ERANCE AND GERMANY.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 17, Issue 970, 17 March 1871, Page 2

ERANCE AND GERMANY.

Father Hyacinthe recently delivered an address at the Hanover Square Rooms, London, before a large audience, on the, subject of " France and Germany." We quote his peroration, as reported by the. Times :

France is Catholic by tradition, by temperament, by the exigence of its logical development; but in France was borjs ; the Protestantism of Calvin as well as the .ardent Catholicism of Bossuet. Germany, on her side, is a patient animal which bears every burden except that which presses upon conscience j and in that way she became the cradle of Protestantism. —: a manifestation sincere and grandiose* though excessive. Speaking even in England, I will say that Germany has the greatest Universities in the world * her knowledge and research, if sometimes rash, are always profound and fertile ; her piety naive and heartfelt. But then Germany is Catholic too, and her Catholics (and the Father paid a high tribute to Dr Dollinger) are learned, anxious for reform in the Pioman system, and tolerant, the most fraternal relations existing iu some places between the two communions. There is no necessity for antagonism, then, between the two nations in race, in policy, or in religion; all these things, in fact, should make for peace. Iu the hands of God war has indeed been, and may again be, an instrument of progress. If, as the result of this war, Germany obtains unity and increased strength, developing her intellectual and moral life, with a corresponding political development, which shall make her, not a great military and absolutist nation, but a peaceful natiou in the heart of Europe, that will be a great gain to civilisation. As to France (said the Father, with intense feeling), my poor country, stretched like a bleeding victim at the feet of the invader, yet battling with all the energy of despair, one is tempted at first to cry, as the Poles cried years ago, Finis Gallics / But, no! France needed deliverance from herself, and deliverance now will, come, I speak of her not politically, but morally and socially, and as such she was a bad example the nations. I say that for her her own sake and that of the world it was necessary she should ba saved from the abyss to which she was approaching. In 1867 —from the pulpit oi' Notre Dame —I warned my hearers o( the luxury and vice which carried in their bosom the seeds of social aud of national dissolution. It is something already to see the freedom of Italy accomplished through this down by the ill-directed force of France.. It is something to see along with the deliverance of Italy, the commencement of the regeneration of my great Church—the Church of Rome. If this war sends, us also deliverance from the crying evils I have mentioned at home, then, since there was indeed no other remedy, thank.

God for a war which restores to us ouX ancient manners and our ancient purity —a war which gives us once again a race of chaste women and brave men.