The struggle between these two important figures is one of the most dramatic passages in European history, It led eventually to Frederick being excommunicated and, so far as Gregory IX was concerned, deprived of his crown, But it is indicative of the man that when the news of his excommunication and deposition a emperor reached him he took the imperial crown: and placed it upon his head, recrowning himself, and uttering as superbly arrogant a reply of human pride to human pride as ever has been made by man:
I hold my crown of and neither the Pope nor nor the Council, shall rend it fron me. Does he, in his vulgar piid Think that he shall hurl me from the Imperial dignity; me, who am the Chief Prince of all ihe World, who am without an equal?
It is, perhaps, indicative of the man's whole character, Frederick not a vicious man, he was far too fastidious, too cultured and too intellectual to find any attraction in the gross indulgences of the senses. A sumptuous provider of feasts himself, he was sparing in his food and temperate in his drink, nor did his festivals and banquets ever degenerate into orgies and displays of mere licence and profligacy, Gregory himself was an ascetic, due mor frozen nature, a gloom and extreme old age than to any rigid standard of morals among the priesthood, and there is in the history of this struggle between spiritual and temporal monarchs the contrast of a disorderly irregular papacy and the more correct behaviour ofts secular opponent, These repeated fights with the papacy resulted in the main in the emperor's victory, but the virulent hate of arrogant old men had destroyed the fruits of his genius, rendered his great gifts useless, and reduced to a wilderness of confusion, misery and discord, those dominions he had so fondly cherished and so wisely governed, He died at barely fifty-six years of age. been elected spokesman for foreign residents in China, which mos, definitely is not the case. Especially Will this be felt by those—women as well as men—who did not join the ranks of the evacuees in the* early days of the trouble, but stayed on and saw things through. It was not fear of the Japanese which prompted the authorities to inaugurate the evacuation of women and children (and any men who wished to join them) from Shanghai in August and September, but fear of what migh happen if the Japanese were defeated. Thus Mr. Crow's book, purporting to speak for the Chinese, would have carried much more weight if he had shown the courage of his convictions and. his belief in the Chinese es others have done by staying in Shanghai—a. DE C.S.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.