THE FRENCH WAR ON GIRLS' SCHOOLS.
MCOMBES has been even more imprudent in his • violent action against the unauthorised schools than we imagined, so imprudent, indeed, that we cannot but doubt whether M. Loubet made a wise choice in selecting him for the Premiership. He was originally trained for the Church and has been a schoolmaster, and like almost every schoolmaster and ecclesiastic, he unconsciously exaggerates the effect of education in moulding the next generation. He forgets the superior influence of the home, and fails to perceive that of four brothers all trained in the same way, no two will exhibit the same character, tendencies, or ideals. He believes that men and women trained in Clerical schools will be all anti-Repub- lican, as if the men of the French Revolutionary period had not all been educated before any " laicising ' of schools bad been so much as thought of. He is determined, there- fore, to close the unauthorised schools, and will go any length rather than fail to realise his laicising ideal. Indeed, he avows this him self, statingpublicly that he accepted power hi order to carry out strictly the "Law of Associations," the object of which is to purify the schools from ecclesiastical influence, and that if defeated in his policy he will resign his leadership. He has therefore ordered the free schools to be closed by the police, and the process has already begun all over France. No less than two thousand five hundred schools are to be shut up, and at least one hundred and seventy thousand scholars compelled to choose between lay instructors, not always or everywhere to be found, and a complete absence of instruction The consequences might be expected. The order would have created intense irritation even if it had applied to boys alone, nearly a third of France distrusting the State 'schools; but the majority of the schools closed are girls' schools taught by nuns, or by women whom nuns select and guide, and in striking at them M. Combes has come athwart one of the very few illogical convictions of the French mind. "The majority of Frenchmen are possibly sceptics, )r pseudo-sceptics, though they retain a prejudice in favour of using the ancient ceremonials on the great occasions of life,—baptism, marriage, and burial ; but they are very doubtful whether they wish their wives and daughters to hold similar opinions. They think that religion becomes women, or at all events helps them to be gentle and charitable and to go straight. They prefer them, there- fore, to be educated by religious women, and will send their daughters to be taught in schools of whose special instruc- tion they do not themselves believe one word. Thus the shutting of nuns' schools gives them deep annoyance, which * their wives, who were themselves bred in the nuns' schools, rises often to red-hot passion, as if they had been person- ally insulted. The Bishops and the parochial clergy, in spite of their standing jealousy of the Orders, are in this matter earnestly on their side. Angry protests, therefore, are coming up from all sides of France. In many places the closing is resisted by force, and the officials, though they 'call out the gendarmerie to support the police, simply dare not use armed force against the wives of the most respectable families around. In Paris the feeling is even stronger than in the provinces, for in Paris the respect- ablee see so much of what they consider license that they fence themselves and their homes about with even stronger precautions than their provincial rivals. The Parisian opponents of the law " demonstrate " in the streets, and the police finds itself suddenly called upon to put down a dozen minute insurrections which any untoward accident might develop into formidable movements.
The struggle is a bitter one, and though the Government is the stronger party, its strength is not so overwhelming as would at first sight appear. Its force is honeycombed with men who are not sincerely in its favour, who do not at heart believe that nuns can threaten the Republic, and who fret under the notion of using the police to coerce people who are, in spite of the wide diffusion of scepticism, generally respected. Moreover, the Nationalists, who now include all enemies of the Republic, have perceived and have seized their opportunity. They were cowed by the results of the recent election ; but the first symptom of dis- content has given them fresh courage, their agents are leading the resistance, and they are bespattering the 6,,ver ment with insults of the kind which Governments on the Continent dread, because they feel that if they -do not put them down they will be accounted weak. There are fresh meetings of the Monarchical parties, fresh declarations against Freemasonry and the Semites, fresh outbreaks against the police, and fresh preparations for furious outbursts in the Chamber, which will meet in October in the temper that always produces scenes. As the better classes are specially affected by the Govern- ment policy, society in the smaller sense is rent in .two, duels are constant, and everybody discusses the " crisis" as if the Republic were in danger.
That is not the case. The Army will not take up a question of education ; the bureaucracy obeys orders, though obviously slightly ashamed of them; and the Chambers will no doubt, after heated debates, support M. Combos. It is a curious fact, noted in the history of France ever since the Revolution, that the Radical Deputies sent up to Paris are always a little more anti-Clerical than those who send them. The explanation may be the simple one that they are irritated during the elections by the opposition which the Church offers to their return, or the more subtle one that the doctors, lawyers, and other professionals who are usually adopted by Radical con- stituencies are the least religious of the community ; but of the fact there can be no doubt whatever. M. Combes, therefore, will not be shaken in his seat by the agita- tion taken alone; but, nevertheless, he has greatly increased the difficulties in his path. He has roused into active antagonism the conservative forces of France, which previously were inclined to consider that any strong Government would make the Republic less objectionable. He has bent to the anti-religious wing of his own following, which always tends to become fanatical, and he has thereby created apprehension of violent changes as regards the re- lation of the State to religion, upon which the mind of France is by no means made up. He has given new life and verve to the Opposition, and he has done this just at the moment when he has to put through a most laborious and difficult task. He _mast, when the Chambers meet in October, produce a Budget which will rescue the Treasury from the pit into which the continuous extravagance of the Chamber, and the tendency 'of the times, a tendency marked all through Europe, have combined to throw it. All property holders in France are frightened by the deficit; and with trade declining and the revenue worse than stagnant, he must impose a series of new taxes. He has, no doubt, the aid of an accomplished financier, M. Rouvier, who has just carried through with complete success the conversion of the Debt ; but no cleverness will make fresh taxation sweet to the Frenchman who desires to save. The debates will be long and bitter ; the electors who send up Liberals will be in a discontented mood ; and while his friends will be half-hearted, every shaft thrown at him will be steeped in the poison of ecclesiastical bitterness. He has doubled his difficulties, and all for what? In order that French fathers of families may be prevented from sending their daughters to instructors whom they approve, and who, whether good or bad, are powerless to injure the Republic. M. Combes will deny that; but it is surely true, for if it is not, how does it happen that with every election the Republican majority increases ? The " unauthorised " sisterhoods have been at work for a generation at least, yet Senators and Deputies have been more, and not less, opposed to all the Monarchical parties, to the dictatorship, and even to the Clerical power which they are supposed to be building up. Judged by unmis. takable political facts, there is not the slightest necessity for a persecution which is not made one bit more righteoul by solemn arguments that the future of the State is involved in the expulsion of all nuns from the work of education. By the "future of the State" M. Combes intends the future of the Republic, yet the Republic has grown safer and safer under a laissez-faire regime. The State physician is prescribing an unpleasant diet, not for the sick, but the healthy, and can hardly be surprised if doctors of experience pronounce his prescriptions un- scientific.
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