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HISTORY] by a majority of nearly two to one the Senate voted the placarding of the prime minister’s speech in all the communes of France, and that the mover of the resolution was M. Combes, senator of the Charente-Inférieure, a politician of advanced views who up to that date had held office only once, when he was minister of education and public worship for about six months, in the Bourgeois administration in 1895–1896.

The “Law relating to the contract of Association” was promulgated on the 2nd of July 1901, and its enactment was the only political event of high importance that year. The Socialists, except in their anti-clerical capacity, were more active outside parliament than within. Early in the

year some formidable strikes took place. At Montceau-les-Mines in Burgundy, where labour demonstrations had often been violent, a new feature of a strike was the formation of a trade-union by the non-strikers, who called their organization “the yellow trade-union” (le syndicat jaune) in opposition to the red trade-union of the strikers, who adopted the revolutionary flag and were supported by the Socialist press. At the same time the dock-labourers at Marseilles went out on strike, by the orders of an international trade-union in that port, as a protest against the dismissal of a certain number of foreigners. The number of strikes in France had increased considerably under the Waldeck-Rousseau government. Its opponents attributed this to the presence in the cabinet of M. Millerand, who had been ranked as a Socialist. On the other hand, the revolutionary Socialists excommunicated the minister of commerce for having joined a “bourgeois government” and retired from the general congress of the Socialist party at Lyons, where MM. Briand and Viviani, themselves future ministers, persuaded the majority not to go so far. The federal committee of miners projected a general strike in all the French coal-fields, and to that end organized a referendum. But of 125,000 miners inscribed on their lists nearly 70,000 abstained from voting, and although the general strike was voted in October by a majority of 34,000, it was not put into effect. Another movement favoured by the Socialists was that of anti-militarism. M. Hervé, a professor at the lycée of Sens, had written, in a local journal, the Pioupiou de l’Yonne, on the occasion of the departure of the conscripts for their regiments, some articles outraging the French flag. He was prosecuted and acquitted at the assizes at Auxerre in November, a number of his colleagues in the teaching profession coming forward to testify that they shared his views. The local educational authority, the academic council of Dijon, however, dismissed M. Hervé from his official functions, and its sentence was confirmed by the superior council of public education to which he had appealed. Thereupon the Socialists in the Chamber, under the lead of M. Viviani, violently attacked the Government—shortly before the prorogation at the end of the year. M. Leygues, the minister of education, defended the policy of his department with equal vigour, declaring that if a professor in the “university” claimed the right of publishing unpatriotic and anti-military opinions he could exercise it only on the condition of giving up his employment under government—a thesis which was supported by the entire Chamber with the exception of the Socialists. This manifestation of anti-military spirit, though not widespread, was the more striking as it followed close upon a second visit of the emperor and empress of Russia to France, which took place in September 1901 and was of a military rather than of a popular character. The Russian sovereigns did not come to Paris. After a naval display at Dunkirk, where they landed, they were the guests of President Loubet at Compiègne, and concluded their visit by attending a review near Reims of the troops which had taken part in the Eastern manœuvres. Compared with the welcome given by the French population to the emperor and empress in 1896 their reception on this occasion was not enthusiastic. By not visiting Paris they seemed to wish to avoid contact with the people, who were persuaded by a section of the press that the motive of the imperial journey to France was financial. The Socialists openly repudiated the Russian alliance, and one of them, the mayor of Lille, who refused to decorate his municipal buildings when the sovereigns visited the department of the Nord, was neither revoked nor suspended, although he publicly based his refusal on grounds insulting to the tsar.

It may be mentioned that the census returns of 1901 showed that the total increase of the population of France since the previous census in 1896 amounted only to 412,364, of which 289,662 was accounted for by the capital, while on the other hand the population of sixty out of eighty-seven departments had diminished.

As the quadrennial election of the Chamber of Deputies was due to take place in the spring of 1902, the first months of that year were chiefly occupied by politicians in preparing for it, though none of them gave any sign of being aware that the legislation to be effected by the new Chamber would be the most important which any parliament had undertaken under the constitution of 1875. At the end of the recess the prime minister in a speech at Saint Etienne, the capital of the Loire, of which department he was senator, passed in review the work of his ministry. With regard to the future, on the eve of the election which was to return the Chamber destined to disestablish the Church, he assured the secular clergy that they must not consider the legislation of the last session as menacing them: far from that, the recent law, directed primarily against those monastic orders which were anti-Republican associations, owning political journals and organizing electioneering funds (whose members he described as “moines ligueurs et moines d’affaires”), would be a guarantee of the Republic’s protection of the parochial clergy. The presence of his colleague, M. Millerand, on this occasion showed that M. Waldeck-Rousseau did not intend to separate himself from the Radical-Socialist group which had supported his government; and the next day the Socialist minister of commerce, at Firminy, a mining centre in the same department, made a speech deprecating the pursuit of unpractical social ideals, which might have been a version of Gambetta’s famous discourse on opportunism edited by an economist of the school of Léon Say. The Waldeck-Rousseau programme for the elections seemed therefore to be an implied promise of a moderate opportunist policy which would strengthen and unite the Republic by conciliating all sections of its supporters. When parliament met, M. Delcassé, minister for foreign affairs, on a proposal to suppress the Embassy to the Vatican, declared that even if the Concordat were ever revoked it would still be necessary for France to maintain diplomatic relations with the Holy See. On the other hand, the ministry voted, against the moderate Republicans, for an abstract resolution, proposed by M. Brisson, in favour of the abrogation of the Loi Falloux of 1850, which law, by abolishing the monopoly of the “university,” had established the principle of liberty of education. Another abstract resolution, supported by the government, which subsequently become law, was voted in favour of the reduction of the terms of compulsory military service from three years to two.

The general elections took place on the 27th of April 1902; with the second ballots on the 11th of May, and were favourable to the ministry, 321 of its avowed supporters being returned and 268 members of the Opposition, including 140 “Progressist” Republicans, many of whom were

deputies whose opinions differed little from those of M. Waldeck-Rousseau. In Paris the government lost a few seats which were won by the Nationalist group of reactionaries. The chief surprise of the elections was the announcement made by M. Waldeck-Rousseau on the 20th of May, while the president of the Republic was in Russia on a visit to the tsar, of his intention to resign office. No one but the prime minister’s intimates knew that his shattered health was the true cause of his resignation, which was attributed to the unwillingness of an essentially moderate man to be the leader of an advanced party and the instrument of an immoderate policy. His retirement from public life at this crisis was the most important event of its kind since the death of his old master Gambetta. He had learned opportunist statesmanship in the short-lived grand ministère and in the long-lived Ferry administration of 1883–1885,