in Paris. The publication of this document caused some joy among the extreme clericals, but this was nothing to the exultation of the extreme anti-clericals, who saw that the prudent diplomacy of Leo XIII., which had risen superior to many a provocation of the French government, was succeeded by a papal policy which would facilitate their designs in a manner Diplomatic crisis with Rome. unhoped for. Moderate men were dismayed, seeing that the Concordat was now in instant danger; but the majority of the French nation remained entirely indifferent to its fate. Within a week France took the initiative by recalling the ambassador to the Vatican, M. Nisard, leaving a third-secretary in charge. In the debate in the Chamber upon the incident, the foreign minister, M. Delcassé, said that the ambassador was recalled, not because the Vatican had protested against the visit of the president to the king of Italy, but because it had communicated this protest, in terms offensive to France, to foreign powers. The Chamber on the 27th of May approved the recall of the ambassador by the large majority of 420 to 90. By a much smaller majority it rejected a Socialist motion that the Nuncio should be given his passports. The action of the Holy See was not actually an infringement of the Concordat; so the government, satisfied with the effect produced on public opinion, which was now quite prepared for a rupture with the Vatican, was willing to wait for a new pretext, which was not long in coming. Two bishops, Mgr. Geay of Laval and Mgr. Le Nordez of Dijon, were on bad terms with the clerical reactionaries in their dioceses. The friends of the prelates, including some of their episcopal brethren, thought that their chief offence was their loyalty to the Republic, and it was an unfortunate coincidence that these bishops, subjected to proceedings which had been unknown under the long pontificate of Leo XIII., should have been two who had incurred the animosity of anti-republicans. Their enemies accused Mgr. Geay of immorality and Mgr. Le Nordez of being in league with the freemasons. The bishop of Laval was summoned by the Holy Office, without any communication with the French government, to resign his see, and he submitted the citation forthwith to the minister of public worship. The French chargé d’affaires at the Vatican was instructed to protest against this grave infringement of an article of the Concordat, and, soon after, against another violation of the Concordat committed by the Nuncio, who had written to the bishop of Dijon ordering him to suspend his ordinations, the Nuncio being limited, like all other ambassadors, to communicating the instructions of his government through the intermediary of the minister for foreign affairs. The Vatican declined to give any satisfaction to the French government and summoned the two bishops to Rome under pain of suspension. So the French chargé d’affaires was directed to leave Rome, after having informed the Holy See that the government of the Republic considered that the mission of the apostolic Nuncio in Paris was terminated. Thus came to an end on the 30th of July 1904 the diplomatic relations which under the Concordat had subsisted between France and the Vatican for more than a hundred years.
Twelve days later M. Waldeck-Rousseau died, having lived just long enough to see this unanticipated result of his policy. It was said that his resolve to regulate the religious associations arose from his feeling that whatever injustice had been committed in the Dreyfus case had been aggravated by the action of certain unauthorized orders. However that may be, his own utterances showed that he believed that his policy was one of finality. But he had not reckoned that his legislation, which needed hands as calm and impartial as his own to apply it, would be used in a manner he had not contemplated by sectarian politicians who would be further aided by the self-destructive policy of the highest authorities of the Church. When parliament assembled for the autumn session a general feeling was expressed, by moderate politicians as well as by supporters of the Combes ministry, that disestablishment was inevitable. The prime minister said that he had been long in favour of it, though the previous year he had intimated to M. Nisard, ambassador to the Vatican, that he had not a majority in parliament to vote it. But the papacy and the clergy had since done everything to change that situation. The Chamber did not move in the matter beyond appointing a committee to consider the general question, to which M. Combes submitted in his own name a bill for the separation of the churches from the State.
During the last three months of 1904 public opinion was diverted to the cognate question of the existence of masonic delation in the army. M. Guyot de Villeneuve, Nationalist deputy for Saint Denis, who had been dismissed from the army by General de Galliffet in War Office difficulties. connexion with the Dreyfus affair, brought before the Chamber a collection of documents which, it seemed, had been abstracted from the Grand Orient of France, the headquarters of French freemasonry, by an official of that order. These papers showed that an elaborate system of espionage and delation had been organized by the freemasons throughout France for the purpose of obtaining information as to the political opinions and religious practices of the officers of the army, and that this system was worked with the connivance of certain officials of the ministry of war. Its aim appeared to be to ascertain if officers went to mass or sent their children to convent schools or in any way were in sympathy with the Roman Catholic religion, the names of officers so secretly denounced being placed on a black-list at the War Office, whereby they were disqualified for promotion. There was no doubt about the authenticity of the documents or of the facts which they revealed. Radical ex-ministers joined with moderate Republicans and reactionaries in denouncing the system. Anti-clerical deputies declared that it was no use to cleanse the war office of the influence of the Jesuits, which was alleged to have prevailed there, if it were to be replaced by another occult power, more demoralizing because more widespread. Only the Socialists and a few of the Radical-Socialists in the Chamber supported the action of the freemasons. General André, minister of war, was so clearly implicated, with the evident approval of the prime minister, that a revulsion of feeling against the policy of the anti-clerical cabinet began to operate in the Chamber. Had the opposition been wisely guided there can be little doubt that a moderate ministry would have been called to office and the history of the Church in France might have been changed. But the reactionaries, with their accustomed folly, played into the hands of their adversaries. The minister of war had made a speech which produced a bad impression. As he stepped down from the tribune he was struck in the face by a Nationalist deputy for Paris, a much younger man than he. The cowardly assault did not save the minister, who was too deeply compromised in the delation scandal. But it saved the anti-clerical party, by rallying a number of waverers who, until this exhibition of reactionary policy, were prepared to go over to the Moderates, from the “bloc,” as the ministerial majority was called. The Nationalist deputy was committed to the assizes on the technical charge of assaulting a functionary while performing his official duties. Towards the end of the year, on the eve of his trial, he met with a violent death, and the circumstances which led to it, when made public, showed that this champion of the Church was a man of low morality. General André had previously resigned and was succeeded as minister of war by M. Berteaux, a wealthy stock-broker and a Socialist.
The Combes cabinet could not survive the delation scandal, in spite of the resignation of the minister of war and the ineptitude of the opposition. On the 8th of January 1905, two days before parliament met, an election took place in Paris to fill the vacancy caused by the death Fall of the Combes ministry. of the Nationalist deputy who had assaulted General André. The circumstances of his death, at that time partially revealed, did not deter the electors from choosing by a large majority a representative of the same party, Admiral Bienaimé, who the previous year had been removed for political reasons from the post of maritime prefect at Toulon, by M. Camille Pelletan, minister of marine. A more serious check to the Combes ministry was given by the refusal of the Chamber to re-elect as president M. Brisson, who was defeated by a majority of twenty-five
