FRANCE

New Zealand Tablet, 25 April 1912, Page 55

FRANCE

A FOREIGN MISSIONARY society. > The Paris Society for Foreign Missions is far from decreasing. From the year 1888 to 1909 it nearly doubled the number of its priests. In 1888 they were 804; in 1909 they reached the never heretofore attained figure of 1415. As a matter of fact, in the history of the organisation, these last twenty years, as a whole, have been its banner years for vocations to the foreign mission field. 3, INCREASE OF CRIME. ' * - The crimes that now abound in France are the theme of private conversations and of articles "in the public press. The people are in a state of alarm and know not how to protect themselves. The malefactors have become very daring. Ruffians who carry deadly weapons are adopting all sorts of expedients to rob and plunder more effectively. The murder of a policeman in a crowded street by one of three men who had stolen and were driving in a motor car lately caused something of a panic. An extract from the speech delivered by M. Lepine, Prefect of Police, at the victim’s funeral, will show what is the condition of the city. ‘ You will ask,’ said M. Lepine, ‘ how many there are of these scoundrels. There are thousands of them. For twenty years I have been making complaints on the subject. Their number is increasing every day. Can we wonder that scattered, and, as it were, lost in a population of four millions, they at times notify their existence by some horrible crime?’ The remedy which M. Lepine suggests is greater severity. French criminals are, he thinks, treated too leniently owing to humanitarian sentiment they are not subjected to sufficient hardships. The Prefect does not go to the root of the evil. If he had done so he would have told the French Government that by their policy of opposition to religion they are placing French youth on the road to crime.