In France

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 13, 28 March 1907, Page 10

In France

'! How times are changed ! Only -a few months ago | the atheistic news agencies in Paris held ■ possession of the submarine cable and made its atoms vibrate to the * ends of the earth with g-oss : and persistent misrepresentations of .the real situations as between the Church and the Christ-hunters in France. ' Falsehood (as an eastern proverb has it) skips round .the earth while truth is getting her shoes on. It was even so, in the present case. But you cannot deceive all the people all the time,. The great body of the secular press,throughout the- world now at length realises that the struggle in France is not a mere conflict of interests between Church and- State, but a war of •no^quar-ter which afficial atheism is waging .against ' Christianity. The game ; is up. And so 'the cold chain . of silence' has fallen on- the atheistic strand in the French cable. And yet there is much— much that is even sensational — to tell. ,A- state approaching that of civil war exists, for instance,,,o r c wide regions of France. All Brittany, for instance, is 'up' against the,, seizure of its -churches, - seminaries, and ecclesiastical -dwellings.- At S. Anne - d' Auray, over 20,000 persons assembled to defend their beloved shrine. It^.tpolr 4000 armed .Jsjldiers to. break . dowii the. barricades 1 and seize the sacred edifice. "- In . another -town«lso persons were wounded — a record that* resembles some of " the 'great' battles of '--the : Soulh African war. Page after page of ' Le, Nouvelliste de.' Bretagne ' (a daily, paper published at JJennes)— mime-:, rous copies of which are be-fore -us— 4s nlled^with rdports of such great popular demonstrations against those who are ' hunting Christ ' out of "the country and seizing churches, and driving bishops "and clergy out ,. or their dwellings and students out of the seminaries. at the point of the bayonet. But on these matters, the'Paris cable agencies— so glib and voluble * r a few weeks ago— are now (at least as regards New, Zealand) as^sifent? as . the Sphynx. ~ _„ . - ' ' v. :