The French Minister of Education, M. Leygues, has issued a
circular to all heads of colleges or lycies, or State schools of any, kind, requiring them to prohibit the distribu- tion of pamphlets or writings of any kind calculated to propagate particular ideas. "Youths," says M. Leygues, "should be rigorously kept out of party disputes and struggles, or anything foreign to the object of their studies." The Times correspondent in Paris says all the parties approve this decree because each thinks the writings of his opponents will be forbidden, and he laments for himself the leniency of the circular, which, lie says, is "so evasive and vague that it threatens no one." To us it seems to threaten one person very directly, namely, the lad who wishes to know something besides his lessons. M. Leygues' idea clearly is that the youth of France should be brought up in cells, should be carefully sheltered from the open air, and should be fed intellectually only on a few books provided by the State. He will find if he succeeds that he has produced a race of weaklings, who will be carried away by the first breeze of free speech that meets them. It is all, say the French, in the interest of the Republic; but do lads in Massachusetts or Berne develop into Monarchists ?
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