At no point can the German character produce contradictions so supreme as over the question of religion. The extent to which the practice of religion, however exact and devout, can remain external to a man’s life is an unhappy fact with which all religious systems and creeds are too familiar. Germany perhaps supplies the supreme example. But to any one like myself who has seen a good deal of Catholic worship in Germany, the puzzle is necessarily acute. In no country of the world, certainly in no Catholic country, have I ever found myself among congregations so earnest and so devout. Catholicism in the Rhineland has a touch of almost Protestant austerity, thanks to which its services are wholly devoid of the tawdry fripperies which will often make the hearing of Mass, say in Italy or in parts of France, seem perfunctory and insincere. In Catholic Germany the services strike a note of great dignity and reverence. There is no talking, no moving about, no coming and going. Among the thousands of English people who have passed through Cologne since the Occupation, few have any knowledge of the extraordinary congregations which, Sunday after Sunday, fill the cathedral to overflowing; congregations three parts composed of men of all ages and conditions. A Franciscan monk, Father Dionysius, whose fame is widely spread throughout the Rhineland, holds these great congregations spellbound week by week. Men of God, those sons of the Spirit who arise wherever the Spirit listeth, transcend all limits of race and creed and clime. To that rare company this German monk belongs. An orator of the first rank, it is not his oratory which compels, but the nobility of his personality and the purely spiritual appeal of his doctrine. The face is not typically ecclesiastical--it is too broad, too fine, too human. It has humour also, for the Father can use at will the lash of a fine irony.