For several lifetimes previous-as Belloc details-England had been undergoing an internal struggle between, on the one hand, the half-Christianized Danes, with their smoldering traditions of cruelty, and on the other hand, English and Norman Chris-tians, whose civilization was epitomized in the gentle, enlightened rule of St. Edward the Confessor (1043-1066) and who were the bearers of the ancient Christian and Roman civilization. With William's "conquest," the latter side won out.

England was thence-forward to be knit ever the more closely into the unity of European Christian civilization-not a political unity, but a unity of culture and civilization, of which the soul was the Catholic Faith. Within a hundred years from Hastings, this civilization would stretch from Scotland in the West to the Holy Land in the East. It is this same civilization of which all who are today Catholics are the

heirs-and must also be the bearers, if our Christian civilization is to be preserved in the face of the encircling "civilized," but nonetheless neo-pagan barbarism which threatens the existence of our entire culture.