More and more are the students of St. Thomas coming to realise his deep insight, and indeed foresight, into modern biblical problems. A striking example of this insight is to be found in his treatise on the Incarnation. We make no apologies for reproducing the bulk of the article [3a Qu. 42, Art. 4.]

Before the Revolution of 1917 religion in Russia was very real; the people, as a whole, were pious and God-loving, and a stranger would have been struck by the intense piety which existed in town and country alike. The vast solitudes of his native land have had their effect on the character of the Russian peasant, filling him with an extraordinary spirit of mysticism. Young and old seemed possessed by some strange power of detachment from external influences while engaged in prayer. They appear to be raised into a state of ecstasy, and I have often noticed quite young children, apparently lost to their surroundings, praying with a fervour which is astonishing to a Western mind.

Up to the year 1917 there was little or no religious freedom in Russia; then followed a few months of liberty, after which the Catholic Church was subjected to a persecution which could only have been originated by the spirit of darkness. Very few Catholics outside Russia know anything of the sufferings of their brothers and sisters in the faith. Perhaps here I may be allowed to quote from the introduction to Princess Almedigen’s book, The Catholic Church in Russia To-day : ‘ Go to Russia and see how Catholics live there, and then come back and tell me whether people whose beliefs are not founded on the rock of truth can stand one-tenth of what they endure.’

During those critical years, 1914 to 1920, I lived in Moscow, and there I found a little band of workers who, in God’s mercy, had been gathered together to carry on his work in this time of stress.

It is a commonplace that, prior to the nineteenth century, communication between one part of Europe and another was never so safe or so rapid as under the Roman Empire. The Roman roads were the cement of the ‘pax Romana,’ and the ‘pax Romana,’ as has been well said, is an ideal which the modern world has not yet been able to realise.

As far as the problems of communication are concerned, the invention of the steam and internal combustion engines establishes an absolutely rigid gulf between the modern age and all previous ages. Before the nineteenth century mechanical transport was unknown, and Napoleon could command no greater facilities than Julius Cæsar.

Any consideration, therefore, of the relative efficiency with which the past ages dealt with these questions must stop at the nineteenth century. From then onwards the whole nature of the problem is revolutionised, and resources become available, whose potentialities we have, as yet, hardly begun to realise. Whether they are capable, in concert with other agencies, of giving some kind of unity to a world from which social, moral and political unity have entirely vanished, is a question which the future alone can decide.

It has been suggested, with very probable truth, that the Romans derived many of their ideas of practical statesmanship from their contact with the Persian Empire ; and it is well known that the Persians were magnificent road-makers. For our purpose it is sufficient to note that, under the Roman dominion, the first serious attempt was made to unite Europe, and that as the Imperial frontiers were pushed outward, the continent was gradually covered by a network of splendid roads, many of which are in use at the present day.

It is a depressing thing that there should be so few people who really appreciate fairy stories, and still fewer who allow themselves to believe them. In fact, there is even got to be a certain theory that not to believe them is a sign of intellectual enlightenment and freedom from superstition; than which nothing could be more false. It would be very much nearer the truth to say that it is a sign of intellectual darkness to reject the Daoine Shee, and a notable token of superstition to deny the royalty of Huon, once of Bordeaux and later of Fairyland.

We would not assert, indeed, that it is necessary to have for the world of elves the same certainty of belief that one has for the truths of religion; nor need one be able to dogmatise as positively about the motives of Titania as one is able to about those of Attila the Great, Anthemius, Heraclian, or any other historical characters of whom we know even less than we do of Titania. But there is no valid argument against the existence of fairies and fairyland which would not be equally valid against the existence of Kamschatka, in which, nevertheless, we most firmly believe. In fact, if we return to the days of the innocence of nations, before their characters had been vitiated, and their intellects depraved, by the horrors of education, we should find that, whereas it was exceedingly difficult to convince them of the existence of Kamschatka, it would have been even harder to convince them that there were no fairies.