North and South of Paris
z6o THE COMMONWEAL July 14, 1926 NORTH AND SOUTH OF PARIS sonal sacrifices, to...
...z6o THE COMMONWEAL July 14, 1926 NORTH AND SOUTH OF PARIS sonal sacrifices, to labor for the common good, to rear up children for a nation bled white, and to repel the T HE continuous standstill of parliamentary govern- lure of social revolution l Small wonder that many ment in France is a challenging phenomenon...
...ancient...
...Committed as it hopefully by some who point to the numerous con- is to a scheme of political action not conceivably within versions among intellectuals, pessimistically by others reach, it is really only a party of the past or the future...
...The explanation is simple...
...A thinking minority, conscious of the stakes for and government...
...If at present political peace exists, "antiBetween a Left which was brought to a halt during clericalism is asleep in the hearts of the people...
...A citizen is either in the Church or out- discoverable to reason...
...A group which religion in France...
...and even ergetic respect for the Church, generally even acceptthe school issue in Alsace-Lorraine is apparently at ance of the dogmas of the Church, but also something rest...
...It is this ground cepting everything dictated by Parisian liberalism which the Briand ministries and those which have cease...
...France cannot prove effective, in the long run, against a hostile govsolve the problem because France herself is dissolved...
...The enemies of thize, aid a little with his alms and his petitions, religious belief have succeeded during the last fifty knowing that the outcome of it all will have an imyears in educating Christianity out of thousands of portant bearing upon the civilization of the world and hearts which are now called upon to render heroic per- upon the inner spiritual life of Christendom...
...Jacques Cocteau is the most recent of the money question...
...in the Sarthe he moves and which is guaranteed stable by the state...
...Here there is not only enKlein, remains firm in its general outline...
...But can this truce be termed a real victory for like a tenaciously held social doctrine...
...will be something speedier and more easily realized M. Valdour's inquiries are concerned chiefly with than the dreams of Charles Maurras...
...in certain parts of Touraine, 6oo out ciates, the cinema, the theatre, the advertisement, the of a total potential parish membership of io,00o at- picture papers, the public gatherings, the revolutionary tend religious services...
...issue does not rise to the surface...
...that a nation which some years ago was obviously M. Valdour enumerates the remedies which can be victorious can find no way out of the disastrous im- applied...
...the Church and the multitude is complete and already It is a sorely tried, vitiated, often malformed crowd...
...This spectator the working classes...
...preceded it were required to establish themselves Hope lies in the continuing discovery by French inupon...
...The adults with whom he assobaptismal font...
...and that there must be "battle and victory...
...And it is answered Francaise is super-abundant theory...
...that the old policy of obediently acis little ground for compromise...
...which the intellectual world is playing, is capable of Curiously enough, this impasse has relegated to a standing against numbers for the redemption of the secondary position another conflict that has endured stricken nation...
...the great strikes of I92o and a Right which has hardly Therefore it is absolutely essential that instruction now any other fundament than the Banque de France there dispel ignorance...
...a village of 1,200 inhabitants has completely ceased Small wonder there is a problem, that there are dozens going to church, and its dead are buried under slabs of problems, in France...
...in the city of Mans a parish syndicates-all these create the atmosphere in which of 3,000 souls has lost all excepting 300...
...who deal in statistics...
...But it must be truly enlightened and as long as the Third Republic...
...Today the religious aware of the difficulties to be faced...
...ernment...
...And so the story continues...
...the picture drawn, Small wonder that the program of l'Action Franin this number of The Commonweal, by the Abbe caise has interested many...
...The question is of the greatest approaches the study of labor problems in the spirit importance because in all Gaul there are really no of Le Play is going ahead on ground as firm as any three parts...
...He finds that indifferentism has sees also that this waiting, this "positivist idealism," succeeded hostility, that a system of laic education has will never get down to the business of salvaging the uprooted all knowledge of religious matters from a great crowd who have been lured out of the House of very great many hearts, and that "the divorce between God by the palaver of a sceptical half-century...
...During three years of investigations he "When the young man leaves the laic school," says found out the following facts, among numerous others M. Valdour, "he is trained in the factory, the street, in certain districts of Paris three-fourths of the work- by the newspaper, by all those things which constitute ing population do not even bring their children to the a social environment...
...But he sees clearly that none of these can passe...
...But the trouble with 1'Action side the pale of Christendom...
...The battle is not merely for a certain solution tellectuals-M...
...The battle is rather for a example-of the identity of the Church and civilizasolution of everything which has to do with property tion...
...We believe that it is answered That the governmental system of France needs reform exceptionally well in a paper recently contributed to is obvious ; but the American spectator hopes that it the Revue Apologetique by J. Valdour...
...An American cannot know bearing the inscription of "Liberte, egalite, frater- how to solve them...
...He can merely observe, sympanite...
...who doubt the supernatural character of religion Granted that the financial problem is serious enough should be appalled at the wholesale disappearance to baffle even the best minds, it still remains singular of its natural effects...
Vol. 4 • July 1926 • No. 10
