M. de Freycinet has made an extraordinary selection for the
Residency at Had. The new Resident, who is in future to represent France throughout Anam and Tonquin, is M. Paul Bert, the physicist, who knows nothing of diplomacy and very little of Asia, and is bitterly opposed to the Catholic Missions which it will be one of his principal tasks to protect. We presume he was selected by the Foreign Office as a lead- ing Opportunist for whom a great post must be provided ; but the selection is none the less extraordinary. Men of M. Bert's type do not make good agents for that kind of work. They are viewy to a man, and we venture to predict that before M. Paul Bert has been in Hue for three months, the Foreign Office will be dismayed at the audacity of some of his proposals. At present N. Bert says that he and the missionaries have a common ground of action, namely, their patriotism, and that he intends to govern through Anamite Mandarins ; but he does not know what religious quarrels are in Asia, or what an Anamite Mandarin is like. When he does, he will ask aid from France more urgently than General de Courcy.
