[3] “Vel Judam non videtis, quomodo non dormit, sed festinat tradere me Judæis?” (Feria V in Cœna Domini—“See ye not Judas, how he sleeps not, but makes haste to betray me into the hands of the Jews?”)
[4] According to a recent article in the Figaro, 8th October, 1906, among the conscripts sent this month to the army by Paris, ninety could neither read nor write; seventy-nine could read only.
[5] It was only at the annual September Convent of the Grand Orient, 1904, that it was decided to rush the assault on the Church itself by the law of alleged separation. “Il nous reste un rude coup de collier à donner ... la separation figurera en Janvier prochain a l’ordre du jour de la chambre.”
[6] At the Free-Thought Congress.
[7] His native city recently hoisted the French flag and proclaimed its annexation to the Third Republic, 1906. Of course it was only a platonic demonstration on the part of Sicilian Freemasons.
[8] M. Rouvier had obtained a law obliging every one without exception who distilled anything to pay the usual tax on alcohol. This law was made and repealed by the same Parliament, so that now every one who has a peach or a plum tree can manufacture any kind of alcohol of poor quality, and retail it in the buvettes or drink-stands which are found at every step almost; in every little vegetable and grocery shop, even in Government tobacco stores where stamps are sold. These buvettes are the curse of France to-day. They have caused far greater ravages than the Franco-Prussian war.
[9] “We do not wish to see the secular arm placed at the service of free-thought,” said a deputy of the “bloc” not long since. “Meanwhile the secular arm in the service of free-thought has closed all our schools and colleges,” retorted a deputy of the Right.
[10] On November 17th, 1906, the Bishop of Nancy wrote as follows to M. Briand, Minister of Cults, regarding the sad plight of the Sisters du Saint Cœur de Marie at Nancy: “In 1902, 56 of them were huddled together in a small house situated at the extremity of their grounds.... Their spacious chapel was razed to the ground and in its place three private houses have been built. The property was sold for 527,000 francs. The liquidator promised that in conformity with the law the sisters should receive pensions. Out of the 56 there remain to-day but 44. Of these 10 are over seventy, and 22 of them are over sixty.... In these last four years they have received out of the 527,000 francs only 12,000 in three instalments.... They owe 17,800 to their baker, butcher, etc., and are threatened with starvation if further credit be denied them.... Are these aged women, who have devoted their lives to the instruction of the poor, to die of cold and hunger, M. le Ministre?” And these things happen in the twentieth century under a Government that proclaims the rights of man and of the poor!
[11] There is no such thing as proportional representation in France, and the whole electoral machinery is manipulated to give the Government a majority.
[12] Recently in the Chambers (November 13th, 1906), M. Lassies criticized that part of M. Clemenceau’s declaration in which he referred to the Holy See “as a foreigner subject to foreign influences.” “Foreign influences,” said M. Lassies, turning pointedly to M. Delcassé, “we find them here in the person of the ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs, who fell from power without our knowing why. Whence came the gust which caused his fall? From which frontier?”