on the head with a cane by an anti-Dreyfusard. In that month President
Loubet summoned Waldeck-Rousseau to form a cabinet, and at the same time
entreated Republicans of all shades of opinion to rally to the defence
of the state. By the efforts of Loubet and Waldeck-Rousseau the Dreyfus
affair was settled, when Loubet, acting on the advice of General
Galliffet, minister of war, remitted the ten years' imprisonment to
which Dreyfus was condemned at Rennes. Loubet's presidency saw an acute
stage of the clerical question, which was attacked by Waldeck-Rousseau
and in still more drastic fashion by the Combes ministry. The French
ambassador was recalled from the Vatican in April 1905, and in July the
separation of church and state was voted in the Chamber of Deputies.
Feeling had run high between France and England over the mutual
criticisms passed on the conduct of the South African War and the
Dreyfus case respectively. These differences were composed by the
Anglo-French _entente_, and in 1904 a convention between the two
countries secured the recognition of French claims in Morocco in
exchange for non-interference with the English occupation of Egypt.
President Loubet was a typical example of the peasant-proprietor class,
and had none of the aristocratic, not to say monarchical, proclivities
of President Fauré. He inaugurated the Paris Exhibition of 1900,
received the tsar Nicholas II. in September 1901 and paid a visit to
Russia in 1902. He also exchanged visits with King Edward VII., with the
king of Italy and the king of Spain. The king of Spain's visit in 1905
was the occasion of an attempt on his life, a bomb being thrown under
his carriage as he was proceeding with his guest to the opera. His
presidency came to an end in January 1906, when he retired into private
life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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