suspected of spying for the Allies. 46 Some of its welfare activities were eventually taken over by the Protestant organisation, L'Œuvre des Diaconesses. It would seem that at the same time the Germans had also requested the disbanding of the Quakers--presumably also because of their English connections, and despite the high esteem in which the Germans had held them in the First World War--and, for good measure, even of the Frères de la Doctrine Chrétienne ( Christian Brothers). 47
Towards the end of the Occupation the Hierarchy, perhaps like Pétain himself, pinned their hopes increasingly on the Americans rather than the British. They noted how de Gaulle, whom generally they disliked, was ignored by Roosevelt, how Vichy had been able to maintain until comparatively recently diplomatic relations with the US and Canada. They had been gratified in early 1941 when Cardinal Villeneuve, Archbishop of Quebec, had praised Pétain in a speech. 48 The stock of the British had gone down--although their accuracy in bombing military targets was compared favourably with the more indiscriminate pattern bombing of the Americans. Contrary to belief, perhaps even in northern France 'Anglophilie' as such was not so widespread as it had been in 1940. A Catholic, later a priest, from Boulogne, then a young man, has testified that the 487 Allied bombings of his town had been hard to take. Despite his own Resistance activities and the delusion, at least until 1942, that the General and the Marshal were in cahoots, the young Boulonnais had a gut reaction ('réaction épidermique') against the British; any remaining love for them was 'un amour de raison'. 49
It is to the Church's reaction to these bombings and other acts which some bishops lumped together as 'terrorisme' that we now turn.
Unless otherwise stated the place of publication is Paris
-162-
