Neisse, said lately to a Berlin sensation-seeking audience that was
underlying with frantic applause the unsavory remarks and filthy
inuendos of the closing act: "Pardon me, I did not write this act.--You
dictated it to me."

In pandering to the morbid curiosity and lustful passions of a
pleasure-mad world, the stage, the moving-picture, the novel, the
illustrated weekly are leading Public Opinion to depths before unknown.
The abyss calls to the abyss. Ways of living always follow ways of
thinking. Should we then be astonished that crime-wave after
crime-wave is sweeping the shores of every country.

Existing conditions in our universities, public academies and schools
are not of a nature to conciliate Public Opinion with the Catholic
Church. We know perfectly well that in our seats of higher-learning
the Church is looked upon as an effete Institution, as something of the
past that has kept a certain air of respectability. Her teachings and
her history are there viewed in the light of the "evolution theory."
Who has not read, a few years ago, that terrible indictment against the
antichristian education of the American Universities, as it appeared in
a celebrated article, under the title: "Blasting at the Rock of Ages?"

In our legislative assemblies, here and abroad, do we not find the
educational problem the burning problem for Church and State? Over the
head of the child swords clash, for the child of to-day is the man of
to-morrow. The stand the Catholic Church takes on the educational
problem--from which She never deviates--has always stirred Public
Opinion against her in political and social circles. We have only to
mention "separate schools" to awaken the memories of a long and bitter
struggle.

The same inimical relations dominate the International Order. Rome and
its world-wide moral influence have been deliberately ostracized in the
recent and unhappy attempt to form a League of Nations.

So the tide of Public Opinion sweeps upon tide. Everywhere its heavy
waves break into a foamy froth on the Rock of Peter. We conclude:
_Public Opinion is against the Catholic Church_.

_Our Duties to Public Opinion_.

The antagonism against the Catholic Church is an overt fact. What are
the causes? _A distorted vision_, born of misrepresentation of facts
and misrepresentation of doctrine and practice; the _blind prejudice_
against which our refutation of facts and explanation of principles are
of little