they were dubbed " green cardinals," because so many of the signers were privileged to wear on their coat the green palm of the French Academy. bishops, however, were not uninfluenced by this appeal. Some of them, like the Archbishop of Rouen, had independently upheld the law. It is probable that in the Assembly of Bishops, by a large majority, a decision was reached in favor of organizing under the new law. Thus if the question for the Catholic Church in France could have been decided by the suffrage of its most distinguished laymen or by that of the bishops, the vote would have been for submission. In France, however, while the affairs of the nation are settled by popular suffrage and by representative government, the affairs of the Church are settled by an appeal to the Pope, who has disregarded the bishops and the law.

A writer in the Catholic World, of New York, describing the situation before the Pope's decision, says: "The lay Catholics of France were then divided into two camps: on the one side there were those who were called 'submissionists,' and on the other the advocates of resistance. The hierarchy and the clergy were equally divided." "So long as the Holy See had made no definite pronouncement concerning the policy which French Catholics ought to adopt, they were very much divided on the question, but unanimity instantly reigned on the day when Pope Pius X. formally indicated a definite policy."

This unanimity is not the unanimity of conviction, but of obedience. It is the unanimity with which soldiers obey a general even when they know he is wrong. A distinguished prelate of the Catholic Church in this country has publicly said that if Leo XIII. had been in the papal chair the deadlock would not have occurred. Another Catholic equally eminent has said that the present Pope knows nothing of international politics, does not understand France, and is guided by a small clique at Rome. It is not alone American Protestants who doubt the wisdom of governing a Church so that the ripest conviction of its most eminent men, both lay and clerical, is

set aside by the edict of one man in a foreign land; many French Catholics have left the Church because they cannot be loyal to an authority that does. not command their convictions. They refuse to accept the formula of M. Brunetière to obey the Pope in the dark if they cannot obey him in the light. The most pathetic aspect of the religious. situation in France is not due to the action of the Government, which has not closed the churches; it is due to the fact that thousands on thousands of Catholic have left the Church because they decline longer to accept its dogmas or its authority. They are orphaned Catholics without a religious home. They cannot be recalled by decrees or anathemas.

Catholics, both regular and nominal, in France may concede the right of the Pope to decree as to vestments and doctrines, and to decide questions that are purely religious; but a majority of the thirty-six millions of Catholics have decided that they will not longer maintain a political alliance with the Pope or recognize in any official way the doctrine of his temporal sovereignty. Under this conviction, France has abolished the Concordat between the Pope and the State.

In doing this has France violated an international obligation? It is not difficult to answer this question both from the standpoint of ethics and of international law. The Concordat was an agreement made between Napoleon I. and the Pope in 1801, with reference to the status of the Catholic Church in France. There is not a clause in it that indicates that it was in the nature of a perpetual contract. Indeed, there is a clause which indicates the contrary. It was provided that if at any time the successor of the First Consul should not be a Catholic, there should be a new agreement.

In refusing to regard the Pope any longer as a foreign potentate, France has taken a step which Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel took for Italy years ago, in spite of Napoleon III. At the last Hague Conference the existence of the Pope as a sovereign was not even recognized, France may well claim that it

could not recognize the sovereignty of the Pope, because every vestige of it is gone.

Has France repudiated a national debt?

Upon what is the accusation based? Upon the assumption that the agreement to pay salaries in the Concordat was to be perpetual. The article of the Concordat reads: "The government assures a proper salary to the bishops and pastors whose dioceses may be included in the rearrangement." There was no contract as to how much should be paid or how long.

It has been said that France has actually done what the State of New York would do if it should seize and hold the property of Trinity Church. France has not assumed to-day in the new law the ownership of any buildings or churches which it has not owned for more than a hundred years under the Concordat. In that document the Pope formally renounced on behalf of the Church the title to the property acquired by the nation in the French Revolution. For instance, the ancient churches such as Notre Dame and the Oratoire, the former a Catholic and the latter a Prot estant house of worship, belong to the French Government. For a hundred years France has allowed these religious bodies to use them. The new law does not confiscate them; it simply reaffirms the title to them which was declared in the Concordat. Nor has the State confiscated any church buildings erected since the Concordat and built by the individual offerings of pious Catholics. The law does not raise the question of their title. When there is any doubt on this point, it leaves the decision to the courts.

