under date of 1379, tells us that it would be impossible to describe the prevalence everywhere of perjuries, blasphemies, adulteries, hatreds, quarrels, brawls, murder, rapine, thievery, robbery, gambling, whoredom, debauchery, avarice, oppression of the poor, rape, drunkenness, and similar vices, and he illustrates his statement with the fact that in the territory of Ghent, within the space of ten months, there occurred no less than fourteen hundred murders committed in the bagnios, brothels, gambling-houses, taverns, and other similar places. When, in 1396, Jean sans Peur led his Crusaders to destruction at Micopolis, their crimes and cynical debauchery scandalized even the Turks, and led to the stern rebuke of Bajazet himself, who as the monk of St. Denis admits was much better than his Christian foes. The same writer, moralizing over the disaster at Agincourt, attributes it to the general corruption of the nation. Sexual relations, he says, were an alternation of disorderly lust and of incest; commerce was nought but fraud and treachery; avarice withheld from the Church her tithes, and ordinary conversation was a succession of blasphemies. The Church, set up by God as a model and protector of the people, was false to all its obligations. The bishops, through the basest and most criminal of motives, were habitual accepters of persons; they annointed themselves with the last essence extracted from their flocks, and there was in them nothing of holy, of pure, of wise, or even of decent. #God in the Schools# But that, you may say, was a long time ago. If so, let us take a modern country in which the Catholic Church has worked its will. Until recently, Spain was such a country. Now the people are turning against the clerical machine; and if you ask why, turn to Rafael Shaw's "Spain From Within": On every side the people see the baleful hand of the Church, interfering or trying to interfere in their domestic life, ordering the conditions of employment, draining them of their hard-won livelihood by trusts and monopolies established and maintained in the interest of the Religious Orders, placing obstacles in the way of their children's education, hindering them in the exercise of their constitutional rights, and deliberately ruining those of them who are bold enough to run counter to priestly dictation. Riots suddenly break out in Barcelona; they are instigated by the Jesuits. The country goes to war in Morocco; it is dragged into it solely in defense of the mines owned, actually, if not ostensibly, by the Jesuits. The consumes cannot be abolished because the Jesuits are financially interested in their continuance. * * * * *