Et Nos Mutamur in Illis

Extract

I was kindly asked to write something for the first number of Blackfriars, in 1920, and now, to suggest what changes may have occurred during those Forty Years Gone.

When the Archduke was murdered in 1914, our insularity may have asked: ‘Who was he? Where is Sarajevo?’, even, ‘Does it really matter?’ But a member of the Austrian imperial family, when asked: ‘But you don’t think it means the end of a dynasty?’ answered: ‘It’s the end of a world’. Exaggerated? Well, in 1918 many were exclaiming: ‘Now for a new world!’ and I too, though lastingly bruised by the sorrows of that war, felt full of hope. Why? One must select.

It was obvious that there would be an immense influx of students into the depleted universities. It was agreed that Catholic societies should be reinforced, or revived, or created, to welcome Catholic arrivals. It was hard to get the better of the idea that such societies existed only to ‘safeguard’ the faith and morals of their members. Some, however, hoped for the formation of a liberally-educated Catholic mind which would make a positive impact on public opinion. ‘The International Society of Intellectual Co-operation’ soon enough existed in Geneva alongside of, not part of, the League of Nations. But this impact seemed far more likely to happen if such societies were ‘federated’, learned to meet and know one another, and become more than merely local groups of which the members just ‘talked to one another’.