the opinions of his people, he respects spiritual things and wishes to control them without interfering with them and without becoming entangled himself in them; he wants to make them square with his policy, but by the influence of temporal things."[1] In the same way, Millerand was commissioned to assure the workmen that their Socialist convictions would not be interfered with; the Government only wanted to direct the action of the syndicates and to make them fit in with its own policy.
Napoleon had said, "You will see how I shall be able to utilise the priests."[2] Millerand was instructed to gratify in every way the vanity of the leaders of the syndicates,[3] while the mission of the prefects was to induce the employers to grant material advantages to the workers; it was thought that this Napoleonic policy would give results as considerable as those obtained from the policy pursued in regard to the Church. Dumay, the Minister of Public Worship, had succeeded in creating a docile episcopacy formed of men whom the ardent Catholics contemptuously called the "préfets violets."[4] Might it not be possible, by putting a shrewd principal clerk in the office of the minister, to create "préfets rouges." An this was fairly well thought out and corresponded perfectly with the kind of talent possessed by Waldeck-Rousseau, who was all his life a great partisan of the Concordat and was fond of negotiating with Rome. It was not unpleasing to him to negotiate with the reds; the very originality of the enterprise would have been enough to charm a mind like his, that delighted in subtlety.
- ↑ Taine, Le Régime moderne, vol. ii. p. 10.
- ↑ Taine, loc. cit. p. 11.
- ↑ This is what Mme. Georges Renard very sensibly points out in her report of a workmen's féte given by Millerand (L. de Seilhac, Le Monde socialiste, p. 308).
- ↑ [Préfets violets; this expression was used ironically by several papers to designate bishops who were too submissive to the Government. Catholic bishops wear a violet robe.—Trans. Note.]
