Part 7

If death had not cut short Waldeck Rousseau’s career we might witness a _machine en arrière_ policy. It is even possible, now, that a moderate Rouvier-Ribot ministry may succeed the Combes despotism.

But I have no confidence in any palliatives. The evil is too deep-seated. Only by blood and anguish can France be redeemed, and the sooner the crisis comes the better; a few years later it may be too late. This is why I desire the denunciation of the Concordat, for with Gambetta, and all his anti-clerical successors, I think it may be the ruin of the Third Republic.

Excommunications and interdicts are no longer published as in former days, but they operate nevertheless. And, as in the past, there is always some ruler ready to execute the mandate; though this, too, is not done in the same way. There is not, necessarily, any invasion of territory.

Germany and Italy (yes, and England too) are keenly awaiting the moment when they may seize France’s birthright. Both are assiduous in their marks of deference to the Holy See. Victor Emmanuel would gladly evacuate Rome to-morrow if he dared. Thirty-five years are the mere twinkling of an eye in the lives of nations. Yet there are simple-minded people who look upon the Piedmontese occupation of Rome as an immutable fact.

FREEMASONRY

_December, 1904._

We cannot adequately appreciate the religious and politico-social conditions of countries like Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Belgium, unless we take into account the action of Freemasonry in all its ramifications--Carbonari, Grand Orient, Mafia, etc.

There is eternal enmity between them and Christianity. It was said in the beginning: “I will put enmity between thy seed and the seed of the Woman,” etc. The Catholic Church being the largest, strongest, most accredited and influential Christian Society, it is against her, naturally, that all attacks are directed. In Protestant countries people shrug their shoulders and sneer at the idea of Freemasons militating against Christianity, or any political order. This is not surprising. A distinguished atheist of the eighteenth century used to say that “England was the country where Christianity did the least harm because it was divided into so many rivulets.” Here we have the explanation of the different attitude of Freemasons in Protestant countries, split up into innumerable sects, and in Catholic countries, where “One holy Catholic Church” still holds sway over the whole nation practically.

The great purpose of the French Revolution in 1792 was to break up the Church in France. For this purpose the throne and all the institutions of the ancient regime, some of them very excellent, were all overthrown.

The revolutions of Italy in the nineteenth century had no other purpose. The destruction of the Papacy was considered a means of disrupting the Catholic Church, not in Italy only. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Crispi, Cavour, etc., were all fierce republican anarchists; the last thing they wanted was an Italian monarchy. But they were Freemasons, and the “Order” imposed its will. An Italian monarchy demanded Rome as its capital, whereas a republican system would, no doubt, have left the Papacy in its ancient city. “A schism,” wrote Renan in 1870, “seems to me more than probable, or rather it already exists; from latent it will become effective.... It seems to me inevitable that there will soon be two Popes, and even three.... The schism being made in the papal person, the decomposition of Catholicism will follow; a quantity of reforms will then be possible.”

Napoleon III, a dignitary of the order, entered into the plot, and received Savoy and the county of Nice. Rome was seized 20 September, and the Franco-Prussian war brought swift and condign punishment on Napoleon for his complicity.

Simultaneously with the establishment of a monarchy in Italy, the Grand Orient established a republic in France, always with the same purpose, the disruption of the Church. During the last four years of residence in Europe I have repeated in the Press of the United States that Republicanism is not a form of government here, but the _modus operandi_ of a secret society. The manifesto issued by the Grand Orient (3 November, 1904) is an irrefutable proof of my allegation. It is the most astounding document ever made public. They evidently consider that France is a conquered country which can never shake off their domination. “Without the Freemasons,” says the document, “the Republic would not exist.” The elaborate spy system they had established at the Ministry of War is defended on the ground that “the head partner, or _commanditaire_, of a great industrial enterprise in which he has placed his capital has the right to denounce to the manager the peculations of his employees.”

Thus France is an industrial company; the ministers are managers appointed by the head partner, the Grand Orient! But the most revolting part of this manifesto is the manner in which the deputies of the “bloc” are whipped into line like a pack of disorderly hounds under the lash of their keeper. “We denounce to our lodges and to all masons present and future the votes of fear, defaillance, cowardice, of a certain number.... We shall have our eyes on them ... and they will find themselves treated as they would have treated those to whom they were bound by interest if not by loyalty.”

