rthest and matters most.

Problems may vary with the times and the countries, and yet, the moral
issues involved never change; for, right is eternal. To detect this
ethical element amid the ever restless waves of human activities has
ever been the noble and constant effort of true leaders. Like the
pilot they are ever watching for the lighted buoy on the tossing waves.

This moral element underlying all our national problems is what affects
Catholics as such, or rather the medium through which Catholics are
called to affect them. No period should prove more interesting to
Catholics than our own, for the very principles of Christian Ethics are
now being questioned and vindicated in the lives of nations, either by
the benefits accruing from their application, or by the evils
consequent upon their neglect.

Our neo-pagan world is learning by a cruel and sad experience that
Religion is the foundation of morality, and morality that of true
legality. "For unless certain things antecedent to conscience be
granted and firmly held, 'conscience' becomes synonymous with
'sentiment.'"

Mr. Lloyd George himself, addressing a religious gathering in Wales on
June 9, 1920, recognized Religion as the only bulwark able to resist
the rising tide of anarchy. "Bolshevism is spreading throughout the
world," said the British Premier, "and the churches can alone save the
people from the disaster which will ensue, if this anarchy of will and
aim continues to spread." The task of the churches, he continued, was
greater than that which came within the compass of any political party.
Political parties might provide the lamps, lay the wires and turn the
current on to certain machinery, but the churches must be the power
stations. If the generating stations were destroyed, whatever the
arrangements and plans of the political parties might be, it would not
be long before the light was cut off from the homes of the people. The
doctrines taught by the churches are the _only_ security against the
triumph of human selfishness, and human selfishness unchecked will
destroy any plans, however perfect, which politicians may devise.

This period of history, to quote Gladstone, is "an agitated and
expectant age." The world is travelling fast into a new era. The
modern social fabric, built on the shifting sands of selfishness and
injustice is rocking on its foundations. Amid accumulated ruins
nations are searching for the basic principles of tru