exception of Windthorst, was the greatest man in that grand Catholic organization, the German Centre Party. And Count Ballestrem, now for several years President of the German Reichstag, commenced one of his speeches before that assembly with the following words: "The last time I had the honor to address you here, I defended an institution which has become dear to me, and in which I have spent a great part of my life, the Prussian Army. To-day I come to defend an institution which I have known from the days of my childhood, and with whose excellences I am acquainted in every detail. I come to bear witness for my venerable teachers, for my highly esteemed friends: for the religious of the Society of Jesus."[1]
Undoubtedly the testimony of these men, who with the keen eyes of boys that so readily find fault with their teachers watched the Jesuits and scrutinized their every word and action, outweighs a thousand calumnies of prejudiced pamphleteers, who, in many cases, have never seen a Jesuit or any other religious. Moreover, these witnesses refute the oft-repeated charge of "the corrupt moral teaching of the Jesuits." Fair-minded Protestants have long since branded this charge as a slander. Thus the German Protestant Körner says in his "History of Pedagogy"[2]: "It is the fashion to represent the Jesuits as. heartless beings, malicious, cunning, and deceitful, although it must be known perfectly well that the crimes imputed to them
- ↑ Duhr, Jesuiten-Fabeln, ch. 5 (2nd ed.), pp. 102-103.
- ↑ Geschichte der Pädagogik (Leipzig, 1857), page 12. – Quoted by Shea; History of Georgetown College, page 86. Italics are ours. – See also the splendid testimony rendered to the Jesuits by M. Albert Duruy in the Revue des Deux Mondes, January 1, 1880.
