Alice had often wished to see Wonderland and Looking-Glass Country again, but she had never had the opportunity of doing so. In fact she had no idea how she could set about it. “And, in that case,” she told herself, for she was fond of giving herself good advice, “you ought to give up thinking of it, since it is no use wishing to do something if you do not know how to do it.” In spite of this, however, the wish remained.

Then, one day, when she was going down to the tube railway, the usual gale of wind met her as she turned the corner. She did not think anything of it at first, as she had experienced it before, but it gradually became more and more violent. She could not struggle against it any longer and felt herself being blown backwards faster and faster, until she was blown right through the wall.

‘If we pass in review the long and sorrowful sequence of woes, that, as a sad heritage of sin, mark the stages of fallen man’s earthly pilgrimage, from the flood on, it would be hard to find spiritual and material distress so deep, so universal, as that which we are now experiencing.’ Those are words of Pope Pius XI, written in the Encyclical Caritate Christi Compulsi some twelves and a half years ago. If they were true then, they are more true than ever of to-day when the bloody shroud of war has enveloped nearly all mankind.

But one feels sometimes that too much ink is devoted to the description of what is obvious. Having, therefore, recalled these striking words of Christ’s Vicar, let us not dwell here upon the depressing thought of the plight of modern humanity; rather we will turn to the remedy for such an unhappy state of affairs.

‘As these evils crowd in upon us, what hope of remedy is left to us’ asked Pope Pius XII in his Easter Homily in 1940, ‘except that which comes from Christ, from his inspirations, and from his teaching, a healing stream flowing through every vein of our society? Only Christ’s law, only Christ’s grace, can renew and restore private and public life, redressing the true balance of rights and duties, checking unbridled self-interest, controlling passion, implementing and perfecting the course of strict justice with his overflowing charity.

First of all I would like to thank the Executive Committee of Pax Romana and the Chairman for allowing me to address you here to-day and to speak to you about the position in Germany. You know that the German Catholics are not officially represented at this Congress, and I would like to stress the point that my credentials to speak on their behalf consist in nothing but the simple fact that I am a German Catholic myself, and that I was in Germany and in contact with some of the most eminent German Bishops, priests and laymen until the end of 1943.

The theme of our discussion to-day is Relief and Reconstruction. It concerns the tasks, with which Pax Romana will have to deal in the near future. I must, therefore, ask your indulgence if, before talking about what lies before us, I shall refer at some length also to the past. There are two reasons why I should like to do this: first, that if you want to find the remedy, you must first know the disease. The problems of Relief and Reconstruction are thus of necessity to some extent retrospective. Second: Pax Romana will have to decide—and I hope that will be some time soon—whether it is going to re-admit as constituent members German University Federations. Monsieur l’Abbés Gremaud has told me—and I am painfully aware how right He is—that the spirit of Pax Romana has found only very few faithful witnesses among the Germans—students and graduates—and that the great question of the future would be how to make sure about the trustworthiness of any new federations that might be formed.

The annexation by Soviet Russia of certain territory which after 1920 had again been part of the Polish State is now a thing not only accomplished in fact but recognised by those powers strong enough to have a say in the matter. We have heard a great deal about it (and doubtless shall hear more) from the several sides and from various aspects. The only people whose views we have not been able to hear are those most affected, the inhabitants of ‘Eastern Poland ’; the great powers have not asked them to express their choice.

It is not easy to estimate what would have been the result of a free plebiscite (a really free plebiscite would probably have been un attainable in the circumstances). The people east of the Curzon Line are mixed, and accurate statistics of the ethnic elements are not easy to come by. A Polish estimate (quoted by Konovalov in Russo-Polish Relations, Cresset Press), based on the 1931 Polish census, gives a total population of 10¾ millions, of whom 36.4 per cent, were Poles, 40.6 per cent. Ukrainians, 11.8 per cent. Byelorussians, 8.4 per cent. Jews and 2.8 per cent, others. These groups are largely, but not entirely, localised : Byelorussians in the north, Ukrainians in the south, Poles in both; in the provinces of Stanislawow, Volhynia and Polesia, Poles are a minority of under 25 per cent.

Charles Du Bos has a particular interest for English-speaking readers from the fact that he, a great Frenchman, was not only partly English but that his sympathies were so largely Anglo-Saxon. Some of the last years of his life were spent in America, though he died near Paris in 1939. Had he lived through the occupation to the present delicate task of ‘rehabilitating’ France, who can say what bearing his unobtrusive influence might not have had on the evolution of French policy? Though ignored in his lifetime by the general public, as Martin-Chauffier says in his introduction to the Byron of Du Bos, “there is scarcely a first-class mind in Europe which does not know him and feel for him the surest and best-founded esteem; ... It is not the least of undertakings to trace his influence on so many writers, so many works, so many matters which have stirred public opinion to passion.”

