The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1899-08-31
FRANCES TWO PARTIES.

II WOulu require an extremely pnllO-
sophie historian to say why France is
what it is. The display that it is MAX
ing to the world is that of an exceed
ingly turbulent, and exceedingly un-
just and an exceedingly immoral COM
munty. But is this the true France?
1t is certainly the France as pictured to
the world at the present time. From
casual and not deep knowledge one
would be apt to say that it is not true
picture of the true France, but merely
a symptom of it's very worst diseases.
The turbulence of France is not the
bulence of the capital city and it's sis
ter cities like Lyons, and Marseilles.
Paris is not France though it arrogates
to itself that title. Paris is full of tur-
bulent anarchistic and socialistic ele-
ments. 1t is the hotbed of seethng i'm
possible and impracticable thought. The
lower classes have emancipated them
selves from Roman Catholicism only to
throw themselves into a superstitious
free thought. Then a big city is filled
with people seeking for employment,
and this adds to the Disconnected class
es; those who are disconnected on
principle and those who are discomfort
ed through circumstances. That such
elements should break forth into riot is
not to be wondered at. They broke out
into unnameable license and cruelty in
the last years of the last century, they
seem to be ready to break out into like
license, followed by cruelty in the last
year of this.
OF French injustice the Dreyfus case
has been a marked example The con-
duct of that case and the French meth
DDS of trial, their methods of brow
beating and bullying witnesses, their
permission of hearsay evidence has
opened many eyes to judicial system
which savors of the Middle Ages and
not of the nineteenth century.
French immortality has been shown in
the Panama Scandal, the Grevy Scan
dal, the present army scandal, and in
forms of vice known throughout the
world. There is no controverting these
| charges, they are true. But they are
true of only a portion of the nation. 1t
is the noisy and the apparent portion,
it Is, one may say, the dominant por-
ton, but it is not the whole nation.
The agricultural population has all
the negative virtues while the urban
population has all the positive vices. It
| is not turbulent, it is not lavish but al
most too frugal and it is neither i'm
moral commercially or otherwise. 1t Is
however, intensely ignorant, intensely
bigotted, intensely conservative and in
tensely selfish. 1t is a France that is
! little known to the general reader, but
it is in an inert way a powerful factor
1t is, practically, what saves France
from the disastrous results of the con-
duct of that other France whose acts
fill the newspapers.
1t certainly begins to look as If In
Paris revolution was imminent Much
depends upon the army. If the army
sympathizes with the mob, the latter
cannot be quelled, and the commune
horrors and destruction may be repeat.
ed. But the inert country party might
exert itself and prevent any action out
side of Paris, and might even support
a party in Paris, and that party could
then become dominant. But what will
the country party support? Not the
present Bourgeois Ministry, not the
Army, which is an incubus drawing the
best OF its young men into it's Unsuitable
NAV. 1t cannot affiliate with the an
archist, because it is property holder
in very small way. and is as tenacious
as all Celts of property rights. If some
leader were to arise and rouse the coun-
try party to action, there might be hope
of permanent peace in France. 1t has
been done, as it was in La Vendee by
the leaders of the Chuan's, but the
| chances are that it will not, and a wave
of revolution will sweep over France
and leave it worse off than now.