FRENCH JOURNALISM.
the heart of the party at the moment when one would have supposed unanimity and concord were most needed. It is no affair of ours, and we need hardly say that we have no love to spare for the fanatical, seditious, un- scrupulous cause which has given France such deep anxiety; it is all to the good of the Republic, and for that we are glad. But what a reflection on the cause of the Orleans Princes !
The second event is the retirement of M. Clemenceau from the brilliant journal L'Aurore, for which since its foundation he has been the chief writer. It is understood that the cause of difference between him and M. Vaughan, the director of that organ, is whether the Dreyfus case should be still further pursued into its remoter ramifica- tions, or whether the French Radical party, having won a considerable though not complete victory, should let well alone and leave the dead past to bury its dead. There is perhaps no writer in France who, from the advanced democratic point of view, writes with greater force, sparkle, and elan than M. Clemenceau, so far as journalism is con- cerned. We should say that he would be far less successful as an author on a great and serious scale, but as a brief, witty, incisive commentator on the news of the day it would be hard to surpass M. Clemenceau. He has some of his native Breton idealism, mingled with the sprightly in- tellectual tone of Paris, and with a certain cosmopolitan feeling which some Parisians can never attain. He has not the solidity of M Francis Pressense, of the Temps, he is not perhaps quite so well equipped as M. Valfrey, of the Figaro, but for the Parisian reader he is perhaps a more attractive writer than either. His political career has been, on the whole, a failure,—M. de Coubertin thinks it has been worse than a failure. M. Clemenceau has at times (wrongly, we dare say) given the impression of a farceur who was bent, above all things, on amusing him- self, and who would sacrifice the institutions of France and the Republic herself for the sake of a brilliant political coup. At one time it seemed as though he must attain to the first position in the Republic ; but though he wrecked many a Ministry, he was never able to found one. At length he lost the support of his constituents, and exchanged his career in the Chamber for journalism. What the Chamber of Deputies lost the Parisian Press gained ; and, in our judgment, it was a very considerable gain.
Frenchmen (and to some extent Americans also,—we wonder whether it is inherent in Republics) tend to get the representative man to supplant the representative body. Here we generally think of a newspaper as an impersonal institution ; the public reads what it has to say, and it does not occur to people to ask who writes those articles. " What does the Times say ? " is the question; and it is safe to assert that, even in these days of publicity, not one in a thousand knows who are the gentlemen who write the leaders in the Times or who edits that organ. But in the time of the Civil War in America every newsboy knew that Bennett edited the Herald, Greeley the Tribune, Raymond the Times ; and even now, when there are no such striking per sonalities in the American Press, most of the lead- ing journalists in the great cities are more or less known to the public. But in Paris the identification of a journal with its editor and chief writers is complete. In the brilliant days of the July Monarchy nobody thought of the Presse or the Constautionnel ; these were mere counters, and hardly that ; people thought of Emile de Girardin and Adolphe Thiers—they provided educated men with their politics, as somewhat later on Sainte-Beuve and Jules Janin provided them with their literary ideas. When the Republic was founded Gambetta started the Ripub- ligu,e Francaise, and though it had many able writers, France identified that journal with the great orator, and millions accepted its every utterance as oracular. To quote a lesser instance, L'Intransigeant, with its hysterics and heroics, would be nothing without the personality of M. de Rochefort. And L'AutoriM is simply M. Paul de Cassagnac.
It has been said that an ideal newspaper would com- prise the very best features of English, French, and American journalism. Our own newspapers are the most solid, informing, and dignified, but they tend to a dull con- ventionalism. The most enterprising and the most crowded with news are the American, but they tend to vulgarity and sensationalism. The most literary, the best written, are the French, but they are comparatively devoid of news. A London leader, a Paris literary or art criticism, a New York interview,—these are respectively the ablest types of contemporary journalism. But from the point of view of aiding the public to form judgments, which is the better method, the English or the French and American ?—the impersonal or personal ? It is useless perhaps to criticise the French method, which elevates individuals into the high office of interpreters of ideas and almost dictators of the public mind, for we feel that it proceeds from the same inborn feeling for a single " strong " ruler which the French have always shown. For our part, we think the French method implies, and also develops, a certain weakness, an absence of self- reliance and a tendency to lean on authority. It is true that some men know far more than others, but after all a democratic Republic is supposed to rest on freedom of thought and individual responsibility. Has not a chief source of the weakness of France lain in gregariousness, —in the tendency of the flock to follow the bell-wether ?
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