Part 10

No country wants war, but all fear it. The causes of unrest are manifold and legion.

In an important political speech made by Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) at Aylesbury, September 20th, 1873, he expressed himself as follows: “I can assure you, gentlemen, that those who govern must count with new elements. We have to deal not with emperors and cabinets only. We must take into consideration secret societies, who can disconcert all measures at the last moment, who have agents everywhere determined men encouraging assassinations, and capable of bringing about a massacre at any given moment.”

The passage is quoted in an article in the _Nineteenth Century_ (1876), “A History of the ‘Internationale.’” The “Internationale,” by the way, is fast superseding the “Marseillaise.” The verse of blasphemy against Christ and His mother is followed by one which ends with these words: “Our balls are for our generals.” A short time ago there were prolonged riotous strikes on the eastern frontier. A striker was killed accidentally. Thereupon M. Berteaux, the Minister of War, retired a general and imprisoned a captain and a lieutenant for the crime of having allowed the lancer regiments to carry lances when they were sent out against the strikers!

To propitiate these rioters the Minister of War went to Longwy, and the strikers marched past singing the “Internationale,” and the Minister of War actually saluted the red flag! He afterwards protested in the newspapers that he did not salute the red flag, but the men and women who were escorting it! This Minister of War began life as dry-goods commercial traveller. He is to-day a millionaire _agent de change_ at the Paris Bourse, and is said to ambition the presidential chair.

Shakespeare wrote: “Motley is the only wear.” In France, everything seems to be running to red. I have witnessed here two “free-thought” funerals, one last April and another yesterday, in which pall and banners were red, and even the coffin was draped in flaming red. Red “is the only wear,” though it is not easy to understand why “free-thought” should necessarily blush--for itself. At the “Free-Thought” convention held, recently, at Paris, under government patronage, anarchy dominated, just as it did at Rome last September. Red was the keynote.

THE ABOLITION OF THE CONCORDAT

_February 3rd, 1906._

On August 19th, 1905, I described some of the odious features of the alleged Separation Bill voted by the House of Deputies on July 7th, at “midnight, the hour of crime.” It may truly be ranked in that category to which Cicero referred when he said, “There are laws which are merely conventions among thieves.” “The vote of the Senate is a foregone conclusion,” I wrote. The order had been given; every amendment (there were about a hundred) was rejected automatically, and the law was voted, December 6th, 1905, by a majority of 180 to 101. “The French Government,” I wrote (June 30th, 1900), “is on the verse of apostasy. Is this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three I fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the government they deserve, and are punished for the evil doings of their rulers! ‘I gave them a king in my wrath,’ was once written of the Jews. Is there sufficient vitality left in the French national constitution to reject the poison which is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, unknown in France fifty years ago, is but the outward and visible sign?” To-day this apostasy, not of the nation, but of the French State, is complete. It is the latest, though by no means the last act of a series of anti-religious laws, elaborated by the Grand Orient and voted by majorities and cabinets formed by them. I dealt with this subject on March 17th, 1900, and said, then, that “with a Parliament and Ministry like this any legislation is possible.”

The pseudo-Separation Bill is the most important legislation accomplished in France since a century at least, and it has been done in a manner which would not be tolerated in any free, civilized country. An Act, which is the repudiation of fifteen centuries of national life, and is fraught with the gravest consequences both political and religious, interior and exterior, has been rushed through both Houses with most unseemly, “scandalous haste.” “You are treating it,” said a senator, “as if it were a question of a fourth-rate railroad.” There was only one deliberation in the Chamber of Deputies, and not one in the Senate we may say. Senators of the Right were allowed to soliloquize eloquently. Their speeches were admirable from every point of view and might well have given pause to the Left. But these were dumb, by order. With few exceptions, the reporter and President of the Separation Commission and the Minister of Worship alone spoke, to curtly and peremptorily repulse the proposed amendments. M. Rouvier, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, who did not speak at all in the House of Deputies, made but one appearance, on November 9th, at the first session of the Senate, to declare that “the question was essentially a political one,” and that there was “a primordial and dominant interest for the Government that this reform should be completed before the Senate went before the electoral body.” He further declared “that the Senate had given its adhesion in advance ... if it were otherwise the Government would resign.” Surely a singular speech to make to a deliberative assembly, on a matter that transcends in importance anything that has been transacted in the French Parliament since 1793.

If the law were not what Cicero calls “a convention among thieves,” how did M. Rouvier know “that the Senate had given its adhesion in advance”? Indignant at the systematic refusal of the Left to enter into any discussion, a senator exclaimed: “You are a deliberative assembly; try at least to keep up appearances.” MM. Monis and Clemenceau spoke on the Left, not to refute the arguments of the Right, but to travesty history, to malign and misrepresent, and to discuss subjects wholly irrelevant. M. Monis entered into a long digression on the Franco-Prussian war in order to incriminate a French cardinal and Pius IX. He was ably refuted by M. de Lamarzalle.

