'Honor, Loyalty,' etc.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 42, 17 October 1907, Page 9

' Honor, Loyalty,' etc.

Mr. Clemenceau, the Premier of France (so runs a canle-message in lasl week's papers) has been delivering a patriotic speech at Amiens 'against the parricidal anti-militarists and anti-nationalists ', and appealing to ' all true Frenchmen ' for * a -sounding faith in the ideals of honor, loyalty, and national strength '. • At a time when blood flowed like water in the Coliseum, and thousands were ' butchered to make a Roman HolicJay ', the old pagan Senate of the Empire enacted iihat n: attresses should be provided for the ropedancers, in order to save their bones from the risk of fracture and- their epidermis from abrasion. Mr. Clemenceau is acling. with even greater inconsistency. After an act of national repudiation of a great national obligation, he dares .to appeal" to the honor of l true Frenchmen ' ; in the midst of a campaign of unconstitutional plunder ancl proscription, he has the courage to invoke the ' loyalty ' of the people to constituted authority ; and he talks of ' national strength ' after having thrown down the apple of bitter social discord, and set himself, with his other aggressively atheistic ministerial confreres, to extinguish the light of heaven in France and to wipe out of the heart of, the nation iihe knowledge and love and fear of God that are not alone the hignest wlsdojn, but the best safeguard of a nation. But

' Evil on itself shall back recoil '

And the fierce extreme Socialist anti-milit!arisn\ and anti-nationalism that now menace France, are— rlike the reinforced wave of hoioliganisrr. and juvenile and adult crime— merely a symptom of the fell disease with which the long > campaign of official atheism has infected

France, ahe ' bloc ' scheme of a stable atheistic republic does riot promise to gain on its goal, i o adapt some lines of Gordon's,

• rt seems an intangible,, bubble , • That cheats an unsatisfied soul, _• ' And. the" whole , Of the rest's ah illegible scroll. The first Napoleon failed to rule a people, bereft of God. And where the. giant failed, the pigmies are not likely to succeed. Olemenceau's appeal. seems* to be the small politician's "mode of realising the tremendous destructive energy that lies in a mass ookf k humanity released from allegiance . to the .principle of authority—to obedience to God ■or master. • Extrema gaudii luctus occupat '—grief often takes the place of extreme joy. And tlie joyous triumphs of the 'RadicalSocialist plunderers over pious : and defenceless ' women yesterday are dearly bought, in the spectres of- disorder that they have -evoked from. the,. yawning deep to-day.