19 DECEMBER 1896, Page 3

The universality of the French feeling for Russia was curiously

illustrated on Thursday. The vote was proposed for the fetes to the Czar, and it was expected that the Socialists, now a powerful group in the Chamber, would resist it to extremity. They do not love autocrats, and they thought the " Protocol" which settled the ceremonials derogatory to the dignity of the Republic,—which, by the way, it was. When the vote was moved, however, the Socialists, after a futile attempt to "save their faces" by proposing a grant of the same amount-2160,000—to the unemployed, announced that sympathetic relations with Russia were of great importance, and they should therefore vote the fete- money. Which, like the will of the late Mr. W. Morris, in which he bequeaths 255,000 to his wife and family and nothing to charities, shows that even in Socialists there remains a good deal of human nature.