FOCH AND CLEMENCEAU.

New Zealand Tablet, 17 July 1919, Page 23

FOCH AND CLEMENCEAU.

The Lutheran, which cannot be accused of Catholic bias, says:—"No two men could stand further apart than Foch the . marshal and Clemeneeau the statesman. The one is a devout Catholic; the other a freethinker, if not a downright unbeliever. Politically the one belongs to the Clerical Party—and the other to the Anti-Clerical Party two parties were like fire and water, they would not mix. Everybody knows of the bitter feuds between these two parties, and of how the free-thinking Government of France harassed and humiliated the Catholic Church and unseated it as a power in political affairs. But the war has wrought a great change. It was this same Clemenceau who despised the Church that called Foch to the head of the army. When Foch said to him, 'I propose to consecrate my armies to the Sacred Heart of Jesus/ Clemenceau gave the characteristic answer: 'Consecrate them to whatsoever you will so long as you win.' When the political barriers had broken down and the people fought and suffered as one, and when it was discovered that the soldiers who had a religion and a conscience were : man for man the : best in the army, 'Old Tiger' lost his claws and teeth and changed his whole attitude towards the Church (which France is of course predominantly Catholic). On the day the Armistice was signed, he spoke of General Foch in. the Chamber of Deputies as 'the soldier of God.' While we as Protestants could wish that the evangelical Christianity were more in evidence in France than it is, we may well rejoice that the attitude of the Government towards the Church has undergone a radical change/ Carlyle was wontl. to say that so long as there was a soul of good left in any religion or institution, . it would not die, and Protestants will wish the Catholic Church well in. that, country; for as between unbelief and a Protestant liberalism which knows not what it 'believes, on the one hand, and Catholicism on the other, it would not be hard to choose/' "'■' "v '"; -•/ ■■'-'.