Without going so far back as 1793, we have but to read the records of the Commune in 1870, which was a phase of the Revolution that is still marching on. One of the moving spirits of this time was Raul Ripault. M. Clemenceau was only Mayor of Montmartre, and M. Barrère, now ambassador at Rome, was an active member.
To Monseigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, one of the hostages taken and shot by the Commune, Raul Ripault said, “Ta liberté n’est pas ma liberté, aussi je te fait fusiller” (“Thy liberty is not my liberty, so I have you shot”).
Liberty, I repeat, is bound up with and inseparable from Christianity. To-day, as in 1793, a coterie of atheists or neo-pagans have captured all the avenues of power by means of godless schools and the Socialist vote, and even by hobnobbing with the red flag of anarchy, which waved unrebuked around M. Loubet at that famous fête called Triomphe de la République.
They have worked, steadily and intelligently, to this end since twenty-five years, while two-thirds of the country have been absolutely indifferent to politics. Some even affect to ignore the name of the President. Laborious, honest Frenchmen as a rule despise politics, and cannot be induced to take part in them or be candidates for office. One has but to consult the electoral returns to see how many hundreds of thousands abstain from voting. Thus the Government has passed into the hands of the Judeo-Masonic coterie.[3]
As in 1793, the first result is the diminution of liberty. It was long sought to represent the Associations Bill (1901) as a mere measure of domestic economy. It was the entering wedge of tyranny. The object to be attained is the suppression of all Christian education, by the suppression of all religious teachers, preparatory to a state monopoly of education.
The indignant protestations and the tumultuous manifestations of men and women who fill the streets with cries of “Vive la liberté!” “Vivent les sœurs!” are wholesome signs; but I think it is just as well that the Jacobins should go on and do their worst. Overvaulting tyranny, like ambition, doth overleap itself. At the Gare St. Lazare, recently, some ten thousand people accompanied the expulsed sisters of St. Vincent to the train with cries of “Liberty! Liberty!” The police were powerless.
In another place the population unharnessed the horses of the omnibus that was taking some other sisters to the station. They dragged the conveyance back and broke down the doors of the convent which had been sealed by the Government.
In Paris at least 50,000 children of the poor have been thrown into the streets; for the state schools were already inadequate, and 30,000 or more children were waiting for a chance to comply with the law of compulsory education.[4] In a mining town, a crèche, or infant asylum, where 150 babies from six months to four years of age were cared for while their mothers worked, was closed suddenly.
When we think of all the suffering and inconvenience caused by these executions, we are amazed that more blood has not flowed.
The right parents have to educate their children as they see fit, and the right all citizens have to live as they see fit, and teach when duly qualified, are primordial, inalienable rights that cannot be violated without crime, and a crime which must find its repercussion in all civilized countries. In general it may be said that every Government has a right to administer its own affairs as it sees fit. This is precisely what the Turks assumed when they were massacring the Bulgarians and the Armenians. But Europe thought differently in 1877. The Jacobins of 1793, who had conquered France then, as to-day, by cleverly combined manœuvres in which fear played a large part, also thought it was nobody’s business, if they saw fit to drown, proscribe, and guillotine by tens of thousands, in order to enforce their peculiar views of liberty. But every act of tyranny, every crime against liberty, offends all Christendom. It cannot be circumscribed by national frontiers. Soon all Europe was weltering in blood. The First Consul marched rough-shod over Europe, imposing French liberty on unappreciative nations. And we all know how the allied armies occupied Paris in 1815 and curbed the Revolution for a season. History repeats itself.