One Hundred Years of Success
Klein, F\'elix
38 THE COMMONWEAL May 15, 1929 ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SUCCESS By FELIX KLEIN ON APRIL 18 there was held, in that illustrious church of the Cannes which now serves the Institut Catholique as...
...One may say that in our time the friends of the Church are beginning to achieve victory in most parts of the field, and several recent actions that have characterized the pontificate of Pius XI are emblems of important advances...
...Ferdinand Bruntiere...
...The number of subscribers increased steadily, and the magazine absorbed several other publications which had enjoyed their own periods of fame—the Revue de France and le Quinzaine, the second of which had been edited by Georges Fonsegrive...
...Pere Didon...
...It has done more than any other French journal to make known and understood the present prosperity and the future opportunities of the Church in the new world...
...To draw up a list of those who have written for it during the past century would be to cite almost all the names which have added lustre to French religion and letters during that period...
...and the program of its founders was "to unite the best qualified representatives of diverse political opinions on the common ground of Christian belief and liberty...
...I believe there were no better soldiers in the army struggling for the cause of God than those who enlisted under the banner of the Correspondant...
...Occupying a middle ground between the timid who, under the pretext of prudence, hide the better half of their thought, and the violent who love to shout raucously without stopping to consider whether they are being understood, and who aim to confound the enemy rather than to enlighten and convert him, these generous youngsters defined the attitude they considered ideal and bequeathed it in solemn trust to their successors...
...Alfred de Mun, famous social reformer...
...Cardinal Perraud...
...Charles Peguy...
...Imbart de la Tour, historian...
...Then the laymen who have figured prominently in the contemporary reestablishment of French Catholic letters—Francis Jammes, Prince Sixte de Bourbon, Fortunat Strowski, Maurice Denis, Jean Brunhes, Henri Gheon, Andre Bellessort, Firmin Roz, Max Turmann, Paul Claudel and many others...
...Today American life is discussed regularly in the Correspondant by Georges Lechartier and Bernard Fay...
...They recruited important new names—Lacordaire, the Due de Broglie, Augustin Cochin, Gratry, Lacombe, Gaillard, Poujoulat, Armand de Pontmartin among them...
...More recently there were two articles on Father Isaac Hecker, by the Comte de Chabrol, which appeared during 1897...
...Albert de Lapparent, perpetual secretary of the Academie des Sciences...
...His department, which appears every fortnight under the title of Regards sur la Vie, has made his pseudonym of Joubert familiar to all students of ideas and of international policy...
...Monsignor Louis Batiffol, student of early Christian history...
...In all truth slightly more than a hundred years have passed since the Correspondant began to serve the cause of the Church and of civilization...
...and under the leadership of eminent chiefs such as Comte de Falloux and Monsignor Dupanloup, they contributed more than did any other Catholic group to the conquest of educational liberty...
...Readers will pardon me for recalling that my own three books of travel—Au Pays de la Vie Intense, FAmerique de Demain, and En Amerique a la Fin de la Guerre—were published almost entirely in the Correspondant...
...First the Academicians—Bazin, Bremond, Doumic, Bordeaux, de la Gorce, Goyau, de Nolhac...
...Lying and calumny we abhor...
...Between 1830 and 1848, the period of the "monarchic de juillet," its editors fought for the liberty of education and the independence of the Church...
...Among those who are now deceased we may mention ThureauDangin, perpetual secretary of the French Academy and author of a definitive history of the Catholic renaissance in England...
...We love frankness and good faith...
...the second attempting to reveal its intimate accord with a modern spirit cleansed of errors, and to prove that it can effect true progress in all the activities of life...
...Civil and religious liberty for the whole world" was its first motto...
...Since I cannot review here even the most important papers which the Correspondant has published, it may be well to stress the fact that no French review has paid so much attention to the life and activity of the United States...
...Maurice Barres...
...We are repelled by intrigue almost as much as by injustice...
...Among those now living I shall mention only a few...
