THE General Elections in France, which commenced on 24th April and which will be terminated by the second ballot on 8th inst., present a novel feature. It is the unprecedented interference of the Church in the electoral struggle, under the direct inspiration of the Pope. Till the concordat was violently repudiated by the French State the Church was, so to say, the paid servant of the Government, and could not agitate against the public powers; and at the last general elections in May 1906 it was in much too disorganised a condition, after the promulgation of the Separation Law at the end of the month of December 1905, to exercise any political influence. Now the situation is different. The reorganisation of the Church has been effected with much greater ease and success than either its friends or enemies had imagined possible, and the at

VOL. CLXXXVII.—NO. MOXXXV.

tempt to create a schism having utterly failed, the whole Catholic Episcopacy of France obey the dictates of the Vatican with remarkable docility. Thus it may be truly said the Pope himself is at the head of the present electoral movement, though he was careful in giving his instructions to repudiate the idea of seeking to interfere in the political affairs of France. However, when over 60 French prelates and some 60,000 French pilgrims paid a visit to the Vatican on the occasion of the beatification of Joan of Aro last summer, Pius X. urged all the French Catholics, without distinction of party, to unite at the coming elections in favour of religion and the Catholic Church. Subsequently those verbal instructions were embodied in a letter signed by Cardinal Merry del Val and addressed to Colonel Keller. The document was destined to leave no sort of 2 T

doubt or ambiguity with regard to the Pope's wishes. He then demanded, and has continued to demand, of all the French Catholics-Republicans, Royalists, and Imperialists-to rally round their bishops in the electoral struggle, subordinating their divergent political preferences to the interests of the Catholic Church and religion, including those social interests which are closely allied to those of religion. This appeal was soon responded to almost simultaneously by Mgr. Germain, Archbishop of Toulouse, and Mgr. Turinaz, Bishop of Nancy. The former constituted what he named a Diocesan Catholic Alliance, composed of all the most influential Catholics of his diocese, without distinction of political party. The electoral programme adopted by the Alliance comprised the reestablishment of religious peace (1st) by a direct understanding with the Sovereign Pontiff, or failing that, by new legislation ensuring the complete liberty of the Church; and (2nd) by the complete liberty of education. A Diocesan Electoral Committee, with Mgr. Germain at its head, was appointed with the mission to support only those candidates who would inscribe the above-mentioned demands in their electoral programmes. Several Bishops followed the example set by the Archbishop of Toulouse. On his side Mgr. Turinaz constituted at about the same time what he called the National Catholic Union. Over 50 prelates adhered to it

promptly. The programme of this Union was expounded in two successive pamphlets, and may be summed up as follows: 1st, Men of all parties should unite to demand and to defend civil and religious liberties; 2nd, As the interests of religion, society, and France should take precedence of the interests of persons and parties, the candidates at the elections must be chosen among those Catholics who have the greatest chance of success, and all the members of the Union, whether Royalists, Imperialists, or Republicans, should support those candidates with their votes, influence, and pecuniary resources. Mgr. Turinaz went yet further, and invited all "honnêtes gens" (good honest men), though only nominally Catholics, and perhaps freethinkers, to support the Union, in the name of liberty. In the dioceses adhering to the National Catholic Union no bishop or priest formed part of any electoral committee. The choice of the candidates was left entirely in the hands of laymen. Nevertheless, each bishop reserved to himself the right to supervise the action of the electoral committees in so far as the defence of religious interests was concerned. The electoral programmes of the candidates supported by the Union were therefore very similar to those imposed by Mgr. Germain's Diocesan Alliance, that is to say, they comprised the demand for the resumption of relations between the Vatican and the French Government, and the liberty of

education.

