CATHOLIC RIGHTS IN ALSACE

By M. MASS/AN!
As soon as the American Third and
French First Armies had liberated the soil of Alsace and Lorraine, certain
Alsatian Socialists began manoeuvres to bring about the integral application of French law to these Provinces, with a view to depriving religious institutions of benefits which they had had prior to 1918 and which Joffre and Poincare
preserved for them against similar attacks during the period following World War t.
Confessional schools particularly would have been affected, but neither Catholics nor Protestants interested in the maffitenance of such support have, much ground for worry. It is most unlikely that either the Provisional Government or the National Consultative Assembly would agree to a step calculated to wound the feelings of the majority of the population in AlsaceLorraine.
Furthermore, the Government has selected a prominent Catholic as its
commissioner in Alsace, Charles Blon del. • State's Counsellor Blonde!, who has always been a champion of reli gious liberty, is the son of that great Catholic philosopher Maurice Blondel, and the son-in-law of Henri Bazire who, at the beginning of this century and as president of the French Catholic Youth Association, was one of the most eloquent apostles of social Catholicism.
The Assembly aleo has selected a Catholic to head its Alsace-Lorraine Commission—the former general secretary of the Confederation of Christian Workers, Gaston Tessier, who has never wavered in his -support of religious rights of Alsatians.