France and the Republic Part 5

Sooner or later this tragi-comedy must end. It concerns Europe and the world that it should end sooner rather than later, and that it should end with a pacific restoration of France to her proper place in the family of European States. Surely the most imperious necessity of the immediate future in Europe is a general disarmament. No French Republic can possibly propose or accept such a disarmament. No French Empire even could easily propose or accept such a disarmament. For the Republic and the Empire are jointly though not equally responsible for the humiliations and the disasters of the great Franco-German War. The historic French monarchy, restored through a revision of the existing Const.i.tution by the deliberate will of the French people, might propose such a disarmament with a moral certainty that it would be accepted.

Would not England necessarily stand by France in such a proposal? And is it not clear that the refusal of Central Europe to accept such a disarmament so proposed and supported would make that alliance with the Russian Empire, which is impossible to a French republic, both easy and natural with a French monarchy?

I should have visited France to small purpose if I could suppose that such considerations as this will much affect the ma.s.ses of the French people. Their present Minister of Public Instruction, M. Fallieres, gave his measure of their average enlightenment on such points when he actually called upon the electors of the Lot-et-Garonne in September to vote against M. Cornelis Henry de Witt because a monarchical restoration would 'be followed by a revival of the _droits des Seigneurs_, and--by a Cossack invasion!'

But there are many men in France alive to such considerations as this, and these men have many ways of reaching and influencing the political action of the ma.s.ses of their countrymen.

Such men see the vital relations of the diplomatic position of France to the grave domestic question of the public expenses. It is difficult to ascertain the actual cost of the military establishment of France on its present footing of an armed peace. But French officers of rank a.s.sure me that France is now keeping under arms at least 550,000 men, or more than one in seven of her adult male population available for national defence. 'We have more men under arms than Germany,' said a French general to me at Ma.r.s.eilles, 'which is absurd, because the German army for fighting purposes, in case of any sudden trouble with us, includes the armies of Austria, Hungary and Italy--so Germany saves money on her peace footing which we idly expend on ours.' What this officer did not say to me has been said by many other well-informed Frenchmen, that the recent military legislation of the parliamentary majority is demoralising this great military force and threatens its efficiency. The prominent position taken in the new Chamber since it a.s.sembled by M.

Raynal, a Radical member for the Gironde who held the portfolio of Public Works under M. Gambetta in 1880 and again under M. Jules Ferry, is not of good omen for the army. It was M. Raynal who brought about the fall of General Gresley as Minister of War by an 'interpellation,'

founded on the refusal of the War Minister to remove an officer of the Territorial Army because he was a monarchist. And now M. Raynal appears with a project for more effectually establis.h.i.+ng the domination of the parliamentary majority by giving it the right to adjourn once a week for six successive weeks, all debates on any 'interpellation' to which the Government may object on 'grounds of public policy!'

While the costly army of France is at the mercy of legislation under such conditions, the navy of France is managed, as appears from a drastic report presented some time ago by M. Gerville-Reache, an able Republican deputy from Guadeloupe, with at least as much regard to politics as to economy. M. Gerville-Reache showed that contracts were given out so recklessly that a supply of canned provisions, for example, had been laid in at Cherbourg sufficient for five years! At other stations supplies of all kinds were bought at prices ranging far above the market rates, and circulars were produced in which successive Ministers of Marine had ordered the commandants at different naval stations to 'expend every sou in their possession' on no matter what, 'before the expiration of the fiscal year, as any excess remaining in their hands would not only be lost to the Ministry by being ordered back into the Treasury, but would allow opportunities for impugning the forecast and judgment of the ministers!' Under such a system it is not surprising that Admiral Krantz, one of the best naval administrators France possesses, should have been forced to withdraw from the Tirard Government to satisfy a political Under-Secretary, M. Etienne.

Is it possible that in the actual condition of France and of Europe such a system as this should last?

