France under the Third Republic inclines me, as I have
already said, to think that the Catholic children of light in Lille and
in French Flanders generally may be doing better work both for Religion
and for Liberty than my pessimistic journalist was disposed before the
elections to believe. If they had given more time and thought and money
to 'tactical necessities' and 'political combinations,' and less to the
social and spiritual interests of the land in which they live, the
results even of the elections might perhaps have been less satisfactory
to them. For, as I have shown, the strength of the Monarchist vote in
this region proved to be much greater than my pessimist thought it
would be; and the Republicans of the Third Republic did a deal of
canvassing for the Monarchists by making it very hard for men who love
religion and liberty to vote for Republican candidates.

Lord Beaconsfield's saying, that the world is governed by the people of
whom it hears the least, is certainly not less true of the Catholic
Church than it is of the world. The Catholic stock in French Flanders is
as vigorous and full of sap as in Belgium or in Holland. It is
interesting to hear educated people talking glibly in London or Paris
about the decay of the Christian religion in the same breath in which
they profess their unbounded admiration of the heroism of Father Damien.
It was through no act or wish of Father Damien that the world at large
came to know his name, or to take account of a work which was done not
to be seen of men. He was simply a Flemish Catholic, doing what he
believed to be the will of God.

Throughout the broad rich plains of the great Department of the Nord,
and in its crowded busy towns and cities, this Catholic faith is
everywhere to be seen and felt--to be felt rather than to be seen in its
fruits of charity, self-denial, and devout self-sacrifice.

Nowhere in France is public charity, I am told, so extensively and
efficiently organised, and the demands upon public charity are
exceptionally great. The department is very rich and very prosperous,
but it contains, like all frontier regions, a large floating population;
and one of the best-informed men I met in Lille, a large landed
proprietor in one of the wealthiest communes of the department, told me
that there are probably more families or tribes of hereditary mendicants
scattered over French Flanders than are to be found in any other French
province.

These are