20 APRIL 1901, Page 2

M. 011ivier, the Minister of Napoleon ELL who helped to

make the war with Prussia, and said that he made it with "a light heart," has indulged himself in a furious outburst against Italy, whose ingratitude, he declares, amounts to "quasi-parricide." He accuses King Humbert of treachery, and asserts that Victor Emanuel II. hates France as much as his father did. He predicts in consequence the fall of Italy, which under wiser circumstances, he thinks, might have resembled that " European paradise, the Tuscany of the Grand Dukes," the Tuscany, we may add, where everything was free except man, education, and religion. We do not know that M. 011ivier's opinion matters much nowadays, but his wild utterance is a curious evidence of the instinctive French distaste for a united Italy. Millions of Frenchmen agree with M. 011ivier, and when the time comes for France to resume her role as supreme disturber Italy will probably contest with Spain the glory of being the first object of French invasion. Piedmont or Catalonia, either would be a compensation for Alsace-Lorraine, and attainable by "a war with limited liability."