At Bizerte on Monday M. Pelletan made another and even
more indiscreet speech. He said that France had revived Carthage without her vices and ferocity. The object was not to make the Mediterranean a French lake, but a portion of that sea was and must remain French. In spite of Malta and Gibraltar, France with Corsica, and Bizerta could keep the sea open. France did not desire conflict either with England or Italy, but it was her duty to prepare for the Holy War with her enemies, whoever they might be. Security scarcely existed in the civilised world. "At the end of the nineteenth century, after the defeat of France by the barbarism of old Germany, a return was made to brute force." Every "effort must therefore be devoted to maintain intact that focus of justice and light,—French genius." These sentences will probably prove fatal to M. Pelletan. His countrymen would pardon both his rhetoric and his bragging, but there is an undercurrent of menace in his speech which Europe has agreed to receive with a storm of ridicule. France will never bear that her representative should threaten and be laughed at. The President will be compelled to act, or if he does not, the Session will open in October with a shower of interpella- bons to which there can be no possible reply except that M. Pelletan is unfit, from an inherent deficiency in tact and Judgment, to be a Minister.
