ABSTRACT
There are limits to the terms on which Frenchmen can unite. Between 1905 and 1940 a modus vivendi was worked out between those groups who had quarrelled over the dynasty, the powers of the Catholic hierarchy, and the authority of the army. But the balance of forces was variable and groups questioned each other’s trustworthiness. Not all Frenchmen accepted the Republic in its third form. Even words like ‘liberté’, had, and still have, different meanings for supporters of secular or Catholic schools. Thibaudet 1 likens the Radical-Socialist Party, with its anti-clerical mind, to a champion fighting bulldog trained to seize its canine opponents by the left hind leg but defeated by inability to adapt its tactics on meeting a three-legged adversary.
