Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/173

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sity of making it directly. Railways so conducted yield a diffused national dividend of utility, the value of which is incalculable.

A further token of this firm handling of the tangles of everyday life is to be found in the work done in the School of Social Sciences at Louvain. I had not much opportunity of studying its courses, but I fancy that Father Corcoran, the distinguished Jesuit educationist, would know all about it. It is likely that he derived from it the idea of the Leo Guild. In Belgium, at all events, it was a thing of course that a priest should be not an economist—a poor title and quality—but a trained healer of economic disease. The activity manifested under the inspiration of the Church was extremely rich, and diversified. And not only in Flanders, but also in Wallonie. I have a list showing for the little Walloon town of Soignies, a town of 9000 inhabitants, no less than fifteen different Catholic economic societies. Nobody can ever have gone to Mass in Belgium without contributing at the door his "denier scolaire" for the education of poor children, or without seeing the Catholic Young Guards, engaged in some of their manifestations. Priests in Belgium would tell you that their success is due to the care with which they have avoided every hint of "clericalism." At all events, a Catholic Government has been able in one of the freest countries in Europe to maintain, and at the