s of Holiness. I will show you some day a
letter from some Nuns on the subject. A great friend of mine one of
the greatest saints I have known, Sister Mary Annunciation of the
Convent Orphanage, Upper Norwood, used always to pray for you. She,
alas, died last year.

Did I ever quote you a sentence of Bernard Holland on the subject
of Kenelm Henry Digby when the latter was received?

"Father Scott . . . who, at last, guided him through the narrow
door where one must bend one's head, into the internal space and
freedom of the eternal and universal Catholic Church." _Space_ and
_freedom:_ that was what I experienced on being received; that is
what I have been most conscious of ever since. It is the exact
opposite of what the ordinary Protestant conceives to be the case. To
him and not only to him but to the ordinary English agnostic the
convert to Catholicism is abandoning his will and his independence,
sometimes they think even his nationality; at the best they think he
is sheltering himself in a walled garden; at the worst they think he
has closed on himself an iron door: and shackled himself with foolish
chains and sold his birthright for a crown of tinsel.

And yet their own experience, the testimony of their eyes if they
would only use them, ought to suggest to them that they might perhaps
be mistaken.

It would be difficult for anyone to make out a case for the
UnEnglishness of Manning or indeed of any prominent English Catholic
whether a born Catholic or a convert.

It would be difficult for them to prove that Belloc was a writer
wanting in independence. It would be difficult for them to convince
any one that Father Vaughan and Lord Fitzalan were wearing foolscaps.

And anybody who has thought about history or looked on at politics
must have reflected that freedom resides where there is order and not
where there is license: or no-order.

It is true in politics; it is true in art. It is the basis of our
whole social life in England. Russia has just given us the most
startling of object lessons. The English with their passion for
Committees, their Club-rules and their well organised traffic are
daily realising the fact, however little they may recognise the
theory. Only the law can give us freedom, said Goethe talking of art.
"Und das Gesetz kann nur die Freiheit geben."

Well all I have to say, G