The Royalist "Non Possumus"

...All of which accounts for the fact that when the Archbishop of Bordeaux, obviously commissioned by Rome, started the long series of episcopal condemnations we have witnessed since September, neither the friends of L'Action Franchise nor its foes could believe their own ears...

...Maurras, who knows all the political news that does 6oo not get printed in his paper, comments upon it in three columns without which many writers could not write their own leaders the next day...

...Jules Lemaitre, with his usual clarity and understanding sympathy, has explained the rapid success of the movement...

...It appealed to the traditional forces because of its preferences for the royalist regime, "the least bad of all political systems," but, above all, it appealed to the young because of the novelty of a monarchist doctrine severed from its apparently indissoluble alliance with the Church, and defended by men who had no intercourse with the clergy, wrote what they pleased, and fought more duels than anybody else...

...In April, 1915, the secretary of the Holy Office reported the above proceedings to Benedict XV, but the new Pope also thought it better to put off the promulgation till after the war...

...the Royalist revolution, the coup de force, which is one of the dogmas of L'Action Franchise, is still something like the Socialists' Grand Soir, a mirage rather than a probability...

...But Monsignor Canali's statement leaves no doubt that Maurras's books and articles were regarded as baneful to the many young men enlisted in L'Action Franchise, and that his condemnation was only deferred "till the Pope thought it wise to promulgate it...

...the anti-French mission of Monsignor Testa...

...One of its chief contributors was the German von Gerlach, later on unfrocked and married...

...But this unusual deportment of people calling themselves royalists caused astonishment and, pretty soon, scandal among the traditional royalists, the "dowagers' party," as Daudet called them...

...The recent action of the Holy Office is accounted for by the opposition of L'Action Franchise to Locarno, to M. Briand, and to a policy tending to nullify the campaign of meetings of General de Castelnau...

...He regarded Christianity as Gibbon did, as the kill-joy of the world, and wanted to rebuild civilization on its old Roman foundation...

...Maurras is obviously full of the idea that he may be an unbeliever but has supported Catholic orthodoxy in its every manifestation, and that his followers are by a large plurality excellent Catholics...

...Politics have to do with facts, realities, matter-of-fact existences of all kinds with which the principles of morals should not be mixed up...

...But in each issue Daudet writes an effervescent editorial you cannot help enjoying, even if you disagree with every word, especially the oft-repeated prophecy that the restoration is at hand...

...Comte, Nenan, Taine, and de Tocqueville had all realized this...

...As usual in such occurrences, we have two versions, one given by the Vatican and supported by such organs as La Vie Catholique and almost unanimously by the diocesan bulletins, the other propounded by L'Action Franchise and its provincial substitutes, apparently also admitted by the Figaro...

...the Royalist party still numbers less than a score of deputies in the Chamber...

...In those days, one ran some danger in criticizing this movement, even in the most moderate terms...

...and finally, the favor shown to French pacifists with pro-German tendencies like Marc Sangnier...

...The daily bearing this name has gradually outshone all the older organs of the royalist party, and the doors of provincial chateaux, long shut against it, now open wide to receive it...

...second, nobody should expose himself or expose others, especially the young, to influences imperiling the Faith...

...We are not accustomed to such language, except in organs making no pretense of being Catholic papers...

...Every French prelate with more of the controversialist than of the good shepherd in his composition, was sure to be on the side of, and praised by, L'Action Franchise...

...As a matter of fact, it was not till October, 1926, that the public blame administered to L'Action Frangaise by Cardinal Andrieu, Archbishop of Bordeaux, was ratified by Rome, and not till Monsignor Canali published the decree of the Holy Office, that the now thirteen-year-old condemnation was promulgated...

...Has L'Action Franchise secured any positive results...

...As matters now stand, the substitution of a Catholic for a Gallican attitude can hardly come from the surrender of the Royalist leaders: it must come from individual changes and these, for a long time, will be slow...

...L'Action Franchise has made a successful appeal for funds and goes on...

...the unconcealed propaganda of Monsignor Pacelli, nuncio in Germany, for the inclusion of the Nationalists in the new Cabinet...

...It appears from this illuminating document that, as early as January, 1914 (when Cardinal Billot and Cardinal de Lai were both friendly to L'Action Franchise and both enjoying the confidence of Pius X) the condemnation of not only the early books of Charles Maurras, but of the fortnightly L'Action Franchise was envisaged at three sittings of the congregation (January 15, 26, and 29...

...Those people were enraged at the success of Daudet in his campaign against Malvy, Caillaux, and the Bonnet Rouge which resulted in the quelling of the meeting at the French front...

...The new royalist movement was different...

...Such a thing might happen again in the future...

...Royalism had long appeared as a semifossilized remnant of the past cherished by a few old aristocrats, a few old generals, and a fast disappearing section of the clergy...

...Nine days before, Pius XI, addressing the Consistory, had summed up the motives for the condemnation of L'Action Frangaise as follows: First, Catholics should not favor a "school" of doctrine placing the interests of a party before those of religion...

