Empire, Germany meant
Prussia to the rest of the world--Prussia officially evangelical,
privately sceptical, the rigid backbone of the whole German military
mammoth. The fact that about one-third of the population of the Empire
is Catholic was overlooked by Prussia and forgotten by Europe.

France--Catholic in the provinces--was Paris just then--republican
Paris. And all French Republics have been anti-Catholic, as all French
monarchies have been the natural allies of the Vatican, as institutions,
though individual Kings, like Francis the First, have opposed the Popes
from time to time. France, in 1878, was recovering with astonishing
vitality from her defeat, but the new growth was unlike the old. The
definite destruction of the old France had taken place in 1870; and the
new France bore little resemblance to the old. It was, as it is now,
Catholic, but anti-papal.

The smaller northern powers, Scandinavia and Holland, were anti-Catholic
of course. Russia has always been the natural enemy of the Catholic
Church. Of the remaining European nations, only Austria could be said to
have any political importance, and even she was terrorized by the new
German Empire.

Italy had been the scene of one of those quick comedies of national
self-transformation which start trains of consequences rather than
produce immediately great results. One may call it a comedy, not in a
depreciating sense, but because the piece was played out to a successful
issue with little bloodshed and small hindrance. It had been laid down
as a principle by the playwrights that the Vatican was the natural enemy
of Italian unity; and the playwrights and principal actors, Cavour,
Garibaldi and others, were all atheists. The new Italy of their creation
was, therefore, an anti-Catholic power, while the whole Italian people,
below the artificial scientific level, were, as they are now,
profoundly, and even superstitiously, religious. That was the state of
the European world when Leo the Thirteenth was elected.

[Illustration: POPE LEO XIII.

From the Portrait by Lenbach]

The Popes have always occupied an exceptional position as compared with
other sovereigns. There is not, indeed, in the history of any nation or
community any record of an office so anomalous. To all intents and
purposes Christianity is a form of socialism, the Church is a democracy,
and the government of the Popes has been despotic, in the proper
sense,--that is, it has been one of 'ab