The President of the French Republic held a great military
review on Sunday, which was remarkable because he was neither insulted nor assaulted, and because all the enthusiasm of the vast crowd was expended upon Major Marchand, a man who now occupies the unusual position of having greatly succeeded by failing. M. Deroulede on the following day, however, filled up the hiatus by a speech directed chiefly at the President, though it had a political idea in it too. He de- nounced all " Panamists," and would have the President elected by a mass vote of "all true Frencbmen"—that is, of all who agree with him—and his proposal was received, for reasons which we have tried to state elsewhere, with frantic applause by an audience of five thousand persons. His peroration was even more acceptable, for he declared that even if the Rennes Court-Martial acquitted Dreyfus, Dreyfasards must never be pardoned, "for they had divided France." "He is Arthur Orton," cried the English mob of the impostor who claimed to be Tichborne, "bat he ought to have his rights." M. Deroulede with his frantic violence strikes Englishmen as a man who is deficient, but that is not the view Frenchmen take of him, and if we are not mistaken his central idea, that France should choose her own chief by a direct vote, is ad- vancing.