The revolutions which have convulsed Spain during the last century, down to the recent Republican riots in Madrid and Brussels, are all traceable to the “Order” which issued this manifesto. Among the rioters killed were Frenchmen. The visit of M. Chaumié, Minister of Public Instruction, to Italy, and the famous Congrés de Libre Pensée, are all manifestations of the Grand Orient, which will never rest until it has destroyed the stability and peace of other Catholic countries, as it has done in France. When I arrived at Innsbruck in July last, I saw many students with bandaged heads and arms. An Italian student had knocked the book out of the German professor’s hand with his cane. This was the origin of that last riot. What has occurred recently at Innsbruck is far more serious, and was undoubtedly prepared at Rome in September.[6] A band of Italian anarchist students were sent to the University of Innsbruck to cause trouble. One hundred and thirty-eight of them were arrested, yesterday, with revolvers and other weapons on their persons.

Two years ago I was in Venice when there was a monster international gathering of students. The Marseillaise and the Hymn of Garibaldi were vociferated by these thousands on the Place of St. Mark. Why the national anthems of other nations were not given is clear. The whole was a Freemason demonstration of the Grand Orient like the Congrès de Libre Pensée at Rome, presided over by M. Brisson, the President of the French Chambers.

The revolutionary strikes at Milan, Genoa, Venice, etc., which were made to coincide with the birth of the heir of the House of Savoy, are symptomatic. The Grand Orient undoubtedly find that they have been marking time long enough in Italy. They have not been able to carry their divorce law there yet.

There is a Socialist party in Italy which is not anarchist and Freemason as in France, but sincerely desires the good of Italy. One of its leaders declared, recently, that they would lend their aid even to the Papacy for the common weal. Between this party and the secret societies and their henchmen, the position of Victor Emmanuel is not enviable. Ere long, therefore, we may see the aid of the Pope and of the Catholic vote, now in abeyance to a great extent, solicited both by the monarchy and the reforming Socialists.

There is really no insuperable difficulty in reconciling the independence of the Papacy and the integrity of the Italian kingdom. The Principality of Monaco has surely never been considered an obstacle to the integrity of France, nor the Republic of San Marino to that of Italy. Why should not the Pope be left in peaceful possession of the Trastevere and the port of Ostia, for instance? There is no difficulty except with the Grand Orient, this _imperium in imperio_.

All through the centuries, “the Papacy has had to negotiate, simultaneously, with each of the republican cities of Italy, with Naples, Germany, France, England, and Spain. They all had contests (_démêlés_) with the Popes, and these latter always had the advantage” (Voltaire, _Essai sur les mœurs_, II, 87).

In the same work, page 81, Voltaire relates the Congress held at Venice, where Barbarossa made his submission. “The Holy Father,” he says, “exclaimed: ‘God has willed that an aged man and priest triumph without fighting over a terrible and powerful emperor.’” The triumph over the machinations of the Grand Orient will be no less striking.

FREEMASONRY

_21st January, 1905._

In these columns (_The Progress_, December 10th, 1904), I referred to the recently published Manifesto of the Grand Orient of France (November 4th, 1904), defending its attitude with regard to the elaborate spy system, a veritable _régime des suspects_ which they had established, not in the War Office only, but in every Department of State. The Press, both in England and in the United Sates, has been singularly reticent regarding this most remarkable document, whose authenticity cannot be gainsaid.

It is, however, the key to the whole politico-religious situation in France, and more or less in other Catholic countries.

Republicanism in Catholic countries will always be the _modus operandi_ of this secret society in some one or other of its ramifications. The Carbonari, who engineered all the Italian revolutions in the nineteenth century, sent their emissary, Orsini, to remind Napoleon III of his obligations and duties. The gentle reminder was a bomb, and Orsini paid the death penalty, but not without leaving a letter with certain behests which were soon complied with. The Italian campaign against Austria was undertaken ere long.

In the _Evening Post_, November 8th, 1904, I find in a review of Count Hubner’s _Memoirs_ the following extract: “The Emperor of the French, placed at the summit of greatness, had forgotten the pledges made in his youth to those who dispose of the unknown dark powers. Orsini’s bomb came to remind him. A ray of light suddenly struck his mind. He must have understood that his former associates never forgot or forgave, and that their implacable hatred would be appeased only when the renegade returned to the bosom of the sect.”

An example of the power wielded by these secret societies is the case of the ex-Minister of Public Instruction in Italy. Prosecuted for misdemeanour and extensive peculations while in office, the Freemasons compassed his escape to Geneva. He was condemned by default, when, lo and behold, he quietly returns to Italy in triumph and is elected deputy.[7]

Since eight weeks the French papers (non-Ministerial of course) are daily printing _fiches_ or spy documents stolen from the Grand Orient. No end of duels and prosecutions for slander have been the result. Nor were army officers the only victims. Even Monsieur and Madame Loubet have come in for their share! In some cases the spies of the Grand Orient have denied the authenticity of these documents. Thereupon M. de Villeneuve has printed photographed copies of the letters in question.

