In Belgium

Death came last week to Desire-Joseph Cardinal Mercier. At it the dying one looked with composure, with a clear mind, a peaceful mind. For days he knew he had no further earthly hopes. Three weeks before, under a local anesthetic, he had been operated upon for a stomach ulcer; and he had watched the operation with the understanding gained in his early days as a medical student. He had seemed to rally. But the long precedent persistent dyspepsia, which had made nutrition insufficient for "his active life, had been an incubus to his strength. Food he swallowed he could not assimilate.* Indirect feeding, and his powerful will-to-live, sustained him until that day. That Saturday morning the death passion set in. To his sagging jaw, as he lay propped up on his white pillows in the clinic of St. Jean in Brussels, a sad nursing sister held tenderly the rubber tube from the tank of oxygen standing on the bedside table. Consciousness did not leave him entirely. He saw facing him on an opposite wall the sorrowful, pain-wracked figure of the Crucified. He saw his two nephews, Father Joseph Mercier and Professor Charles Jean Mercier, of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. He smiled wanly at them.

Father Mercier, in a low voice, said mass for his dying uncle. At the moment of the Agnus Dei, with its supplication to the Lamb of God, "who takest away the sins of the world," to give him peace, the dying one inclined his head as a token of peaceful leave of those around him. He tried to pronounce the benediction, but was too weak. His thin, transparent hand moved through the sign of the cross with effort. He was certain of death; had been refusing all medicines. Towards the last, attendants thought they heard him whisper " . . .rien qu'attendre . . ." About two o'clock in the afternoon he went into a deep coma. The oxygen did no good. Kneeling and holding in the Cardinal's clasp a lighted taper was a nursing sister. Brother Hubert of the Community of Morey, kneeling, held the other hand. Both prayed softly for the soul of their superior.

At three o'clock, as twilight set tled over quiet Brussels, his hollow-cheeked, highbrowed, thin-haired head fell forward on his chest. He was dead.

Outside the bells of Saint Gudule moaned the grief of the world. Women who had been praying for hours in the street outside the clinic crossed themselves once again; rose with stiffened knees and chilled bodies. "Requiem in aetemam dona eis, Domine," prayed all society. Lying in state at Malines on Sunday, the frail old body was approached with reverence by a long queue. They touched the hems o? hio robes, they brough/ pious tokens and keepsakes for the cold fingers to brush. Toward evening the line still stretched far down the dusky avenue. There was rioting before the doors were shut. The funeral was to take place during the week, probably a state funeral, Belgium's fourth.*

Desire-Joseph Cardinal Mercier, Primate of Belgium, Archbishop of Malines, was one of those rare men who in youth so thoroughly foresee their life work that the desiccating years cannot warp the fulness of their ideals, can scarcely shrivel even their bodies. Yet his disease did waste him to scarcely 100 pounds.

At 23, in 1874, a slim boy, famed in his native village of Braine-l'Alleud, south of Brussels, for "disputing the rabbit" for arguing, was ordained priest. The young man was eloquent with words, never lost his temper, was very likable, studied hard, reasoned clearly. His superiors liked him; soon, in 1877, made him professor of philosophy at the Petit Seminaire in the see of Malines the seat of Archbishop Goossens. For five years there he educated youths; taught them with kindliness, perspicacity, sympathy. He gained besides a wide reputation, a wide influence.

Then in 1882 Leo XIII (who, while he was papal nuncio in Brussels, had noted the young priest), conceived the idea of establishing a chair of philosophy in the University of Louvain to counter-balance the disarray of ideas prevalent among its students. For this professorship, all praise and recommendations centred in the studious priest, Desire-Joseph Mercier. To Rome he went; conferred with many, including Pope Leo himself; outlined a Thomist program of scholastic philosophy with such clearness and understanding that he won quick approval. At Louvain adherents of the new professor feared he might see too many vacant benches at his first lecture. So with theological students they packed the auditorium. They need not have done so, for he was so self-confident, withal so modest in his pretensions, so serene, so famed already that for that first lecture and for all others during the subsequent quarter century he never lacked a full audience. They liked him. They lived by the principles he taught. They came to him, priesthood and laity, so much that for many years he had scarcely two hours in the week for solitude. Through all he deservingly bore the nickname of "His Serenity."

When in 1906 Cardinal Goossens died and he was promoted from Monseigneur to Archbishop of Malines, he, audacious in his faith, announced as his episcopal motto: Apostolus Jesu Christi. A year later he got the red hat of Cardinal and the pastorate of Saint-Pierre-es-Liens, ancient church symbolical of religious fidelity and intrepidity among persecutions, fidelity and intrepidity which he needed and had when, in 1914, the Germans overran Belgium. Practically imprisoned in his palace, yet he sent out pastoral letters to the two and a half million faithful in his see, urging them to patriotism and endurance. German chiefs writhed before his exclamations; respected him; could testify upon their final withdrawal: "You embody to us occupied Belgium, of which you are the pastor venerated and listened to." The German wrecking of Louvain, his old university, hurt him deeply, a hurt consoled much by reconstruction from the U. S.

Despite his activities he found time to write many books on scholastic philosophy, on ethics and psychology. His pastoral letters compose six thick volumes. Before death Cardinal Mercier knew the eulogies of the departed. U. S. Ambassador William Phillips brought him flowers on behalf of Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg. President Coolidge cabled for information on his condition. Famed Burgomaster Max of Brussels, his fellow in audacity against the invading Germans of the War, visited the sick room often. So too King Albert I and gracile Queen Elizabeth. At his death she was kept in the Laeken Palace by a cold caught during her relief work against the recent Belgian floods. She sent a bouquet, the day of the Cardinal's death, by her son, Crown Prince Leopold. He had just returned from 13 months in Africa. Him the Cardinal blessed among the last.

* When, on Jan. 6, the turn really came for the worse, the Cardinal said: "My stomach has failed me; there in nothing more the doctors can do." He took the Last Sacrament, saying bravely, in his calm, mellow voice, and with the sanity that marked his whole life: "When my health was good I always said I wished to receive the Last Sacrament not when I was compelled to receive it but while I could still receive it, and I feel a little better now."

* The first three were for Charles Latour Rogier, father of the Belgium constitution; Baron Auguste Lamberton, liberator of the Scheldt, acquirer of the Belgian Congo; General G. G. Leman, defender of Liege.