THE NATIONALISTS OF FRANCE.
WE do not believe that Paris, just at present at all events, rules France. As we tried to explain last week, the conditions which gave the capital its ascend- ency have in great measure disappeared, and it has become the central city, instead of the governing city, of the French people. In these municipal elections all the great cities of France, as well as a large majority of the rural districts, have refused to follow its lead, Marseilles, in plrticular, so decidedly that the minotity displayed the temper which has so often in French history preceded dangerous insurrections. Nevertheless the capture of Paris by the Nationalists, and the appearance everywhere of a strong minority who act under that name, are very remarkable incidents, which statesmen all over Europe will consider with some • care, and not without apprehen- sion. A great many important people will inquire, after hearing of Sunday's second ballot and its result, a clear majority for the Nationalists in the Hotel de Ville,—What do these Nationalists think they want, and whither are they drifting ? We should ourselves answer both these questions by saying that they drift towards a dictatorship of some sort, and that they will ask from the Dictator a foreign policy which shall be, either through an aggres- sive diplomacy or a successful war, formidable to the rest of the world. They represent, in fact, the wounded vanity of France. In Paris especially, but everywhere in classes large enough to be felt at the elections, there is an uneasy feeling that France is being outstripped, that the world is being shared without her permission, that Ger- many, England, America, and Russia are making great leaps forward, while France, which ought in all move- ments to be first, is only a looker-on. By what precise line of 'foreign policy this failure is to be remedied the Nationalists do not pretend to know, some of them crying for more colonies, some for more ships, some for defiance to Great Britain, and some for pressure on the Triple Alliance, while a few even say that there must be taxes on celibacy to increase the declining population ; but they all demand more "energy," more display of the national strength, a diplomacy with more edge and nerve in its interferences. "Fashodas are to be made impossible." The Nationalists are pining for a success abroad which shall reconcile them to themselves and France, and in their efforts towards that end they drift towards a more avowedly military regime. If they saw a great soldier or fighting statesman in France they would follow him to a man, with very little reference either to his opinions or to the remainder of his qualities. If, therefore, they obtained power they would be very dangerous, for they would make of every difference a quarrel, and stand ready to fight, not for a specific object or ,against a specific nation, but for the general improvement of the external position and prestige of France, which as they consider, with some justice, has never quite recovered the terrible blow of 1871. They want her representative to be the person first consulted in every capital of the world. The people of France perceive this instinctively, and it is in part because the peasantry and most industrials outside Paris regard war with alarm, and would rather continue peaceably making money, and if possible increasing the " fairness " of its distribution, that the majority still votes against Nationalism and for the Republic.
While, however, we believe that an unsatisfied desire for greater consideration in the world lies at the very root of the new movement, we are bound to say that its chiefs give to it a somewhat different interpretation. The word they -put forward in all their speeches, letters, and pro- grammes is "patriotism," by which they mean exclusive- ness. France, they say, must be governed exclusively for the benefit of Frenchmen. They have an idea, or profess to have an idea, that the present Government of France, and indeed most prominent politicians, are "too inter- national," and are habitually carried away by considera- tions of the good of the world, instead of considerations of the good of France. They prate, it is alleged, of moderation while everybody else is immoderate; they pro- fess to object to expansion from dread of expense, but really from fear of the foreigner ; and talking of free competition, they will not even secure that every contract shall be given irrespective of circumstances to "a child of France." -They want to put up a Chinese wall round their country, going even the length of asserting that the immigration from Spain, Italy, and Belgium, which sup- plies their frontier cities and many of their industries with much needed labour, is a positive injury to France. Being penetrated with the notion that the Jews are of all men the most international—which is true and false in a curious way, most Jews being, like colonists, at once in- tensely local and broadly cosmopolitan—they concen- trate their rage on them, and demand as a test of patriotism a readiness to expel that section of their guests. That dislike carries with it two consequences,—a readiness to believe that everybody is bribed, and a determination that Dreyfus shall be barred by a general amnesty from the chance of legally establishing his innocence. So fierce is this particular determination that a speech by M. Reinach insisting that there should be no amnesty is said to have brought the Nationalists thousands of votes, and to have led to that queer incident, the alleged " abduction " of the Comtesse de Martel, better known as "Gyp." The Anti. Dreyfus feeling, of course, carries with it a horror of any attack on the Army, even in the interests of justice, which is strengthened by the other feeling already mentioned,— that if the Army is not worthy of admiration, the eleva- tion of France to its natural position—viz., international primacy—will never again be secured. All Nationalists, again, are Protectionists' or, at least, ready to follow M. Meline, not so much from any economic theory as from a rooted dislike to see foreigners prosper through trade with France. There is, of course, besides all these moving impulses, a side-current of clerical feeling, result- ing in part, no doubt, from a permanent dislike of non. Catholics, which has survived in Frenchmen the decay of faith, as you will often see a dislike of certain " worldly " ideas survive in families which have quitted Quakerism, but in part, also, from the extreme unfairness which the Republic constantly betrays towards both religion and the priesthood. Nationalism seen from the inside may, therefore, be best defined as a product of Jingoism, Protectionism, militarism, and clericalism all working together to produce a scorn of the Republic. What the precise depth of this scorn may be, and what the area of the minority which feels it, it remains for the future to reveal. Our own impression is that both are exaggerated, that the Nationalists themselves are Celts in a mood of exasperation rather than a population with fixed convictions, and that the majority of Frenchmen, though rather tired of the bourgeois "plainness" of their central Executive, are content with the Republic, which gives them order and prosperity in exchange for heavy taxation, and by no means sure that a general overturn might not upset order and impair prosperity without giving them any relief from the tax-gatherer. Frenchmen in motion, however, wander far, and we have always admitted that the appearance of a real statesman or a, trusted soldier on either side might alter the whole com- plexion of affairs. Only we are wholly unable to believe that such a leader has been found in the loud-voiced person —gentleman and man of culture though he be—whom Mirabeitu would, we think, have nicknamed Masaniello- Lafayette-Derourede.
Previous page
