The attitude of MM. Clemenceau and Briand has (it is pointed out) been in a certain degree conciliatory. M. Briand's measure itself is liberal as contrasted with earlier proposals. They both seemed disposed at the outset to apply it so as to give the Church real freedom in its own sphere of religious influence, and to effect the process of disendowment gradually and not inconsiderately. This attitude and spirit are recognised (it is asserted) by moderate and liberal-minded Catholics who have concurred with the opinion of the episcopate, which is supposed to have decided by a large majority that the Associations Cultuelles described in the law might be formed and worked. The large bulk of the clergy also were in favour of forming the Associations. But Rome, caring only for her own power, or wishing to embarrass the Government, or yielding to German influence, and represented by a Pope and Secretary of State innocent of sound judgment or diplomatic tact, has overridden the wishes of the French Catholics. Rome, by forbidding the formation of the Associations, has decreed a state of persecution and spoliation for the hapless clergy of France. As loyal Catholics they have accepted it, but sorely against the grain. The same thing has happened in respect to M. Briand's circular of the 1st of December, regulating public worship in the absence of Associations Cultuelles. M. Briand imposed on the priests the mere formality of an annual declaration of public meeting, giving thereby a liberal interpretation to the Act of 1881, which in its more obvious sense required a declaration for each service, as being a separate meeting. Bishops and priests have obeyed the papal directions which forced them to do what they were unwilling to do--to decline making the dec'aration. Rome has, by her whole policy of non possumus, endeavoured to create a fictitious impression of a persecution on the part of a Government, when in reality her own action is responsible for the persecution. The bulk of Church property could have been saved had the Associations Cultuelles been formed. It was Rome who refused to form them. The Church services could have gone on legally after the 11th of December, had the declaration required by the law of 1881 been made. Rome refused to allow it, and thus rendered the clergy liable to fine or imprisonment.

6

The view to which the best information at my disposal points, and which is not, I think, adequately realised in England, maintains almost every fact assumed in the account just given to be either inaccurately stated or wholly false. And I may add that in holding it to be essentially false many Catholics whose views are comparatively conciliatory and progressive are at one with the most intransigeant.

M. Paul Sabatier, in his recent book on Disestablishment in France, written for the instruction of English readers, speaks of the enlightened French Catholics of the new school as likely to come nearer and nearer to the democracy and the free-thinkers.'

The

general impression left on the minds of M. Sabatier's readers is that it is the intransigeant Catholics, the political opponents of the Government, who alone decry the Act of 1905 and accuse its framers of hostility to the Church. The present writer may say at once that, when visiting Paris for some days on the 16th of December last, he derived most of his information from M. Thureau-Dangin, the distinguished Academician, one of the twenty-two who joined the late M. Brunetière in petitioning the Pope for measures of conciliation, and the Abbé Ernest Dimnet, whose name is familiar to English Catholics as a representative of the comprehensive theology of the Revue du Clergé Français, and whose recent work, La Pensée Catholique en Angleterre, has been so fiercely attacked in the Etudes Religieuses by the more Conservative French Jesuits. No Royalist or Intransigeant, not the Comte de Mun or M. Drumont himself, could speak more strongly than did these able writers against the injustice and insolence displayed by successive Governments in the whole course of anti-clerical legislation since 1901. But indeed M. Sabatier largely misconceives the nature of the differences among Catholics both in France and in our own country. He writes with delightful naïvet of the intellectual and moral differences between the clients of St. Januarius and the Catholics formed in the school of Newman,' apparently not knowing that Cardinal Newman went out of his way in the Apologia to avow his belief in the very miracle thus singled out as the symbol of contemptible superstition-the annual liquefaction of that saint's blood in Naples. The religious liberalism of the last century, free thought, the destruction of established religion, these were the great objects of Newman's attack for the first half of his life. His conservative philosophy of religion on Coleridgian linesparallel on some points to Burke's political philosophy with its defence of prejudice as often the practical safeguard of wisdom-was opposed in its first principles to the whole Jacobin movement, of which French anti-clericalism is the representative. Newman's philosophy was, moreover, largely a defence of what is to M. Sabatier credulity and superstition. M. Sabatier's reference to him is unfortunate and fortunate-unfortunate for his own argument, fortunate as reminding his readers how little familiarity he has with the currents of Catholic thought of which he writes so fluently, and how little he can be trusted as an authority on this subject.

Before setting down in outline the general view of the situation taken, I think, by the bulk of French Catholics, and the differences between the more intransigeant and the more conciliatory, I should like to remind those Englishmen whose memory is short, of the complete falsification by the event of the view which our Press took at first of M. Waldeck-Rousseau's legislation for the religious orders in 1901. This was the first stage of the campaign against the Church of France of which we are now witnessing the development. Our

journalists wrote then very much as they write now. Then, as now, they urged that the object of the law was not hostile or persecuting. They pointed to M. Waldeck's assurances that the religious congregations would not be interfered with except so far as was necessary to prevent them from being a political danger. They were to apply for authorisation by law. Such an application was to be in most cases a mere matter of form. Authorisation was to be given except where strong reasons could be shown for withholding it.

When a cry of terror arose from monks and nuns, and community after community left the country, declining to come within the meshes of the law, our Press then, as now, accused them of impracticable fanaticism. Then, as now, the sympathy of Rome with their action was decried as being inspired by political reasons and as savouring of hostility to the Republic. When the orders took refuge in Belgium and England and elsewhere, pleading for the hospitality due to persecuted men and women, our Press retorted that the cry of persecution was a 'pose.' They had in reality exiled themselves rather than submit to a reasonable law, which for most involved a mere formality.

