Apart from the normal duties incumbent on the head of a monastic community, I had, from the time of first taking the reins, placed three objects in the forefront of my hopes and aspirations, and had endeavoured never to lose sight of them. These were, first, an increase in our numbers by the admission of suitable aspirants to our life; secondly, the renovation and utilization of the long derelict buildings of the abbey-school, and the reopening of the school itself as soon as feasible; and thirdly, the hastening of the long anticipated day when work should be resumed on our abandoned church, and a part of it, at least, completed and opened for Divine Service. Thanks to the goodwill and support of my own brethren, and to the interested sympathy of many friends outside, I had the happiness of seeing all these hopes in a fair way to be realized within a twelvemonth of my receiving the abbatial benediction. Four of our first year's batch of novices were ultimately admitted to profession and to holy orders: they were joined by two priests from the Scottish mission, both of whom took their vows after due probation; while there were also affiliated to our community two young English monks from a German monastery near Birmingham, as well as a novice from the monastery of Caldey, in South {255} Wales, almost all the members of which had, with their superior, made their submission to the Catholic Church in the previous year.[10] We were all agreed in the wish and hope that the eminently Benedictine work of the education of youth within our own abbey walls, discontinued for several years, should be resumed as soon as circumstances permitted. Carpenters and painters, plasterers and plumbers, were soon busily engaged at the much-needed work of repair and restoration. The buildings were practically ready for occupation in the summer of 1914; but our hopes of reopening the school a few months later were frustrated by the world-stirring events of July and August of that year. It was a great satisfaction to all of us to be able, a little later, to place our renovated college at the disposal of the Red Cross, and to see it utilized as an Auxiliary Hospital, first for the wounded soldiers of our gallant Belgian allies, and then for the wounded of our own armies.[11]