Whence this unseemly haste to vote a measure so important on the ragged edge of a legislature? Next month one-third of the Senate is to be renewed, the presidential term expires, and in May general elections are to take place. In vain the Right, in learned and eloquent speeches, adjured the Senate to postpone the final vote: (1) till one-third of the Senators had been replaced; (2) till the Municipal Councils had been consulted; (3) till the country had been consulted; (4) until after the general elections of May, 1906. All in vain. “_Motions préjudicielles_” and a hundred odd amendments all had the same fate.

The explanation of this “scandalous haste” is very simple. The reporter of the Commission said: “If you do not vote this liberal law now, you can say good-bye to it, for you will never see it again.”

The country has never been consulted, and the Government wishes to confront the people with the _accomplished_ fact, and above all to be able to say, as I pointed out in my last: “You see the law is voted and nothing is changed.” If this law had been passed two years ago, it would have gone into operation a year before the general elections and the people might have been roused. On the other hand, if it hung fire now, it would certainly have to be placed in all the electoral programmes. Everything has been planned and foreseen by the lodges since twenty years.[14]

Several senators of the Right convincingly established that there was no adequate reason for this unseemly haste--that no organic law had ever been passed without a second reading; and they adjured the Senate not to abdicate. M. de Chamaillard even offered to withdraw all the proposed amendments (about a hundred) if the Senate would not vote the “urgency” and give the law a second reading. All in vain.

No one ignores or denies that the true purpose of the law is to dechristianize France; even the spokesmen of the Government could not dissimulate the truth. The coterie of Freemason Jacobins who have ruled France for the past twenty years have not renounced their scheme of national schismatic churches; only, instead of having one, which was seen to be impossible, they propose to establish dozens of them by means of associations of worship. Articles 4, 6, 8, 19 dealing with these associations contain the whole venom of the law. In vain the obscurities, the anomalies, the legal antinomies were pointed out, and explanations demanded. _Règlements d’organization and Conseil d’Etat_, it was said, would settle everything later on! In this _Review_, August 19th, I commented on the text of the law--and not one word, not one comma, has been changed by the Senate!

To-day, Islamism is, _ipso facto_, the only religion recognized by the French Government; its ministers and mosques and schools are provided for, and its ceremonies are often honoured by the presence of state officials. This, in spite of Article 2, “the Republic recognizes and subventions no worship.”

Another point worth noticing is that while discussing Article 1, “The Republic assures liberty of conscience,” the Minister of Public Worship, speaking for the Government, clearly indicated that state functionaries would never be permitted to send their children to any but government schools.

There are three points on which I insist in conclusion: (1) That the country has not been consulted. At the general elections, 1902, not one senator, and only 130 deputies out of 580 had “Separation” in their programmes, and the Budget of Worship was voted in 1902, 1903, 1904 by a compact majority who would then have been indignant had it been said that they were acting against the wishes of the country. On January 27th, 1903, M. Combes himself repelled a suggestion of denunciation of the Concordat thus: “If you do this by an improvised vote ... you will throw the country into the greatest difficulties, trouble consciences, and cause a veritable peril to the Republic.” Now the country has not been heard from since 1902. Yet the law was rushed through, on the eve of a new election, for reasons I have indicated.

(2) We must remember that when continual violations of the Concordat are alleged as an excuse for the rupture, the Jacobins constantly confound the seventy-five Organic Articles with the seventeen articles of the Convention called Concordat, 1801, which alone was signed by Pius VII.

(3) The suppression of the indemnity _Concordataire_ is, as far as the Catholic clergy are concerned, a partial repudiation of the National Debt. It was recognized as such by laws of 1789, 1790, 1791, 1793, 1801, etc.

This law of pseudo-Separation is not only a law of spoliation, but also of supreme tyranny, in that in the name of Separation, it pretends to regulate minutely the mode of existence of its victims, in future, by special codes, and deprives them of the right to have more than the strictest necessary for a hand-to-mouth existence.

I am convinced that to acquiesce in regard to these “associations of worship” will be to fall into the Government’s trap as the Congregations did when they applied for authorization in 1902. It will only mean retreating before the enemy, and postponing the hour of violent persecution and combat, which must come before the Jacobin-Freemason yoke can be broken.

THE INVENTORIES

_12th February, 1906._

Year by year, I have foreshadowed and characterized the programme of persecution, spoliation, and arbitrary tyranny which is that of the Judeo-Masonic coterie which governs France, by means of the Socialist vote. We have now reached the second part of this programme.

