The citizen. (Frederick City, Md.) 1895-1923, 1900-08-24
EXPOSITION LETTER.
written tor the Citizen.)
PARIS, August 6, 1900.

~ fanr. FOR the last fifteen
days it has ranged from 81 to 9S.
That explains great many
things besides an all-pervading
lrrltability, stagnation and de
preston. The fact that ice is
four cents pound instead of two.
for one thing; that nearly all
Partisan horses are going about
with cOmical straw hats on their
now foOlish-looking heads, for an
other; that Paris is emptying
fast of Americans as well as
everyone else, and that the daily
attendance at the Exposition has
fallen to under 10000, while the
price of admission is only six and
seven cents, instead of, as origi-
nally, twenty. There is nothing
abnormal in the drop in the price
of tickets. The same thing hap
pened in 1889, yet the tickets
afterwards went up to the normal
ten and twelve cents. The fall in
tickets gives the impression that
the Exposition is being neglected.
Perhaps it is during the hot wave.
Anyway, there is now a discus
sion i'll the French papers as to
artiticially stimulating the con.
sumption of tickets by giving
special leteS and charging five or
even more tickets for seeing them.
The public, however, has hitherto
shown itself so shy of the enter
tainmentS at the Exposition that
it is very doubtful if the govern
ment will do any such thing. In
providing the Exposition they
have provided the best and most
attractive entertainment possible
for all tastes but the lowest. and
it is probably not sorry to find
that popular education has made
such far reaching progress Of re-
cent years that mere mountebanl
shows and blaring bands and
flaming gaS-iets no longer draw
and debauch the multitude.
After all, 100, 600 people make
a good sized crowd. 50 that the
Exposition is not deserted vet.
1t is a pity that out of the number.
so few, not more than 5000 or
5000, pay a visit to the annex at
NlncenneS. Unfortunately, Vim
cenneS Is not as accessible as the
other parts Of the Exposition, or,
If 1t Is easy of access, the visitor.
as a rule, has very hazy ideas of
how to get there.
We are waiting with some curl
osity here for the ultimate issue
of Deputy Gerville- Reaches pro
posal for a society to promote a
Franco American alliance. |
doubt If such proposition can
ever come to anything beyond
the most sensational of ententes.
Politically, there is no chance of
it, if only for the reason that
America does not contract foreign
alliances, and even as to social
entente with fruitful results of
any sort, it is still very doubtful.
Look at the fate of all attempts
to patch up an English French
entente cordiale. They invariably
start we'll, with fOwery speeches
and banquets, but that is the end
OF them, and the feeling between
the two peoples remains exactly
what it was a hundred years ago.
Not, perhaps, among the educat-
ed classes, for well-educated peo-
pie have no national antipathy-
they have an entente cordiale
with all the wOrld-but among
the peoples. There never can be
an entente cOrdiale between the
French and English and it is ex-
tremely doubtful if there can be
one between ourselves and French.
men. Even between the French
and Russians there cannot be
real one. There can be and is an
alliance between the latter based
on the need of mutual support,
but the Frenchmen of today is
still as selfish and narrow minded,
politically and socially, as to all
that goes on outside his own from.
tiers as ever. The English pleas
antry-"Who's that, Billg' Bill:
GA stranger. "Oh! then 'eave
arr brick at 'im"-is quite expires,
sive of French feeling towards all
foreigners. Interest is the sole
bond that can politically unite
two natiOns-any two nations
in the hour of national peril. 1t
is pity, but is it not true9
There was a great deal of what
may be called "fummery" in the
speeches about Lafayette lately,
and the idea put forward in a
New York paper that but for La
fayette'S cooperation during the
Revolution, America would never
have succeeded in gaining indie
pendence, was mere nonsense.
No people, no society even, can
defeat and nullify, though it may
control and guide, the forces that
are inherently at work in it.
Monuments and medallions are
all very well; they Impress and