"Since we are, at all costs, engaged in a disastrous war, the causes of which we have not to discuss and judge, but the consequences of which will necessarily reach our country, and since our Canadian soldiers are battling under the British flag, with the clear conscience of an honourable duty loyally and freely accepted, it is just, it is legitimate that our prayers do accompany them on the very fields of battles to support their courage, and that these prayers ascend to Heaven to implore victory for our armies." Evidently the venerable Bishop of Valleyfield is far from believing, like the publicist whose errors we must all deplore, that in organizing a powerful army "_to go overseas to fight and die for the noble and urgent cause so proved to them_," the Canadian Parliament "_were forging for us a militarism without parallel in any other civilized country, a depraved and undisciplined soldiery, an armed scoundrelism, without faith nor law_." The blessings of the Head of the Canadian Church and those of the whole Episcopate have consolated our brave volunteers for the outrages thrust at them, and have inspired them with the great Christian courage to forgive their author. The only revenge they have taken against their accuser has been to defend himself and his own against the barbarous Germans. CHAPTER XXX. RASH DENUNCIATION OF PUBLIC MEN. A long experience of public life, whether by daily observation, begun in my early youth, when the Union of the Provinces was finally discussed, carried and established, or, subsequently, during many years of active political life as a journalist and member of the Quebec and Ottawa representative Houses, has taught me to judge the actions of responsible men, whether ministerialists or oppositionists, with great fairness and respectful regard. At all times the government of a large progressive country peopled by several races, of different religious creeds, is a difficult problem. It should not be necessary to say that in days of warlike crisis, of previously unknown proportions, like the present one, the task becomes almost superhuman. Anyone taking into serious consideration the very trying ordeal through which, for instance, the rulers of Great Britain and France have been, and are still passing, since early in 1914, cannot help being indulgent for those who have the weighty and often crushing burden of the cares of State. Let so much be said without in the least contesting the right of free men to their own opinion about what is best to be done. But it was never more opportune to remember that the honourable privilege of constitutional criticism must have for its only superior object the good of the country by improved methods.