Bisbee daily review., 1918-07-12
The Fourteenth Of July

observe in some manner the French na- tional holiday of the Fourteenth of July, a brief and simple discussion of the origin and the purpose of the day might not be anliss at this time, even to those ot our readers who have read and studied more about this event than has the writer, for different viewpoint might be gained, if not more knowledge After all, the Fourteenth of July marked an epoch and not a mere date It marked the first change Tn human affairs in France for seventeen centuries. The day itself, like most immortal days, was sordid and shabby enough, and to those who saw it by the light of that sun its bloodstains shone through its rags. For, be 1t known, upon that day, in the year l769, a mob of wild, bloodthirsty, dirty,' implacable revolutionists, men and women, stormed the Bastile, also known as the Castle of Paris, and put to death the gov ernor and seven of his small company ot soldiers. and liberated something like a dozen state prisoners and carried them on their shoulders in triumph. They also burned the great prison and tore down its massive walls.
 This was mere incident in the red haze of the great French revolution, and yet 1t was perfectly natural that France should date her real liberty from this day. For the Castle of Paris, the Bastile, had stood astride tAe San Antonio gate for 400 years as the symbol of kingly power, and its mighty bastions and walls had thrown their shadow over the city as menace to all men, and no man within that shadow knew whether or not he was free At the king whim or fancy or humor, any one might be taken from the bright sunlight and the winds of heaven and placed within these dark walls and held there forever. No man, be he bourgeois, gamin, nobleman, soldier, merchant or priest, ever looked at those terrible frowning, mysterious, impregnabie walls without shudder He did not know at what hour the king man might place his hand upon his shoulder and lead him away to the Bastile.
 For four centuries the Bastile was name to conjure with in France. Grim and fearful and many were the legends that clung to every stone of its ancient towers. How many millions of Frenchmen Tn each of the scores and scores of generations that had lived under its shadow had felt and known and whispered the awe they, felt for this prison. It was the king own castle and there men were fed and lodged at the king expense. It was easy to enter the Bastile and hard to get out again. It stood in one of the most prominent places in Paris and its towers were landmark and its bastions dominated the entire city. I ( II IL k.,,l.a rat mystery, the kings and ministers and card- inals and princes who had the power of the high justice. the middle and the low of the old days in France took care that the peo- ple should know as little as possible of the Bastile and its dark secrets and ot the com ing and going of its prisoners and ot the administration of its affairs in general. 50 it was that the Bastile came to be an insti- tuition as well as a prison. Its name served for the name of all prisons; its crown ot power and symbol of oppression became legion and all France shrunk instnctlvely from its subtle and pervading menace. bus through the ages the psychology of the kings prison and its mission grew until It was an actual part of the kingship in France As D'Artagnan, the king musk eteer, once said, after taking a prisoner there, 'I seemed to feel the cold breath of this place and did not breathe freely until outside of its walls. The governor asked me to stay and sup with him, but curse me # could eat a morsel of food in there.
 And this mob of wild fierce, bloody men and women who stormed that prison that day; this sad. sodden terrible mob, was nothing more or less than the new born