In 1901 the Associations Bill was, according to Waldeck Rousseau, intended to give legal standing and liberty to the unauthorized as well as to the authorized Congregations. We all know, to-day, how twenty-seven thousand of their schools have been closed, and how the Congregations, simple enough to fall into the Government’s trap by asking for authorization and furnishing inventories of their property, have been robbed of everything and turned adrift.

The inventories now being made in the churches, amid scenes of violence and bloodshed, with the cooperation of the regular army, represent the first step on the road to wholesale spoliation and strangulation. If only the victims would be docile and resigned there would be no trouble whatever. Resistance will compel the operators to be drastic, when they would rather go slowly and surely. The French voters should be consistent. After giving themselves such law-makers, they ought at least not to wince when the laws made by them are put into execution. But this is an incurable idiosyncrasy of the French; they are clear-sighted, energetic, and practical in the administration of their private affairs, but when it comes to politics and government, they are absolutely apathetic and purblind. Any pothouse politician can wheedle them out of their votes, who would find it difficult to coax a sou out of their pockets. All they ask is to be left in peace to attend to their business and pleasures. It is only when the unpleasant practical sides of laws like those of 1902, 1904, and 1905 are brought home to them that the peasant seizes his pitchfork, and the bourgeois his cane, and bloody manifestations occur all over France, as in 1902, 1904, and to-day (1906).

Generally speaking, inventories are made only when property is about to change hands, as in cases of death and bankruptcy. Now the adherents of the Catholic Church in France are numerous and very much alive, and they cannot see why their ecclesiastical furniture and property should be inventoried, quite forgetting that they gave carte blanche to the “bloc” of Briands, Brissons, Combes, etc., who made the law they are now resisting.

If _Associations cultuelles_ are formed, a consummation most devoutly to be deprecated by every friend of Catholic France, evidently they will be composed by bishops, curés, and their present _conseils de fabrique_, and there will not be any transmission of property.

If there were no _animus furtandi_, no malevolent projects of strangulation in the background, the Government would have contented itself with denouncing the Concordat, and repudiating that portion of the National Debt represented by the _Budget of cults_, instituted by the Jacobins themselves, in 1790, when they appropriated Church property and assumed the charge of maintaining Catholic worship in France. Neither Protestant nor Jewish worship was included, originally, in the _Budget de Cults_, seeing that their Church property had not been touched, and they had no part in the Concordat.

When the Anglican Church was disestablished or separated from the State in Ireland, it surely never occurred to Mr. Gladstone and his Government to order inventories to be made in the churches.

To understand this revolt of the French people just now, we must recall their past experience with inventories. In 1790 a decree obliged all cathedral chapters and titulars of benefices to furnish complete inventories of all their holdings, and in March, 1791, about four hundred millions of Church property was seized and sold by the State. In 1901 the Congregations were invited to furnish ample inventories with their demands for authorization; no authorizations were given, but the inventories were very useful for the wholesale spoliations which followed, spoliations which still masquerade under the pseudonym of “liquidations.”

Moreover, the State makes these inventories to-day as proprietor, though by no sleight of language can its ownership be proven, even as regards churches existing before the Revolution, while many costly structures have been erected and endowed since then by private initiative.[15]

Fierce riots occurred over one of these churches built on private grounds. The proprietor produced his title deeds, proving that the commune had not contributed one cent and that he was absolute owner, but this made no difference.

The law Mirabeau of 1789 distinctly recognized that all ecclesiastical property then existing had been “irrevocably given to the Roman Catholic Church for public worship and charity.” The Jacobins of to-day apparently base their claims (Art. 12 de Separation) on this loi Mirabeau, which declares, forthwith, that all this Church property is “placed at the disposal of the nation,” (“_mise à la disposition de la nation_”). But Art. 12 of the Concordat uses exactly the same words in speaking of what was left, in 1801, of Church property, edifices, etc.--“_sont mises à la disposition des évêques_”--all was “placed at the disposal of the bishops”; and the faithful, moreover, were invited to reconstitute the stolen patrimony by gifts and legacies, which are now to be confiscated.

Church edifices and everything pertaining thereto, as well as pious legacies (_fondations_), are to confiscated, if _Associations cultuelles_ are not formed before 6th December, 1906, or if said associations are dissolved for any of the five cases foreseen by the law ironically called of “Separation.” Lineal descendants may claim _fondations_ made by ancestors, but this liberal provision is illusory, as all important bequests are made by people who are childless. Thus the dead are despoiled as well as the living.

