the verge of apostasy. For the first time in French history the usual religious observances on Good Friday were suppressed in all the naval ports. “What thou doest do quickly,” and on this occasion the order was sent by telegraph on Thursday evening. As I stated in my last letter, irreligious education is doing its work, and the increase of juvenile criminals is appalling.[1]

If the projected law regarding religious associations is voted, it will be tantamount to the abolition of all religious teaching, as the existence of these congregations will be rendered impracticable. England and the United States will be the gainers, as they were when the Revolution dispersed the priesthood in 1790.

The French Government is on the verge of apostasy, as I have said. Is this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three, I fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the government they merit and they are punished for the evil doings of their rulers. “I gave them a king in my wrath,” it was written. Is there sufficient vitality left in the French constitution to reject the poison that is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, unknown in France fifty years ago, is but the outward and visible sign? The assertion I make that the greatness of the French people and their very national existence is bound up with the Christian Faith is unquestioned by every thinker in France, even by those who, for diverse reasons, do not practise their religion, though they all bank on the last sacraments and would be very sorry to see their wives and children neglect their religious duties.

The governments which have succeeded each other since 1880 have flattered themselves that they could govern without the Church and against the Church. Bismarck tried it and failed. The Catholic party triumphed. It still holds the balance of power in Germany, and the nation is growing daily more powerful and prosperous. In France, alas! it is quite the contrary. In order to crush what they are pleased to call the “clerical” party, the Government has allied itself with Socialists of the reddest streak. Indeed, we may say that anarchy and socialism, or collectivism as it is called, are sitting in high places.

Any president or minister who dared to stem the tide would fall. They must temporize, resign, or die. Carnot was assassinated. Casimir-Perier resigned; Faure, who steadily opposed the revision of the Dreyfus case, was poisoned, I am told—at any rate, it is said that he died almost immediately after swallowing a cup of tea at a soirée. Though the public has no means of forming a correct judgment regarding the guilt of the notorious Dreyfus, the most important evidence having been secret, I have never doubted that he was justly condemned. At any rate, he accepted the Presidential pardon, and withdrew his appeal, a strange thing for an innocent man to do. This alone, it would seem, ought to estop him from a new trial. But unfortunately the whole thing is to be gone over again, though it is a perfect nightmare for four-fifths of the French nation.

I know France intimately since thirty years, and it is with infinite sorrow that I diagnose her present condition and its perils.

According to custom, the Imperial Court of Russia retired to Moscow for Holy Week, and while the Czar, laying aside court etiquette, was kneeling humbly on the bare floor among his peasant subjects, holding his lighted candle like them, his allies, the rulers of France, were desecrating Easter Vigil by inaugurating the Paris Exhibition with speeches, which seemed to have been compiled from those made by Robespierre and his companions on that very Champs de Mars a century ago, when they inaugurated their theo-philanthropy and the worship of the Goddess of Reason.

I presume Holy Saturday was selected because it is a high festival among the Jews; otherwise Easter Monday would surely have been more appropriate in a country where there are thirty-five million Catholics. This was on the 9th April, and the Exposition they were in such a hurry to inaugurate on that particular day is far from ready even now.

THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL

May 4th, 1901.

A YEAR ago I wrote in these columns as follows: “For twenty years the Government has been running its educational machine at immense loss, compelling the French to support their own schools as well as those they will not patronize. Nevertheless, State schools and colleges are so neglected that laws are being devised to compel parents to send their children to them. If all other means fail, the congregations of both sexes occupied in teaching will be suppressed.”

Now this is the true object of the Associations Bill; all the rest is merely padding. Liberty of association for Freemasons, Socialists, and all friends of the Third Republic will be untrammelled as heretofore. The blow aimed at religious teachers is of peculiar interest at this hour, when Christians, all over the world, are recognizing the immense importance of the religious education of the young, if we would preserve the structure of Western civilization, so laboriously built up during 2000 years, and save its deep foundations from being sapped by the returning tide of barbarism and paganism. For the revolutionary spirit of to-day is simply another version of that renaissance of paganism which culminated in the Protestant revolt. As in the past, it will be met by a great Catholic revival like that of the sixteenth century, which Macaulay has so eloquently described in his Essay on Ranke’s Papacy. This is the counter-revolution against which the self-styled government of “Défense Republicaine” is dressing its batteries. Already the effects of this revival are felt and, as Macaulay has pointed out, revivals of the religious spirit, this everlasting factor in the history of humanity which our pseudo-scientists so unscientifically ignore, always redound to the benefit of Catholicism. When men like Brunetière, Bourget, Lemaître, François Coppée, become standard-bearers of truth, we are consoled for the vociferations of any number of Vivianis, Trouillots, etc., in and outside the French Chambers, for whom “the eternal decalogue” is but an antiquated superstition that must be swept away.

The law against the Congregations has been opposed in the Chambers by many Republicans who have no religious scruples, and one may safely affirm that there is not a respectable Frenchman, outside the coterie in power, who does not condemn the Bill.

A few days before its passage, a mass meeting of many trade unions, presided over by Leroy Beaulieu, was held in Paris to protest against the projected suppression of the Congregations. The eminent economist declared that the proposed legislation was one of “national suicide.” If the law is so repugnant to the French in general, how is it that the Government always obtains a majority? it may be asked.

The explanation lies in the fact that while honest Frenchmen have been attending to their business and leaving politics strictly alone, this anti-religious campaign has been carefully prepared since many years by the enemies of Christianity. Like all notable persecutions, it is the work of secret societies. The Boxers of China are a congeries of these societies. In the days of Julian the chief instigators and abettors of persecution were the secret societies of Mithra, whom Renan declared to have been “veritable Masonic lodges with their initiations, passwords,” etc.

Since 1875 the “Grand Orient,” in which the Jewish element predominates, has gradually been gathering into its hands all the reins of government; not a very