eader to the Chapter "Ploughing the Sands." To what extent
this rather negative disposition will hasten the spreading of the true
Faith, is difficult to state. Will it, as is evident in England,
promote a movement of return to the Church or accentuate, as in the
United States, indifference and unbelief, the future alone can tell.
But, is it not our duty in the meantime to make use of every tide and
wind to bring the ship to port? The tide, as it is now running, shall
bring to the Church many a shipwrecked soul.

This is our firm belief.

This rapid survey of Western conditions in their relation with the
Church, without being a searching examination, outlines, as it were,
the actual religious topography of our new Provinces. Our sole
ambition is to help to wipe away, in our work, useless curves, make
easier the grades and map out the straightest and most direct route to
success. With the knowledge of conditions, less energy will be lost
and more time will be gained. Time and energy are the necessary
factors of true and permanent progress.

[1] "Catholics to a certain extent will remain an alien body. We
differ from those around us in a profound fashion, not in matters of
direct doctrine, for which the modern world has largely ceased to care,
but in the effects of that doctrine. The Catholic's whole conception
of man and of the fundamentals of human life is a different thing from
that held by those about us."--H. Belloc.

PART II

EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS

"To-day's boy is to-morrow's man."

CHAPTER VIII.

WHY SEPARATE?[1]

_A Moral Reason--A Social Reason--A Political Reason--A National
Reason--A British Reason--A Historical Reason--A Religious Reason--For
"Separate Schools."_

The West is without a doubt the classical land of the "School problem
in Canada." The Prairie Provinces will remember the struggles that
have marked their birth in the Dominion. The words, "_separate
schools_," rang loud and angry over the cradle of these youngest
partners in our Confederation. The conflict has not subsided with
years. Although the rights of the minority, at least in Saskatchewan
and Alberta, are partially recognized by law, there are yet some who
seem to have a mission to reopen the conflict by ever dragging the
problem into the open arena of our political life. Under the specious
pretext of national welfare they would foist upon the Canadian Public
opinions and measures opposed to our exist