QUARTER OF M NKIND TO INTERCEDE FOR PEACE

It is announced that the Holy Father will lead the prayers for the Christian Unity Octave which begins next Thursday, January 18, the Feast of St. Peter's Chair.
He will celebrate a Mass for the intentions of the Octave between January 18 and January 25.
The Octave for Unity is kept by Catholic and non-Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox Now Eastern Catholics have been invited to follow suit. 350,000,000 Catholics and 250,000,000 non-Catholics will be represented in this prayer for Christian Unity.
The Pope's reiterated insistence that peace among the nations can only be achieved by a return to Christian principles of international, national, social and economic order, lends a special and pressing importance in this year of war to the prayers of the Octave.
It has become a Crusade for a Christian Peace.
Prayer More Potent Than Gunfire
On all sides there is a growing realisation that the civilisation whose breakup is threatened to-day derives its finest achievements from Christian principles. Christians therefore pray for a Christian peace, and non-Christians, whether knowingly or otherwise, invoke principles which are meaningless unless referable to God.
Many who have been thinking on these lines will welcome the announcement that has recently been made to the effect that the Pope is to lead a crusade of prayers for Christian Unity. This, coming soon after the encyclical Pontificatus and the Christmas Eve points for peace, is another indication of the practical nature of the Pope's solution for our troubles.
Prayer is more potent than gunfire. Unity among Christians is more effective than federation among democrats.
Pray for Unity
Such would seem to be the message of the Holy See, if we may draw any deduction from the recent letter of Cardinal Tisserant, Secretary of the Congregation for Eastern Christians, in which he recommends them to pray for the reunion of Christendom and states that the Pope will take part in an eightdays' prayer for that most desirable end.
The letter, which is to be circulated among all Eastern bishops in communion with Rome, recommends a practice which has gained increasing support in the West of late years. It started in America some thirty years ago and has spread both there, in this country, and on the Continent; so that to-day many thousands, not only Catholics, but Anglicans, Orthodox, and others, to whom the divisions of Christendom form a stumbling block, pray in the words of Our Lord " that they may all be one."
Millions upon millions of souls in every land grieve to-day at the sight of the evil spirit which sets the children of God against one another. But is it altogether fanciful to hope that the present tragedy, which affects not only Europe but the whole earth, may prove to be more of a blessing than scourge by drawing together all men of good will?
Thus it comes about that representatives of the vast block made up of all those who follow Christ — 350,000,000 Catholics and 250,000,000 Protestants and Schismatics—will be united in prayer for peace next week—one quarter of mankind.