Indeed, in many cases the candidates of the Union demanded the equal division of the money voted annually by Parliament for public instruction among all educational establishments in proportion to the number of pupils attending them. It was argued that it was unfair that Catholic parents who send their children to (Catholic)

schools should have to contribute to the budget of public instruction without deriving any advantage from it, and at the same time be under the necessity of paying for the education of their children. The Pope, who was the inspirer of the Catholic Union as well as of the Catholic Alliance, blessed both of them, and expressed high approval of their programmes.

The Catholics therefore entered on the electoral campaign denouncing the laws of exception promulgated against the Church, and, above all, the attempt of the freethinking Government of the Republic to complete the de-Christianising of France by its projected educational measures. With regard to this latter accusation it would be difficult for any one to deny it. On one occasion, in November 1906, M. Viviani, Minister of Labour in the Clemenceau Cabinet, and still retaining that post in the Briand Ministry, speaking in a great debate from the tribune of the Chamber on the application of the law for the Separation of Church and State, declared, "We all, by our ancestors and ourselves, have in

the past striven to accomplish an anti-clerical, an irreligious work. We have torn faith from the hearts of men. When a poor wretch, worn out with the toil of the day, bent his knee in prayer, we raised him to his feet telling him that behind the clouds there was nothing but chimeras. With a majestic gesture we extinguished the lights of heaven which will never be rekindled. That is our work, our revolutionary work." Though M. Briand, then Minister of Public Instruction and Public Worship, was less outspoken, his conduct has been in perfect harmony with his colleague's official utterances. He himself proposed the repeal of the Falloux law on the liberty of secondary education, and in his capacity of Prime Minister countersigned the two educational Bills presented to the Chamber by M. Doumergue in June 1908. Not content with that, he also countersigned M. Doumergue's recent Bill for what is called in the preamble the "better supervision" of the free (Catholic) schools. As the liberty of education is one of the principal questions at stake at the present elections, it is useful to examine in a few words the contents of those three projected educational measures which the Government had hoped to be able to hurry through Parliament before the expiration of its mandate.

It is necessary to state that many parents of children attending the Government educational establishments, having

in some of the school textbooks, had either forbidden their children to study them or had torn out the objectionable passages. They had also protested strongly against certain irreligious verbal instruction given by the school teachers, and had prevented their children from attending some of the classes at which they considered such irreligious and anti-patriotic verbal teaching was given. It was with the object of putting a stop to this interference of the parents that the Minister of Public Instruction elaborated the Bill rendering it a penal offence, punishable with fine, and on the repetition of the offence, with imprisonment, for a parent or guardian to prevent a pupil of a State school from attending any of the classes at which instruction stipulated for in the official programme is given, or to mutilate any book inscribed on the official list and placed in the hands of his pupils by the teacher, or, again, to hinder a pupil from studying such a work. Moreover, any person who should counsel or encourage a parent or guardian to violate the projected law will, when the measure is promulgated, be punishable with the same penalties as the actual offender. The second Bill presented to Parliament at the same moment was framed to protect the school teachers against prosecution by the parents of their pupils for offences committed in the exercise of their

Minister of Public Instruction is to be held civilly responsible for all offences committed by his subordinates-the school teachers-in connection with their professional duties. Every one at all acquainted with the manner in which justice is administered in France is well aware of the great difficulty, not to say impossibility, of obtaining a judgment against Government; yet in the case of a parent having to complain of either the corporal or intellectual treatment meted out to his child by a village school teacher, he must, according to the projected measure, of course prosecute the delinquent who will, however, be supported by the Government advocate. Indeed the plaintiff will in practice have to prosecute the Minister of Public Instruction himself. order to conceal the real object of this projected measure, the Government pretends the Bill offers greater guarantees to parents, because, in the case of condemnation to the payment of damages, there can be no doubt of the solvability of the State being greater than that of a schoolmaster. The third Bill laid on table of the Chamber early in February, after the grand debate on the budget of Public Instruction in January last, when a large fraction of the Government majority demanded the creation of a State monopoly of education, would seem to be a step towards that system qualified by Renan

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