WHY FRANCE HATES THE PROTESTANTS. T HE Dreyfus affair, which still
rests upon Europe like a heavy shadow, possesses the peculiar faculty of un- masking animosities. Whatever be the result of this hideous intrigue, one thing is certain : the parties of France are at last sharply and bitterly defined. On the one hand is the Catholic Church in France grim and menacing; on the other are united in an unequal alliance the Jews, the Protestants, and the Freemasons. The hatred of the Jews, inspired by M. Dramont, has been discussed a hundred times ; the con- tempt for the Freemasons is based upon the fear of " secret societies. But, it may be asked, why does France hate the Protestants ? The Protestants are loyal and thrifty citizens ; they fulfil all the functions of citizenship with accuracy and circumspection ; they love their country with a constant heart ; their energy has placed them high in all the services ; yet they are hated as fiercely as the Jews, and with as little (or less) reason. France was always the nurse of fanaticism. St. Bartholo- mew has no disgraceful sound to-day in the ears of a Frenchman, and when the Edict of Nantes was revoked, an immense majority was on the side of intolerance. Nor did the doctrines of Voltaire palliate for one moment • the offence of Protestantism, and even the Revolution failed to change the heart of the country. Again, the policy initiated by M. Jules Ferry after the war of 1870 was a policy of secularisation, and one might have thought that in this triumph of religious liberty the Protestant would have secured respect. But no ; the Protestant was never permitted to take his place beside the agnostic, and he remains to-day what he has always been, the best hated man in France, after the Jew. He is successful,—that is the beginning of his unpopu- larity. He numbers no more than one in sixty ; yet every- where he is rich and everywhere he is in office. To the simple and unprejudiced mind the conclusion is easy : the Protestant prospers because he possesses qualities which the Catholic does not share. He arrives at wealth and govern- ment, despite the universal animosity ; he makes light of obstacles which might, appear insuperable ; and if we may believe the French Cat h )lic Press, his persistence is but another proof of his villainy. His enemies admit his superiority, and attribute it to intrigue. Yet if he succeeds by intrigue, why is he not countered by intrigue ? The Catholics have never failed in the gifts of diplomacy ; and why should they be distanced in all their ambitions by the poor Huguenot, whose dogma imposes upon him a certain simplicity ? In truth, the pretended disease is as difficult to appreciate as the proposed remedy. Wherever you go in France, say the Catholics, you find the Protestant powerful and installed. The bankers and manufacturers, if they be not Jews, are Protestants, and the consequence is that in the great provincial towns there is sometimes an imperium in imperio. Even though an official is doomed to failure if he be discovered in a church, the very men who condemn the observance of religious rites detest the Protestant because he is not of the faith which they neglect. It seems paradoxical, but it is sober fact ; and it brings us to our first point, which is this,—the prevailing dislike of Protestantism has nothing whatever to do with religion. The agnostic joins hands with the practising Catholic in his contempt for the member of the Reformed Church, and the Protestant fights the unequal battle alone. And he is forced to fight it, because his outlook upon life differs from the out- look of the majority. Catholicism is something more than a cult ; it is a point of view. When we speak of the Latin races, and declare that they follow other impulses than those which dominate the Anglo-Saxon, we should state our case more accurately if we wrote "Catholic" instead. of "Latin." For the Latin-races differ from one another in blood and training ; yet they gaze out upon life from the same watch- tower,—the watch-tower of Catholicism. This tower may be well or ill -built ; it may be turned to a gliod - or -bad quarter ; but the visions seen from it are Catholie, and the arguments deduced from those visions are Catholic tils.O. The most of Frenchmen, then, whatever be their expressed opinions, are Catholic in their point of view. They may resent the domination of the Church ; they may clamour for the suppression of the priests ; they may -(as they have done) expunge the word " God " from the fables of La Fontaine ; yet they retain the inherited prejudices of their inherited faith. The Christian religion has no bitterer enemy than M. Henri Rochefort. The Church has served him, as well as the Jews or the Empire, as a target for his missiles ; yet Henri