The speech of the Minister of Commerce was decidedly "high-falutin'."
M. Millerand began by asserting that "the universe bad joined France in this gigantic enterprise," and continued by affirming that "death itself was recoiling before the march of the human mind," which in a year of terrible famines is not even rhetorically true. His main idea was that the pooling of the world would make the happiness of the world, interests, ideas, and sentiments acting "like the thin wires on which flies human thought," which is only correct if interests are never maddmore selfish, ideas never lose their edge, and sentiments are not made sickly in the processes of traveL M. Loubet was more moderate, but even he regarded the Exhibition as likely to foster the solidarit4 of nations, which he regards as the most moralising of influences,—a belief not greatly confirmed by the history of the Roman Empire. Doubtless the existence of that Empire made the spread of Christianity possible, but it also reduced the many great European races, whose frontiers it swept away to a common and Asiatic level. M. Loubet, being a wan with eyes, perceives. and mentions "the rude combats engaged in by the nations in the industrial, commercial., and economic arena," but he hopes the rudeness will be at least mitigated by great exhibi- tions. So do we, but they have been going on for half a century and have not mitigated it yet..
