WAii. 105 



drooping in glorious Uitiers, 1)iit never receding! The 

 women of France rising indignant behind their lius- 

 bands and their sons, and driving l)eibre the scourge of 

 their righteous anger and disgust tliis rabble-rout of 

 harlots and sophists! Make way there for the Sister 

 of Charity, that conies to tend the wounded on the bat- 

 tle-lield! Make way for the Catholic priest, till now 

 neglected and despised, sneered at as a man of the 

 past, a man of foreign sympathies, when all the time 

 he is the nation's own man, for the present and the 

 past alike : he is at hand now with the consolations of 

 religion, comforting in his arms, cherishing with tears 

 and kisses those who ar« dying with no mother by their 

 side. 



As those days draw nigh, as in the days of Israel's 

 calamity, men cry, Peace ! peace ! But the Lord, per- 

 haps, has said War ! The monarchs go about one to 

 another calling each other Brother, and then, as if they 

 doubted of it, saying it oyer again. The peoples do but 

 make echo to their kings. From the coasts of the At- 

 lantic to the shores of the Mediterranean, interests in 

 coalition protest against war, now l)y the dull silence of 

 business, now by the noisy complaints of working-men. 

 The talking men and the writing men come to the sup- 

 port of business interests in the name of ideas, and 

 onco more the whole world is crying Peace I And yet, 

 as under some overhanging storm, we seem to feel the 

 thunder in the air, so the people vaguely percei^'Ç in 

 their atmosphere that terrible gathering of electricity 

 which Jesus Christ has spoken of as " rumors of wars." 



Son of Bethlehem ! Father of the Age to come ! 

 Prince of peace ! grant us that peace which is peace 

 indeed ! Scatter these rumors of wars, save each nation 

 by itself, regenerate France by her own children! So 



