ing system and to the broad
spirit of liberty that inspires and maintains it. But we all know that
in this persistent and methodical opposition to our separate schools
the fundamental issue is a religious one. Life, after all, is a
spiritual value. The school is the great loom on which the rising
youth weaves its thread into the great and amazing tapestry of the
nation. Who has the mastery of the school, has in the making that
mysterious tapestry of human life.

This problem is but an aspect of the eternal struggle between the
Christian and the Pagan ideal. The pagan ideal of civilization is the
absorption of the individual by the State, the confiscation of liberty
by the political monopoly of the nation.

The Christian ideal is the State at the service and for the protection
of the individual and of the family. "To Caesar what belongs to
Caesar; to God what belongs to God." Before the ever recrudescent
forces of neo-paganisim it is most useful, we contend, to reassert in
plain, terse language the principles, the reasons that explain and
justify our persistent attitude on the school problem. They will be
our answer to the question which is ever thrown at Catholics in Western
Canada:

"_Why separate_?" We have placed the discussion of this problem on the
higher plain of the unchangeable and unchanging principles of truth and
justice, for, we are firm believers in the pacific penetration of ideas
and in their conquering power. In truth alone, the Master stated, is
true and abiding liberty: "You will know truth, and truth will make you
free." Every true Canadian readily grasps the transcendent importance
of the problem under examination and should bring to its discussion
open-mindedness and sincerity.

_I.--A Moral Reason_

It is the right and duty of the parent to educate his child. This
right is founded on nature. The child is the offspring of the parents,
the continuation as it were of their own life. They are therefore the
natural educators of their children. When they commit them to the care
of others for instruction it is their right to have them educated as
they wish. As by the supreme and sacred right of conscience man is
free to give to his life its moral direction, so also does the same
principle apply to the education of a child for whose conscience, as
for whose life, the parent is responsible. The moral right of the
parent, which is one with that of the child in that period of life, is