Brother Bedderide, an advocate of the bar at Marseilles, an active spy on magistrates and other civil functionaries, has been expelled from the Order of Advocates. The Grand Orient will no doubt amply compensate him, for they are as generous to their friends as they are implacable to their foes.

Read this passage from the Manifesto of the Grand Orient, 4th November, 1904: “All our workshops know the campaign waged against us by the reaction, nationalist, monarchical, and clerical. They seek to travesty acts in which we justly glory and thanks to which, we have saved the Republic. A traitor, a felon, bribed by the Congregations [poor congregations recently shorn of all] lived in our midst since ten years.... As sub-secretary he gained the confidence of our very dear brother Vadecard [Secretary of G. O.] and became the confidant of all our secrets. He projected to steal from our archives documents confided to us ... new Judas, he sold them to the irreconcilable enemies of our brethren. Brother Bidegain is in flight like a malefactor. We signal him to Masons all over the world. In waiting the just punishment of his crime, the Council of the Order summons him before masonic justice, and until the final sentence is rendered, we suspend all his titles and prerogatives.... And now we declare to the whole Freemason body that in furnishing these documents [spy denunciations] the Grand Orient has accomplished only a strict duty. We have dearly conquered the Republic and claim the honour of having procured its triumph.... Without the Freemasons the Republic would not be in existence.... Pius X would be reigning in France.”

Then follows the menace quoted in my last to the tricky, cowardly deputies who voted against the Government, which was saved by two votes more than once. The memorable slap administered by M. Syveton to General André compelled M. Combes to throw the Minister of War overboard, though the latter protested to the last, “They want my skin, but they shall not have it.” The Minister of Public Instruction also nearly succumbed. He declared that if a certain _ordre de jour_ were not voted he would throw down his portfolio there and then. The votes were not forthcoming but he clung to his portfolio and contented himself with another _ordre de jour_.

All the performances at the Palais Bourbon are indeed a most amazing comedy.

Meanwhile M. Syveton, who negotiated the purchase of the purloined documents from the Grand Orient, and slapped General André on the ministers’ bench, got his quietus in a very mysterious way on the very day on which he was to have retaken his seat in the Chambers (after his thirty days’ punitive exclusion), and on the eve of his appearance before the Cours d’Assise for that famous slap. His defence, carefully prepared by himself, was published in the papers next day. It is a long incisive arraignment of the Government in imitation of Cicero’s _Catalina_. All the witnesses, who were to have appeared in his defence, were also witnesses against the Government. In fact the trial was to have been a great political manifestation, and the Government had every interest in its not taking place. Since two weeks public opinion is on tenter-hooks regarding the death of M. Syveton. It was declared at first to be a vulgar accident by the Ministerial organs. While M. Jaurès, strange to say, published in _Humanity_ a most remarkable brief, establishing clearly the guilt of Madame Syveton, and, still more strange, the latter did not prosecute him for it. Then the suicide theory was adopted, and the most odious, baseless, and unproven calumnies were launched against the memory of the dead man. His widow even accused him of having stolen funds of the Nationalist party. All this in order to explain his suicide on the eve of what was expected to be a great political triumph of the Nationalists, and for which M. Syveton was preparing with the ardour of a fighter by temperament, just forty years old.

The autopsy, made before the twenty-four legal hours had elapsed, revealed seventeen per cent of oxide of carbon in the blood. The lungs, brain, and viscera, strange to say, were not examined at all, but placed under seals for eleven days! They are now to be examined. Meanwhile the last person who must have seen M. Syveton alive, must have been the emissary of the Government, who, according to custom, served the writ on the dead man, commanding his presence in court in twenty-four hours. Who was he, and why was he never heard of again?

No one believes seriously that M. Syveton committed suicide. His father and brother-in-law have begun a prosecution for murder against X, in which the Mutual Life is also interested.

As to Brother Bidegain, the traitor, he was at Salonica when last heard of. His sudden death there was announced; but I think the rumour is false. It would be very imprudent, coming so soon after the other. But he will have to make his peace with the G. O. or beware. He cannot be prosecuted for stealing these documents, as they represent no monetary value, and, moreover, the Grand Orient has no legal existence or civil personality. They are said to have millions of _main morte_, but they simply ignore the Associations Bill.

In conclusion, I hope it will be understood that I do not accuse many honest Freemasons of England and the United States of being _particeps criminis_ in all or any of the doings of the Grand Orient, Carbonari, Mafia, Cimorra, Senuisi, or the secret societies of Islam or in China.

Freemasonry assumes different aspects in different circumstances, but it is the eternal enemy of militant organized Christianity. It does not trouble itself with Christianity “divided into many rivulets,” and consequently harmless, according to the saying of Lord Shaftesbury, who was of opinion that “England was the country in which Christianity did the least harm because it was divided into so many rivulets.”

