HIS VOICE OF PEACE LOST
Meyer, Ernest L.
His Voice Of Peace Lost BLESSED ARE THE MEEK, by Zofia Kossak. Roy Publishers. $3. Reviewed by Ernest L. Meyer IT IS SAID, and not without statistical proof, that during wartime there is a...
...When the devil rides high, the devout seek confirmation that the Shepherd once walked the earth and may lead us again to green pastures...
...Francis, the voice of compassion, was lost...
...And so, inevitably, was the Crusade...
...Francis, such as winning the friendship of an infidel Sultan, spring not from the mumbling of magic but from the power of a'simple, child-like, and all-embracing love...
...Reviewed by Ernest L. Meyer IT IS SAID, and not without statistical proof, that during wartime there is a rising demand for books of piety and peace...
...Francis of Assisi, has given us a book in the general school of its predecessors...
...For the Crusade of the "Red Cardinal" Pelagius, waged under idealistic banners, was as brutal a butchery as the war we now are fighting in the name of human brotherhood...
...It contains, however, nothing of the supernatural...
...Sacrifices," the Cardinal said sternly when St...
...And the cause of all that would be wealth, nothing else.' " Blessed Are the Meek will engross readers of diverse tastes...
...The book, in fact, is the record of an epic and tremendously dramatic contest between love and lucre, humility and pride, and the radical doctrines of a true follower of Jesus ranged against the conservative worldliness of an established and wealthy Church...
...Many will be chained by its often powerful narrative of the Children's Crusade, of the Crusade of vengeance which followed it, and of the illicit love of Blanche and De Brienne, King of Jerusalem...
...It is this hunger in men and women that may account for the success of such recent best sellers as The Robe, The Nazarene, The Keys of the Kingdom, and The Song of Bernadette...
...Radical indeed...
...Whatever miracles are wrought by St...
...And thoughtful readers will find more in the book than blood and passion...
...Were I to possess anything,' he says, 'I must likewise possess weapons to defend it...
...They will see an analogy between those days of the early 13th Century and the time in which we live...
...Had I a house, I would have to surround it with a fence and I would have to keep a watchman and a dog...
...Francis begged mercy for the innocents, "are inevitable when great ends are to be achieved...
...Francis wants to live like the Apostles," one of his followers reported...
...Zofia Kossak, in her historical novel based on the life of St...
...Pelagius, not content with the Sultan's offer to surrender Jerusalem, demanded control of Egypt...
...The voice of St...
...And I would have strifes and litigation...
...And hewing to the line of ruthlessness he allowed all the men, women and children of a besieged Saracen city to starve to death...
Vol. 8 • April 1944 • No. 17
