Evening star., 1898-10-08

TO the village school teachers. He gives
promiscuous banquets. for which a special
brand of deputy champagne is furnished
by Paris house at 30 cents a bottle. The
corks must be sent back with the bottles.
Among the formalites to be gone through
previous to the election day. each candi-
date must take oath that he has not paid
Tor any votes. A deputy in Brittany de-
vlsed plan for getting over this. To
every voter in a dozen villages he gave a
hundred of his election posters to dis
tribute: and then, for the service. he paid
each 81. AS every man over twenty-one
years of age had hundred posters to start
with, distribution had to be made to the
women and children.
In the larger towns the run of politics is
somewhat more lively, as we'll as more
serious. But local interests are still upper
nest and the Dreyfus scandals, even, do
not excite the people as they would in
America. The average French voter thinks
OF little outside his own parish war
scare, at the least, would be needed to
change this; and, in case of actual war, a
dictator would probably have to come up
and suspend for time the republican form
of government, which works rather weak
ly in France. But in ordinary times the
candidates in towns promise mountains
and valleys" as the French say. for all
local interests, and confine themselves to
geleralities in other matters
Socialists at Heart
These candidates, of course, belong to
groups into which the deputies fall when
they are once elected; and, as the case
may be, they talk conservatism or re
vision of the constitution, "opportunism,'
letting things go as they are, or radical
aEt-clericaltSrn.' But each and every one
of them, when he is appealing for the votes
of the workingmen in large manufactul-
ing town, will be sure to wind up with
something like the socialism which pleases
them best. 1t is in this way that they have
Christian socialists and "socialistic radi
calls as well as socialists pure and SIM
pie.
Long before the election it is important
that each of the political groups or parties
should have banquet in some one of the
largest cities in the country. This is to
give a chance to some prominent senator
or deputy to make an after-dinner speech,
in which he will lay down something like a
political program. This all the candidates
throughout France will patch up and use,
according to the principles they profess
tacking 1t on to their own local utteranceS.
After the election they will naturally do
as they please about its promises. They
are not bound TO any party, and combine
in the most unexpected manner when yot-
ing in the chamber of deputies
Law and custom and perhaps the fear
of riots, prevent anything like the Ameri-
can parades and monster mass meetings.
But in the towns public reunions-real
pOltlcal meetlngs-are of Importance. The
candidate who faces such a meeting must
have a quick wit, for single break may
cost him all the votes he has gained by
hard electiOneeering. An American can
scarcely bring himself to believe how light
a thing may influence these voters of
character so different from his own.
Easily Influenced by Cheap Wit
A few years since one of the crack speak
ers among the deputies was soliciting his
reelection. He held the crowd by his elo-
quence. as he spoke of the unfortunate di-
visions among his countrymen. THE gulf
Is still open between us; and we wish to
close it. But our work should be slow and
constant, if it is to be sure
Far back in the crowded hall a petty
lawyer, in a loud voice, called out at this
moment: We'll sir, We want the work
done quickly. Wen fill up your gulf not
by the shOvelful, but by the cartful!'
The meeting rang with applause and
LOO votes We're lost to the orator and his
election with them.
In all these meetings the most general
formulas are given out by the speakers
and with the utmost solemnity. Reaction
lists tax against government by "athe-
lists Radicals declare themselves the
only genuine sons of the revolution. And
wherever an appeal has to be made to
workingmen, capital and the dirty bour-
geolsle are sure to catch it hard. In
manufacturing suburb of Paris one of the
candidates gravely proposed 1.-The extinc-
tlon OF pauperism by the emasculation of
capital
That's well puti' cried a voice and the
phrase was embodied in a resolution as the
unanimous sense of the meeting