...The tone of the Roman condemnation of L'Action Franchise has consistently been considerate and almost tender, and it ought to have been easy for M. Maurras to take the necessary steps...

...A campaign for an alien, carried on largely by other aliens, and certainly with the help of foreign finance, was enough to endanger a noble country with ancient traditions...

...Only one individual conversion would produce such a sensation that it might cause a landslide, viz., the submission of the Due de Guise, who is a good man and a sincere Catholic...

...This sentence is repeated ad nauseam all over Paris and it is not possible to foresee when another slogan can displace it...

...Jacques Bainville has few rivals for a terse presentment of foreign questions...

...If, as the Holy Office wished it, M. Maurras's books had been, as they richly deserved to be, as he himself admits, placed on the Index in 1914, not a ripple would have been created...

...The decree added that, on account of the daily L'Action Frangaise criticizing the Holy See and the Sovereign Pontiff himself in several recent articles, this newspaper was also to be regarded as being prohibited...

...The younger men replied with poisoned arrows until the Due d'Orleans, the Pretender himself, long before Pius XI—for it was in 1910—put them on the royalist index and declared that the orthodox party was represented by the Ganlois...

...The Roman point of view will be found in two documents of the highest importance: one being no less than the address given by His Holiness Pius XI himself in the Consistorio Segreto of December 20, 1926...

...Certainly the Osservatore Romano was...

...But it was not so...

...His intellectual superiority, his astounding capacity for work, and his literary talents quickly made him the leader...

...The new doctrine was not identified at first with royalism proper, but it soon led to it...

...finally, almost a whole page is devoted to a passionate but illuminating and generally amusing review of the press...

...The official organ of the monarchists, the Ganlois, edited by a Jew, attacked L'Action Franchise in a grand lofty manner...

...What has happened...

...On Christmas Eve, L'Action Frangaise, in a long 6oi article entitled Non Possumus, stated its wish to meet all the requirements of Rome, "if they should be made clear," appealed from the Pope misinformed to the Pope better informed, and protested against what it regarded as a spiritual invasion of the realm of politics...

...the other being a chronological summary of the proceedings of the Holy Office against the leaders of L'Action Franchise signed by Monsignor Canali and dated December 29, 1926...

...Its connection with religion was admitted by friend or foe who used the well-worn slogan : Le trone et l'autel...

...Since then, every year has more and more identified the cause of the French monarchy with that of L'Action Francaise...

...The blow to authority and the danger to France, which the success of the Dreyfusist agitation admittedly was, acted as a revelation upon them...

...The Holy Father in his consistorial address hoped that the step he was taking would unify the French Catholics: but division is what we see...

...It seems difficult that there should not be before long an interview between him and some delegate from Pius XI, perhaps between him and the Holy Father himself...

...Things are different now that Maurras has corrected his own works, and a large section of Catholics have long regarded him as an "intellectual Catholic" superior to most...

...First and foremost that this is a most deplorable state of affairs...

...The League of Nations is greatly favored by Rome, but largely on account of Locarno...

...I was in the room when Count d'Haussonville said without caring if he was overheard: "We have nothing to do avec ces gens la...

...M. Daudet has long been famous for his detective capacities and obviously uses them...

...The man who reaps the greatest advantages from this attitude of the Vatican is M. Briand, an excommunicate...

...But having, so many years ago, done my best to approach a somewhat difficult question in the spirit of the historian and not of the polemist, I now get my reward by being able to do so again...

...The clamoring for deep reforms in the French administration and even in the Constitution would never have begun had it not been for Maurras...

...Not one of them was a practising or even a believing Catholic...

...The Action Franchise movement seemed a strange novelty when it began, in the early years of the twentieth century...

...The secretary of the Holy Office, who tried to bring about the condemnation of L'Action Franchise during the war, was a German...

...Since then, Maurras in his daily paragraphs and Pierre Tuc in his review of the press have maintained the same attitude...

...This, then, was what individualism could do...

...But in reality, L'Action Franchise has been successful in one capital thing: the daily probing of democratic principles, indefatigably repeated by Maurras and Daudet, has been carried on with such perseverance and such mastery that their criticisms have become public property...

...It is a fact that Maurras, in his views of French politics, and Bainville, in his interpretation of foreign politics, never take a Christian standpoint, regard their enemies with the old contempt of the ancients, and care little whether the means of restoring social order are Catholic or pagan...

...Every word of the above statements was true...

...Maurras was still referred to as an atheist, but he deleted most of the objectionable passages from his books, and adopted in his articles the tone of the most intransigent theologian...

...The possibility could only be averted by the nation as a whole judging everything from the standpoint of its own welfare and, when necessary, sacrificing everything to it...

...Pius XI, influenced by Cardinal Gasparri, may not be a pro-German, but he has been won over to the opinion that the Church must use the Catholic party in Germany as the pivot of a far-reaching policy...

...What are we to conclude...

...Five days later, the newspaper was placed on the Index, and as the readers of L'Action Francaise are, nine-tenths of them, Catholics, it was expected and indeed rumored that the editors would soon be compelled to stop publication...