If France drifts or is driven into a great European war, one of two things would seem to be inevitable. If the French armies are victorious, the general who commands them and restores the military prestige of France will be the master of the government and of the country. If the French armies are defeated, the Government will disappear in a whirlwind of national rage and despair. 'In that event,' said a Republican Senator to me, 'in that event--which I will not contemplate--the princes of the House of France would be recalled instantly and by acclamation; we should have nothing left but that or anarchy.'

But putting aside the crisis of a great war, what other alternatives present themselves as the possible issues in peace of the system now dominant at Paris?

Of what weight or avail in the policy of the parliamentary oligarchy which calls itself the Third Republic are the counsels of men like M.

Leon Renault, M. Jules Simon, M. Ribot, M. Leon Say, who have tried in vain to const.i.tute in France the Conservative Republic of M. Thiers? M.

Leon Say left his seat in the Senate before the recent elections and presented himself in the Pyrenees as a candidate for the Chamber, with the well-understood expectation of finding himself eventually put into the presidency of that body. This was to be a guarantee of the Conservative Republic!

Who actually fills that most important post?

M. Floquet, who first distinguished himself under the Empire by publicly insulting the Emperor of Russia in the Palais de Justice during the visit of that potentate to Paris, and who resigned his seat as a deputy for the Seine in March 1871 to share 'the perils and sufferings,' as he put it, of his const.i.tuents, the Communards of Paris! For this M.

Floquet was arrested at Biarritz and locked up at Paris till the end of the year 1871.

How can France hope to find liberty within her own borders, or peace with honour abroad, under the domination of such men?

On December 19, 1888, during a discussion of the budget of 1890 in the French Senate, M. Challemel-Lacour, a Republican of the Republicans, who actually allowed the red flag to be hoisted instead of the tricolour on the Hotel de Ville of Lyons while he was prefect of the Rhone, and who represented the Republic for a time as Amba.s.sador in London, made a remarkable speech, in which he warned his colleagues of the fate which they were preparing for the Republic. He is one of the three Senators of the Bouches-du-Rhone, and one of the four Vice-Presidents of a body now controlled by the Government, and therefore virtually by the majority of the Chamber of Deputies. He is more than this. An elaborate speech of his, delivered in the a.s.sembly on September 4, 1874, in which he denied the 'right to teach' as threatening the 'moral unity of France,' was the signal of the deliberate war against all religion afterwards proclaimed by M. Gambetta, and since prosecuted by M. Jules Ferry. Out of that speech grew the policy of the Third Republic. Yet what did he say in 1888? He plainly declared his belief that the policy of the Government was driving the Republic headlong to its ruin. He spoke as a Republican, pa.s.sionately reaffirming his faith in the Republic, and his desire to see it solidly founded in France. 'I conjure you, therefore,'

he said, 'to take order, that the Republic may once more become the reign of law; that all may be protected in their persons, in their property, in their faith, not only against disorder in the streets, but against moral disorder, moral anarchy, defamation, calumny, against the fury of an unbridled, uncontrolled, irresponsible press. It is time to arrest the threatening ruin which must affect the humblest lives, if our sad fate be to witness the catastrophe of liberty!'

M. Challemel-Lacour is an orator. The Senate was shaken and roused by his earnest appeal. A motion was made that his speech be ordered to be printed and posted on the walls of Paris. But the night came, and with the night the pressure of the powers indicted by the speech, and so no more was heard of it, and the budget of 1890 was voted by the outgoing Chamber, and the incoming Chamber has re-established in it a Secret Service Fund of 1,600,000 francs for the Minister of the Interior--and the work of 'invalidating' the elections of troublesome deputies goes merrily on, and in the remote valleys and hills of France poor village curates are mulcted of half their humble stipends for the offence of calling upon their paris.h.i.+oners to vote for the candidates who do not attack their religion.

