TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE HOOTING OF KING ALFONSO.
THE hooting of the King of Spain in Paris is not merely a
regrettable incident. It is a calamitous occurrence. It brings war perceptibly nearer, and it destroys, as no event since 1870 has destroyed, the confidence of Europe in France. There is not a German alive, and especially not a German soldier, who will not see in it startling evidence of French im- placability. The King of Spain had done absolutely nothing to affront, or injure, or humiliate France, in any way whatever. On the contrary, in accepting the offer of a State reception in Paris he had, according to the European code of etiquette, paid France a considerable, though of course merely formal, honour. He had, however, sought the friendship of Germany, he was accused of seeking alliance with her, and he had accepted from her Emperor a customary titular honour, the colonelcy of a regiment, accepted also by the Prince of Wales ; and so deep is the enmity felt for Germany in Paris that this sufficed to overpower every consideration of inter- national courtesy, of State policy, and of municipal self-respect, and make Parisians express for a guest not merely anger, but contempt. It is nonsense to say the hatred was felt only by the roughs. The Army of the Revolution, swarming out in tens of thousands, gave the hisses ; but some of the first journals of Paris had held up the King to obloquy as a soldier of Germany, and had counselled an unmistakeable silence and avoidance. The hooting was only the mob translation of that advice, and in every German mind the conviction will sink deep that, as far as Paris is concerned—and Paris, though not France, represents her— peace will only last while France is unable to make war. We say nothing of the insult to the German Emperor, for he has passed into that period of stately old age when the judgment survives emotion ; but every German will feel bitterly that the decorations his Sovereign bestows are in Paris felt to be dis- graces, deserving hissing. That is not a conviction which even in the steady Teutonic mind tends to placability or to moderation in the expression of dislike. The English, with their history behind them, are not sensitive ; but suppose Queen Victoria had been the Sovereign hissed ! And if the Germans feel this, what must the Spaniards fee], with their almost morbid pride in the grandeur of their nationality, their undying recollections of the day when an insult to their Sovereign would have lit up war through the world ?
Even the effect of the incident in Germany and Spain grows small, however, before its effect in Europe. It has re- vealed in a moment the ominous truth that the Parisians, who are the bodyguard of the Republic, have been dwelling on their defeat, on the lowered position of France in the world, on her mortifications, real and unreal, until they have reached the point of self-absorption, when the mind grows unsound, when self is the sole pivot, and men see conspiracies in the natural movements of the crowds around them. Such morbid irritability in individuals always precedes either an outbreak or an illness, and in the case of a nation it is as ominous of evil. For months past, it has been most diffi- cult for men who, like ourselves, are friends of France, and cannot bear to see her bright genius obscured by her self- will, to defend or explain her action. There has been in it a note of savage suspicion, of angry self-assertion, of indulged contempt for all others' rights, which suggested that reasoning power had become impaired. The Govern- ment or its agents, backed by the Press, made the occupa- tion of Tunis needlessly offensive to the Italians, till they at last thought their countrymen in Tunis specially marked out for French injustice. The treatment of the Mala- gasy Envoys in Paris was discreditable, and seemed based upon the old etiquettes of Constantinople. Li Hung Chang, the great Viceroy of Southern China, quitted his station, rather than negotiate any longer with M. Tricou. The ultimatum offered to Queen Ranavalona III. was arrogant to a point seldom reached by a conqueror in his intercourse with the conquered. Even towards England the French Press has been bitter, offensive, and so suspicious, that the only accurate intelligence received from Tonquin, that collected by the London journals, is frequently declared in tones of spiteful contempt to be "English inventions." So marked has been this tone that the quiet friendship of fifty years, which had grown by degrees into a true amity, has decidedly cooled, and English Liberals with whom an entente cordiale with France is a tradition, ask them-
selves what can be the reason of the new French temper, and listen gladly to stories of Bourbon dislike, and of M. Challemel-Lacour's personal irritability. M. Challemel-Lacour, it is true, did not hiss King Alfonso, but it is difficult not to believe, after that demonstration, that he expresses, in his irritable haughtiness and readiness to be acrid, the present temper of the body of his countrymen, who would be capa- ble of believing, from sheer irritability, that if Queen Victoria went to see her daughter in Berlin, she had gone to arrange the partition of France, and the seizure of that "menacing growth," the French empire in Judo-China. Such
a temper not only makes negotiation difficult, by inducing the English people to resent any concession as derogatory, but drives French agents all over the world into acts which might at any moment produce frightful consequences. They respond, half consciously, it may be, to the emotion they see at home. We will not press the deplorable incident at Tamatave, during which there is too much reason to believe that the Captain of a Queen's ship was compelled to clear his decks for action, because we do not believe that Admiral Pierre was respon- sible ; but even in Tonquin the French agents are showing a disposition towards each other, as well as the world, which is in far too close accordance with that of the Parisian populace, a temper which sees in the slightest in- dependence on the part of anybody an affront either to them- selves or to France. The spirit which would order King Alfonso to ask M. Gr&y's permission before accepting a decoration from the Emperor William is precisely the spirit which treats Chinese claims to Anam, claims centuries old, as impertinent arrogancies, which France will not even discuss, but sets aside as if unworthy of temperate reply.
We write, we need not say, with no intention of embittering the situation. To us, it has always appeared that the French people, with all their faults, are still pioneers in the long search for a happy political society, that the French alliance is the only one worth having, and that the enmity of France is for Britain, next to the enmity of America, the most paralysing and weakening of evils. And it is because of that friendship that we feel dismay at a spectacle like the hooting of King Alfonso. What stable confidence can we repose in a people who, after days for consideration. assemble in huge masses to in- sult a gentleman who can mass a hundred thousand soldiers on their southern frontier, who might in a war be the most effective of allies, who was their invited guest in their own capital, and who had done nothing to offend them, except talk pleasantly with another gentleman against whom they have a long- standing grudge ? What would they themselves think of the temper and mental condition of Francois, if, after inviting Alphonse to dinner, he had thrown the soup into his face, because, forsooth, he had been seen shaking hands with Francois's opponent in a great law-suit ? Would they not con- clude either that Francois was habitually ill-conditioned, or, if that were impossible, that he was no longer master of himself sufficiently to be safe?
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