; the benefits of university
education; the enormous sums left by wealthy individuals for the
endowment of chairs and the foundation of scholarships; the eagerness
with which these offers are grasped by men of all classes; the
extraordinary success of the Overseas University in the American Army,
which had a student body of 10,000--these are, without doubt, manifest
signs of public opinion on the matter of higher education. The
world-struggle, we all feel, has shifted to another battlefield, and the
future in every realm of human activity rests on the mastery of ideas.
In that intellectual conflict, the primary school rooms are the trenches
on the first line of defence; the college and university lecture halls
stand out as the strategic heights from which the heavy artillery of
ideas smashes the way to victory. Hold the college and university
heights to-day, and the hinterland of industry, commerce, science, art
and politics will be yours to-morrow.

Catholics throughout our Dominion begin to realize that higher education
is the price of leadership. "Of the many points of contact between the
Church and the modern world, education is the point where Catholicism has
most to gain by energetic thought and action, and most to lose by an
atmosphere of indifference." We are waking up from our deep lethargy and
beginning to understand that we shall not have our share in the shaping
of the destinies of our own Country until our leaders, particularly among
the laity, impose themselves upon the nation by their number and their
value. The magnificent campaign of the "Antigonish Casket" in favour of
higher education and the exchange of views this point at issue brought
from various correspondents, the successful drive in favour of Loyola
College of Montreal, the growing influence of the Catholic student bodies
in the various universities, the creation of Laval, in Montreal, as a
distinct unit from Quebec; the tremendous success this newly born
organization met with in its drive for $5,000,000; all these facts
indicate concentration of forces in the direction of higher education.
The national Catholic conscience is awakened into action. "One of the
most pressing needs of the Church at the present time, is to have a
well-connected body of university-trained Catholics." This statement of
Father Plater, S.J., is true also for Canada and more particularly for
Western Canada. And indeed, this pressing need of higher education has