Page 16 - March On! God will Provide by Brother Aubert

XIV FOREWORD

static copies of several of them as an appendix to his
master's thesis at Notre Dame: "Xaverian Brothers in
the United states, 1854-1926." On their content he made
no comment,
In 1944, at the request o{ Brother Ambrose, who had
become Superior General in 1937, I elaborated on the
material used in Brother Edmund's conferences and
produced a monograph entitled: "Theodore
James
Ryken, Nov. 8, 1837, to June l, 1838." In it I provided
translations of the testimonial letters, traced Ryken's
travels in America with day and date, and added brief
biographical sketches of the men who wrote the testi-
monials. In the concluding paragraph, feeling that I
had done all that I had been requested to do, I wrotel
"I hope that this report may be the beginning of a full-
length biography of our Founder. As his spiritual sons
we have owed him this debt for too long a time. To
the material in this report I make no claim of proprie-
torship. Everybody is welcome ro make use of it and,
I hope, to go on from where I have left off. lVhat have
been blind alleys to me may be broad highways to others.
If I have conveyed some part of the admiration I have
gained for Theodore James Ryken, I shall tre more
than rewarded."
I had written "Finis," so I thoughr, to my part in
the Ryken story, but in reality I had unwittingly nomi-
nated myself as a potential biographer. Somehow that
monograph on the Ryken Testimonial Letters found
its way to the Xaverian pioneer mission in the Congo.
There Brother Xavier, the Belgian Provincial, read it in
1946 when he was making his first visitation after World
War II. On his return to Bruges, he asked Brother Tillo
to prepare a Flemish translation, and possibly with the
idea of making a similar contribution he made prelim-