The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-17
ALLIANCE BETWEEN FRANCE AND JAPAN French Ambassador Hamard
 Discusses Situation IT WAS A MASTER COUP The Clever Ruse That Saved Monu- ment of the Martyred King Louis XVI. And Marie Antoinette
 to France.
IT WAS A MASTER COUP
BY MARQUIS DE cAsrELLANE.

Special Cable to the Age-Herald From
 the Hearst News Service. Copyrighted.
 1907. by W. R. Hearst.)
 Paris, June 16-M. Hamard, the French ambassador at Tokio, who has just re- turned from Japan after twelve years tenure of office, has been interviewed on the subject of the alliance just concluded between France and the great Asiatic power.
 "It is a master coup" said the am bassador.
 And who prepared it?"
 Not us. It was England
 Then, you were not concerned in the negotiations which preceded it?'
 No; these negotiations took place at the foreign office, in ondon.
 "The British cabinet opened up pour palers and brought the whole thing to a happy issue. So that it Is to England that we owe the benefit that will un- doubtedly arise for us from this excellent alliance"
 May ask you what feeling 1t was that induced Japan to conclude such a treaty." Nothing is simpler for those who know the Japanese, whose mentality is so differ ent from ours.
 "The Japanese are at one and the same time vain and grateful. Their ambition is to pass fo rome of the first peoples in the world. At one moment they fancied they had attained the height of their ann bition when they beat Russia; but now by degrees the Russian press has brought 1t home to them that Russia was after all only an Asiatic power like themselves, and that the fact that they had beaten her was not sufficient to establish their worldly superiority
 Ia afe l.. beaten-a really great European power So they decided to fly high game, and their goal this time, at the instigation of England, is Germany. | This idea was adopted all the more | easily by Japan inasmuch as, as I pointed out above gratitude is one of the virtues of these people, and Japan has not for gotten. and will not easily forget, that | it was French officers who organized ! their army and made victory possible for them.''
 And do you think that the new Franco Japanese alliance will extend beyond the Asiatic shores?'
 1 q do not doubt 1t, but nothing would | surprise me less than to learn very soon that in case fo conflict between England, l France and Germany the Japanese under | took to transport SO0,0O0 ftheir best troops to some French port, which they would be able to do by help of the great English navy" And as I shook hands with M. Hamard he assured me that King Edward VII. was really a great | diplomat.
 At the end of March, 1871, one of the 1 first decrees of the victorious Commune was to order the immediate destruction of the monument erected to the memory of | the martyr King Louis WI. and the un- 1 fortunate Marie Antoniette. | This was about to be put into force when MT. Washburne, the eminent repre- sentative of the United States, acting In ] conjunction with a we'll known and llb- eral fellow citizen, went to the Com munist leaders and told them that his government was inclined to purchase the 1 monument and have 1t taken stone by stone and re-erected in one of the public squares In Louisiana,
 MT. Washburne's first advances were ! rejected by the leaders of the Commune but he insisted so much and with such ability, offering, moreover, a sum. of $10O,- GOO, that finally they ended by cohsenting to the arrangement. The commune pressed the purchasers to carry out the bargain and rid them of the monument. But one after another the purchasers n- vented pretexts against carrying out the work.
 First of all. it was the difficulty of pro-
 
 material, and then again the difficulty of passing through the lines of the be- siegfng army. Then the condition of the sea prevented the vessel from crossing the Atlantic. And so 1t went on, until after two months of patent efforts, MT. Washburne and his generous fellow citl- zen, whose name 1t has been impossible for me to discover, who in these tragic times showed such undoubted diplomatic ability saw another liberating power come to their help. Paris returned to France and, thanks to America the mem orial chapel to the martyred sovereigns was saved.
 Munir Pasha, the Ottoman ambassador in Pars( is accustomed at least once a year to astonish Parisian society by his magnifcence. A day or two ago he in- vited to dinner of fifty cores what we are pleased to call the elect of the Eau bourg St. Germain.
 Never was the Pasha surrounded by so many dukes and duchesses, but, unfor- tunately the Sultan's~ representative Is 1 not sufficiently aware of the manner Tn which high Parisian society likes to be treated. He seems to have imagined that l this society passes It's time in listening | to music hall singers and the somewhat | ambiguous pleantries of which they have
 With this idea, he served up to his | guests the other day after dinner a little review. entitled 'Les Petits Cochons" i (The Little Pigs). Needless to say, the | little, pigs were the French. The aristo- cratic ladies who were his guests found the joke very litle to their taste, and Munir Pasha has not been in good odor | since
 The marriage which is about to take place between Prince de Tonay- Clarente and Mile de la Rochefoucauld unites two | families which compose the quintessence of the French noblesse. Not that these great houses can claim ancestors who have been great warriors or distinguished statesmen; jbut what is equally as good, If not better. is that they have given l birth to men and women who have left h their impress in the social world. | The Morten rts of whom Prince de l Tonay-Charente is a direct descendant. Bhave among theri ancestresses Madame de | Montespan, whose grandeur and whose immortality are a part of the age of l Louis PVT. The house of La Rouche- foucaud gave birth to the famous author of the "Maximes." which combine the scepticism and good sense of the French ! and which are as fresh today, two hun dred years after their appearance. as fl they had been written yesterday
  Marcuro Assassin atfop caea