions of modern study, there is no scope for the activities of propagandists or sensation-mongers. The authority of an official History of these times will not depend on its clever advocacy of a national cause, but on the conclusive statements that are submitted for the consideration of impartial readers. The historian, indeed, must have the gift of graphic and lucid exposition, for History is an art, not merely a science; but this requirement will be admirably fulfilled by such writers as Mr John Fortescue and Sir Julian Corbett. So far the promise of an authentic narrative of the part played by our Navy and Army in the war is excellent. The foundations of the work have been securely laid by these experienced historians and their skilled assistants. In due course a stately national memorial will arise, provided that one indispensable requirement is suppliedthat is, free access to all the original sources.

We may assume that, for the immediate purpose of an official history of the British naval and military operations during the present war, at least the records