The Catholic Church alone is an enemy worthy of its steel, and wherever these two foes meet there must be war--latent or overt.

This war is on in France, and must be fought to the finish.

PART SECOND

_October, 1904._

M. Combes, who proclaimed at the Chambers two years ago that he had taken office only to wage war on Clericalism, enumerated his deeds of prowess recently in a political speech at Auxerre. Fifteen thousand scholar establishments, strongholds of the ghostly enemy, had been demolished! “Gentlemen, you will grant that this is a great deal for a ministry obliged to fight at every instant for its own existence,” he exclaimed.

We are now coming to the second part of the Jacobin programme. As I wrote last year in the _Evening Post_ (June 27th), the true object of the Revolution in 1790, as to-day, is the destruction of Christianity and its offspring, Liberty, in order to establish on the ruins of both, the reign of the Omnipotent Infallible State, before which all must fall down and worship or disappear. To-day the State is M. Combes and his “bloc,” a very poor avatar of the Titanic Corsican who measured himself with all Europe. There was but one force that resisted him, and against this obstacle M. Combes stumbled when he demanded, peremptorily, that the Vatican withdraw letters addressed to two bishops needing to be disciplined. The Holy See was acting in the plenitude of its spiritual jurisdiction. M. Combes curtly demanded that Pius X send in his resignation, as “the political system of the Republic consists in the subordination of all institutions, whatever they may be, to the supremacy of the State.”

This is the latest phase of a very old struggle which began in the days of the Apostles. In the history of all the nations of antiquity, the problem of Church and State and their correlations existed, and was solved, easily and summarily, by the system proclaimed by M. Combes. The ruler of each nation was the Pontifex Maximus of his realm. This system, with its necessary concomitant of national religions, reached its culminating point in the worship of the “divine Cæsars,” the acme of human servitude.

Now Christianity was a profound and radical innovation. Never had the supremacy of the ruler or the State been questioned before the Apostles proclaimed the Creed in “One Holy Catholic Church,” destined to transcend all natural and political boundaries, without distinction of class or colour. Not less radical was the second innovation, a necessary corollary of the first, viz. the ecclesiastical autonomy and independence of the new spiritual society or Church, one, Catholic. “Never,” writes J. B. Martineau, “until the Church arose did faith undertake the conquest alone, and triumph over diversities of speech and antipathies of race.”

But Paganism, with its system of state absolutism in spiritual as well as in temporal matters, has never accepted its defeat by the Catholic Church, a spiritual, autonomous society, distinct from the State. The tale of Byzantine heresies, from the fourth to the eighth century, were all efforts of each successive Emperor of Constantinople to shake off the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and be again the Pontifex Maximus of his dominions. The long struggle of the Investitures, the Constitutions of Clarendon, statutes of Præmunire, State Gallicanism, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 1792, Josephism in Austria, the Kultur-Kampf laws in Germany and Switzerland, 1870-76 were all episodes of this struggle, between the new dispensation and the ancient system of national religions under state supremacy. In the sixteenth century there was a vast renaissance of this latter system in a new dress called Erastianism. Lord Clarendon declared that this spiritual supremacy of rulers was “the better moiety of their sovereignty.” The old pagan, or Erastian system, triumphed in the eastern empire with the Schism of Photius, in Russia under Peter the Great, in England under Elizabeth, in all the Protestant States of northern Europe.

The well-defined purpose of the Revolution and of Napoleon, its heir-at-law, was to establish this system in France. After long and arduous negotiations the Concordat of 1801 was concluded with Pius VII. It was a bilateral contract between two sovereignties, the French Republic, as party of the first part, and the Holy See as party of the second part. It contains seventeen articles. To these, Napoleon, without the knowledge of the Pope, added seventy-six articles, and published both documents, in conjunction, as the law of Germinal l’an X. Great was the indignation, and loud were the protestations of the party of the second part, as we may well suppose. Nor is this surprising when we consider that one of these “organic articles” (24th) requires that all professors in ecclesiastical seminaries shall “submit to teach the doctrine of the Declaration of 1682, and the bishops shall send act of this submission to the Council of State.” In other words, the Catholic Church in France was to turn Protestant. Even Louis XIV, who had had this famous Declaration drawn up to spite Pope Innocent, who alone in Europe had dared to oppose him, never exacted that it should be taught, and had practically suppressed it before he died. Since the Council of the Vatican the subscribing to and teaching the Declaration of 1682 would be an act of formal heresy and apostasy. The fifty-sixth of the organic articles renders obligatory the use of the Republican calendar to the exclusion of the Gregorian. There are other articles equally absurd, which have never been observed.