The Belgian Struggle for Education.
By Christian at Work
THE little kingdom of Belgium is a stronghold of Roman Catholicism of the extreme type. Out of a population of 5,000,000, not 50,000 are nominal Protestants. The church has ruled the people with a firm hand, and with a bold affirmation of its divine right so to do. To maintain this hold, it must of necessity have the direction of national education. This it held unquestioned till the Liberal Education act of 1879 wrested the power from its hands. This law was the work of the Liberals of Belgium aided by the Radicals. The former are Catholics, but revolted against a system of church education which kept the masses of the people in dense ignorance of most things except their duties to the church. From the day when the educational act of 1879 went into force, the priesthood have opposed it by every means which malignant ingenuity could devise. In opposition to the Government secular schools, they set up the parochial institutes. They refused the sacrament to children who attended the public schools, and to their parents as well. It was not that the education law banished religion from the schools, although it discarded church emblems; for an hour each day was allotted to the priest for instruction. This, however, was not the control which the church demanded, and the privilege was refused with scorn. The struggle over the schools was severe in the extreme, and the interest of the nation was roused to a burning heat. At the expiration of three years, the Clerical schools still held a majority of the children; but the superiority of the Government institutions was beginning slowly to tell. The violence of the Clericals naturally begat violence in return on the part of the Radicals. In a conservative country like Belgium, Radicalism was naturally dreaded. Accordingly, when it happened, a year or more ago, that the Government was driven to temporary alliance with the Radicals, in order to carry some of its measures in Parliament, a reaction began to show itself. In the election of the present year, this reaction ended in the return of a Clerical majority in Parliament, and a revolution in the ministry. Following this triumph, came a revision of the education law, which practically restores the priesthood to all their ancient control of the national education. It is this burning issue which has brought Belgium to the brink of revolution. The blame of the recent disorders in Brussels and other cities should be placed where it belongs. It does not rest upon the true Liberal party, but upon the impracticable, the petulant Radicals, who know no better arm for combating abuses than violence. Although the duties of a beaten minority are not too fully comprehended in either France or Belgium, it is evident that the Belgian Liberal leaders have the correct idea of them. Following the riotous demonstrations of the middle of September, they posted placards in the public places of Brussels, announcing their policy of peaceful, legal opposition to the obnoxious education statute. The factious and malignant opposition made by the Clericals to the law of 1879 would furnish ample warrant for a less legitimate procedure; but the true Liberals of Belgium are in sober, conscientious earnest, and are unwilling to imperil their sacred cause by using the weapons which they have denounced when wielded by their adversaries. It may be hoped, therefore, that the Belgian school issue will have a peaceable solution, when sober second thought has time to assert itself. What effect the threatened Encyclical of the pope against the Liberals may have is not certain, but it may be expected to bring more sharply to the front in Belgium the real issue, which there, as in France, underlies the school question—that of the entire separation of church and State. The conflict will be long and severe, and, as in the present contention, the difficulties of the genuine Liberals may be intensified by the factiousness and intolerance of their Radical allies. With Clericalism on the one hand, and Red Republicanism on the other, the sincere friends of liberal institutions have a most perplexing and difficult mission.—Christian at Work.