Is not this a portent? In my judgment it is. It is not true that the modern world as a whole has suffered such a revolution. The Catholic culture in the continent of Europe not only stands strong, but is rapidly increasing in strength. The two branches of reaction against it (the German Protestant reaction of which Prussian atheism was the climax, and the more respectable anti-clericalism of French and Italian tradition) are both manifestly weakening. The doctrines that would dissolve society have been exposed and are now counter-attacked with an increasing vigour. Europe—the Soul of the world—is hesitating whether it will not return to the Faith: without which it cannot live. But is that so in the world to which we belong, or at least of which we Catholics are exceptional inhabitants? Is it true of that English-speaking culture which was founded upon the Bible and whose peculiar virtues and weaknesses, advantages and disadvantages (many of them alien to us Catholics, but all well comprehended by us), were the texture of life in England and Scotland, in the English Dominions, and in the United States? I think not. Men hesitate to say it; they are afraid of facing the truth in the matter, but truth it is: the foundations have gone. I do not mean that in their place other foundations may not be discovered. I do not predict chaos, though chaos is a very possible result of it all. What I do say is, that Christian morals and doctrine, and all that they meant, are, in our English-speaking world much more than in any other part of contemporary white civilization, in dissolution. This is no place in which to discuss the remedies (if any practical remedies be available) or even the probable results of so vast a revolution; but it is the place in which to emphasize the truth that the revolution has taken place. It is a revolution in doctrine, discipline, morals, and intellectual action, as complete as any that we can find recorded in History since the conversion of the Roman Empire to the Catholic Church. It applies only to a section of the modern world, the section which I have mentioned: Britain, America and the Dominions; but that is a very important section of the modern world, and (what is of chief interest to us) it is the section wherein we live, of which we are citizens, to which we owe allegiance, and with whose fate our own and that of our children is bound up. I will add no more. APPENDIX It is cumbersome to load a book intended for general reading with quotations from Authorities and a mass of footnotes. Moreover, a reader of intelligence desires to hear the arguments rather than a mere list of expert names.