Rights cannot be denied to those who
fulfilled duties involving self-sacrifice of the sublimest kind with
unflinching devotion. No practical interest of democracy then is
involved in the conflict of the western powers.
As to their representing liberal institutions in a higher or lower
degree, I am perfectly willing to admit England's superior claims in
that respect, but I am not at all inclined to recognize such superiority
in modern France, republic though she calls herself. The omnipresence
and omnipotence of an obtruding bureaucratic officialism is just what it
has been under the old monarchy; religious oppression has only changed
sides, but it still flourishes as before. In former times the Roman
Catholic religion was considered as a State religion and in her name
were dissent and Freemasonry oppressed; today atheism is the official
creed, and on its behalf are Catholic believers oppressed.
Separation of Church and State, honestly planned and loyally fulfilled
in America has been perverted in modern France into a network of
vexations and unfair measures against the Church and her faithful
servants; the same term is used and this misleads you to cover widely
different meanings.
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