In your name I send them the greeting of our fraternal sympathy and our assurance that not only do we pray for the success of their arms and for the eternal welfare of their souls, but that we also accept for their sake all the distress, whether physical or moral, that falls to our own share in the oppression that hourly besets us, and all that the future may have in store for us, in humiliation for a time, in anxiety, and in sorrow. In the day of final victory we shall all be in honor; it is just that today we should all be in grief. To judge by certain rumors that have reached me, I gather that from districts that have had least to suffer some bitter words have arisen toward our God, words which, if spoken with cold calculation, would not be far from blasphemous. Oh, all too easily do I understand how natural instinct rebels against the evils that have fallen upon Catholic Belgium. The spontaneous thought of mankind is ever that virtue should have its instantaneous crown and injustice its immediate retribution. But the ways of God are not our ways, the Scripture tells us. Providence gives free course, for a time measured by Divine wisdom, to human passions and the conflict of desires. God, being eternal, is patient. The last word is the word of mercy, and it belongs to those who believe in love. "Why art thou sad, O my soul? and why dost thou disquiet me? _Quare tristis es anima, et quare conturbas me?_" Hope in God. Bless Him always. Is He not thy Saviour and thy God? _Spera in Deo quoniam adhuc confitebor illi, salutare vultus mei et Deus meus._ When holy Job, whom God presented as an example of constancy to the generations to come, had been stricken, blow upon blow, by Satan, with the loss of his children, of his goods, of his health, his enemies approached him with provocations to discouragement; his wife urged upon him a blasphemy and a curse. "Dost thou still continue in thy simplicity? Curse God, and die." But the man of God was unshaken in his confidence. "And he said to her: Thou hast spoken like one of the foolish women: if we have received good things at the hand of God, why should we not receive evil? _Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit; sicut Domino placuit ita factum est. Sit nomen Domini benedictum._" And experience proved that saintly one to be right. It pleased the Lord to recompense, even here below, His faithful servant. "The Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. And for his sake God pardoned his friends." Better than any other man, perhaps, do I know what our unhappy country has undergone. Nor will any Belgian, I trust, doubt of what I suffer in my soul, as a citizen and as a Bishop, in sympathy with all this sorrow. These last four months have seemed to me age long. By thousands have our brave ones been mowed down. Wives, mothers are weeping for those they shall not see again; hearths are desolate; dire poverty spreads, anguish increases.