4 - Problems and principles

Summary

An acute and much-travelled English observer of French life, J. E. C. Bodley, wrote in 1898, ‘a French citizen who is dependent on the State for his livelihood is not always at liberty to accompany his wife and children to Mass on Sunday morning, without risking his future prospects and their means of sustenance’. Bodley's personal sympathies were admittedly with the Church rather than with its critics – and he viewed with a jaundiced eye what he saw as the profiteers in the contemporary political climate. His son recounts an occasion when he and his father had seen pass by an open carriage, bearing Edward VII and his current host, an eminent Jewish businessman. Bodley had thereupon raised his silk hat and in loyal ringing tones shouted ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ Yet Bodley's remark on France reflected a belief that was widely held at the time, and was also shared by many later writers, who claim that it was extremely difficult for a practising Catholic to make a career for himself in the more politically sensitive branches of the public service – not only in the Ministry of the Interior, but in varying degrees elsewhere. Others reply that insofar as this was the case, it was a result of the anti-Republican record of the milieux from which the rejected applicants came; but that Catholics who kept a low profile and loyally supported the regime had no difficulty in obtaining entry or advancement. The matter has not been systematically studied by historians – partly because of the difficulty of obtaining access to the personal dossiers of civil servants.