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Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 240

240 SUGGESTIONS AS TO WORKS CHAPTER 37
complain. Why should it cause surprise to see that the bad
behave badly, and that the worst act vilely!
In short, in every circumstance of special difficulty, or in
face of danger, the legionary should remind himself: “A war is
on”! This phrase that nerves a war-ridden people to sacrifice,
should steel the legionary in his warfare for souls and hold
him to his work when most others would desist.
If there is any reality in the talk of precious and eternal
souls, there must be readiness to pay a price of some sort for
them. What price, and by whom paid? The answer is that if
ever lay persons are to be asked to face a risk, who are they to
be — if not those who are striving to be worthy of the title of
Legionaries of Mary? If ever great sacrifices are to be required
from lay Catholics, from whom — if not from those who have
so deliberately, so solemnly enlisted in the service of her who
stood on Calvary? Surely they will not fail, if called upon!
But leadership may fail, through a mistaken solicitude for
those led. Therefore, Spiritual Directors and all officers are
exhorted to set up standards which have some slight relation
to those of the Colosseum. This word may ring unreal in
these calculating days. But the Colosseum was a calculation
too: the calculation of many lovely people — no more strong,
no more weak than legionaries of Mary — who said to
themselves: “What price shall a man give for a soul?” The
Colosseum only summarises in a word what many words go
to say in chapter 4 on Legionary Service, and that chapter is
not intended to express mere sentiment.
Work for the derelict or abandoned classes will always be a
difficult, long-drawn-out one. Its keynote must be a supreme
patience. A type is being dealt with which will only rise after
many fallings. If discipline be put first in dealing with them,
nothing will be accomplished. In a short time the rigid system
will have lost all the subjects it was constituted to treat, and
will have as patients those who least require treatment.
Therefore, the work must proceed upon the principle of
values reversed, that is, it shall concern itself especially with
those whom even the optimist would term utterly hopeless
cases, and whose warped minds and initial insensibility to
appeal would seem to justify this description. The vile, the
malevolent, the naturally hateful, the rejects and black-listed
of other societies and people, the refuse of cities, shall all be