EUROPEAN POLITICS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 133, 19 November 1875, Page 15

EUROPEAN POLITICS.

General de Cissey's official exertions have been quickened by the disturbances in the Herzegovina, which cannot fail to suggest apprehensions of a serious nature. Up to the present moment the immediately exciting causes of the insurrection are utterly unknown to the public, while not a few diplomatists attribute it to Eussian intrigues. Prussia, would like to occupy Austria and Rubsia with Turkish affairs, and would even encourage them to add to their dominions, and then when the annexations had been effected the German Empire would claim, its turn. It would say : You have partitioned Turkey ; now allow me to proceed to the conquest of two or three more provinces of France. Such are the designs one constantly hears attributed to "M. de Bismarck." Most persons here consider that the war will go on with various turns of fortune until next spring, and then about April, 1876, war will be declared against France. While Prussia is preparing for a fresh cimpaign against us the mischievous activity of Radicalism increases daily. The Catholic Congresses that have just taken place at Poitiers and at Rheims supply the Revolutionary press with a pretext for a fierce onslaught on the Church. The Government is bitterly reproached for allowing Catholics the liberty of forming associations and of holding meetings. The complaint is indeed founded in fact, for there are at the present time three important societies carrying on their operations in every important town in. France. These three societies are called, 1. "L'UniondesCEuvres/' or " Central Bureau," of which Mgr. de Segur is the director; 2. " Las Comitfe Catholiques," under the presidency of M. Chesnelong, member of the Assembly, and M. Lallemde, the editor of the 'Monde'; and 3. "Les Cercles Catholiques d'GEuvriers/' the presidents of which are Captain Comte de Mur, and Commandant Count de la Tour dv Pin Chambly. The Radicals accuse these societies and their directors of breaking the law by the establishment of their committees in the great towns. M. Buffet, as Minister of the Interior takes no notice of these complaints ; and so long as he is in power we are safe, but should there come a change of Ministry it is but too probable that the Catholic societies would be suppressed. The Radical papers are most furious against us ; they heap calumnies upon us. One of their assertions is that our charitable and benevolent societies are merely a cloak for political c >mbinations. This charge is certainly devoid of pretext, especially as regards the Central Bureau, which has no object in view save that of improving the condition of the working classes. The Cercles Catholiques have never even attempted to exercise any infuance over working-men in regard to elections; and as to the Comites Catholiques it only concerns itself about politics during election time. Is that any crime ? Everybody is thinking and. talking about the new Catholic Universities. It is now almost a certainty that in the one now being established at Paris the lectures will commence in October. The liabitat of the university will be the old Carmelite Convent (Les Cannes) in the Rive de Vaugirard, where such a nmltitude of priests and monks were massacred on the 2nd September, 1873. We shall have universities at Avignon, at Toulouse, at Angers, and at Lille. In some of them there will at first perho ps be a scarcity of professors, but the students will be numerous and zealons. The Positives are hoping to found a university at Paris by the assistance of some of their rich friends in England, but such a university will not be set up in a hurry. Sufficient funds will not, I expect, be forthcoming, and M. Buffet will not bo disposed to tolerate its establishment.