THE STORM-CLOUD IN FRANCE. T HE signs of trouble are coming
thick in France. In the absence of a strong Pretender—though, remember, a plebiscite solves all difficulties of descent, and Louis Bonaparte, the Russian Colonel of Artillery, might bind the Russian and the French Armies together—the Republic may survive ; but that a change of some sort is approaching we can hardly disbelieve. Our sympathies are wholly with the Republic, which is edu- cating all Frenchmen, which actually and not nominally throws open all careers, and which, with every temptation to make war, has maintained peace for twenty-seven years ; but we cannot be blind to the ferment that exists. A great judicial scandal, furious disorder in the streets of many cities, a caste under popular proscription, appeals to the Army to save France, the journals full of mad invectives, the Chambers seething with excitement, duels incessant, no man at the helm in whom either soldiers or populace confide, suspicion grown electric,—these are the signs which in modern France have always preceded revolution. It needs but one thing, that that vast and silent Army should share at heart the popular madness against the Jews, and the Revolution is as certain as the setting of the sun. There is as yet no proof that the Army shares the popular fury, and if it does not, the effervescence may end in a mere change of Government ; but that the effervescence exists, and is of the kind which in France induces men to welcome radical change, seems to us beyond denial.
The pivot of danger is the position of the Jews. They are in France, as in England, accepted citizens, with all the privileges and all the duties which other citizens possess or perform. They are liable to the conscription like other men, they can become officers like other men, and they struggle like other men for success in the professions. The free exercise of their creed is not only permitted, but their pastors receive allowances from the State. So far as the world can per- ceive, they perform their duties faithfully, and are as French as any other class, more French, indeed, than some of the clerical Monarchists, who hardly know how to retain their patriotism in the face of a century of disappoint- ments for their caste, and what they regard, often justly, as persecution for their Church. For years past, however, deliberate efforts have been made by three separate parties to sow broadcast a. suspicious distrust of the race. The lower Catholic clergy never pardon them either their independence of all Churches, or the pre- dominant earthiness which nevertheless is consistent in in- dividuals with the loftiest and most spiritual of minds. The Jews still worship the Golden Calf while pro- ducing Moses and Aaron. The peasantry never like them, partly, we fancy, from unacknowledged but traditional religious hatred, partly from a feeling that they are somehow separate from themselves. And the whole of that immense party which in our day is governed at once by a noble pity for the poor and a base envy of the rich has fixed on the Jews as at once the most offensive and the most conspicuous of capitalists, and indulges in such a frenzy of spitefulness that families like the Rothschilds, who give no provocation except by their wealth, are compelled to apply for armed protection. All these smouldering hatreds have recently burst into a flame, caused partly by the " treason " attributed, truly or falsely, to the Jewish Captain, Dreyfus ; partly by the imprudent though generous vehemence with which his coreligionists have taken up his cause ; partly by a certain change in French opinion which we may have some diffi- culty in making clear. The belief in the power of money has greatly increased in France. It may be due to a grow- ing materialisation of thought, or to an increased horror of poverty and its incidents, or to the influence of a literature which ascribes to money a sort of demoniac influence over- riding every better impulse, but of the fact there can be little doubt. The man in the street in France now believes that everybody, from the Pope to the sentries, can be bought, and whenever the rich are concerned, rages with " sus- picion," which in France means acute danger to the caste suspected. Moved by all these influences, the French People 18 visibly losing its balance, a.ud if it were only safe, would on any given day, by a wild rising against the Jews, introduce the kind of anarchy which in France evolves within a few hours the cry for a saviour of society. Affairs very nearly reached this point in Marseilles on Monday, and Marseilles is only France with a little extra heat in its blood.
This is the danger of the Republic. Its responsible chiefs and agents must protect the Jews, because if they do not, the attack upon the suspected people will in a few hours be widened into an attack on property, and the first business of an " orderly " and " moderate " Republic is to protect property. It was because it allowed property to be threatened that the Republic of 1848, which had more claims to respect than is now remembered, suffered its overthrow. In the event of a rising, protection for pro- perty will mean the calling out of troops to shoot down rioters, and the troops, who certainly will not like the work, may, if they share the passion of the populace against the Jews, refuse to perform it. Remember that according to the Continental method of regarding ques- tions of honour, the Army has been grievously insulted, the allegation being that Courts-Martial are mere agents of the State, and cannot be trusted to do the commonest justice to those summoned before them. If the Army fires, the Generals will be masters of France, for only their support can enable the Government to go on amidst the passions thereby excited ; while if it does not fire, nothing except the armed force will stand between France and social anarchy. The demand will then arise, alike from the Army and the owners of property, for some one who can govern, and whether the some one is a soldier-Pre- sident, or a dictator, or an -Emperor, is a matter of comparatively insignificant detail. In any case, the present Constitution, under which one Ministry governs till the Chamber supersedes it by another, would formally or informally be overthrown, and France would once more pass for a time under a personal regime.
Events may go very differently, for it is vain to prophesy about France, but of the danger all men in Paris are certain ; and what a wonderful thing it is that the danger should exist ! That a people should rage against an unjust sentence, or against secret trials, or against militarism is conceivable enough, and when the people are French their rage may be directed not against a Ministry, but against the form of government, which they have altered so often that they no longer hold it sacred, or even necessary to orderly prosperity. But that a whole people should think itself betrayed because a Jewish officer has sold State secrets, that it should rise in defence of secret trials, that its war cry should be in favour of militarism,—these are incidents which could have occurred only in one country of Europe. They suggest something in the French character which is absolutely unaccountable except upon the ghastly theory that a whole population may be liable, like an individual, to lose control of its reasoning powers. What is the populace of Paris afraid of ? At worst that the Govern- ment, from fear of the money power, may order Captain Dreyfus to be tried again before a Court-Martial sitting with open doors ! There is absolutely no other ground for apprehension of any kind. The notion that any Army will march on France to defend Dreyfus is con- temptible folly. Great Governments, to their discredit be it spoken, under the pressure of a half-imaginary neces- sity, do employ agents of that kind to ferret out secrets, but their obligation to them is acquitted when the fees agreed upon are paid, and they welcome with relief any evidence that the useful traitors have been properly guillotined or shot. The Army is on the side of the people ; the Chambers are on the side of the people ; there is no one threatening the people, on their own theory of the facts, except the Jews, and the Jews the moment the laws give way are in every country of the world as powerless as so many mice. We will not say, remember- ing what has occurred in our own country and America at moments when suspicions of witchcraft became acute, that a population so capable of mania is degraded, but certainly the power of self-government has not bred in Frenchmen much power of self-control. Imagine a new St. Bartholomew being even remotely possible in a country like France, in an age like the present, and with M. Faure sitting, a genial and contented bourgeois, in the chair of the last and worst of the house of Valois.
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