Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/229

 It is a noble and touching episode, worthy of France, and there were many such as Sister Julie in the dark days of retreat. Innumerable, patient, fearless women tended the poilu back to health, won the whole nation to the height of resolution and confidence from which it now so confidently confronts the future.

These books are a rich, even an inexhaustible repository of Catholic heroism. It will be a pity, and a grave loss to the literature of the war, if they are not made available for English readers. France has long enough been judged for her sins; it is time that there was some celebration of her virtues. She has been long enough condemned on a bill of indictment drafted by her enemies, and would-be conquerors: it is time that we listened to her speaking for herself. Nor in praising France do I, or do my fellow-writers, think it necessary to blacken German Catholicism. Simple, misled, unfree units of the Central Powers are dying all over Europe at the bidding of two disastrous Emperors: these plain soldiers, obeying the call of patriotism and deprived of any true vision of things, are dying in good faith, in our good Faith, and dying well. But over all the leaders of German Catholicism lies the red cloud of blood with which the statecraft of their country has enveloped the world. When they burned Louvain, the barbarians lit a fire which is not easily to be put out.