From this intolerable position there are two obvious ways of escape. One is the familiar Parisian way of the barricades. That way is not likely to be tried in the interest of liberty or of law. The other is the way which France sought to adopt in the recent elections, of a deliberate Revision of the Const.i.tution, now hopelessly perverted into the instrument of a parliamentary oligarchy. The actual Government has just prevented a Revision in the interest of a Republican Dictator, which after all must have been more or less a leap in the dark out of a window.

As between the only available window and the only available doorway of a dwelling in flames, it is intelligible that an emotional inmate, with the smell of the fire on his garments, should make for the window. But, the window being barred, what should restrain him from walking rationally out of the doorway? Any one of a dozen possible emergencies may compel a Revision of the Const.i.tution--and any Revision of the Const.i.tution now must mean either a Radical revolution, or a restoration of the hereditary Executive. Either of these would be a doorway; for France would know whither either of these must lead. M. Thiers, it is said by persons who ought to be well informed, might have led France thus out of a doorway in 1871, and into a restoration of the Monarchy.

M. Thiers was an exceedingly able man, but it is hard to see how he could then have gone about to achieve this result. France in 1871 was still a conquered country occupied by the German armies. The Third Napoleon and his son were both then living. The Comte de Chambord was then in the strength of his years. The Comte de Paris had not then taken the steps which he afterwards took with so much wisdom and moral courage, to make an end of the rupture between Henri V. and the House of Orleans.

The situation now is materially changed. The Imperialists are divided between Jerome the father and Victor the son. The Royalists are united.

The France of Henri IV. and of Charles X. is represented to-day by the grandson of Louis Philippe. The _vox Dei_ and the _vox Populi_ meet in him as they met in the Prince of Orange when England, forty years after the criminal catastrophe of 1649, was driven by the flight of James II.

into seating William and Mary, the grandson and the granddaughter of Charles I., upon the abdicated throne.

How can an independent Executive ever be restored in France excepting in the person of Philippe VII.? Had the Revolution of 1830 never occurred he would now by the ancient law of succession be King of France and Navarre. Had the Revolution of 1848 never occurred he would now be King of the French under the Charter. If the era of revolutions is ever to be closed in France, must it not be by an Executive who shall be at once King of France and King of the French--King of France, as representing the historic growth into greatness and unity of the French nation; King of the French, as representing the personal liberties and the private rights of every citizen of the French commonwealth?

FRANCE AND THE REPUBLIC

CHAPTER I

IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS

CALAIS

The men who, in 1790, brought about the formal division of France into departments, no doubt thereby facilitated the ephemeral transformation, in September 1792, of the ancient French monarchy into a French republic, 'one and indivisible.' But they also put their improvised republic thereby at the mercy of the marvellous Italian who blew its flimsy framework into shreds with his cannon in October 1795.

In working out what George Sand calls 'the great practical joke' of the First Consulate, and the formidable reality of the Empire, Napoleon found, ready-fas.h.i.+oned to his hand and undamaged by the republican tinkers, a system of administration essentially despotic. This system did for him what Charlemagne did for himself when he got rid of the tribal dukes of the Merovingian epoch, and, as Gneist and Sir Robert Morier have shown, gathered into his own control the four unities which make up the unity of the State--the military, the police, the judiciary, and the finances. The counts of Charlemagne, removable at his pleasure, with no root in their _comitatus_ save his sovereign will, were the true prototypes of the modern French prefect. If the old provinces of France, which had a local life, organisation, and spirit of their own, had been taken as the units of government in 1790, the monarchy perhaps might hardly have been abolished in 1792 by a Convention so headlong and tumultuous that for one day it actually forgot, after abolis.h.i.+ng the monarchy, to establish any government in its place.

