Affaire Des Fiches

L'Affaire des Fiches de délation (“affair of the cards of denunciation”) was a political scandal in France in 1904-1905 in which it was discovered that the militantly anticlerical War Minister under Emile Combes, General Louis André, was determining promotions based on a huge card index on public officials, detailing which were Catholic and who attended Mass, with a view to preventing their promotions. Much of the information had been collected by the Masonic Grand Orient de France. ["In 1904, the Affaire des Fiches broke when it became known that the ministry had gathered information on candidates' political and religious views from the Masonic Grand Orient." Page 18, France and the Great War, 1914-1918, By Leonard V. Smith, Stéphane Audoin, Translated by Helen McPhail, Published 2003, Cambridge University Press] Discovery of this by the media undermined the government. [Larkin, Church and State after the Dreyfus Affair, pp. 138-41: `Freemasonry in France’, Austral Light 6, 1905, pp. 164-72, 241-50.] [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0422/is_n2_v77/ai_17239628/pg_5 Page 5] , "Monuments, martyrdom, and the politics of religion in the French third republic", Neil McWilliam, The Art Bulletin, June 1995]

Further reading

Porch, Douglas [http://books.google.com/books?id=SiCRnNwl3EYC&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94&dq The March to the Marne: The French Army, 1871-1914] , Ch. 6 "The affaire des fiches" pp. 92-104, 1981 Cambridge University Press

References