FRENCH RADICALS AND FRENCH CLERICALS .
TERE is no political party or body so intolerant or so ready to resort to persecution as the French Clericals, —except the French Radicals. Neither side ever seems able to get rid of the notion that the only way to meet opponents is to defame them and their ideas if you are out of power, or to inflict on them every possible form of injury and annoyance if you are in power. During the Dreyfus agitation we saw the kind of things that the Clericals were willing to say and do in regard to Semites and Huguenots, and noted their bloodthirsty appeals for violence against their enemies—how they tried to hound on the mob against Jews, Protestants, and sans- the Radicals who did not agree with them. At the moment we have an example before us of Radical intolerance, of the same persecuting tendency which, though, happily, it does not include demands for a Clerical St. Bartholomew, is almost as virulent in inten- tion. The Radicals, like all Frenchmen when they are intolerant, are frightened at the propaganda of their enemies, and declare that the seminarists are mating use of their presence within the barracks to carry on a secret propaganda. Hence a demand which is now exciting France to exclude the seminarists from the barracks.
To understand the position we must refer back to the history of the dealings of the Republic with the question of compulsory military service for persons intended for the priesthood. The story of the dealings of the Radicals with this problem, which is not without its humorous side, is worth telling. It will be remembered that just twelve years ago was passed the law which compelled the seminarists to take their turn of service in the Army. Great were the hopes and great the fears which this law excited. The Radicals were delighted,—in part because it consecrated afresh the principle of equality, and made it superior even to the interests of the public; but in part because they believed the vaticinations of the Bishops, and thought that the law would. make short work of Clerical vocations. When once the seminarist had tasted the pleasures of a barrack he would never go back to the dull routine of the priesthood. The seminary would open its doors to him in vain. When his turn of service was over he would leave the colours indeed, but he would leave them an emancipated man with no 'taste for what at best is a poor copy of the cloister. The episcopal pre- dictions did not take exactly this form, but they were not greatly different in substance. The Church would die out in many parts of the country from the difficulty of keep- ing up the supply of clergy. Service in the Army would make this difficulty greater in two ways. It would tempt those already in seminaries to leave them ; it would re- move one of the inducements which then led young men to enter them,—the wish to escape military service.
Twelve years have passed, and we are now able to compare the prophecy and the fulfilment. First of all, have Clerical vocations grown fewer? For some little time, no doubt, it looked as if the result which had been foretold was really going to happen. The number of ordinations fell from 1,679 in 1889, the year the law was passed, to 1,205 in 1894. But from that point it began to rise, and in 1900 had mounted to 1,670. The contrast between the seminary and the barrack is evidently not so unfavourable to the fornier as Radicals and Bishops alike expected, and there are other motives which determine men to enter the prie sthood than the wish to escape conscription. If this were the only conse- quence of the law of 1889, its authors might be willing to put up with it. It would not have worked the beneficent revolution that was expected from it, but it would not have made things worse. Unfortunately for the Radicals, this is not the only result Of the law. The seminarists do not merely leave the Army as prejudiced, as superstitious—as religious, in fact—as they entered it ; they corrupt the laity whom they find there. The Radical journals have terrible tales to tell in illustration of this sad fact. The seminar- ists exercise a detestable influence over other young men. They have actually become popular in the baxrack-room, and, instead of being themselves drawn away to the cabaret, they have tempted others to go to Mass or to join a Catholic club. Thus, far from proving a cause of weakness to the Church, the law has given it positive strength. Service time in the Army makes better priests, not worse, and it gives young men an opportunity of proving to their con. rades that'even a seminarist is not as black as he is painted. This is not at all what those who helped to pass the law expected to see follow from it.
When you are convinced that you have made a mistake the wisest course is to try to undo it. The Radicals accordingly betook themselves to General Andii, and he has drafted a law which they think would reduce the mischief to the smallest proportion possible in a world which is still forced to tolerate the existence of religion and all that religion implies. In the Session which has lately closed the Minister of War brought forward a proposal the effect of which would be to relegate the seminarists to the military hospitals. It was impossible to turn them out of the Army altogether—the inconsistency of such a step would have shocked even his Radical supporters—but they might at least be put where they would be likely to de least mischief. This proposal has been referred to the Army Committee, a body recruited from all parts of the Chamber, and here it has fared extremely ill. M. Le Herisse, the Chairman of the Committee, appears to have thoroughly enjoyed the work of pulling the Bill to pieces. You say, he argues, that the seminarists have set up a religious propaganda in the regiments of which they form part. " These future priests "—he quotes from some Radical newspaper—" putrefy their fellow-soldiers by the contagion of their virtue." But the remedy you propose will be worse than the disease. You are going to take the seminarists away from their healthy comrades who are able to hold their own with them, and to intro. duce them into hospitals, where they will exercise their propaganda under the most favourable conditions,—by the bedsides of sick people whom they are nursing and caring for. Obviously this is not an easy argument to answer. These same people who now seek to introduce the priest into the hospital have already turned the Sister of Mercy out of the hospital. They laicise hospitals with one hand and make them ecclesiastical institutions with the other. The Bill thus sharply criticised will hardly become law in the interval between now and the elections. It is chiefly interesting, therefore, as an example of the shortsighted- ness which refuses to recognise where the real strength of an enemy lies. The authors of the law of 1889 cannot be accused of underrating the power of the Church as an institution. On the contrary, they were willing to go all lengths to cripple and injure it. But the dangers they thought it necessary to guard against were all of a kind which implied. that the Church was only formidable when it could command and make use of the secular arm. It did not occur to them that a measure which was honestly intended to inconvenience and impede the clergy might really open out to them fresh oppor- tunities of influence, and by consequence prove a fresh source of strength. The French Radicals are quite clever enough to understand this if they could approach the question without a preliminary assumption that no one can be a Catholic from genuine conviction. Had they realised this, possibly they would have carefully closed against the clergy the very door they were in such a hurry to open.
We have written strongly because we feel strongly in regard to the intolerance of the French Radicals. At the same time, we are, as we have said above, by no means blind to the anti-Republican and anti-Liberal attitude of the Clerical party, nor do we forget the detestable part played by them in the Dreyfus agitation, and in the Anti-Semite and Anti-Huguenot crusade. Their in- tolerance and virulence equal even the intolerance of the Radicals. But two wrongs can never make a right, and intolerance can never be successfully fought by in- tolerance. Therefore, though we admit that the French Radicals have many just causes for opposing the Clericals, we have nothing but condemnation, and that of the strongest kind, for their cowardly attempt to interfere with and injure the seminarists.
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