The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1899-01-08
THE GOOD SIDE OF FRANCE
AN INTERESTING BRITISH ESTIMATE
or THE FRENCH NATION.
Not Afraid of Revolution Because of
Much Expericnce-The People Look
for Strong Man to Lead Them.
London Spectator.

London Spectator.
Many of our friends are belittling France
too much. 1t is natural for there are many
causes in France both moral and political,
of irritation to Englishmen, and many signs
in her present condition which appear to
| observers menacing in proportion to their
friendship for her people. Hysteria seems
to have become chronic Gin Paris at all
events, and there is in section of the peo-
pie contempt for the abstract idea of right
which is most ominous of coming disorders.
The Chamber, the army chiefs, the press
and the populace all seem to have broken
loose together from customary restraints.
and there is for the moment nothing left
that is dignified in France except the Court
| of Appeal. The generals tell the President
| that they are Inundated and the President
answers that under the Constitution he is
| powerless to intervene; deputies fight each
| other with their fists; the most monstrous
accusations are banded to and fro in the
streets, and are some of them true; the
| power of securing swift remedy for wrong
| seems to have died away, and that ascend
| ency of rumor which struck Carlyle as
| special note of the early days of the first
revolution has established itself once more.
| To most Englishmen the scene appears as
a welter of disorder corruption and vice,
such as nation can hardly pass through
and continue to exist in safety. They hard
! ly see the other side; and yet there is an
other side. To begin with. the vitality of
France is of a special quality. Her people,
| like many men known to doctors, possess
the liability to grave disease and recupera-
| tive power in almost equal degree. No enc
| would say that France at this moment had
sunk, morally, politically or Intellectually to
! the level she occupied in the later years of
Louis XIV yet it took less than a genera
ton to place her at the head of the world.
| Napoleon five years old when Louis
XIV died, and his corpse was left deserted.
RECUPERATES QUICKLY.
| The strength which in other nations comes
| back slowly returns in France by leaps and
| bounds, and before her fribbles are dead she
| produces a whole generation of men compe-
| tent in all departments of life. Her plants
| spring strongly up through the everything
manure. France may be dying, as so many
| think, but to the historian it rather appears
| that she is passing through one of those
| periods of disease which have repeatedly
marked her history, which have left terrible
traces on her body, but which have also left
its extraordinary force in all appearance I'M
imbroglio there are symptoms from which
cool observer may gather reasons for
hope The men who have cried for justice,
often to their own immense loss and risk,
include the majority of the nervous and
comfort-loving 'intellectuals'' of France,
and their conduct should not be passed over
when one is speaking of the spiritual degra-
dation of their country. There must be good
left In a country when a writer like M. lola,
vain, egotistic, and salaclous, deliberately
faces steam engine in it's rush rather than
see it crush down an innocent man. Even
the Jews of France, whom most Frenchmen
and many Englishmen so suspect, have be-
haved Well They do not love the republic,
they would Infinitely prefer regime under
which Socialists would be silenced; their
game, ii they were mere self-seekers. was
to uphold the army, provide it's chiefs with
money, and profit by military revolution;
but rather than abandon an innocent core
ligionist, they deliberately faced what is for
! them the awful and st1Il existing danger of
popular uprising against their caste.
Nor have the people been altogether given
up to evil. The foundation of the whole
agitation, that which makes the struggle
so formidable and inspires such doubt, if
not terror in the mighty forces arrayed
against Dreyfus, is the uneasy conscience of
the people, the perception that if they
were once convinced that they were crush
ing the innocent they would turn in fury
upon the doors of injustice. The tendency
to imaginative terror and causeless sus-
pciOn which we see in the occasional bursts
of the spy mania has befogged their brains,
but the cOnsciences of the people are not
quleted, and where the victim is not Jew,
start even in Paris into fierce activity. Pic
quart would be a good candidate for a va
cant senatorship IN any district of northern
france. A nation is not lost II 1t REJECTS
good evidence, but only if it rejects it will
fully, and the will in France in the Picquart
case is obviously distracted. After all, Titus
Oates was much less credible witness than
Colonel Henry, and our own Londoners be-
lieved in him.
USED TO REVOLUTION
But we shall be asked, if the French are
not bad and tickle and on the downward
gr de, why are they ready to upset the re-
public which has existed for twenty-five
years, which has set all careers free and to
which, above all, they can give any direction
they please? They can make it economical
if they will, or send it swiftly moving on
the groove of foreign affairs, or use it as
their instrument to secure any social change
they may desire. Why then, except from
instability, are the French hurrahing for
the governor of Paris? We regret their ac-
ton as much as any Republican in France
can do. So far from having the cryptic
kindness for the Bonapartes of which some
of our friends accuse us, we should If mon
archy were desirable in France, greatly pre-
fer a restoration, and hold the republic dis
tinctly preferable to both the sets of pre-
tenders. There is hope in it, and chance
of peace, and there is neither If a throne is
set up again to run its course and fall once
more. leaving nothing founded. But we I'M
derstand why great multitudes in France,
who mean no particular mischief, have lat
entity or openly a different opinion. French
men pining. as Englishmen have often
at moments pinned, for proof that they are
great, for success, in short, in some grand
form which the world cannot fail to recog-
nize. They are dissatisfied and ''low'-we
mean in the medical sense. 1t is our En-
glish instinct derived from history when we
are in that condition to grumble loudly and
even groan, TO critcise and abuse ministries,
and if we can. to change them or persons
included in them. 1t is French instinct, de-
rived also from their history. though the
of the state, which they think they do
at will without injury to the continuity of
their national life.
We think them wrong-probably they are
wrong-for permanence is a source of
strength; but France is more populous, ten
times as rich and rather larger in area than
she when Louis XVI mounted the
scaffold. Moreover. France has broken with
her past as we have never done. There is
nothing which signifies to her people older
than 1.-The year one G792.) 1t is natural,
therefore, that her fear of revolution should
be less than ours and that she should ven
ture on a revolt venture on forced
general election Lastly. there is a quality
in Frenchmen which, though it exists in
all nations more or less, does not elsewhere
attain the same proportions of influence.
France always longs for guide-for some
visible person to whom she can look for