No religious association can be formed without authorization given by a law which will determine how it is to function.
One of M. Waldeck Rousseau’s henchmen stated the truth squarely, a few days ago, when he said “the enemy is God,” improving on Gambetta’s maxim, “Le clericalisme voilà l’ennemi.”
Already there are symptoms that the Premier is being carried away by his Socialist advance guard. When they now demand the suppression of the Concordat he no longer protests as earnestly as he did, affirming his devotion to the secular clergy, whose interests, he used to declare, were the main object of the Trouillot or Associations Bill.
The trial of Comte Lur Saluce by a so-called “High Court,” composed of senators, was a most peculiar episode. Accused of plotting to restore the monarchy, his defence was one long, incisive, itemized arraignment of the Third Republic and all its works and ways. His judges listened with much interest, fascinated, no doubt, by the truth of his statements, after which they found him guilty with extenuating circumstances—a tacit admission apparently that his enmity to the Third Republic was justified. Meanwhile, poor France is threatened with all the horrors of another revolution, if the same elements compose the next parliament, as they most certainly will, if opposition candidates are not even allowed to hold meetings unmolested, as at Toulouse and Lyons recently.
Religious liberty has however found a new home in a most unexpected quarter, none other than the realm of the Grand Llama of Tibet, who is sending a special embassy to the Czar. The latter may follow the good example and proclaim religious liberty in all the Russias, at the same time as the Calendar reforms which are being prepared. The two questions are not as irrelevant to each other as one might suppose at first sight.
INCONSISTENT JACOBINISM
11th November, 1901.
IN 1894, 1895, and 1896 I contributed several papers on the Eastern Question to the Progress. At that time public opinion was much excited and indignant over the massacres in Armenia, but none of the Powers who signed the Berlin Treaty thought fit to interfere. Massacres on a small scale were renewed from time to time, and a few months ago they reached considerable proportions; but nothing was done to punish the culprits, or to protect the victims of Turkish barbarity.
This week a mild surprise has been caused by the sending of the French fleet to Turkish waters. The callous lethargy, which a sense of duty, a chivalrous sympathy with the weak and the oppressed, could not dispel, has yielded to a financial exigency. Two naturalized citizens are creditors of the Sultan for a large sum. It is true they have been receiving most usurious interest these last fifteen years, but now Lorando and Turbini wish to recover their capital; and lo! the might of France is put forth on their behalf! It is said that M. Waldeck Rousseau, the Premier, is professionally interested in the matter, and will receive a fee even bigger than the one he earned when he saved his clients in the Panama scandal, who are now in the seats of the mighty. The long-suffering French taxpayer will grudgingly pay the expenses of this naval demonstration, and the Porte will promptly pay up in order to be rid of his unwelcome visitors. But France does not mean to be a simple collector for MM. Lorando and Turbini.
The elections of 1902 are at hand, and the semi-Jacobins in power are anxious to obtain the suffrages of the better element, and not be entirely carried away captive by their Socialist and ultra-Jacobin supporters, through whom they have seized the reins of government.