Marietta daily leader. (Marietta, Ohio) 1895-1906, 1900-08-21
SWELTERING
Is the Weather at the French
Capital.
EXPOSITION CROWDS SMALL.
Proposal for a Society to Promote Franco.
American Alliance.
FLUMMERY SPEECHES ABOUT LAFAYETTE.
The Economy of the Frenehman is More
Stringent than that of His Ameri-
can Brother.
Proposal for Society to Promote Franco.
American Alliance.
FLUMMERY SPEECHES ABOUT LAFAYETTE.

| Paris, France, August 1O.-The aver
age temperature in Paris at this time
OF year is SO or 70 Fahr. For the last
fifteen days, it has ranged from 81 to
9S. That explains great many things
besides an all-pervading irritability,
stagnation and depression. The fact
that ice is four cents pound instead
of two, for one thing, that nearly all
Partisan horses are going about with
conical straw hats On their now fool
ish-lcoking heads, fer another; that
Paris is emptying fast of Americans as
well as everyone else, and that the
daily abundance at the Exposition has
fallen to under 100000, while the price
of admission is only six and seven
cents instead of, as originally, twenty.
There is nothing abnormal in the drop
in the price of tickets. The same thing
happened in 1889, yet the tickets after
wards went up to the normal ten and
twelve cents. The fall in tickets gives
the impression that the Exposition is
being neglected Perhaps 1t is during
the hot wave. Anyway, there is now
a discussion in the French papers as to
artifically stimulating the consump-
tion of tickets by giving special fetes
and charging five or even more tickets
for seeing them. The public, however,
has hitherto shown Itself so shy of the
entertainments at the Exposition that
it is very doubtful if the government
will do any such thing. In providing
the exposition, they nave 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 recent years
that mere mountebank shows,auu Dl,. =
ing bands and flaming gas-jets no
longer draw and debauch the multi
tude.
After all, 10000 people make good
sized crowd, so that the Exposition is
not deserted yet. 1t is pity that out
of the number so few, not more than
1000 or 5000 pay visit to the annex
at Vincennes. Unfortunately, Vim
cennes is not as accessible as the otL-
er parts cf the Exposition, or, if it is
easy of access the visitor as a rule has
very hazy ideas of how to get there.
We are waiting with some curiosity
here for the ultimate issue of Deputy
Gerville-Reache's proposal for a socie-
ty to promote a Fra AGO. American al
lance. | doubt if such proposition
can ever come to anything beyond the
most sensational of ententes. Politi-
cally, there is no chance of it, if only
for the reason that America does not
contract foreign alliances, and even as
to a social entente with fruitful results
of any sort, it is still very doubtful
Lock at the fate of all attempts to
patch up an Englisl-French entente
cordiale. They invariably start well
with fowery speeches and banquets
feeling between the two peoples re-
mains exactly what is was hundred
years ago. Not, perhaps, among the
educated classes, for we'll educated peo-
Pile have no nationa, antipathy-they
have an antente cordiale with all the
world--but among the peoples. There
never can be an entente cordiale be-
tween the French and English, and il
is extremely doubtful if there can be
one between ourselves and Frenchmen
Even between the French and Rus
slams there cannot be a real one. There
can be, and is, an alliance between the
latter based on the need of mutual sup
port, but the FrenChmen of today is
still as selfish and narrow-minded, poll
ically and socially, as to all that goe.
on outside his own frontiers as ever
The English pleasantly: "Who't that
then cave arf a brick at 'im"-is quite
expressive of French feeling toward:
all foreigners. Interest is the sol'
bond that can politically unite two ma
tions-any two nations-in the hour o
national peril. 1t Is pity, but is i
not true?
There was great deal of what MAJ
be called "flummery" in the speeche
about Lafayette lately, and the ide;
put forward in a New York paper tha
but for Lafayette's cooperation during
the Revolution, America would neve
have succeeded in gaining indepen
dence was mere nonsense. No people
no society even, can defeat and nullify
though it may control and guide, tn
forces that are inherently at work il
1t. Monuments and medallions are al
very well; they impress and perhap
ennoble the young, but 1t is not mon
uments and medalllons that assur
peace and constitute internationa
amlty, but money and armed strength
1t was my intention before closing t
draw attention to the fine American
exhibit in the Fine Arts section, but /
would take long to do it justice and fol
the time must ask permission to post
pone doing so. One are or mechanical
item, however, may be of interest. The
French as rule are original, but they