CARDINAL MERCIER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19234, 25 January 1926, Page 8

CARDINAL MERCIER.

Cardinal Mercier is dead. Mention of the name brings flooding back recollections of the dark days of the war, when all that made life worth living seemed destined to be engulfed in a rising tide of.savagery and destruction. In Belgium especially there were concentrated those forces, which were battering at civilisation, progress, liberty and human brotherhood. Then out of this welter of pain, loss and desolation there came a voice, comforting and encouraging a stricken people, nerving them to endure, telling them in words of flame that right must prevail, courage and devotion must eventually triumph. Before the war Cardinal Mercier was a great prelate with a European reputation as scholar »and philosopher. Very soon after the war began his name was known wherever people followed the fortunes of the struggle being waged in Europe, especially wherever there was realisation of what Belgium had been called upon to endure. He had taught again the lesson that force " was not omnipotent, because whatever it might do to the bodies of men it could not conquer the soul of man. He had taken his place among those who proved that tyranny was impotent in the face of the courage that would not flinch before its threats. He had made vocal the high resolve of a people whom adversity failed to crush or suffering to subdue. He is dead, but his name will live as perhaps the highest example of the heroism which war awakes in others besides those who fight its battles.