Kilmer did not become a great patriot when his country entered the world war. He was, of course, the same in fibre then as before. Only then was known to him and visible to others what was latent in his heart. And in this sense it was, I think, that it was clear to him that he did not become, but had always been a Catholic, though he had not earlier realised it. He tried all things and held fast to that which he found good. He was inwardly driven to seek until his spirit found its home. That only the time of his conversion was, in a sense, accidental, and that the conversion itself was inevitable, must be evident in the fact that he was never really himself before he became, as we say, a convert. Then his fluid spirituality, his yearning sense of religion, was stabilized. What is the “secret,” as we say, of all that has been told of his ability? His courage, his mental and physical energy, were, manifestly, unusual. But his character, in the faith that he embraced, found its tempered spring. His talent was a wingéd seed which in the rich soil which had mothered so much art found fructification. It is not an unsupported assertion to say that he was in his time and place the laureate of the Catholic Church. His sentiments as to the function of a Catholic poet he has expressed very positively in his essays and lectures. He joyed in the new proof given by Helen Parry Eden “that piety and mirth may comfortably dwell together.” “A convert to Catholicism,” he wrote of Mr. Yeats on Lionel Johnson, “is not a person who wanders about weeping over autumn winds and dead leaves, mumbling Latin and sniffing incense.” Nor is it necessary to lay æsthetic hands on the church’s treasures, “and decorate rhymes with rich ecclesiastical imagery and the fragrant names of the saints.” But in Faith one may find “that purity and strength which are the guarantees of immortality.” And, once a Catholic, there never was any possibility of mistaking Kilmer’s point of view: in all matters of religion, art, economics and politics, as well as in all matters of faith and morals, his point of view was obviously and unhesitatingly Catholic. Considerable as were his gifts and skill as a politician in the business of his career, the veriest zealot could not say that he did not do the most unpolitic things in the service of his faith. A very positive figure, he laboured tirelessly, alternating from one field to another, for the Catholic Church.