Evening star., 1928-11-25

was in turn filthy commanding, saint
like. treacherous, faithful, gluttonous,
aseetic, childishly happy, or introspec-
lively gloomy
He desplsed the human race, but
treated his successors TO GATHERINGS
favors as II they were his brothers.
He was her dog, master, concierge,
next friend and Dutch uncle. In her
position as mistress of all the Russias
he worshiped her, but as a woman he
often despiSed her, treating her dearest
wishes as mere whims. And one. of
these. he thought, was John Paul Jones'
The Russian adventure was disastrous.
While Jones led the operations in the
Black Sea that blocked the Turks and
enabled Suvarofi to start the string OF
victories that eliminated In the tri-
umphant peace Of Jassy, 1t was not to
Potemkin's interest to give the Ameri-
can hero any credit, He was surround-
ed on all sides by spies and lived in
an atmosphere OF treachery, plots and
eounterplots,
For the victories that he achieved
the Prince OF Nassau-Seigen received
official credit. having made the official
reports, Jones operated with men who
did not want him to succeed and who
sabotaged his attempts at unified action.
When the fighting was over, he faced
false. and insidious calumnies at the
Russian court.
On August ls, 1889, he completed the
most Wretched 10 months OF his life
and left Russia. Catherine could easily
have, on one pretext or another, dis
missed him from her payroll, but she
chose to keep him on a cord, obviously
because, If dismissed, he might have
taken service with Turkey, Sweden, or
any one Of the other countries with
which her ambitions had thrown her
enormous empire into war.
ZONES had been run over and fat
tened by forces which he never un-
derstood and which. as q man of action
and not OF reflection, he was incapable
OF understanding
What were writes elsewhere became,
In Russia, his defects His self-contis
denee led him to oppose the Potemkin
machine when more flexible nature
would have gone with II. His care in
preparation for action was seorned by
leaders who on alap-dash impulse loved
to make inpressienstic attacks. He was
concerned to save lives and material
when they cared for neither: while his
numerous little punctilios they regarded
as effeminate weaknesses.
he left Russia as man without
country The United States, In the
midst OF Its struggles to establish sta
BILE government after the Inauguration
Of Washington as flFat President In April
of this same year, could give him no en-
ployment. France was too absorbed in
the pains Of her approaching revolu-
ton to pay attention to him. From the
country Of his birth he had cut himself
of with finality.
On returning to his old Partisan
haunts in 1890, he found enough to dis
turb him, That lovely court at Ver-
sailles, where as kings chevaIier he had
always been received with the pageantry
delightful to the heart Of an instructive
lover Of the dramatic, had been ruth
iessly broken up, and his benefactor,
Louis XVI and that sweet girl" Marie
Antoinette, had been brought to Paris
under guard. His adored Lafayette was
flirting with abhorrent, II moderate.
ideas OF democracy. The Duchess Of
Chartres had. been separated from the
duke and was living with her father,
while her husband was following in the
wake Of Nine, de denlis In England.
Having too much time" on his hands,
as ha confessed, Jones wrote quantities
Of letters from his Paris apartment. He
Mah1L 54A0AN AVA AbAn AACAP w bpka4LAtAk
an American eonaul's post In Europe.
He elSo urged upon Jefferson and Car
michael the necessity of doing some
thing to redeem the American seamen
captured and enslaved in Algiers.
And then he encountered q new in
teFest. He met Bertrand Barere. after
ward known as the Anacreon OF the
Revolution" Barere saw the necessity
of ieorganizing the French navy and
admitting TO It aggressive young men of
the middle class, II 1t was to hold its own
against British naval domination in fu-
ture,. In communicating these ideas to
Jones, he touched O. vibrating chord Ia
the admiral, who had himself suffered
from the fact that the French navy of
the old regime had admitted as officers
only men Of aristocrattc birth: and It
was not long before Barere was intro
ducing Jones to FrenchEnen Of those
mercantile and professional classes
which had determined to abolish the
monarchy. -
'T''9re Is some evidence. found chiefly
Yritings Of Benoit Andre, his for
I! cratary, that Jones promised
FIR 4 republicans, IN case OF attack by
foreign powers, especially Great Britain,
that he would join their navy as an adj
miral: but he was dead before the san
itary Gordon" OF revolutionary powers
began to close in.
These is a story that Napoleon, IL
years after Jones's death, realizing after
Trafalgar and the Nile how British sea
power, had nullihed his plans for con-
quest In the East. asked How old was
Paul Jones when he died?" About 40