KLEIN, Felix, French clergyman and writer: b. Chateau-Chinon, department of Nievre, 12 July 1862. Educated at the seminaries of Meaux and Saint Sulpice, the Institut Cathol ique de Paris and the Sorbonne, pro fessor of philosophy at the Ecole Saint Etienne at Meaux in 1890, and in 1893 was appointed professor of French literature at the Institut Catholique. A tolerant, broad-minded ecclesias tic of democratic sentiments, his preface to a French translation of a life of Father Hecker (q.v.) in 1897 laid him open to the charge of "Americanism." The papal interdiction of that heresy in 1899 led the abbe to retract and withdraw the book. In 1904 he visited the United States and Canada, an experience that still further strengthened his keen interest in, and admiration for, American institutions and ideals. He was received by President Roose velt in Washington, and on his _return pub lished a record of his travels entitled 'Au pays de la vie intense) ('In the Land of the Strenuous Life,' Chicago 1905) and dedicated to Mr. Roosevelt. In 1907 he made a lecturing tour in America, which furnished materials for his book, 'America of To-morrow) (1910). During the European War the Abbe Klein was attached as chaplain to the American War Hospital in Paris. In this capacity he kept a
record of events in a careful diary, published in 1915 as 'La guerre vue dune ambulance,' of which an English translation appeared in the same year, 'Diary of a French Army Chaplain.' It is a simple, profoundly moving account of what war means to the wounded combatants. In October 1916 he published a volume of reflections, 'Les douleurs qui esperent,) translated by G. Bailey under the title of 'Hope in Suffering.> Made up of short studies of types of French character, the hook reveals finest aspects of French faith and patriotism. His other writings are 'An American Student in France,' a peculiar work of semi-fiction with its original title of 'The Discovery of the Old World by a Stud( nt from Chicago,' drawing comparisons between the two countries; biographies of Bishop Dupont of Metz, and Cardinal Lavigerie ; 'New Tendencies in Religion and in Literature' ; 'Higher Education of Women' ; an edition of Montaigne and of Corneille; 'Autour du dillettantisme> ; 'Le fait religieux,' and trans lations from Archbishops Ireland and Spalding.