GOVERNMENT TYRANNY IN FRANCE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 10, 12 March 1908, Page 14

GOVERNMENT TYRANNY IN FRANCE.

VICTIMS OF THE ASSOCIATION LAW

In the eviction of the Sisters from the Hotel-Dieu in Paris, on Wednesday in last week (says the London ' Tablet ' of January 25), the world is afforded a further illustration of the overbearing intolerance of the dominant party in France. It is a sad story. Not only has a venerable • link wilh the past been,, rudely broken, but a purposeless act of savagery has been committed upon a band of devoted women for no better reason than to satisfy a passion for ' laicity ' by removing religious influence froir, one of its last remaining strongholds. The Sisters of the Order of St. Augustine have been in charge of the Hofcel-Dieu from the days of its foundation by St. Landry, and during the twelve hundred years of its existence the institution has been an example to all ihe world of what a hospital should be. No wonder, then, that whilst lovingly remembered by the poor who found kindly care within Its walls, it was held in high regard by successive rulers of France, whether dynastic or Republican. - Certainly, from the days of the thirteenth century, the 'Kings of France extended to it the most powerful protection and enriched it with privileges' in, testimony of its splendid usefulness. Thus St. Louis exempted It from the payment ol every impost, restored its crumbling walls, and granted the Sisters the right to buy what they wanted in the public markets at their own price. And so this great institution went on through the ages, performing a work of public charity and beneficence, the extent of which may be realised when we point to the record that even during the eighteenth century it was Affording Treatment to Some 6000 Patients at the same time. So highly has the work of the Sisters been ever esteemed that they remained untouched by the fury of the Revolution. But those whom even the Revolution respected, the present rulers of the Third Republic have cast forth from their historic home. M. Combes betrayed no squearnishmess where nuns were concerned, but he, like the Revolutionaries, refused to drive out the nuns from the Hotel-Dieu. They held their position by virtue of an imperial decree of 1810, which did but secure them in the duties w(hiich they had exercised for more than a thousand years. Their removal could therefore only be effected by a decree abrogating that under the hand of Napoleon ; ' and though M. Waldeck Rousseau's Law of Association supplied his successor with a ready weapon by which the Sisters could be struck, and which the sectaries on the •Municipal Council called upon- him to put into immediate use, M. Combes held his hand. But M. Clemenceau has proved more complacent. By / Article 13 of the Law the executive is empowered to dissolve any congregregation or to close any religious house at discretion and without appeal. This giant's "strength, the Government at the instance of the anti-Clericals of the Paris Council and- the groups of the Left in the Chamber, have not hesitated to put into -tyrannous exercise. Early last month, the President of the Republic signed the decree by which, with a euphuism cruelly misplaced, the Sisters were ' authorised ' to transfer their mother-house from the Hotel-Dieu to the Hospital of Notre Dame de Bon-Secours in the Rue des Pla/mtes. In other words they were given summary notice to quit the State establishment, the name of which by twelve centuries of devoted work their Order had made a household word for kindly, capable care and Christian charity. The authorities had hoped to carry out This Cruel Decree almost unobserved. But the day and the hour of the expulsion of the Sisters were known, and as early as ten o'clock in the morning a crowd of people began* to gather in the great square in front of the Hotel-Dieu and Notre Dame. It was in yam that an order had been given that no one except the members of the Chapter of the Cathedral and a few other friends of ,the Sisters should be admitted. Two Deputies, M. Denys Cachin and the Marquis de Rosambo, with a number of Municipal Councillors, arrived on the scene about noon, and M. Denys Cochin declared that unless they were admitted they would resort to force. M. Mesureur, Director of the Assistance Publique, was accordingly summoned. Quickly grasping the situation and appreciating the temper of the crowd, he arranged that the Deputies and Councillors should be allowed to pass in, but a number of insistent journalists were warned off with the words, curiously inappropriate at such a moment of eviction, 'The Sisters are in their own house.' Then followed a series of incidents which converted the passing of the Sisters into a veritable triumph. In

