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Nowhere was the unresolved, undigested struggle between the old order and the Revolution more obvious, or more damaging, than in the relations between Church and State. The Revolution at first sought only separation of Church and State, but the Church was too strongly interwoven with French society to be painlessly extracted. So the Revolution sought to destroy faith, and the Church sought to destroy the Revolution. In the first half of the Third Republic's life (1871-1914), the Church-State issue was the main focus of internal French politics. The issue survives today in a fact of the utmost importance to the struggle with Communism. Although France has never ceased to be a Roman Catholic country in spirit, most of the French industrial proletariat and part of the peasantry have been cut off from Christianity for generations. Natives of the Paris industrial suburb of St. Denis are not converted to Marxism, they are baptized in the triune name of Marx, Lenin and Stalin.
That millions of French workers are born Marxists does not mean that Marx is a legitimate heir of the French Revolution. He is an interloper who picked up the allegiance of millions of Frenchmen while the leaders of France were locked in the long, unended struggle between the Revolution and the old order.
The Great Strength. Yet through the 162 years of struggle, the vitality of France, of both Frances, remained. Through the ridiculous republics and the comic restorations, through the financial swindles and the sordid half-hearted colonial adventures, the France of peasant, artisan, artist—the France of the civilized common man—has remained. This France has survived invasion, defeat, and costly victory. It has even survived French politics.
Communism, however, is a greater danger, within and without, than France has yet surmounted. The country will not win this fight unless it digests its Revolution and unifies the two Frances on more than an emergency basis.