Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/244

2 34 5". E. Baldivin The German is taught reHgion in the school. He is reminded of it from the throne. The Emperor William, as fully as the Czar, seizes every opportunity to claim a divine sanction for his author- ity.' He has thrust France aside as the universal protector of Catholic missions in the East, and found his profit in it by large territorial acquisitions in China, seized in retaliation for outrages on German missionaries. He has made his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. France, too, of late, in the same way, has so shaped her Chinese policy that the flag has followed the missionary. The re- public has clung to the ecclesiastical prerogatives of the monarchy, though with the abrogation of the Concordat it is difficult to see how its protectorate over Eastern missions can hereafter be asserted. A religious motive in foreign affairs can only be seriously ad- vanced when a religious motive is recognized in home affairs. The loss of that in the French Revolution was one of the first things of the consequence of which, after the restoration, Talleyrand warned Louis XVni. when consulting with him over the best assur- ances with which to surround his throne. You have, said he, to deal with a people " accustomed to found their rights on their pretensions, and their pretensions on their power." " Formerly, religious influence could support royal authority ; it can do so no longer, now that religious indifference has pervaded all classes, and become almost universal." " Royal authority can therefore only derive support from public opinion, and to obtain this it must be in accord with that opinion." " It may be doubted whether religious indifference was so wide- spread in the France of 1815, when this was written. If so, it was because of a torrent of revolution which for the time had swept before it the good and the bad alike. That torrent has left to public opinion a lasting place of power over human governments, but it has also, I believe, left religion in its old place as the main foundation of public opinion. Early in 1905, the Emperor of Germany, in a public address,^ declared that the defeats of Russia in her war with Japan were due to the deplorable condition of Russian Christianity. It was deplor- able because directed by a state church which failed to respond to the spirit of the times. None of its members could abandon it for another without forfeiting all civil rights, including that of holding ' See particularly his speech at Coblentz, August 31, 1897, quoted in Reinsch, World Politics, p. 301. 'Memoirs of Talleyrand, Putnam's edition, III. 130, 147. 'On March 9, 1905, in an address before the naval recruits at Wilhelms- haven.