The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1907-01-12


fashion the battle is necessarily ies-
perate. You cannot ignore, despise, or
be polite to an opponent Of that sort
You must conquer It or 1t will conquer
you.
The Opposition Of Modern Huguenots.
That Is the first feature in the stu
alton. The next feature is the caarac-
ter OF the group that opposes Cathol-
icism. What is 1t in France fears to
be conquered by Catholicism? 1t is an
alliance Of all the forces, however dis
similar, that happened not to be Cath
oltc, and an alliance under the leader
ship Of what is curiously enough a
product of catholicism convinced and
militant anti-clericalism.
Two forces acting under the anti
clericals are the Huguenots and the
Jews. There exists in France small
but very influential body of Huguenots
numbering some two per cent. only
of the population, but forming some
thing like twenty per cent. of the we'll
to-classes In some Of the most i'm
portant centers in French life. These
men have swarmed in the liberal pro-
fessions ever since the Medicis, and
though their original confession has
weakened to less than nothing, yet
whether they call themselves Sabatier
and talk milk and water about st.
Francis or Pichon and say nothing
about their religion. or Monod, or
Reclus, they are all united in one COM
mon hatred Of the Catholic church.
The Jewish Opposition to Rome.
OF the Jewish body it is less easy
to speak. The French Jews are a very
small and an exceedingly wealthy
body. They have not the same power
over French finance that English Jews
have over English finance, and they
have far less secret power over the
government Of France than the men,
bers of their race possess over that of
other European peoples. Intellectually
It is probable that these men in their
hearts despise Catholicism less than
they despise any other mode of Euro
pean thought. Their intellects are
simple, direct and energetic and their
emotions strong; logical and exalted
system therefore appeals to them. The
Jew as a nomad and a cosmopolitan
and an alien citizen to whom furious
local patriotism must always be dan
gerous began to side against the Cath
olic church as the latter sided with
national tradition, He did not do so
with any animosity until the opening
of the Dreyfus case, and even today
the Jew preserves a curious retlcence
in his attack which forms one of the
most interesting of contemporary
psychological and clinical studies.
Catholics against Catholicism.
The advance Of both these forces, the
Huguenot and the Jew, are insignifi-
cant compared with the attack of the
purely Catholic type which CATH
olicism produces by REACTION.
To these men the church apears the
enemy of all that is worth having and
the ally of all that is evil, notably of
those twin vices which are corruption
and death in any state-hypocrisy and
the habit of servitude. Every effort Of
the faith to recover it's old authority
produces a furthes energy in these
people.
A series of accidents which have
here no space to detail, but whose
origins lie back in the apathy and
corruption of the middle eighteenth
century, has put some of the purely
mundane traditions of the church into
antagonism with some of the most en-
tnusfastic and the least worldly of the
national aspirations; working upon the
antagonism as wedge would work
In the figure of solid substance, the
anti-clericaI minority have driven
home their power.
The Republic and the Priest.
There has been no single conflict,
however ridiculously simple the mis-
understanding, in which the debate be-
tween the priest and the anti-clerical
has not been decided against the priest
by the populace since the republic was
founded. And here We touch the very
heart OF our subject. Hitherto the de-
bate had been purely academic. The
anti-clerical had perpetually and sue
cessfully posed as the exponent of
national demands The priest had
managed by series of blunders and
the necessary isolation of his position
to misunderstood these demands, 10
be silent upon them, or in moments of
exceptional folly to oppose them. But
the quarrel had not hitherto been d.
rectly connected with the priest qua
priest. The priest had rather been
sort of telegraph used by the anti