or less reluctant alliance with the Papacy. The
Church is here, and her followers are here, before the war several
hundred thousand of them pouring into the country every year. It is no
longer possible to do without Catholics in America; not merely
do ditches have to be dug, roads graded, coal mined, and dishes
washed, but franchises have to be granted, tariff-schedules
adjusted, juries and courts manipulated, police trained and
strikes crushed. Under our native political system, for these
purposes millions of votes are needed; and these votes belong to
people of a score of nationalities--Irish and German and Italian
and French-Canadian and Bohemian and Mexican and Portuguese and
Polish and Hungarian. Who but the Catholic Church can handle
these polyglot hordes? Who can furnish teachers and editors and
politicians familiar with all these languages?

Considering how complex is the service, the price is extremely
moderate--the mere actual expenses of the campaign, the cost of red
fire and torch-lights, of liquor and newspaper advertisements. The
rest may come out of the public till, in the form of exemption from
taxation of church buildings and lands, a share of the public funds
for charities and schools, the control of the police for
saloon-keepers and district leaders, the control of police-courts and
magistrates, of municipal administrations and boards of education, of
legislatures and governors; with a few higher offices now and then, to
flatter our sacred self-esteem, a senator or a justice on the Supreme
Court Bench; and on state occasions, to keep up our necessary
prestige, some cabinet-members and legislators and justices to attend
High Mass, and be blessed in public by Catholic prelates and
dignitaries.

You think this is empty rhetoric--you comfortable, easy-going,
ultra-cultured Americans? You professors in your classic
shades, absorbed in "the passionless pursuit of passionless
intelligence"--while the world about you slides down into the pit! You
ladies of Good Society, practicing your "sweet little charities,"
pursuing your "dear little ideals," raising your families of one or
two lovely children--while Irish and French-Canadians and Italians and
Portuguese and Hungarians are breeding their dozens and scores, and
preparing to turn you out of your country!

#God's Armor#

You remember "Bishop Blougram's Apology," Browning's study of the
psychology of a modern Catholic ecclesiastic. He is not unaware of