Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/240

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2.W S. E. Baldiuin its efforts for their own sake. In Finland, for instance, in the Lutheran denomination which there prevails, confirmation is refused to those who cannot read, and the consequence is that illiteracy is rare. So in a conquered country, if an established church survives^ it may prove a nursery of patriotism. Modern Greece as an inde- pendent kingdom owes its existence to the Greek church. This kept alive the national feeling and tongue during the long years of Turkish occupation.^ The church appeals to what is poetic in our nature, and as our associate President Woodrow Wilson has finely said : " We live by Poetry ; and not by Prose." But the only true establishment of a church is in the hearts of those who belong to it. If they have faith in its principles, these will have a large influence in guiding their action as citizens in public affairs. Fear of its discipline, be it established or unestab- lished, will not. The attitude of every important church towards socialism is antagonistic. If it become official antagonism, it loses power. Why is socialism steadily growing in political weight, throughout Europe ? Why in France did its friends cast nearly half a million more votes at the elections of this year, than in any previous one? It is a sign of the decadence there of the power of the Vatican, pushed unwisely to the front in its encyclicals. It was a natural incident of the struggle which was separating church and state. As Pro- fessor Blondel has said of it : " Le peuple frangais est sans doute moins irreligieux qu'on ne le pretend quelquefois, mais il est tres defiant a I'egard de tout ce qui lui apparait comme une ingerence clericale, et n'accorde pas volontiers sa confiance a ceux qu'il soupcjonne de sympathie a I'egard du ' gouvernement des cures.' "- The jealousy of clerical government on the part of the French people, however, is largely because they have learned to look on it as a government inspired from Rome, subject to Rome. One of last year's books bears the title Les Deux Frances. They are the France of the Blacks and the France of the Reds ; of the party of King and Church, and that of Revolution. A party stand- ing for old institutions cannot easily be displaced by a party standing for new institutions, unless these rise up as the outcome and ex- pression of a spirit of individualism, native to the soil. If each party rests for its support on corporate influences, the struggle will ' Autobiography of Andrew D. White, II. 439. ^Blatter fiir vergleichende Rechtsivissenschaft und Volksicirlschaftslehre, July, 1906, p. 178.