...Monsignor d'Hulst, once rector of the Institut Catholique...
...For 100 years since, a politico-religious battle has been in progress on the same terrain in France between adversaries and friends of the Church: the first seeking to weld it to the spirit of reaction in politics, sociology and scientific enterprise...
...While we are indulgent to those who have gone astray, we shall not compromise with error...
...Nothing is better calculated than its example to keep alive in us the courage, the confidence and the pride one may well feel in belonging to a Church which, after twenty centuries, constantly reveals itself young, supple, able to apply its unchanging principles to the newest of human circumstances...
...Under the reign of Napoleon III who, for all his good intentions, too often compromised the Church both by his protection and by his unwarranted interferences, the editors of the Correspondant knew how to conserve their independence vis-a-vis the government, and how to gain the respect of public opinion for the excellence of their work...
...His immediate assistants are Maurice Brilliant and the Comte de Luppe...
...Edouard Trogan, who as a young man was secretary to the Comte de Falloux, has directed the progress of the Correspondant since 1910...
...During the four years of the republic of 1848, they reaped the profits of their sincerely progressive politics...
...Their articles were signed by illustrious names: Charles Lenormant (then editor-in-chief) Foisset, the friend and future biographer of Lacordaire, the historian Henri de Riancey, and Louis Veuillot, then beginning his career and bubbling over with talent...
...Monsignor Baudrillart said a Mass of thanksgiving for the centenary of the Correspondant...
...Doubtless this interest in the United States harmonizes well with the numerous services which the Correspondant has rendered during a century to the cause of religion by showing, in a particular way, its accord with political liberty, with true progress, with sane democracy...
...The Correspondant is today the oldest of the reviews of general interest published in France...
...38 THE COMMONWEAL May 15, 1929 ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SUCCESS By FELIX KLEIN ON APRIL 18 there was held, in that illustrious church of the Cannes which now serves the Institut Catholique as a chapel, a ceremony so unusual in character that it merits the attention of Catholics resident in the United States as well as of those who live in Paris...
...During the whole of the nineteenth century, the history of the Correspondant is closely bound up with the history of the Church in France...
...Thus a brilliant pleiade was grouped round the Comte de Montalembert, leader in whom enthusiasm and fervent eloquence were combined...
...Quite naturally these directors grouped round themselves the elite of French Catholic writers...
...Its first number was issued on March 10, 1829— that is, near the close of the Restoration and on the eve of the revolution of 1830, when a great effort to promote a French Catholic renaissance was being put forth, but when the enemies of the Church were likewise trying hard to vilify Catholicism in the eyes of the people by associating it with a regime grown most unpopular and verging on dissolution...
...but the fight has often been bitter, and it is only just to pay homage to those who bore the brunt of the hard work...
...Then there were the much more important papers which the Vicomte de Meaux contributed regularly, beginning with an article on Catholics in the United States (1890...
...The bishop of Arras, Monsignor Julien, delivered an address which set forth the significance of this great French Catholic review, and both the cardinal archbishop of Paris and the apostolic nuncio honored the occasion with their presence...
...This good fortune was maintained under the two most recent editors, despite the difficulties incident to the war period...
...Etienne Lamy became a member of the Academy...
...Leopold de Gaillard was now editor-in-chief, but would eventually be succeeded by Leon Lavedan, the father of the present world-famous Academician...
...From the very beginning the editorial staff had marshaled an elite of young Catholics destined for brilliant futures—Montalembert, de Vogue, Augustin de Meaux, Berlioz, Edmond Wilson, May 15, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 39 Henri Gouraud among them...
...To these maxims it has remained inflexibly loyal...
...Cardinal Mathieu...
...It was under the direction of Leon Lavedan that the Correspondant was able (if one be permitted the use of such phrasing) to add to its great moral success the complement of material prosperity and to enter definitely upon the enjoyment of its reputation as an important review flourishing in every sense of the word...
Vol. 10 • May 1929 • No. 2
