THE LATEST FRENCH SCANDALS.
PARIS has been enjoying an aftermath of scandals. She has received them, indeed, with the indifference which comes of a jaded appetite. Probably, the politicians who have provided them did not expect anything different. They knew their public too well. But Paris is not France, and in these days it is of more importance to have France on your side than to have Paris. If the rural electors can but be brought to believe that this Cabinet, like all that have preceded it, is made up of fools or knaves, its enemies will have gained their point. Where parties are so con- fused and broken up as they are in France, common hatreds are often the only attainable bond-of union. Men can agree about what they wish to pull down, though they are hopelessly at issue as to what they wish to build up. We shall know on Sunday-week how far the calculations of the scandal-mongers are well founded. The French elector keeps his counsel before an election ; and he often shows a provoking disposition to keep it during an election. It is at least possible that the effect of the general discredit which has overtaken French politicians may simply be to increase the number of those who show their distaste for the pre- sent conduct of affairs by declining to have any part in making it better. Of all political weapons, abstention is the least effective ; but for the Continental electorate it seems to have an undying charm.
The revelations began last Saturday, when Norton and Dueret were put on their trial for the Cocarde forgeries. As no one questioned the character of these documents, the interest of the proceedings turned on M. 016mencea,u's appearance in the character of a commentator on the evi- dence, and on the amount of belief in the Cocarde revela- tion which two of the Ministers, M. Dupuy and M. Develle, had entertained in the first instance. To outsiders, M. Cl6menceau's defence seems complete ; but in Paris it has to all appearance only impressed those who had no need of being convinced. His innocence of taking bribes might be supposed to be established when the papers on which his accusers rely for their proofs are admitted to be forged. To Englishmen it is further made clear by the inherent absurdity of the charge. Before the English Foreign Office could have bought M. Cl6menceau, they must have convinced themselves that he was worth buying. But in spite of Norton's list turning out a forgery, and in spite of the improbability that an English Government would have spent public money on securing the precarious support of a politician not likely to be in office, M. Cldmenceau continues to be accused of having intrigued with England in opposition to Russia. The incident is only significant as showing the persistence of the set now made against him. It is, indeed, an undesigned tribute to his personal and political eminence. If he could be permanently discredited, the chances of the Radical Party would be gone. They have no one in their own ranks who could fill his place ; and when by his disappearance they had ceased to be formidable, they would no longer retain their present hold on the Opportunists. Were M. Ch menceau a smaller man, no one would pay any attention to the Boulangist attacks on him. As it is, there are politicians of a very much higher order than M. de Mores who would be well pleased if the charge of corruption could be brought home to him. It is difficult not to rejoice in iniquity when it is the iniquity of a dangerous party leader. In such hands, however, as those into which the process of denunciation has now fallen, it may be trusted to defeat itself. There has been quite enough in M. Clemenceau's avowed policy and action for the last fifteen years to make him distrusted in a country which is gradually finding out the fallacy of a Republican concentration that places the conduct of affairs in the hands of a faction representing neither the opinions nor the wishes of the majority of the nation. Accusations like those of the Marquis de Mores can only divert attention from the real demerits of M. Cl6menceau's career, and benefit where they are intended to injure.
But if the Cocarde trial has helped to rehabilitate M. 016menceau, it has not been equally kind to the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. It is doubtful whether they were not in the first instance inclined to believe in the genuineness of the forged papers; it is certain that after they had satisfied themselves that they were forged, they allowed them to be made the subject of a debate in the Chamber. If M. Dupuy and M. Develle could believe that an official of the English Embassy was capable of writing such letters as those which deceived M. Millevoye, they can be but poorly equipped for the high functions they have to dis- charge. They are not, indeed, altogether to blame for this defect. It is the misfortune of France that she has come, under pressure of circumstances, to be governed by men who have little or no preparation for the conduct of affairs ; and there is no department in which the want of this pre- paration is so quickly visible as in diplomacy. The man in the street is always willing to listen to cock-and- bull stories about the machinations of foreign Govern- ments, and in France it is the man in the street who now takes the chief seat in Cabinets and puts his name to despatches. But politicians who consent to take great duties upon themselves cannot be permitted to plead their own incompetence as an excuse for failure to perform them. That would have been a very proper ground for declining office ; it is none at all for making a mess of it. Unfortunately for the two Ministers, their liability on the second head of the accusation becomes heavier in proportion as they succeed in clearing them- selves of their liability on the first bead. Let us concede that they were never taken in, that they saw all along that the Cocarde letters were clumsy forgeries, that their only object in not undeceiving M. Millevoye was to make a little cheap reputation by exposing him in the Chamber. In this case, what is to be said of Ministers who, when informed that the character of a friendly Power is about to be attacked on testimony which they know to be forged, allow the debate to come on, when they might have stopped it by telling the author of the attack beforehand what they were prepared to tell him as soon as he had made his speech The second revelation is of a more amusing order. It is the work of one M. Dupas, an ex-secretary of the Director of the Paris Detective Police, and purports to disclose the complicity of M. Loubet and M. Ribot in the escape of Arton. From the former, M. Dupas alleges that he received orders to look very sharply after Arton but on no account to arrest him, but it was not until M. Ribot had succeeded M. Loubet that M. Dupes was in a position to carry out these instructions. At last., on December 30th, 1892, he actually met Arton at Venice, and faithfully fulfilled both parts of his commission. He watched Arton sharply, for they y breakfasted together in the morning, spent the day in each other's company, and went to the theatre together in the evening. Nothing, according to M. Dupas's account, could have been more unreserved than his communications with Arton, nor was their intercourse interrupted by any attempt on M. Dupas's part to obtain Arton's extradition. Nor again, if we accept M. Dupas's story, could there be any misconception on the part of the French Government as to the meaning of the instructions they had given him. They were kept informed of all that passed, and M. Dupas became the channel of sundry offers which Arton desired to make to them. If the narrative were only true, the case against M. Loubet, and still more against M. Ribot, would be complete. They thought that Aeon's disclosures might be compro- mising, and they took such simple measures as occurred to them to keep him at a distance. The weak point of the story is that it rests on nothing but M. Dupas's word. The surprising thing about the inci- dent is the way in which the Cabinet have treated it. In a semi-official note M. Dupuy has disclaimed all re- sponsibility for the non-arrest of Arton, but he has been equally careful not to express any disbelief in the accuracy of the story, so far as it affects his predecessors. " Even admitting," he says, " that the allegations are true," they do not concern the present Ministry. The acts, "rightly or wrongly ascribed to preceding Ministers," involve the present Cabinet in no responsibility. M. Dupuy will hardly be the gainer by this ostentatious refusal to com- mit himself to any opinion as to the conduct of M. Loubet and M. Ribot. One mark of innocence is unwillingness to believe in another's guilt, and it would not have cost M. Dupuy much to express his conviction that the two ex- Prime Ministers have been falsely accused by M. Dupes. Such a declaration might have added nothing to the force of M. Ribot's denial, but it would certainly have presented his successor in a more agreeable light.
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