us what the topography of the country under survey is to the
engineer. It helps to adjust the vision, to give the sense of
proportion and to suggest the easiest grades.

To know well an obstacle is often the best means to overcome it, just
as in modern warfare to locate the enemies' batteries is to silence
them. In our Chapter, "The Call of the West," we have explained the
obstacles with which Catholics have to contend on the prairie and in
small towns. We pointed out those obstacles, _geographical_ (distance
and climate), _ethnical_ (race and language), _religious_ (absence of
catholic traditions and surroundings), and marked how they were as wide
crevices through which vitality is being lost to the Church in Western
Canada. It is our intention here to dwell only on difficulties of a
general character, inherent to the state of this new country and
effecting the Church in its corporate existence.

_The materialistic spirit_, in all its forms, characterizes the West.
The youth of our Eastern Provinces and foreigners from every shore
flocked to this Eldorado by the thousands and hundreds of thousands
with the one particular aim in view, to better their material
condition. Their success has been so great that we may well say that
the very atmosphere of the West is surcharged with commercialism. The
"crop" is the ever-recurring factor and eternal topic of Western life.
No better picture reflects this attitude than that which is offered to
the traveller as his train goes rolling on through the even prairie.
Ever emerging on the horizon and dotting the landscape of the bald
plain the _grain elevator_ stands indeed as the most conspicuous land
mark of our Western towns. The elevators are in our prairie landscapes
what the church spires are in the Quebec villages, along the shores of
the St. Lawrence. Here and there they stand as symbols; they interpret
an ideal. Naturally a population so immersed in material pursuits and
frequently, not to say always, separated by the very force of
circumstances from the vitalizing contact of spiritual influence,
rapidly loses grasp of the supernatural and becomes refractory to the
doctrines and practices of the Church. Nothing is more adverse to the
influence of Christianity than material prosperity combined with the
absolute ignorance of its divine teachings. The wealthy and prosperous
farmer out West is inclined to look down on the Church and consider Her
"out of date." [1]

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