The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-10-13
'card far in excess of what was counted
 on for it, and has become justly popu- lar with the patrons of the Bjou.
HIS FATAL ERROR.
Consequences of Plus Ks Dealings
 with the Church in France.

Consequences of Plus Ks Dealings
 with the Church in France.
 Since the principles of Voltaire were applied by the policy of Ganbetta, the Catholic Church in France has never ceased to retreat. It has re- tained, nevertheless, among the great est institutions in the world, and by the bold acceptance of the Disestab- lishment Act, which it is too late to reverse-by entering into the spirit of free State-it might have embarked upon a new career of vitality and in- fluence. This is what has been hop ed for by the foremost leaders of the who have fought for a losing cause with admirable devotion and compos- ure This is what has been rejected by the vatican. Against the mind and instinct of all that is best in Cath ollie opinion across the Channel, in spite of the disastrous r3ut of the op- ponents of the Separation at the polls a few months ago, the Pope threat ems intellectual war upon the govern ment of the third republic by belated ultimatum, In M Clemenceau he has to deal with as formidable and brilliant an enemy as Clericallsn has ever had in practical politics; and we very much the irreparable defeat of religion in France has been ordained by one of the most estimable and least states might well cause the late Pontiff to turn in his grave; and Cardinal Ram polia, plunged from power into obscur- ity, waiting in retirement for the op- come to him if he lives, but may come too late, must watch with sombre med itation the situation that he alone might have saved. Leo XIII. was sub tie, but a saint. Plus K is a saint Catholics without the subtlety. It is in the highest degree unlikely that the French Catholics can ever obtain bet ter terms and the probability is that they are being led to disaster without ture of the whole struggle is that Pope Plus x. remained silent and irres9lute while the French catholics were mak- and death No note of ringing and de- cislVe leadership was sounded before the elections Now the Vatican is un- compromising in asserting that it re- fuses the terms of settlement, which there is no hope of improving. Tn the long history of papal diplomacy it would be difficult to find more in- effective chapter,
 The encyclcal will simply reunite the blue, and this following the loss of strength by all moderate clements in the recent general elction, will will make the position of the Catholics in The Chamber utterly hopeless. Throughout the departments parochial life will be plunged into anarchy, and scenes of deplorable and even danger ous disorder are only too likely to be witnessed, in spite of the Popes warn ing,s against violence. The imagina- ton of Englishmen will be dominated by concern for the future of the great cathedrals those miracles of Gothic in spiration In architecture in which the gents of the age of the Crsades sprang from crypt to pinacle like some vision of medieval prayer realized in stone Beauvals, with the wonderful group of lancet windows, and the mighty vault suspended at the perlous height, which overwhelms man with the sense of his mortality; tho sculptured front and lovely choir of Amiens, which Ruskin thought the Parthenon of Christin art; Chartres of the twin towers and an- cient gloom looking down upon the lazy windi ngs of it's river; Nortre Dame rising like citadel, solitary yet impregnable, out of the human surge of Paris, They dreamed not of an earth ly shrine who thus could build" says our own poet. If the possession of these historic shrines is jeopardized by impotent fulminations, Pope Plus K, adding another to the number of good men who have ruined great causes, will have given the mortal stroke to the weakening life of French Catholicism London Telegraph.