Those who remained in France were applauded as men of common sense and genuine patriotism, who trusted the assurances of the rulers of their country that no harm was meant to them. We know the sequel. Yet let me once more record in outline, for the sake of those who may be ready to forget, the assurances of M. Waldeck as to the scope and intention of the law, and their practical interpretation by his successor.

(1) On the 27th of June, 1901, M. Waldeck declared in the Chamber that the Bill, so far as it was meant to dissolve the orders, was designed only to disperse those monks who are plotters against the State and those who interfere in politics.'

(2) To Dominicans, Benedictines, Carthusians, and others it was represented that they had only to go through the formality of applying for authorisation as an act of submission to the State, and they would be left unmolested.

(3) With a view to helping the Government in its peaceful and paternal work they were asked to give all particulars of their property and their numbers, which it would not be very easy for the Government itself to obtain.

(4) There were many houses and schools belonging to already authorised congregations, but not themselves separately authorised. For them the question arose, Did the existing authorisation of their order cover them? If not, they must decide whether to go or to apply now for authorisation. M. Waldeck, in his paternal kindness, declared such an application to be quite unnecessary. The existing authorisation protected them. "Let them stay." And they stayed.

Nothing is gained by hard words, and it would not be easy to find the appropriate adjectives to qualify the administration which carried

out the law. Eighty-six congregations of men and two hundred and eleven of women said from the first roundly that the Government simply meant their extermination; that to trust its word, its pledges, its sense of honour would be madness. Such language was stigmatised as unpatriotic, unmannerly, bigoted, fanatical. But it represented a conviction too deep to be shaken by the abuse of irresponsible onlookers. The congregations left the country, taking with them as much of their property as they could. The subsequent action of the Government was directed therefore not against the disaffected, not against the opponents of the Government, but against just those orders which had trusted it, which had accepted its assurance that the law was honestly meant for the legalisation of the orders and the expulsion only of such as were 'political' or 'plotters against the State.' M. Waldeck at this juncture retired, leaving the carrying out of his pledges and the execution of his law to his successor M. Combes. M. Combes' method of performing his task was as follows to take the above four heads in order :

(1) No examination whatever was made as to the charges of political Catholicism or plotting against the State which had been given as the only ground on which expulsion would be resorted to. The charge was not even alleged in detail against any but a handful of Assumptionists, and vaguely, but without an attempt to adduce evidence, against the Jesuits.

(2) The assurance given to Dominicans, Benedictines, Carthusians, and others that, apart from such evidence, they were all to stay, was interpreted as meaning that they were all to be evicted and their whole property confiscated. Five orders only, out of the whole regular clergy of France, were suffered to remain.1

(3) The schedules drawn up by the orders as to their numbers and their property, demanded in their own interests, in order that they might have legal standing and protection, were employed as useful documents to ensure not a monk escaping nor a farthing of his money from being saved.

(4) The assurance that new houses of already authorised orders already possessed legal authorisation-an assurance on the strength of which they kept themselves and their property in the country, and in the power of the Government-was interpreted as meaning that they were not authorised after all, and moreover that they should not be authorised now. In June, 1902, 130 schools belonging to them were closed by the Government; in July, 2,500 more were

shut up.

To make his work quicker, M. Combes got rid for the occasion of the controlling influence of the Senate. One Chamber alone-so he decreed-should decide the fate of the orders, and a law was These were the Trappists, the Cistercians, the African Missions, the White Fathers, and the Order of St. John of God.

passed to that effect. The Senate was assigned the five orders which were to be allowed to stay. Twenty-five teaching congregations were refused authorisation en bloc at one sitting of the Lower Chamber, twenty-eight at another. The rest followed quickly. M. Combes had practically made one head for the whole monastic organism, and he proceeded to cut it off.

I recall all this not only to remind Englishmen that the view taken at first by our own Press as to the tenour and probable issue of the law was at once similar to their view of the present situation and legislation, and proved to be wholly false, but also because quite inevitably the sequence of events produced the profoundest impression in Rome. And this impression has had, I believe, a large share in determining the present attitude of the Holy See. Englishmen may forget, but in such a matter not Rome, whose interests are so deeply affected. The law of 1901 was the culmination of the attempt persevered in for some twenty years by Leo the Thirteenth and Cardinal Rampolla to rally' Catholics to the Republic, and to pursue in its regard a policy of undeviating friendliness-with at no time any substantial response. The esprit nouveau of M. Spüller raised hopes for a few months, but nothing came of it; and now at last open persecution and breaches of faith without a parallel in modern times came from the Government of that very country with which Rome had so persistently sought alliance and an entente cordiale. It was a most severe lesson, not to be forgotten. Two views had, as we have seen, been taken even among Catholics as to the spirit and intentions of the Government of 1901. One party had taken its assurances to be on the whole reliable, its motives really what they professed to be. The others quickly scented reasons for the suspicion that it had undertaken to carry out the campaign against Christianity which the Radical Socialists and Freemasons had long been urging. This second view was confirmed by fact after fact. The judicial tone of M. Waldeck-Rousseau and his assurances were now seen to have meant only that the first step must be taken securely and without scaring either the orders or the public at large. Else the second could not be achieved. Public opinion must be enlisted on the side of the Government. Political Catholicism, Clerical encroachments-these were foes which might be fought with the world's approval. Therefore they were the only alleged objects of attack. Such an attack was indeed self-defence on the part of the State; and while the world held that it was forging only an effective defensive armoury, it completed undisturbed its equipment and its strategical operations for a war of extermination.

Probably M. Waldeck did not in his heart desire himself to carry the campaign to its next step. But none the less that step was inevitable. The Government was pledged to carry out the antiChristian policy which was the least impracticable of the proposals