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THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE JESUITS
Only the secular clergy is still somewhat reserved. In the Congregations, things are more virulent: "On the 15th of July 1898, prize-giving day at the College of Arcueil, presided over by Generalissimo Jamont (vice-president of the Superior Council of War), Father Didon, rector of the School Albert-le-Grand, gave a violent speech in which he advocated using violence against the men whose crime had been the couragous denunciation of a military error... "Must we", said the eloquent monk, "let the wicked go free? Certainly not! The enemy is: intellectualism pretending to despise force, and civilians wanting to subordinate the military. When persuasion has failed, when love(!) has been ineffectual, we must brandish the sword, spread terror, chop off heads, make war, strike..." "This speech seemed to be a challenge thrown before all the sympathisers of that condemned wretch".(92) But how many of them have we heard since then? These calls to bloody repressions, coming from gentle clerics, especially during the German occupation! As for the cry of hatred against intellectualism, we can find the perfect echo to it in this declaration from a certain general: "When someone speaks of intelligence, I draw my revolver". To crush the thought by force is a principle of the Roman Church which has never altered. The Abbe Brugerette wonders, however, about the fact that nothing disturbed the clergy's belief in the culpability of Dreyfus: "Such a great and dramatic event, coming like a clap of thunder in a blue sky and bringing to light the Department for forgeries operating at the general-staff, must have opened the eyes, even of those not wanting to find the truth. We are referring to the discovery of forgeries made by Henry... "Had not the time come for the French clergy and the Catholics to repudiate a mistake which had gone on for too long... They, the priests and the faithful could have gone, en-masse, and at the eleventh hour like the workmen mentioned in the gospels, to increase the ranks of the defenders of justice and truth... But the most evident facts do not always shed their light on minds dominated by certain prejudices, as prejudices are opposed to examination and, by their nature, rebel against evidence".(93) Anyway, what efforts are made to maintain Catholics in error! "Could they guess that they were scandalously deceived by a press stubbornly keeping covered all the proofs of innocence, all the testimonies favourable to the convict of Devil's Island, and also determined to impede the course of Justice by any means?"(94) At the forefront of that press was "La Libre Parole", created, as we have (92) Abbe Brugerette, op.cit., II, p.451. (93) (94) and (96) Abbe Brugerette, op.cit., II,
pp.443, 444, 448.