Catholic conscience is awakened into action.  “One of the most pressing needs of the Church at the present time, is to have a well-connected body of university-trained Catholics.”  This statement of Father Plater, S.J., is true also for Canada and more particularly for Western Canada.  And indeed, this pressing need of higher education has 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.”