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A hundred years ago eight .young law-students of the Sorbonne gathered in the back room of a Paris newspaper office. Tired of decrying the low ebb to which the Faith had fallen in the chaos of the preceding half-century they had decided to put their hopes to the test of action. Under the patronage of St. Vincent de Paul, whose indefatigable zeal for the poor was not yet forgotten, they constituted themselves into a lay confraternity with the object of achieving their own sanctification through charitable works. Their rule was perfectly simple, in its first article it welcomes all young men anxious to unite in prayer and good work, in the second it states that no work of charity may be regarded as foreign to the aims of the society.
From this modest beginning the Society has grown from strength to strength, so that in May of this year representatives of provincial Councils from the four comers of the earth met in Paris to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the foundation. Instead of merely stirring the youth of France to a proper sense of its responsibility, the Society has come to be one of the most active spiritual organisations for Catholic laymen, and as such perhaps the best example of social action in modem times. Yet because its work is done unobtrusively, it is not as well known as it deserves to be outside the humble homes which enjoy its special care. Yet in the course of a hundred years of diligent activity the society has increasingly shown its ability to cope with the multifarious problems which are not and cannot be dealt with directly by the Church.