With reference to other property, real and personal, now held by the Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish churches, it requires that an inventory shall be taken of the same, and that it shall be legally held by associations or trustees formed from the representatives of these bodies. The law reads: " Conforming to the regulations of the general organization of the religious worship of which they propose to assure the exercise." The twenty-three eminent Catholics whose address to the bishops has already been

The

referred to laid great stress upon this; they pointed out that the Pope had "the power to outline what are the general laws of organization for a Catholic association of worship." They completely answered the objection that such an association must be composed only of laymen, the rock of offense to the Pontiff. These eminent Catholics showed conclusively that the object of the law was to prevent non-religious associations from getting possession of the churches; they declare, "We are not hindered by the Law of Separation from believing what we choose, nor from practicing what we believe;" the hierarchy remains intact; our churches, too, being allowed to remain at the disposition of organized associations and under the direction of the bishops;" and they point out the disastrous results of not organizing under the law.

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The asperity of the discussion, and the evident desire of the extreme radicals to affront the dignity of the Pope and the Catholic Church, and even to scoff at religion itself, are greatly to be deplored, as is the violence of a few extremists, both clerical and secular, especially in the taking of inventories, a prudent measure in the law introduced at the demand of the Conservatives. It is to the credit of the great majority of Catholics, however, that they have refused to listen to the appeals of incendiary journals like La Croix; and it is to the credit of the Government that it has demanded, and in most cases secured, moderation on the part of its officials. These are matters incident to the enforcement of the law; they do not affect its underlying principle.

We have shown what France has not done. It is not difficult to understand what it has done. Omitting all unnecessary and minor details of the law, France has apparently decided:

That the union between Church and State shall be severed; that the Roman Catholic Church shall no longer be a privileged religion; that all sects shall stand on the same footing before the law; that liberty of conscience and freedom of worship shall be guaranteed to all; that the Government will no longer sustain official relations with the Pope;

situation. It is very hard, for instance, for a layman to understand why the provisions for transporting people across New York are so hopelessly inadequate. At the foot of West Twenty-third Street four large railways have their city terminals and pour in every day an army of men and women. To distribute this army over the city there is a single railway through Twenty-third Street. Between four and six o'clock in the evening the accommodations for passengers who wish to go to the ferries at the foot of West Twenty-third Street are hopelessly inadequate; and in the morning, from eight to ten, when the army of commuters and shoppers come in from the various roads across the Hudson River, they swarm around the insufficient cars like bees around a hive. The disproportion between these commuters and travelers and the means of carrying them would be ridiculous if it were not exasperating. There ought to be a conference of the passenger agents of the four railways that have terminals in West Twenty-third Street and the managers of the Twentythird Street electric car line to provide for a proper distribution of the multitude that is landed there every day and is often obliged to wait in the bitter winds of winter until a number of cars have passed before it is possible to obtain even foot-room. To the lay mind the construction of some kind of a loop at West Twenty-third Street would seem imperative, or the building of parallel lines through Twenty-second or Twenty-fourth Streets. Under any circumstances, the number of cars in use during the rush hours ought to be very largely increased.

Another source of discomfort in New York is the multitude of unnecessary noises. The daily life of a modern city cannot be conducted without a great deal of noise, but probably two-thirds of the most irritating sounds that pierce the ears of residents of New York are unnecessary. Mrs. Rice, who has organized the Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noises, is in the way of rendering the public a great service if she succeeds in carrying out the work which she has planned. She has interested a number of the most prominent men of the metropolis, and proposes, in the first

place, to secure relief for the hospitals. She calls attention to the fact that the street-car company that operates a line of cars passing St. Vincent's Hospital on Seventh Avenue agreed, at the time of securing its franchise, that no bells should be rung in front of the building, and she asks very pertinently why the same rule cannot be enforced in the neighborhood of other hospitals. She hopes to secure the co-operation of automobile clubs in order that, in passing the hospitals, noises may be avoided. She intends to ask that a policeman be assigned on every block on which there is a hospital. Several physicians in different hospitals who have been consulted are agreed that street noises in the neighborhood of these institutions are a serious menace to the well-being of patients, and one of them expressed the opinion that two patients in the hospital with which he is connected became insane during the year owing, partly, to the constant noises prevailing about the building. If Mrs. Rice is able to effect, even in part, what she has in mind, she will render a very important service not only to the hospitals but to residents of New York, and the movement may lead the way to a marked diminution of one of the most uncomfortable concomitants of city residence. It is high time. to study the possibilities of diminishing the discomforts of living in one of the most interesting cities of America.

During the last few months residents of New York have endured the discomforts of traveling across the Desert of Sahara or over the alkali plains of Montana without securing novelty of surroundings or unusual scenery. Not in the memory of this generation have the streets of the city been in such a deplorable condition. In wet weather the mud in many places is inches deep; in dry and windy weather the streets are filled with clouds of dust. The condition is deplorable; and unless circumstances exist which are unknown to the public, it is unpardonable. What has happened to the street-cleaning department? has it gone into the hands of a receiver? It is giving New York the reputation of being the dirtiest city in America.

Not many years ago, under