GENERAL DE GALLIFFET ON "COUPS D'ETAT."
AVERY curious and significant proposal made on Friday week in the French Chamber elicited from the Minister of War a speech which has attracted no attention here, but which was really of historical import- ance. The Chamber was debating the Bill for raising a colonial army, or, as we should call it, a sepoy army, which interests all military men because it may offer them careers, all the " Colonial party " because they are wild for expansion, and all peasants who attend to politics because they dislike tropical service for their sons, when M. Marcel Sombat, a Socialist Deputy, raised a serious objection to its provisions. He was afraid, he said, that the dark troops, being personally devoted to their leaders, might be used to strike a coup dicta ; and he therefore moved that it should be illegal to station them "within the Continental dominion of the Republic." The Motion hit a blot, for Frenchmen are always expecting a coup d'etat, and know that their colonial officers are seldom in love with the Republic ; and it might have been carried but that the Army chiefs feared that with such a provision all rising officers would look on colonial regiments as penal settlements for discredited or hopeless men. In accepting colonial commands they would, as General de Galliffet said, pass into the black-list of the French Army. General de Galliffet, therefore, mounted the Tribune to resist the Motion, and made one of his frankly outspoken speeches, which so carried away the Chamber that M. Marcel Sombat, who had hopes of a Parliamentary triumph, was defeated in a full House by nearly seven to one. In the teeth of such a majority no further attempt, we may be sure, will be made in France to draw geographical dis- tinctions between the Regulars and the auxiliary troops. General de Galliffet, after pointing out the slur we have mentioned which would be cast upon colonial officers by a sentence of perpetual banishment, laughed at the notion of a coup d'itat. The idea was, he said, an anachronism, a coup d'itat being no longer possible. Such a stroke could not be delivered at Brest or Toulon. The blow must be struck in Paris, and to strike in the capital you must have the consent of the Minister of War and of the Governor of Paris. If they were wisely chosen no coup d'itat would be attempted or would succeed. He knew, he said, for coups d'etat had often enough been proposed to him, before he was Minister, and he had rejected all such offers, first, because he would not attack his country; secondly, because he found the proposals were always " stupid and imprudent"; and thirdly, because he thought the business he should have had to do afterwards—a massacre like that of December 2nd, 1852—was " un- desirable." That is a very remarkable utterance for a Minister of War who executed Communards by the thousand, and will set many men thinking, especially Ambassadors, whether it is or is not substantially correct.
In theory it certainly is. The Army has always been more powerful in France than Englishmen think it ought to be, and has often been suspected of menacing the State, but since the abdication of Napoleon I. there has been nothing like a military gmeute nor any serious mutiny. The average French officer is a slave to discipline. He waits always for his superior, and his superior waits for chiefs, who themselves look to the Minister of War, and the Governor of Paris, who is absolute within his command, and have a sort of horror of the regiments firing on one another. That, they say, is " Spanish," and would destroy for France all hope of victory in the field,—a judgment probably correct, as the French regiment which destroyed a French regiment would never be forgiven by its com- rades. Louis Napoleon was President, that is, legal Commander-in-Chief, when he called on the Army to strike, and when he fell the Minister of War assented to his fall. Bazaine's idea of marching on Paris in the name of the Emperor was never carried out, and it is doubtful, if he bad revealed his intentions, whether the sol- diers would have followed him. Marshal MaeMahon who knew the French soldier profoundly, doubted whether even legal authority would be sufficient to induce the soldiery to assail the regular Government, and said boldly that to succeed the general who struck a coup d'etat must, besides being legal chief of the Army, as he himself was, be a victor in the field or bear a charmed name like that of Bonaparte or Bourbon. That charm has been broken of late, and as there is no victorious general now at the head of a, French army corps Marshal MacMahon's con- ditions cannot be supplied. A coup d'etat from the street, it must be added, though General de Galliffet thought the addition needless, is now an impossibility. The soldiers would not take orders from mob leaders, and fighting has so changed its character that the whole popu- lation of Paris could not defeat its garrison. The new rifles and the Maxim guns would wither advancing mobs, as the Dervishes were withered at Omdurman, before they ever got near enough to inflict vengeance on the troops.
It follows from General de Galliffet's statement, which was enthusiastically applauded, that so long as the Republic is true to itself the present Constitution can never be overthrown, and that the uneasiness as to its safety felt both in France and Europe is without founda- tion ; or rather it would follow, but that there are one or two weak links in the chain of General de Galliffet's argu- ment. The President, for instance, might favour a counter-revolution, and if he did his order to the troops would be final, for he is the legal Commander-in-Chief. The Chambers might impeach him afterwards, but for the day the soldier who disobeyed the President's order would be guilty of mutiny. This has before been proved to be a real danger, and no one who recollects certain tendencies betrayed by President Faure can believe that it has wholly passed away. He did not aspire to the throne, but he would have much liked to strike a blow for " the plebis- citary Republic" with himself as President for life. M. Loubet is doubtless loyal to the Constitution, but the first idea of the reactionaries would be to compel him to resign, and if he resigned his successor might not be equally disinterested and straightforward. That duke- dom of Albemarle has attractions even for a citizen President. Then a Ministry may make a mistake. Such a mistake was undoubtedly made when General Zurlinden was made Governor of Paris at the time of the Dreyfus trial, and also when General Chanoine was. niade Minister of War. The opinions of French generals are not always accurately known, and they sometimes are -changed because those who entertain them have been slighted, or because the temptations offered are irresistible. Monk was not a specially bad man, but he had lived through a Revolution and he took a very heavy bribe. And finally there is the most serious danger of all, that of an outburst of military opinion such as would force 'the hand of the Government and place in the chair of the -Minister a general whom they suspected but could not .pass over. It was such an outburst of opinion that gave General Boulanger the chance to which he proved himself so unexpectedly unequal. Whether this risk is a great one we are unable, as outsiders, to decide, but it is certain that some of the ablest men in France believe it to be always present, and that the removal, or resignation, or 'death of General de Galliffet would produce profound alarm. It is known that he would, as he said, if needful arrest the Governor of Paris, and that is not known of any other general of equal rank. It is singular that he, an aristocrat by birth if not a Monarchist by conviction, should be justly regarded as the mainstay of a democratic Re- public; but the confidence in him is only one more testimony to the fact that character is a better guarantee of loyalty than any kind of opinions. The very objections alleged against General de Galliffet, his aristocratic pride and his scorn for the mass of the people, are securities that whether he believes in the Republic or not he will hold it due to himself not to betray the trust which the Republic has confided to his hands.
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