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Letters from Paris, 1870-1875. Written by a Political Informal the House of Rothschild. Translated and edited by Robert Hen (Dent. 15s.)
IN the year 1882 Sir Charles Dilke wrote that he had learned fr the head of the Paris House of Rothschild that " ever since battle of Waterloo the Rothschilds in London and in Paris been in the habit of writing to one another' long letters every da From time to time Dilke saw the letters from Paris " when they upon politiCal affairs." He was not impressed by the insight of writers. Indeed, he described the letters as " extraordinarily interesting," and as expressing old-fashioned Conservative id " although the Rothschilds all think they are Liberals." If these letters from which Mr. Henrey has now publi extracts belong to the main series, Mice's judgement remains from the point of view of general political information. On other hand, with the passing of time, the small talk and gossip the letters have acquired a. certain historical interest and vat Mr. Henrey's extracts deal largely with the Franco-Prussian the siege of Paris and the Commune. They are prefaced by an accurate and unduly long historical introduction (Victor Emma for example, is described as King of Italy in 1858). The reader well skip most of the introduction and turn to the text. Here he will find a number of curious and remarkable facts. is indeed impossible to follow in detail the events of 1870-71 with noticing parallels between the collapse of France in those years the collapse of 1940. These similarities are worth study beta they show that it would be misleading to attribute the calam either in 1870-73 or in 1940 to a particular form of government, that the key to the history of France in the last century and a lies in the events of the years beween 1789 and 1799. Since time the French have had two empires, two monarchies and republics ; the inner weakness, for which remedy has been sought constitutional palliatives, needs a deeper diagnosis and a difficult cure.
As far as the siege of Paris is concerned, the most striking fen from our own point of view, is the lack of organisation and con Meat was not rationed in the city until three weeks after the si had begun. After another three weeks the price of meat had been controlled, and .the poorer people could not afford to buy small ration allotted to them. Two more months went by, and the last three weeks of the siege the lournal des Debars comp that the rich were still keeping " luxury horses," while the ho of the French cavalry were being killed to provide food. (It however, not even necessary to substitute " petrol" for "1 horses " to find awkward parallels today.)
One might put together a number of sentences from Mr. Henrev extracts which have a modern ring, e.g., "The Prussians do n often neglect their propaganda." Two sentences of .a different ki are worth quoting. One of them is a charmingly new phrase political abuse: " M. Thiers is the phylloxera of politics." other sentence should stand by itself : " There is a deputy for Pa
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