The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-02-18 00:00:00

'WHILE ROME IS BURNING, PARIS

FIDDLES!'

The Times' Paris Correspondent writes :

LL ills nations, as with indiv .lud., If punishment does not
make them better, It harder. them and makes them worse.
It Intensities •Il the worst features of their char w.ter. The
melancholy result o' the disasters which have overtaken their
country, and of such sufferings as they have permitted them-
selves to undergo, is painfull apparent among the Parisians
Instead 0,10 the words of one of old, "potting their hands
to their mouth. are! their mouths in the dust, and cryieg
• Unclean, uuelean ' ' "their uncleanness (hunts itself in the
streets and cat'o, and calls itself "dignity." This if mend
" resighation nude expression in their theatres.
With the whole population of two millionn, ace rd.
leg to their own account, at the point of starvation,
with disease rampant in its midst, with a girdle of
hostile bayonet, and artillery lidding the city as in a vice,
and able lu a M latent to level it with the groped, with the
German flag visible from the streets, fleeting abovethe Forts
they never waited to defend, this people can find time sad
inclination to represent—l might even say parody—on the
stage the most melancholy episode of the war. Familiar as!
was with the ruins of Cha•eaudun, with its groups of weeping
women, standing around the tutus of 3,0 houses burnt
to 1:- e ground ; with its stories, alas ! too true of
women and children who had taken refuge in their
°ethers, still to death ; with the gaunt, half-elarvefl
men, nest. honing hoopttalo, desolate streets with the
pitl'ul tales which its Inhabitan•s, with streaming eyes,
have told me of their sufferings-1 went to see whether,
if the French will not hoar the truth from the pl,l'
pit, some man had tried to drive the loosen home from
the singe, tor it would have been ddlicult to preach from a
better text than the burning of Chateaudun. Quite another
sentiment seemed to have inspired the author, who showed
his Ingenuity by mixing up indecency, profanity, and
buffoonery with the bursting of shell., the appearance of
wounded Frei ca soldiers who die upon the stage after burst-
ing Into rhapsodies on the glory of France and the courage
of her tandem, mei, behind all, the grand old chateau and
winding streets of ChAesudun, as if in solemn pro
test; and to find favour with the audience, who
were laughlrig and crying at the tragic farce Into which this
catastrophe was convertee. Leaving the theatre in dirgurt,
the mole on the Boulevard. wee scarcely less instructive.
Here are groups of politician. discussing the elections; nicer
them is a larger group, to and from semen they are eon-
erartly moving. Igo to the larger group, and duel a juggler.
It seems to bee relief se Idle the destinies of the nation are
trembilt g in the balance, and they are rettlhig haw much
they will give to Germany, to look at a few trick., and so,
while /toxin is burning, Pat Ls fiddles.
Steadily refusing to recognize the abyss of degradation to
which the country In being brought, COMCICIIII, so far as any
outward expression of it goes, of no national humiliation,
deceiving itself by a rhetoric false alike In sentiment and in
fact, which elevates follies and vices lutes virtues by mean. of
cunningly devised adjective., it mock, the Nemesis of its sins
which I. Overtaking IL Seven months of defeat and mis-
fortune have nut diminished the number or the character
of the lies which appear dully In the French news-
papers, or changed the t ne of the articles which continue to
flatter and truckle to the popular vanity, and to attribute
the disasters of the nation to a series of scapegoats which
they invarlahly provide upon each new occasion. No one
has the courage to rise up among them and say, "We our-
selves, individually and collectively, are alone to blame for
all this, and 111. only by acknowledging that this is so and
that we need refi rill that we can arrest the downward pro-
gress ef the nation." At this moment Freres is In want
rather of a Prophet than a President. The one would proba-
bly last as long as the other.