But if a republic had been founded through the action of the provinces of France, it would probably have been harder for Napoleon to make an end of it, than it was for Charlemagne to dispense with the recognition of local rights to which the Merovingian kings had submitted in the appointment of their hereditary _subreguli_, from among the local magnates of the s.h.i.+res. This, it seems to me, may be inferred from the fact, admitted on all hands in France, that the departments remain to-day what they were at first--mere administrative divisions which have taken no hold on the feelings and sympathies of the people, while the 'local patriotism' of the provinces is still a vivid reality.

Frenchmen are still Gascons and Provencals, Bretons and Normans, Burgundians and Picards, and no country in the world is richer than France in local histories and chronicles. But so late as 1877 the local history of the Department of the Pas-de-Calais, in which I am now writing, could be described as 'unique in France,' and this local history is really a history, not of the department at all, but of the two important and interesting provinces of which it consists--Artois, namely, and the Boulonnais--each of which still preserves, after nearly a century, its own distinctive character in the physiognomy of the people, in their habits, their turn of mind, and their traditions. The attempt to fuse them into a new political ent.i.ty has completely failed.

No more has, apparently, come of it, locally, than would have come of an attempt to fuse Ma.s.sachusetts and Rhode Island into a Department of Martha's Vineyard, or Kent and Suss.e.x into a Department of New Haven.

Possibly even less. For Artois and the Boulonnais never pa.s.sed definitely under the French crown until the middle of the seventeenth century. Even Calais, after the Duke of Guise had wrested it from England, was conquered for Spain by the Archduke Albert, and a smiling little agricultural commune alone now commemorates, in its name of Therouanne, the once great and flouris.h.i.+ng episcopal capital of Morinia in which Clodion began the French monarchy, and which was mercilessly razed to the ground and abolished from off the face of the earth, little more than three hundred years ago, by the victorious emperor Charles the Fifth.

Of this artificial department Calais is neither the chief town nor capital. It has scarcely a third of the population of Boulogne, and not much more than half the population of Arras, which is the seat of the prefecture; and though it is by no means so dreary and uninteresting a place as the casual traveller, seeing only the landing-pier, and the new station, which bears the name of the heroic Eustache de St.-Pierre, is apt to take it to be, it cannot compare, in point of beauty and interest, either with Boulogne or with Arras. But as the French head of the great historic ferry between England and the Continent, and as the seat of sundry thriving factories, it is both a busy and prosperous town. I found its streets swarming with people and its houses a flutter of flags and banners, when I came to it on June 3, 1889, to see the 'inauguration,' by President Carnot, of the works on which the French Government has been spending millions of francs during the past decade, with an eye to deepening and enlarging the harbour. The weather was magnificent. Several men-of-war of the Channel squadron lay off the port. Excursion steamers came in from England, bringing members of Parliament and miscellaneous British subjects, of the sort once indignantly denounced to me by the little old verger of a Midland cathedral as 'them terrible trippers.' The active and good-natured railway porters at the station were worn out with throngs of travellers pouring in from all the country round about. There was much animation everywhere, but nowhere any enthusiasm, though Calais, I suppose, must be a republican town, as at the election of a deputy, held here in 1886, the Government candidate, M. Camesca.s.se, received 5,196 votes against 2,233 given to his Conservative opponent, M. Labitte. I am told, too, there is a good deal of Socialism among the factory workmen; and I can see that the place is full of _cabarets_ and _debits_, flowing not only with light beer and sour wine, but with spirits of a sort to make the consumers more clamorous about the rights than solicitous about the duties of man.

I heard, in the course of the day, that at some points in his progress, the President was received with cries of 'Vive Boulanger!' but nothing of this sort pa.s.sed under my own observation. What most struck me was that his presence appeared to be not an event at all, but merely an incident of a general holiday. Nor did the people seem to care much about the real event of the day, the 'inauguration' of the perfected port. Perhaps they knew that the port is not yet perfected. Those of them who went down to the pier at least knew, this--for a steamer of no very great size, the St.-Andre, I believe, trying to come in, grounded on the sand, and lay there thumping herself heavily for I know not how long. I heard this mishap described with much glee by a group of Boulonnais in the main street. 'Ah bah!' said one of them exultingly, 'they may spend what they like, Calais will never be Boulogne!'

