FRENCH PRIESTS AND RELIGIOUS AND THE CALL TO ARMS

New Zealand Tablet, 7 December 1916, Page 49

FRENCH PRIESTS AND RELIGIOUS AND THE CALL TO ARMS

Day by day, as the war goes on, the evidence accumulates which proves the magnificent spirit shown by the priests of France (says the Tablet ). Our own columns have borne weekly witness of their patriotism, bravery, devotion to duty, and their surprising influence over their comrades in arms. The facts speak clearly for themselves and cannot be gainsaid. It is Viseless to suggest that the clergy are pressed men, and that they are but making the best of a bad job, and so distinguishing themselves by accident in the heat of war. For we have only to turn back to the days of the mobilisation, when the call to arms rang out over the land from the old church towers whose foundations are deep down amid the dust of the dead. Then, if at any time, we should have any objections to obey the law which forced the ministers of the Gospel of Peace to take up arms. Had they wished to hold back, to pose as conscientious objectors, they would not have been gravelled for lack of arguments. For years past they had been legislated against, treated as enemies and pariahs, despoiled of their stipends and their funds for sickness and old age, evicted from their presbyteries and barely tolerated in their churches. Truly the State had shown herself a terrible stepmother to them, and when the crisis came her long arm was able to compel them to exchange the chalice for the rifle. But they were Frenchmen as well as priests, and with France in danger they rose as one man, ready to do a man's duty for their country wherever their post might be allotted. And this uprising was not merely individual ; it was given an official chaiactei b\ the action of Cardinal Cabrieres, Bishop of Montpellier, the (/oi/< n of the French Cardinals, who, on the very day of Germany s declaration of war against France, went to (lie General in command in the city, to the Prefect and the Mayor, and assured them that the military and civil authorities could reckon with certainty on the most absolute and devoted co-opeiation of the clergy. The visit was returned and constituted an event, for it demonstrated the re-establishment of concord between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Not a priest or a seminarist showed himself a defaulter, and it is told how a young bishop took the first boat from Bangkok to Marseilles, in order to present himself at his barracks in Besancon, where he was hailed with cheers. The younger cures and vicaires flocked to their quarters, and the old men left, at home set to work to organise ambulances and works of assistance of all sorts.

For the motives of this loyal and unanimous response one need not search far. Priests and patxiots, they knew that France was in danger ; it was veritably a fight pro oris et foots ; and they looked forward to the help they could give to their comrades by their ministrations in the hour of need. The exact numberwho were mobilised is not yet known, but it is estimated that about 20,000 responded to the call, or nearly twofifths of the clergy of France. What this must mean in the parishes may be gathered from the figures for the various dioceses. Thus, Paris had to part with 487; Lyons with 400 ;. Arras, Besancon, and Cambrai with 300 each ; Amiens with over 200. Nor was it only those of military age who presented themselves. There were others who refused to take advantage of the exemption given them by their years. Thus Canon Malaurie, chaplain of the military hospital at Algiers, who had fought in the war of 1870, insisted on returning to the Colors with the ambulances. Another, the Abbe Chambon, who was a sergeant in the 38th Regiment of the Line in 1870, though sixty-six years old, demanded to resume service with his old regiment, making but one requestto be excused from carrying the knapsack. A third, the Abbe Le Berre, a convent chaplain and fifty-four years old, volunteered, and shortly afterwards wrote to a relative as follows; ‘ Have been on service for some days, and am happy to be able to do something for our dear France, My

health is good, and I am in' the midst of youth and patriotism. My one cry is “Vive la France.” * There were others, too, who showed that the heart of a patriot could beat under the cassock of the priest. Take, for example, the case of Canon Morette, of Montauban, who when the tocsin of war sounded was at Saint-Id euc, near Saint Malo, whither he had gone to recuperate his health. Straightway, though three-score and three years of age, he offered himself as a stretcher-bearer, and quickly won the distinction of the Legion of Honor How these men were welcomed by their comrades in arms, let the Abbe M. M. Gorse, in his Echos de Guerre (Paris; Tequi), to which we are indebted for many of our facts and figures, bear witness: — ‘From the very first the priests were hailed with affection and enthusiasm by their comrades. When their soutane appeared in the barrack-yard, they were surrounded, and the hand of friendship was stretched out to them . We have read a great number of letters from priests and religious, and all tell the same tale without a single discordant note : the soul of our French youth opened out to the priest who had come to exchange his cassock for a soldier’s uniform.’ And that the welcome was to the priest as well as to the soldier is proved by the. way in which officers and men asked for their ministrations.

It*veil more surprising from a human point of view was the response to the call to arms made by the religious who were either living in forced exile abroad, owing to the operation of the laws of M. WaldeckHousseau and M. Combes, or who were engaged in missionary work in the East. The work of many of these latter was perforce for the moment suspended, though their life was fixed without hope of return in the country ot their adoption. As for the exiled religious, their Government had little call on their gratitude or affection, and they had only to treat the call as if it had never reached them. They were in safety, and there was nothing to compel them to return. And yet, forgetful of all that they had been made to suffer, they flew from east and west to the assistance of their country in the hour of her need. Here is the testimony of an eye-witness, M. Bompard, the French Ambassador at Constantinople, to the scenes that accompanied their mobilisation and departure;— ‘One of the features of the mobilisation in Turkey was the great number of religious who were mobilised. Every name and habit were represented; Capuchins, Dominicans, Jesuits, Assuxxxptionists, Franciscans, Lazarists, Brothers of Christian Doctrine, Marist Brothers, and others whose names I forget, fox- what Order is unrepresented in Turkey On some of the boats the religious formed a fourth of those mobilised. They came up under the direction of their superiors. I can still see a Christian Brother sounding the barrack calls on his bugle and a Lazarist singing the “Marseillaise,” and this Lazarist was no less a person than the superior of a college in Constantinople who was well known for his dignified bearing. There were some motley processions seen at Constantinople. It was quite otherwise at Jerusalem, where the monks formed the majority of the mobilised. They flocked from every corner of Palestine to the Consulate-General, so that our agent had to ask for a special train to take them to Jaffa. That day was witnessed a pilgrims’ return of a quite unusual kind which is still the subject for talk on the Jerusalem railway— a trainload of monks singing in chorus the hymn of llouget de V Isle. If the mobilisation in France was an unforgettable sight, that of the French in Turkey is worthy of equal remembrance.’ There we have a sign of the spirit which has animated the priests and the monks to the splendid deeds with which the official records abound— a glowing patriotism which fox’gave so much because it loved so much more.