The suspiciousness of the French Administration is rising to a
point at which it becomes at least a very impressive symptom of the panic to which France is sometimes subject, and therefore a source of real danger to France, since a Government in a panic is always a Government in peril. On Sunday, a Welsh Justice of the Peace, and the manager of certain Welsh granite quarries, Mr. George Farren, J.P., who unsuccessfully contested South Carnarvonshire at the General Election in the Unionist interest, was arrested in his yacht off Perron-Guirec, Brittany, and taken under guard to Lannion, on suspicion of being a German spy. Mr. Farren was known to Baron de Casson, with whom he had been staying, and the Baron at length obtained the release of the party on parole; but the vessel was still under arrest when we last heard of it, and Mr. Farren and his party are unable to leave Brittany. Now, though a Welsh- man might perhaps be taken for a Brittany spy, to take him for a German spy is thoroughly absurd. But the French are frightened subjectively, not objectively,—by the weaknesses they feel within, not by the terrors they find without.
Previous page
