A CAUSE OF SYMPATHY IN FRANCE FOR SPAIN.
PRESIDENT CHARLES LEWIS LOOS, of Kentucky University, discusses, in the Independent of June 30, the question of French sympathy with Spain in this present conflict. Besides the enormous French financial interests involved, and the existing jealousy felt toward this nation by European nations in common, over “the prodigious growth of the United States in territory, power, political and commercial influence,” President Loos gives the following:— “First of all, the Catholic clergy are yet, in spite of the widespread anti-clerical spirit there, a great power in France. Protestants now number much less than one million, as against thirty million Catholics in that land. Spain is known as a Catholic nation by pre-eminence, the most intensely so among the Catholic countries of the world; while the United States is justly regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Protestant nation of the earth. It is inevitable that to the common Catholic mind of Europe, particularly of Latin Europe, the present war should appear as one of Protestantism against Catholicism: all on one side are Catholics; the overwhelming majority on the other side are Protestants. This is the light in which the Catholics of Spain and France look upon this war; and no one need be surprised at it.” “Moreover, the body of the French clergy—and their name is legion—are intense monarchists; this is unquestioned; and the United States is the great republic of the earth, that gives example, inspiration, and direction to the republican aspirations of the nations; while Spain, on the other hand, is the embodiment, every way, of the old monarchical ideas. And then, beyond this, the French priesthood are devoted to the Bourbons, as the lawful inheritors, by ‘divine right,’ of the throne of France; and the royal house of Spain is also Bourbon. With the French clergy of the old school, who are in the large majority, Protestantism and republicanism, such as it is here, with absolute religious freedom, are both from beneath, alike awful heresies. Put the two together, and imagine how the clergy of Spain and France must regard this union.” It will be seen by the above how large a part Catholicism is playing in this great drama.