The long controversy in France as to the exemption from
the conscription of students who intend to be priests, ended on June 25th. The House then sent the seminarists into barracks by a vote of 373 to 173, both fractions of the Republican Party uniting against the Right. A despairing compromise offered by the Bishop of Angers, that all intending priests should serve in the ambulance department, was rejected by 347 votes to 200, some twenty Republicans joining the minority. On Thursday, however, a great concession was made to the whole cultivated class, including the seminarists, by a clause which authorises the War Office to grant four years' post- ponement to all collegians in order to complete their studies. The Chamber, moreover, has broken with its own principles in order to grant privileges to those who will study science. The Deputies on Tuesday, by a vote of 273 to 240, decided that students in the Eeole Normale, the great manufactory of savants, may be drilled in the school, and that their time in the establishment should count as military service. The privilege refused to theology is granted to mathe- matics, with this result, among others, that all cultivated lads who wish to avoid barrack-life will be forced into scientific study. So far as the State can secure that result, there are to be ten Paul Berta for one Dnpanlonp.
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