Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-02-04

To certain great figures in history is
allotted the fate of being known more
by some phrase uttered at a moment
of supreme trial than by all that may
have been tried and done during a life
of devotion.
More people remember Nine. Roland
because of her words on the platform
of the guillotine. "Oh. Liberty, what
crimes have been committed in thy
name"' than can tell of the earnest. in
tellectual work which, during her brief
lifetime. she did to establish that liberty
which in the end proved her undoing.
Born of an artistic family-her father
was an engrayer of slender means-this
girl became one of the greatest factors in
the French revolution, dominated the
government of France for a time. fell
from power because of a chance remark.
and died under the knife of the guillo-
tine. Thirty-nine years was the full
measure of her life. That part of it en-
gagged in political activity scarcely ex-
ceeded ten The period Of her struggle
and her martyrdom comedies closely with
the days of our early struggle for inde-
pendence and then national unity. 1t
was i'm 1916 that she first became recos-
nized as force in the revolutionary
propaganda: it was in 1888. when we were
first organizing under our Constitution,
that her head fell.
For that fierce strife which swept the
French monarchy and ariStocracy down
into bloody demolition she was prepared
both by the conditions of her childhood
and by her early reading. Her father,
unsuccessful despite admitted talent, was
i'm the habit of inveighinS against the
fOllies and privileges of the aristocracy-
an aristocracy probably more profiisate
and heartless than any known to history.
She absorbed the spirit OF revolt before
it became audible in the streets Of Paris.
Her reading. too. was of a sort to Stimu-
late the spirit of liberty.
Young Mind Influenced.
In that day the doubtful boon of floods
of Juvenile books was denied to chill
dren. and Marie-Jeanne Phlipon at nine
years of age was reading Plutarch's
Lives and bemoaning her fate because
she had not been born a Roman. Jean
jacques Rousseau, the philosopher and
literary advance agent of the revolution.
also exerted a powerful influence upon
her young mind.
AS she approached womanhood her
father. embittered and made desperate by
long record of failure in speculation,
took refuge i'm dissipation. The girls
mother was dead: the father having
squandered her dowry and refused his
consent to her marriage to a certain Ro-
land de la Platiere. whom she had met
through a letter of introduction from a
girl friend Of her earlier days ar the con-
vent she turned from him i'm grief and
sought the solace of nunnery.
Fate, however, intervened-that fate
that was to make of her an instrument
in the overthrow of a rotten monarchy
and send her at last to the guillotine. NJ
Roland was not wholly discouraged by
$ho of NJ
tinued to press his suit. He was a gen.
tleman of wealth and practical leisure.
though he held the well paid sinecure of
inspector of manufactures. His personal
ity appealed to her intellect rather than
to her love. She herself said about him:
"He was a man fond Of ancient history.
and more like the ancients than the mod
ems; about seven and forty years old,
STOPPING and awkward, and with man.
ners respectable rather than pleasing.
Mind Ruled Affections.
The young girl had not been without
suitors before NJ. Roland appeared upon
the scene. But it is quite evident that
her affections were swayed by her intel
lect There was nothing. according to
cfroniclers, abou. Roland
that was physically attractive. One writ
er describes him "a tall. meager. rigor- |
Gus gentleman of a sallow complexion
and Scant hair about the temples, but
with the unmistakable stamp OF charac- |
ter about him. He had the air and man. |
ners of scholar, was careless in his |
dress, and spoke in an unmodulated |
voice" |
Nevertheless. Mile. Phipon at the age |
Of twenty-five married NJ. Roland. 1t |
was no marriage of love on her part, but !
rather one of respect, and. after the |
fashion of the France of that day, it end |
ed in her finding an affinity in the per- |
son of one Henri BuZot, who was her
devoted servitor until the day of her
death. Perhaps her essentially revolu- |
tionary spirit was best shown by what 1
she wrote in her diary on her wedding 4
day about husbands: Il could make a
model of man could love. but it would |
be shattered the moment he became my
master
Shortly after her marriage the agita-
ton which brought on the French revolu-
ton began. Ours is an age of news
papers: that was an age of personal cor
1t closely paralleled the
period of our own revolution when the
letters from the Adamses. jefferson.
Hamilton and the allied patriots ac-
compiished what today We rely upon
to perform.
Wrote Many Letters.
Her political correspondence was vo-
luminous. So. too, was that of men like