That so potent a mind was unrecognised by the mass is due to the simple fact that Du Bos did not write what the mass cared to read; such writing, while it finally moulds thought and ideals, does so indirectly and slowly. It might also be thought that he wrote too little. For years Charles Du Bos suffered from a “paralysing” difficulty in writing at all; when he seemed to have overcome it, the first Great War supervened; at its close the same “total inhibition”—a doubt as to his own powers and a resulting scruple in writing—returned to him at intervals. His circle, the most exclusive of French cenacles, attributed his lack of production to a less fundamental cause: Du Bos, they believed, was too gifted in another way—he was a superb talker.

This is Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark, for to write, as does Mr. Bronowski, about William Blake without reference to his religious and visionary experiences is to leave out almost Blake himself. This is a pity, for the book is freshly written and far more readable than the works of many would be interpreters of the writer of the Prophetic Books.

Of late years a host of writers have arisen who are, as Mr. Bronowski states, more interested in the mysticism than in the mystic, Blake. He himself goes to the other extreme, and while having a real feeling for the man, Blake, attempts to explain away his visionary writings by stating that these were written in cypher to avoid censorship. The prophetic Books are accounts of things seen in vision. They are concerned with the nature and destiny of the human soul. They mark a sharp departure, an entirely different set of problems, from , those of the unfinished French Revolution of which Mr. Bronowski regards them as a continuation. By 1797 Blake had finished with Pitt and politics. He saw the evils of his day as symptoms of spiritual dry-rot and not as economic problems. Had they been written in the most straightforward language he would have had nothing to fear from the keenest censorship. Incidentally, we consider that in view of the shortness of the book, undue space and importance is given to the abortive trial for sedition of 1804.

‘They must be guided by that universal love which is the compendium and most general expression of the Christian ideal, and which therefore may serve as a common ground also for those who have not the blessing of sharing the same faith with us. A great deal of confusion in the matter of co-operation with non-Catholics might have been avoided if we had insisted more strongly on the obvious sense of the words of Pope Pius XII in which he called for a common front in the promotion of peace. A common faith is expressly excluded as a basis of co-operation, nor is anything said here about a general recognition of the Natural Law; the common ground is discovered in universal love, an activity of the will rather than an intellectual outlook. That is not to say that we may not take full advantage of a genuinely Christian view of life in individuals who honestly fail to identify authentic Christianity with the Catholic Church, or that we may not expect others to observe the Natural Law and inculcate its precepts; but the one thing that we can generally demand is good will, which, as we know, is the condition for the infusion of sanctifying grace and supernatural charity. We cannot perceive the workings of grace, but we have to assume that one who gives signs of good will is imbued with this supernatural and universal love of which the Pope speaks, no matter what his speculative ideals may be. Such a basis is wide enough to include those who do not profess Christianity at all; as there are so many of them in Europe to-day, ‘those who have not the blessing of sharing the same faith ‘can scarcely be meant to cover only the various groups of non-Catholic Christians.

During the summer of 1944 a ‘Catholic People’s Week’ was advertised to be held during August at Walsingham. The Government ban on certain coastal areas forced the organisers to cancel their arrangements. As considerable interest in the project was aroused it will not be out of place to explain here the ultimate aims the organisers had in mind and the plans they have made for future action.

Educational reform is much to the fore at the moment. But the schemes to be put into operation are mainly concerned with the education of children. Many thinkers are convinced there is an equally if not more urgent need to provide for the education of adults. The acknowledged leader in this field is Sir Richard Livingstone, whose The Future in Education states unanswerably the case for adult education.

The human mind and will, the human senses and emotions, are never at rest. They are always open to the million influences of experience. Whether we realise, it or not, our own individual minds and wills are constantly fed and attracted by the realities of our daily round. Education should fit us to dominate these influences, to reject the unsound and absorb the wholesome. It should give us a high standard of discernment and firmness of character. Were we to drift and allow mind and will to submit passively to the flux of modern life with its press, radio, cinemas and factories, we should hardly succeed in retaining anything worthy of the name of personal autonomy. We do react, but do we react according to truth? Are our choices arbitrary, instinctive, thoughtless?