PATRIOTISM AND CORRUPTION IN FRANCE.
IT seems a strange thing to say, but we have no doubt that one of the main causes of the evils which are now shattering the institutions of France is the French patriotic ideal. The French are genuinely patriotic—that is, they will make great sacrifices and endure much suffer- ing for the sake of their country—but the first claim of that country in their eyes is "consideration." As each Frenchman desires first of all that his amour pro pro shall be gratified, or at least respected, so he holds that his country ought to have her amour propre preserved by her sons as well as by the foreigner. Frenchmen have been biown to argue that it was not what Great Britain did on the Nile which irritated France, but the want of " con- sideration " for France shown in her methods of doing it. That is a perfectly just expression of French feeling, and its result under certain circumstances of frequent recur- rence is most injurious to France. The can be no manner of doubt, for example, that direct corruption, the habit of taking public money for private uses, which has always been one of the curses of France—it was rampant under the Bourbons, though only financiers and nobles greatly profited by it—has invaded the fighting depart- ments, and that officers of rank, badly paid, compelled by the social tone to keep up "an appearance," and subju- gated by the attractions of the great cities, have yielded to temptation, and are now fighting with almost ferocious energy to prevent exposure. The heads of the State are aware of corruption—as aware as Napoleon I. showed himself in his private letters—Senators and Deputies are aware of it, though more vaguely ; H. Pelletan, Reporter of the Budget and the ablest military financier in France, has testified on oath during the trial of M. Urbain Gohier to his knowledge of its existence on a great scale. Hundreds of able officers, keen auditors, trusted chief clerks, must be aware of it, and probably all these classes at heart are indignant because of it. Corruption does not profit them, and it terribly injures France. Moreover, respect for probitg is in the essence of the French character, appealing as it does not only to the virtuous side of that character—and there is a virtuous side—but to the mathematical instinct of the French brain. Why, then, is not corruption rooted out, cut out like a gangrene with the social guillotine of France, general opprobrium ? Partly, no doubt, from social timidity, no Frenchman liking to make a scandal till some one else has made it, but chiefly because all the classes which know anything accurately are penetrated with the idea that exposure would be "unpatriotic." France would lose " consideration " abroad ; great officers would lose " consideration " among conscripts ; this party or that would lose " consideration " with electors. Everything must be bushed up for the sake of "patriotism." Intelligent Paris does not doubt Colonel Picquart, but holds him rightly imprisoned because of his "unpatriotic" rectitude. Unintelligent Paris does not wholly disbelieve M. Zola, but exults in his banishment because of his want of "patriotism" in soaspers- ing France. Deputies allude openly—have alluded this week—to the disastrous incidents of the conquest of Mada- gascar, when thousands of the worthiest lives were flung away by what is too kindly described as mismanagement, but investigation is barred by fear lest the movers should be denounced as "unpatriotic." Such a denunciation is almost fatal to a man in France, stamping him as it does as an unsafe man, probably of secret sentiments in favour of "anarchism." He is lucky if he escapes the criminal trial to which M. Urbain Gohier has been subjected, not for his charges against the Army, for they were unnoticed while he published them as newspaper articles, but for showing an unpatriotic tendency by embodying them in a book, which might of course lover the "con- sideration" felt for France all over Europe. The un- patriotic investigator, even if he is not prosecuted, is liable to what is really a most severe ordeal, suc- cessive challenges, which need have no end, from groups of officers, probably much more familiar with arms than he is himself. One journalist received eleven such challenges for saying, no doubt with a certain brutality, that subaltern officers in France ate too much at parties. Defence against such menaces or prosecutions is nearly impossible, for the good officers, who must constitute an immense majority, will give no help to the man who says unpatriotic things. At the present moment it stands to reason that those who profit by corruption in the French Staff must be comparatively few, but M. Pellet= says publicly in the Chamber that when he, as Reporter to the Budget Committee—Chairman, as we should say, of the permanent Financial Committee of the Commons—inquired into " frauds " which he thought he discerned in the accounts, he could obtain no information whatever. The good and the bad were both alike, the former acting from their entirely false notion of true patriotism. It is very doubtful whether the Judges themselves are free from the same impulse, which constantly so influences juries that whenever a charge of peculation is made it is the first argument of counsel. The effect is that an officer of rank who is tempted to take money from the secret ser- vice, or for forwarding certain contracts, or for ignoring the non-arrival of supplies paid for, knows that he will be screened against the outside world, and that at the utmost he will receive a quiet hint to retire on his pension from the service which he has done his best to ruin. The good will protect him as well as the bad, as they have often done in other great corporations, and even in great Churches in times when the moral tone was low, or when Bishops were aware of a tendency outside to " univer- salise " every charge against an ecclesiastic.
On the disorganisation which a vice of this kind intro- duces into any service it is unnecessary to dwell, but its effect in armies is unusually rapid. It is very difficult, as all experienced soldiers know, to test the quality of articles supplied to an army, the quantities being enor- mous and the prices usually low ; and so much more is to be made by stealing those supplies than by any other method of fraud, that sooner or later the mischief is sure to spread into departments the good order of which is vital to success. Either the food is bad—the great trouble in navies, as it used to be in English public schools—or the reserve stores of powder and weapons are too small, as once happened in Toulon ; or the clothing is too thin —said to be an almost incurable crime in the Russian Army—or the medicine stores are corrupt—one can cheat for ever in quinine—or the boots are absolutely no pro- tection to the soldiers' feet. Those failures are most dangerous to armies, not only because the soldiers are not fed or provided, but because they know perfectly well the reason why; and even if they do not suspect their own officers, as the soldiers did under Louis XVI., they lose all loyalty to the central power, which, as the "repatriated. Spanish soldiers are now declaring, left them to starve in Cuba that great officers might grow rich. The evil, however, is self-evident, and it is the worse because it tends to in- crease, and because it is so difficult to find any remedy except an alteration of tone which laws and regulations will not secure. The evil increases because the terrible numbers in modern armies favour the concealment of frauds, and because such numbers could not be kept without an amount of economy in purchases which almost drives the contractors into fraud. There is hardly an army in the world, for instance, where the price allowed for a boot will buy a good one, and though it is true that ten thousand boots can be sold at less for each than a hundred can, there is a. definite and easily reached limit to that calculation. As to remedy, if the good will not help you because exposure is unpatriotic, where is it to come from ? A vigilant and slightly cruel Sovereign might, one would think, stop peculation, but Napoleon I. failed, and Nicholas I. is believed to have acknowledged his failure, though his ladder of punishments included sentences to North Siberia for life. Parliaments cannot prevent peculation at all, and are slow to punish it after- wards, and ordinary laws break down under the excessive and quite natural dislike of officers for complaining men. The mischief, too, in armies and navies is usually dis- coverable only when it is too late to wait, and too troublesome to fix responsibility. Liberal salaries im- prove matters a little, but only a little, the ultimate right of " passing " supplies resting almost of necessity with inferior persons. There is, in fact, no complete remedy except an improvement in tone such as prevails at this moment in England and Germany, and, we fear, nowhere else; and how is that to be obtained if every peculation is hushed up on " patriotic " grounds ? It is simply impossible, and that, we lament to say, is the conclusion of many Frenchmen of the highest ability and character. The national virtues, they say, protect this guilt even more than the national foibles.
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