“The Church is bound to interfere ‘ex caritate,’” as these workmen are in extreme need and cannot help themselves.  Otherwise, the unbelieving workingman will say to her:  “Of what use are your fine teachings to me?  What is the use of your referring me, by way of consolation, to the next world, if in this world you let me and my wife and my children perish with hunger?  You are not seeking my welfare, you are looking for something else.”

Our fair and broad Dominion has not escaped from that spirit of unrest.  Spasmodic eruptions in the East and in the West indicate the same central fires of the universal volcano upon which the world now sleeps uneasily.  Yet, various reasons have urged us to limit our investigation and reflections to Western Canada.  The predominating interests of the West have of late become more and more evident in the economic and political life of our country.  Lord Salisbury, when trouble was brewing on the far-flung border of India, gave to the people the famous warning “Look at big maps.”  To get a just appreciation of our mighty West we may well follow that same advice and “look at big maps.”  The sudden and rapid growth of our Prairie Provinces particularly, the unlimited and perennial resources of their fertile soil, the progressive spirit of the population have made of the West the land of great possibilities and mighty problems.  The future of our Country, the peace and prosperity of the nation depend to a great extent on the reasonable and just exploitation of these resources and on the adequate solution to these problems.

There is no place in Canada where problems develop more rapidly and meet with more radical solutions than in Western Canada.  This is the case in every young and prosperous country.  No dead are behind the living, to link the past to the future with the steadying influence of tradition.  Who has not heard of “The Spirit of the West?” Broad in its vision, sympathetic and ambitious in its plans, over-confident in its powers and most aggressive in its policies, that spirit grips you as you pass beyond the Great Lakes into the unlimited horizons of the rolling prairies.  Those who have never experienced its secret influence, will never fully understand its tremendous power.  J. W. Dafoe, of the Manitoba Free Press, welcoming to the West the Members of the Imperial Press Conference (1920), assured them that they would observe in the West evidence “of a newer Canadianism, the Canadianism of to-morrow; not hostile to the East, but, we think, a little better.”

As the West has forced itself on the attention of our economic and political world, so also have its Religious problems loomed up many and great on the horizon of the Church.  The Catholic Church, there, as in many mission countries, is in process of formation:  immense fields await the scythe of belated reapers.  Yet, notwithstanding this state of imperfect organization, the Church stands out as one of the great moral factors