The recitals which fill the daily papers of churches besieged and assaulted by _gens d’armes_ and the regular army are very sickening, coming so soon after a similar campaign against convents. There are places where no workmen will break down doors or pick locks for the fiscal agents, and they are obliged to carry operators, or official _crocheteurs_, around with them.

Recently two thousand soldiers were mobilized against a village church. In many places the regular army have occupied the churches, unexpectedly, before daylight, and thus the people were outwitted and the inventories were made quietly. Though, if we may believe a functionary interviewed by a reporter of the _Journal de Génève_, not one inventory has been made thoroughly, as the Government is very anxious to have it over. The probability is that the odious work will soon be suspended entirely, so that all may be forgotten before the elections of May.[16]

Yesterday two superior officers of the Engineering Corps at Cherbourg had their swords broken by the Government, because they manifested their disgust too openly. Many others are under arrest, because they refused to lead the assault on Church edifices, and their careers may be considered at an end.[17]

The first article of this Law of alleged Separation declares that “the Republic assures liberty of conscience.” Yet surely it is a violation of liberty of conscience to command a Catholic officer to batter down the doors of his parish church. Moreover, when this article of the law was being discussed in the Senate, the Minister of Cults (M. Briand), speaking for the Government (as M. Rouvier was never present!), gave it to be clearly understood that functionaries would never be allowed to send their children to any but government schools! Yet surely it must be a matter of conscience with any Catholic to send his children to schools, which are frankly and aggressively materialistic and atheist.

Article II declares that “the Republic recognizes, salaries, and subventions no religion.” This too must not be taken literally. For, as I anticipated last year (May 29th), this law, made against thirty-five million French Catholics, is not applicable to six million Mohammedans of Algeria. Their mosques, their ulemas, their schools and congregations will continue to be supported by the Republic which neither recognizes nor supports any religion. This is just, seeing that the Third Republic took all their ecclesiastical property, promising annual subsidies instead, just as the Jacobins of 1790 did with regard to the Catholics, only in the latter case the capital appropriated is retained, while the charge is repudiated.

Meanwhile Islamism is the state religion of France, _ipso facto_; the only one whose ceremonies and mosques are honoured by government officials on solemn occasions. Shades of Godfrey de Bouillon and St. Louis!

Spoliation and poverty would be endurable if only the Church were truly separated from the State. But the latter presumes to dictate to the Church a new organization of its parishes (_Associations cultuelles_), to limit its financial resources, and decide how these are to be obtained, how they must be invested, and what use may be made of them.

DUC IN ALTUM

_20th August, 1906._

“And the Lord said to Peter, Launch out into the deep,” _Duc in altum_. To-day again the successor of Peter has heard the word of command, _Duc in altum_. He has exercised that _potentiorem principalitatem_ or eminent leadership ascribed to the Roman See by St. Irenæus in the second century, and the whole leash of anti-clericals are transported with rage and surprise at this grand act of Pius X, the one contingency for which they were not prepared. The previous encyclical (_Vehementer_) had left them indifferent. They treated it as a mere rhetorical manœuvre destined to cover a retreat, and as a covert acquiescence in their law of tyranny and spoliation.

The whole venom of this law is, as I wrote a year ago (August 19th, 1905), contained in the numerous articles that regard _Associations cultuelles_--which are aimed at the very life of the Church, by the destruction of her hierarchy, which is the basis of her constitution. In the English and American Press it is sought, disingenuously, to make-believe that these associations were merely “boards of trustees” to administer Church property, and that similar associations exist in the United States, England, Germany, etc., with the approbation of the Holy See. This is not so; French parishes already have _fabriques_ and _conseils de fabriques_, that correspond to boards of trustees. They are abolished by the Law of Separation, and for them are substituted these _Associations cultuelles_, in which the bishops have no standing and no authority whatever. Any seven, twelve, or twenty-five persons, calling themselves Catholics, because they happen to be baptized, can form one of these associations, claim a church and all its revenues, and run the parish to suit themselves.

Even after one association has been legally formed “according to the general rules of worship” (Art. 4), a most ambiguous expression, which the lawmakers deliberately refused to make explicit, it is anticipated that scissions may occur, and that rival associations may claim the same Church property. In all these contentions the bishop has no voice except incidentally. The Conseil d’Etat, an administrative tribunal composed exclusively of Freemasons, is the supreme judge of the orthodoxy of these associations. The phrase “formed according to the general rules of worship” was supposed to offer ample guarantee to Catholics. Yet recently the _Journal Officiel_ has officially registered four or five schismatic associations, formed by already interdicted priests. They are in insignificant hamlets, it is true, one of them being a parish of only 175 members, but they are test cases, and show how foolish it would have been to trust to the illusory guarantee offered by Article 4, “according to the general rules of organization of worship.”