come home of late to our western Catholics as is evidenced by the great
efforts made to establish colleges in the various Provinces. As this
move is of the greatest importance for the welfare of the Church in that
promising part of our country, we thought to be of some service to the
Western Church in drawing the attention of Catholics to this important
issue and bringing to a focus certain indefinite, hazy views on the
subject.

_Higher Education--Duty of the Hour for Western Catholics._

"When a reflective man of middle life walks along the embowered paths of
Oxford and Cambridge or through their quadrangles whose walls have echoed
to the footsteps of so many brainy men of England, he realizes what these
institutions have been and still are to Great Britain and the Empire."
From the lecture halls of these seats of learning have gone, generation
after generation, the men who framed and directed the course of studies
of other universities, the legislators and statesmen that have shaped the
destinies of the British Empire. "There is not a feature or a point in
the national character which has made England great among the nations of
the world, that is not strongly developed and plainly traceable in our
universities. For eight hundred or a thousand years they have been
intimately associated with everything that has concerned the highest
interest of the country." (W. E. Gladstone.) This example of the power
of Oxford and Cambridge is so typical that one immediately grasps its
meaning and appreciates its full value. On that immense background of
the Empire they stand out indeed in bold relief as the embodiment of
higher education, as the great portals that open on the highway of true
leadership. Is not the affiliation, that subtle intellectual bond which
units our universities of Canada to those two great seats of learning, a
permanent and living proof of this fact?

A university is the vital centre of a nation's life. Around it, by a
gradual process of elimination and a natural force of gravitation, centre
the master minds; from it, as from a fountain-head, flow with true
leadership in every branch of human society, progress, wealth and
prosperity. On the force of this _centripetal_ and _centrifugal_
movement of a university depends its value in the community. "The
increase in number and efficiency of universities," said Bishop Spalding,
"is the healthy proof of the vitality and energy of a nation."

In the e