plan of campaign turn from the defensive to the offensive.”  Never should the Catholics of Canada present a more united front.  To sneer and snap our fingers at the energies and organizing powers of others is often but a poor excuse for our own inertia.  It is certainly no argument. Fas est ab hoste doceri.  The lesson has often a sting, but it is a lesson. . . .  We need organization! . . .  The Congress is the great medium of organization.  What are we going to do?  Changing a little the wording of one of Cicero’s famous sentences, in his orations against Catiline, the arch-enemy of Rome, we shall say:  “The enemy is at our doors! . . . and we are not even deliberating!”

* * * * * *

Before giving a suggestive programme for a Congress may we answer some objections.

“The need for co-operation and co-ordination is indeed admitted on all hands; it is its feasibility that is doubted by so many good Catholics.  It is admitted to be an ideal; the question that is raised is whether the difficulties are not too great to be surmounted otherwise than by a very slow and lengthy process of evolution.  That such a gradual evolution would be in accordance with both nature and history we should be the first to admit.  But, after all, there is such a thing as retarding or assisting the process of evolution.  The valuable maxim that ’things are what they are and their consequences will be what they will be,’ is after all but half the truth.  No Catholic believes that we are carried helpless along a stream of circumstances.  He believes that man is man, a free being whose free action can within limits mould circumstance; and he believes that God is God, the one free Being Who can and does overrule circumstance, and Who, when and where He pleases, gives efficacy to the endeavour of His free creatures to do the same.” (Universe, Aug. 15th, 1919.)

Some may say that by coming together we shall awaken susceptibilities, our motives will be suspected . . . and the final result will be more prejudice, more bigotry. . . .

There is no reason why a Congress should be of an unfriendly aggressiveness.  We have ideas to advocate, they stand on their own merit.  They are in our belief, the only key of salvation; let us then get together and bring them by organization and team work, into the domain of realities.  Moreover, our enemies are not so very particular in dealing with us and with our principles.  The best policy is to meet in the open, as our Catholics are doing in England and stand on the value of our doctrine and our works—­“Ex fructibus cognescetis illos.”

“What about the autonomy of parish and diocesan units?  Are they not supreme?  Will not what we advocate interfere with these organizations?  Will it not destroy the work of our parochial societies, etc., etc.?”