The Valley of Vision : A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told TalesVan Dyke, Henry
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The Valley of Vision : A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales
Van Dyke, Henry
Religious fiction, American; Short stories, American
What is happening in Quebec now? Just what ought to happen. The
draft is going forward smoothly and steadily, without resistance.
Sons of the best French-Canadian families are volunteering for the
war. Recruits from Laval University are coming in, stirred perhaps
by the knowledge that forty thousand Catholic priests in France
have entered the army which fights against the Prussian paganism.
The petty politicians who have sought to serve their own ends
by putting forward the mad notion of secession and an independent
“Republic of Quebec” have gone to cover under a storm of ridicule
and indignation. M. Bourassa's iridescent dream of French-Canadian
nationalism has disappeared like a soap-bubble. M. Francoeur's
motion in the Quebec legislature, carrying a vague hint that the
province might withdraw from the Dominion if the other provinces
were not particularly nice to it, was snowed under by an overwhelming
vote. The patriotic and eloquent speech of the provincial Premier,
M. Gouin, was received with every sign of approval. The political
cinema has shown its latest film, and the title is evidently
_“Fidelite de Quebec.”_
Meantime a Catholic missioner has been in the province. The visit
of Archbishop Mathieu of Saskatchewan was probably made on the
invitation, certainly with the consent, of the hierarchy of Quebec.
That intelligent and fearless preacher brought with him a clear and
ringing gospel, a call to all Christian folk to stand up together
and “resist even unto blood, striving against sin”--the sin of
the German war-lords who have plunged the world in agony to enforce
their heresy that Might makes Right.
Such a message, at this time, must be of inestimable value to
the humble and devout people of the province, attached as they are
to their church, and looking patiently to her for guidance. The
parish priests, devoted to their lonely tasks in obscure hamlets,
may get a new and broader inspiration from it. They may have a vision
of the ashes of Louvain University, the ruin of Rheims Cathedral,
wrought by ruthless German hands. Then the church in Quebec will
measure up to the church in Belgium and in France. Then the village
cure will say to his young men: “Go! Fight! It is for the glory
of God and the good of the world. It is for the Christian religion
and the life of free Canada.”
“Well, then,” says the gentle reader, of a sociological turn of
mind, who has followed me thus far, “what have you got to say about
the big political problem of Quebec? Is a French-speaking province
a safe factor in the Dominion of Canada, in the British Empire? Why
was Quebec so late in coming into this world war against Germany?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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