I breakfasted with a friend who lives much on a property he has in Picardy, and who came down to Calais to meet me. When I first knew him, years ago, he was a republican of the type of Cavaignac and a bitter enemy of the Empire, some of his kinsfolk in the Gironde having been ill-treated during the persecution which raged against the republicans and the royalists alike, in and around Bordeaux, after the _coup d'etat_ of the Prince President. Of later years he has been growing indifferent to public affairs, and is now, I think, simply a pessimist, whom nothing but a foreign invasion of France is likely to rouse into activity again.

'What is the matter with the people here?' I asked him. 'Are they Boulangists, or do they simply dislike Carnot?'

'No!' he replied, 'I don't think they care much about Boulanger, and why should they dislike Carnot? There is nothing in him to like or to dislike. He is not a personality. He is only a functionary, and Frenchmen care nothing about functionaries. They know that this is an electoral job, and they care nothing about it, one way or the other.'

'But I saw an inscription on a banner in one of the streets,' I said, 'to this effect: "Calais always faithful to the Carnots!" Does that mean that the Carnots are of this country?'

'Not at all! The grandfather of Carnot was born in Burgundy somewhere.

He married a young lady of St.-Omer, and in that way came to be sent by the Pas-de-Calais to the "Legislative" and the Convention. The inscription is amusing though,' he added, 'for, like these other inscriptions reciting the names of Lazare Carnot, and Hippolyte Carnot, and Sadi Carnot, it shows how hard some people are trying to work the President up into a personality. They want to make him out the heir of a dynasty--Carnot III.!'

'That is not a very republican way of looking at a President,' I observed.

'Possibly not, but it is a very French way of looking at one! We should be the most monarchical people in Europe if we were not the most anarchical. Give a public man a legend and a grandfather, and he can go a long way with us. I don't know that the grandfather will do without the legend, even when, as in this case, the grandfather has a legend of his own.'

'Is that legend of grandfather Carnot very strong in this region?' I asked.

'Neither in this region nor anywhere else,' he replied. 'I think it is very foolish of the managers in Paris to provoke comparisons by sending a political bagman to Germany to bring back the ashes of Papa Victory, as the Prince de Joinville brought back the dead Emperor from St.

Helena. Carnot I., after all, was simply a good war minister, who loomed into greatness only in comparison with the rogue Pache and the phenomenal b.o.o.by Bouchotte who preceded him. He was certainly no better than his successor Petiet, and it was Petiet, not he, who finally "organised victory" by sending Moreau to the Rhine, and Bonaparte to Italy. Napoleon, who knew them both, made Petiet governor of Lombardy, and chose him, not Carnot, to organise the great camp at Boulogne. When Petiet died, not long after Austerlitz, Napoleon gave him a much grander funeral in the Pantheon than can be got up now for the grandfather of Carnot. Most people have forgotten Petiet, and it is a blunder to remind them of him. But this is a government of blunderers. See what trouble the Ferrys and the Freycinets are taking to unmake the legend Clemenceau made for Boulanger! Do what they may, that black horse is worth more to Boulanger to-day than Carnot's grandfather ever will be to Carnot III.'

'But has Carnot III. no value of his own? Has he not shown more firmness than people expected of him when this Boulangist business began?'

'Carnot III. is simply the firm-name of Ferry and De Freycinet. I am not fond of the scurrilities of Rochefort, as you know, but he sometimes. .h.i.ts the nail on the head very hard, as he did when, on the day after that comedy of the presidential election, he said "the fact that a man, if you ask him to dinner, will not put your spoons into his pocket is not a sufficient reason for making him president of a republic." Only,'

he added reflectively, 'that was not quite their reason for making him president. It was that they thought he would let other people pocket the spoons.'