Rochefort remains to-day the same Henri Rochefort who in his schooldays composed a hymn to the Virgin. Doubtless he hates the Protestant as he hates the Jew, as he hates every one who is not French in his blood as in his prejudices. The Protestant, he feels, is prepared to judge all things and all men on their merits, while the Catholic is so accustomed : to-- an intellectual domination, that he will enforce a. logical conclusion from false premises. In brief, the heresy of DI. Rochefort is but Catholicism turned upside dowr. This, then, is the great gulf fixed between the Protestants and the Catholics of France. Whether art or literature 'be discussed, whether politics or theology engross the mind,' the two parties see with different eyes and reason with different brains. The Catholic does not seek the truth for himself, he accepts what he is told ; the Protestant believes nothing upon impulse. The Catholic finds the Protestant too cold and too apt to inquire ; the Protestant, on the other hand, condemns the Catholic because he is too easily led by his passion or by his hasty logic. So we see a country ditided between two races, and the result cannot but be discord and obloquy. In England we know not this discord, because we are Protestant in our blood and in our history. Even the Catholics who live amongst us have been trained in. the Protestant tradition, as M. Rochefort has been trained in the tradition of Catholicism. Habit is as powerful a factor in human life as belief, and like a sincere belief, habit is ineradicable. And since the habit of France is Catholicism, the brain even of the French atheist remains Catholic. That is the first and important reason for the violent prejudice which exists from North to South against the Protestants. But there are contributory causes which should not be over- looked. In the first place, the Protestant, like the jew, is frequently a man of foreign blood. He lives very often upon the outskirts of France. Switzerland is his fatherland, maybe, or the well-cherished and much hated Alsace. His name has a strange sound, and his birthplace on the frontier excites suspicion. Though he is a loyal citizen, he gains from his loyalty no consideration. The cry, raucously raised by M. Drumont and his friends, of " France for the French,'' silences many thousands of patriots, and paralyses the energy of a hundred heroes. We still remember the unseemly on- slaught made upon M. Waddington, whose career was closed and whose life was probably shortened by the violence of those who reproached him with nothing except his name and his rumoured heresy. Above all, the dislike of Alsace is an unsolved puzzle. The pride of France compels her to pray for the ultimate recovery of the lost provinces, and yet her religious animosity persuades her to hate the Alsatians, whose allegiance she hopes to regain. So far, indeed, has this animosity marched that to call a man an Alsatian is to empty upon his head the lees of reproach. For like the Jew, the Protestant is in the politician's eye a man without a fatherland. In the second place, the Protestant clings to scholarship, and has succeeded in dominating the University. This is no doubt a relic of Jules. Ferry 'a tradition. But it is no less galling for that to the pious Catholic. Therefore, the worst insolence of the religious Press is directed against the staff of . pro- fessors, and the " University in ashes" is still the dream of the militant Church. So it is easily intelligible that the Dreyfus case should have reawakened all the old ,intolerance. Here-was a man charged with the worst crime known in a -Republic for no better. reason, than that . he-was a -Jew, and, while the Jets- Supported- him " as in duty bound," the Protestants rallied to his side because they, at least, were not befogged with the prevailing superstition. And thus it is that -France is rent by a fanaticism which has destroyed her efficiency, and which (without the intervention of diplomacy) might-have forced upon her another Sedan.
But the secondary reasons for France's hatred of Pro- testantism weigh light in the scale. The real and abiding cause of the scission is the point of view which we have attempted to describe. It is not a case of Dr. Fell. The Catholic, superior in numbers, dreads the supremacy of his foe's intelligence, and denounces the Protestant because he cannot look eye to 'eye with him, on literature or politics. And-in this argument a Catholic does not mean a professing :Chtistian. He is merely a man trained, through centuries, to an ecclesiastical habit of thought. Voltaire, like M. Rochefort, was a Catholic at heart. He, too, was ready to 'accept false premises, and to proceed from them to a logical conclusion.
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