...Still in the same spirit, the Vatican protects the Alsatian autonomists, no matter if they are mostly Communists, and if one of their leaders is a doubtful priest...

...You find its echoes even outside of France, and many a time I have recognized the familiar ring in things read or heard in America...

...It now seems strange, but it is no less a fact, that until quite recently L'Action Franchise was looked upon as the most orthodox of Catholic newspapers...

...The next day this document was printed by L'Action Franchise, but immediately followed by another, of a highly confidential nature, in which the Cardinal of Rheims notified each bishop that the collective condemnation was the urgent wish of Rome...

...He had been educated in a Catholic school at Aix-en-Provence, but a passionate love for antiquity joined to sincere admiration for Comte, had made him a pagan in tendencies and a positivist in outlook...

...I took with equanimity a virulent reply from M. Charles Maurras...

...Maurras, Pierre Tuc, and even such excellent Catholics as Colonel Larpent, see nothing but "the international policy of the Vatican—that is to say, politics—in the condemnation of their doctrine...

...On March 1, a short letter from the French hierarchy stated the unanimous adhesion of the 104 bishops to the condemnation...

...This was called integral nationalism...

...Now, the only antagonist able to fight off the revolutionary spirit was its historical opponent, the monarchy, with its continuity...

...On December 24, 1926, L'Action Franchise published on its first page the consistorial address in which it was condemned, but, side by side with it, appeared the article Non Possumus...

...If they do so, the international Catholic coalition will be invincible...

...Let me recapitulate as briefly as I can the recent developments as interpreted in numerous articles of L'Action Frangaise...

...Hence the dominant influence of the Germans in Rome...

...The by-standers could not believe their own ears, and the comments in the press showed that even the radical press rejected this Roman alliance...

...You find them not only unchallenged but regarded as axioms even in radical quarters...

...This has been demonstrated by the speech in which the new Paris nuncio, Monsignor Maglione, presenting the diplomatic corps to the French President at Christmas, complimented M. Briand on his pacifism...

...The surprising fact is that they should not see that a confirmed unbeliever can never be a Catholic leader...

...599 THE ROYALIST "NON POSSUMUS" By ERNEST DIMNET AS EARLY as August, 1908, and February, 1911, As the present writer contributed to the London Nineteenth Century two articles on the subject of the then rising L'Action Franchise...

...The Catholics in other countries must be persuaded and, if need be, compelled to act in connection with the Centrum...

...L'Action Franchise is the most un-American-looking of newspapers...

...For the chief enemy of integral nationalism is the revolutionary individualistic, or Dreyfusist spirit, "with its crazy habit of introducing the concepts of ethics into matters foreign to them...

...Thus reasoned the friends of Henri Vangesis and Lucien Moreau, whom a brilliant young writer, Charles Maurras, was soon to join...

...All this apparently means failure...

...But M. Maurras is not a Catholic...

...All the news it gives does not quite fill two lean columns and is visibly compiled from the cheapest agencies...

...This condemnation was postponed, however, "owing to numerous petitions sent in to the Holy Father and adjuring him not to let the congregation prohibit the aforesaid books or periodicals...

...Now, what is the present situation ? Plain rebellion...

...Every now and then, Catholic women, evidently made unhappy by this situation, appeal to the hierarchy in favor of what they regard as "the" Catholic newspaper...

...So did, above all, a number of occasional contributors, lay or ecclesiastic, who, during the white terror known as Integrisme—to which Benedict XV finally put an end—denounced people right and left...

...Shortly after, another unbeliever—who, however, was to become, unlike Maurras, a devout Catholic—Leon Daudet, the already well-known son of the novelist, joined in his turn L'Action Franchise...

...On the other hand, it is also a fact that, during the past fifteen years, more and more Catholics, especially the young, have joined L'Action Francaise without apparently suffering any detriment to their faith and, on the contrary, persuading themselves that they belonged to a highly orthodox and anti-modernistic school...

...But L1 Action Franchise has always been violent and, at present, lives in a state of perpetual irritation...

...Here is the sequence of events as it can be summed up from scores of recent articles: The entourage of the Pope during the war was suspected of being pro-German...

...Daudet and Maurras protested their unbounded respect for the Prince who would always be their Prince, but refused to commit hara-kiri...

...the papal protests against the occupation of the Ruhr...

...Maurras, born in 1868, was about thirty at the time...

...Certainly the restoration has not come and, I am afraid, will not come...

...In less than a year, the Duke saw that he could not do without "those people," and restored L'Action Franchise to favor...

...It arose from the entirely intellectual evolution of a few young men, vastly interested in themselves and watching their inward development, as the young litterateurs of those days used to do, in the spirit of Barres...

...So he, and the Due de Guise, the new Pretender, have gone straight to the old Gallican arsenal, and they are now barricaded behind the familiar argument: "We respect and obey the Pope in all matters spiritual, but he should not interfere in matters political...

...The difficulties we are now witnessing all arise from the opposition between those two facts...

...So did Leon Daudet, although he would every now and then publish exaggeratedly outspoken novels...