one of the great halls of the hospital this devoted band of fifty women, with their Superior, gathered- together in readiness for- their departure, and surrounded by a nmmiber of the hospital staff and the patients, we're bid- . den an- affecting farewell. The Archpriest df Notre Dame, in a voice- choking with emotion, read an : address bewailing the cruel necessity which sent the Sisters, from their age-long home and severed the close spiritual -ties which bound them with the Chapter of the Cathedral. Then came a striking tribute and protest, from M. Alpy, one of the Municipal Councillors. The best witnesses to the worth and work of -the Sisters were, he said, the words of M. Mesureur himself, the petition of the doctors attached to the hospitals, and the gratitude of the people of Paris. Therefore, -in the name of their common rights as citizens and of -the ratepayers whose burdens would be inevitably increased by the change, he and a large number of his colleagues protested against the order which drove- the Sisters from the bedsides of their siefc. Things were going so badly for the authorities that M. Mesureur now felt it necessary to intervene by putting in. the plea of extenuating circumstances. lie stobd by all he had ever. said of -the work of the nuns, and declared that- the Assistance Publique had no words for them but ■ Those of Praise and " Gratitude, and no higher wish than that those who took their place would follow their example and that the Sisters themselves would continue their labor" ot love in another ' ,place. So far Ms remarks were unexceptionable'; but,' when hie went ~' on to point to the tolerance of the ; Government as shown in the fact that such a farewell J gathering had been allowed, M. -Denys Cochin, taking up the word previously let fall by M. Mesureur, protested that as repretentatives of the- people of Paris he and his friends had no need "of any permission to" enter the hospital send greet their Sisters there \ they were intheir own house. After this came the signal for departure. Two by two the. Sisters walked in sad" pro- - cession -to the great doors where six omnibuses were ready to convey them from their old Home. Every window looking out on the court was filled with members of the staff and such of the patients as were well _ enough to be there to bid a last good-bye to their benefactors. As soon as the »Sisters appeared a great cry went up from the thousands assembled outside : ' Vivent les Soeurs ! Vous-reviendrez.' Once already a vain attemlpt (had been made by some of the students and patients to unharness the horses ; now the- crowd surrounded the omnibuses. Some, grasped the wheels,., and others even flung themselves beneath them. The vehicles were smothered in flowers. But a fresh force of police was called in and some semblance of order was at last restored. Then the procession" started through the streets along which crowds cheered and again, vainly attempted to unharness the horses. At - last 'the Rue des PlanOes was reached where the Sisters were received into their new home in the Hospital of Notre Dame de Bon-Secours, which- with a prevision, of probable troubles, Cardinal Richard had accepted twenty years ago from M. Carton, the cure of Montr duge. In spite of the weight of his ninety years, the Cardinal was there before the altar to welcome and console his spiritual daughters in their sorrow. Nor did his Eminence confine his sympathy to his mere presence. After a touching address from Monsignor Amette, his Coadjutor, the Cardinal rose and saSd a few words' in which,' broken as they were with emotion on his own part' and that of the assembly, he recalled the story of i his acceptance of .that house as a sign of the workings of; Providence in the affairs of the world. ■ •:. • We may be told that such a step as. this removalof .the Sisters would never have been taken by the Governttient without good reason : it is unthinkable that such acti.on could be taken out. of, ' pure cussedness.' Those who would put. forward so natural a plea do ibut show ho,w. little they understand the mind -and temper .of the anti-Olericals in France. No breath of suspicion, no word imputing slackness or failing has been uttered against the Sisters in their- professional . capacity. Every attempt to, find even the . flimsiest pre?- . text on such grounds had failed. A- searching adminis-. trative inquiry into the conduct of -the nuns did_ but establish the fact that- nowhere were the sick 'more devotedly or more efficiently nursed. A?,ain, M. Mesureur himself, speaking from his knowledge as the head ol his department, declared iff the Paris Municipal^ Council that the -Sisters of the Hotel-Dieu had "' correctly served both the 'Assistance Publique and the City of Parts, and that he had^ never had . any complaint to ' cause him to make any observations to them of any kind -whatsoever.' That testimony •he -repeated "on the day, of their departure. Far , from having even the leasit shadow of complaint to make, he had notlang but praise arid thanks to utter, like the hospital

doctors, who, both believers and unbelievers, signed a petition begging that the Sisters might be kept at the' post they 'filled so- well. Why then this expulsion to make roomi for lay nurses ? The answer is the same as that which explains the secularising of the schools, the closing of the religious- houses, "the separation of Church and State, the spoliation of the ■ Church, the delation of officers and public servants who practise their religion, ' the obstacles placed in the" way of soldiers in hospital receiving the last rites of their faith. Hatred of the Religious Idea in General and of the Catholic name in particular is the sole and all-sufficient reason for all that has been., done 'in France during the last decade. 'It is proved,' said M. Alpy, ' that it 4s solely because of your religious habit and from hatred o f the ide a of religion that you have been driven from, our hospitals.' Or" as the • Journal des Debate ' puts it with even greater force : ' The pretext of professional negligence has never even been invoked against these admirable nurses. And it is clear from* the words of M. Mesureur that any charge of undue proselytism was equally incapable of being brought forward. It is anti-reiigious passion alone that drives them, from the bedsides of the sick, in spite of the doctors and of all those who have been able to make, if only by casting a glance at the secularised hospitals, the, most significant of comparisons". One wonders what aberration men follow who undertake, ■ such responsibilities. They voluntarily deprive themselves of an incomparable force, of a disinterestedness that cannot be equalled. . . But nothing of all this stays their handS; 1 their hatred is too strong.' We are not, howe.er, left to draw from sympathisers with the Sisters our authority for saying that it is an anti-religious motive which has been the cause of their eviction. M.- Mesureur himself explained that if the Sisters ' were being removed from the hospital where they have rendered * such long; and devoted ' services, it is because the powers that be act in obedience to principles which are opposed to those by which the Sisters are inspired.' There we have, naked though not altogether unashamed, the real reason for the Government's action. M. Mesureur knows full well that the Prioress, Sister Sainte-Marguerite, and her companions are the victims of an order which is unjustified and unjustifiable. It s is well that he should have let the world -know it too. ,