GENERAL BOULANGER ONCE MORE.
THE interest of the Boulanger dispute is, for foreigners, concentrated in a single question. What makes the Government of France, and the Chamber, and the leaders of all parties, except conceivably the more extreme Bonapartists, so afraid of an officer who has never won a battle, or made an army, or exhibited genius of any kind ? Of the fear there can be no doubt. The President, the Ministry, the Chainber, and the political leaders would not all combine to attack a General, and even stretch the military law to compass his pro- fessional ruin, unless they thought him for some reason a dangerous personality. The General obeys all orders, submits to all punishments, stands silent under all military censures ; and yet the Government is not content, is half-inclined, it is said, to apply to him exceptional measures of treatment, such as exile, and does apply quite exceptional measures of sur- veillance. It is most unusual to recommend an officer of General Boulanger's rank to the constant watchfulness of the police, or to receive reports about his movements from every railway-station. If the alarm were confined to the Ministry and the leaders, it might be more explicable. It is the misfortune of France that, since the death of Gambetta, she has been in the hands of third-rate men, who have little confidence in themselves, and no certainty that they have any hold upon the -country. The strongest among them, M. Ferry, is so hated that he is hardly safe in Paris ; and of the remainder, only one, M. Clemenceau, is a visible figure, whether in France itself or Europe at large. Legitimists, Bonapartists, Opportunists, _Radicals, or Extremists, none of the parties produce men of eminence, or even men of whom it is possible to say that great and effective forces stand behind them. All the chiefs are mediocrities, and most of the Ministers are men who, once dismissed, would in a week be totally forgotten. Naturally, they are alarmed by the appearance of any hostile figures big enough to be visible, and are ready to banish Princes, however quiet, or dismiss Generals, however second-rate, out of pure consciousness that whatever their positive rank as politicians, comparatively they rank above them- selves. This explanation would perhaps be sufficient, but that the Chamber also shares the apprehension, votes against General Boulanger by majorities of four to one, discusses him perpetually in the lobbies, and, it is said, will, if requested by the Government, pass a Bill against him individually which would really be a Bill of Attainder. Moreover, while Radical electors are divided as to his merits, Extremist clubs actually
fight over his name, and the Communists at large think it expedient to advertise that they have no sympathy with General Boulanger. All this while the General has done nothing -except commit some trumpery breaches of discipline, most properly punished by suspension and arrest, and allow his friends to represent him as a possible dictator, which is either a mere folly, or an act of treason bringing him within the grip of the regular law.
The usual explanation of the timidity of the Government,
AU explanation we have ourselves accepted, is that a large section of Frenchmen are growing weary of the unwise government of the Chamber, with its endless extravagance :and recurring fits of vacillation, that they are looking about for a dictator to supersede the existing govern- ment; and that, with or without reason, they have fixed upon General Boulanger as their man. They must have somebody, and nobody else is visible. That statement is no doubt, in the main, correct ; but it does not fully explain the visible apprehenion of the authorities, or the panic among the Extremist clubs, or the fears which M. Clemenceau's -organ, La Justice, expresses of some coming change. The General's friends are not, so far as is known, in a majority in any one department ; and if they were, what harm could he do among five hundred Deputies ? His voters cannot march on Paris, or alter the Constitution, or proclaim him Dictator, or even secure him an ascendency in the Cabinet and the Chamber which would amount to a practical dictatorship.
General Boulanger, without men behind him, is only General Boulanger, even if he possesses in himself the mental powers of which as yet he has given no sufficient evidence, and, indeed, no evidence whatever, except that, amidst a grand competition for the lead, he has for a moment pushed himself in front. Where do his assailants find the men, or rather, where do they think they find them ? The peasantry cannot rise, and the popula- tion of Paris is not going to rise, in order to elect a dictator ; indeed, without the support, passive or active, of the garrison, Paris has no means of rising. The old condition of things has been utterly changed by the new system of warfare, and there is not a capital in Europe in which the populace, even if they have all served, could defeat twenty thousand men armed with weapons of precision, or ten thousand men if they had been supplied with the magazine-rifle. The French leaders of parties are therefore either unreasonable men, or they must, for reasons invisible to outsiders, but plain to them, doubt whether the desire for a dictatorship which they perceive in a section of the people, does not extend also to the Army. If that is the case, their alarm is natural, for if the Army is not on its side, the Chamber may be overthrown in an hour, and their special dread of General Boulanger merely as a superior officer would be at once explained. Whether they have any ground for their apprehension, foreigners cannot, of course, judge with cer- tainty; but on a priori reasons their alarm does not seem entirely unreasonable. The Army, it is true, has, as a whole, no special quarrel with the Chamber, which has treated it exceedingly well, has approved all decrees increasing the soldiers' comforts, and has voted all the grants declared by military experts essential to make the Army an effective and formidable weapon. The position of the non-commissioned officers has been improved, and the passion of the conscripts for equality in liability to service, though not yet completely gratified, is entirely acknowledged by the Chamber and fostered by its successive votes. On the other hand, with the new stringency of discipline, and the new recognition of its necessity arising from the German victories, a modern army is much more decidedly in the hands of its superior officers than was the case a few years since ; and it is quite pro- bable that the superior officers in France do not like the Chamber, quite possible that just now they would gladly see it superseded. They understand perfectly that if the great war should arrive this year, they must join in it ; and that if they join in it, the very existence of France will be placed at stake. Moreover, besides France, they themselves will be especially at stake,—their names, grades, hopes, futures, all. Under these circumstances, they may be most unwilling to enter on a European war with a vacillating and impulsive Chamber as the final authority in France, able to dismiss a Minister of War just as his plans are laid, or a General-in- Chief just as he is marching on the enemy. They may be most desirous of a dictatorship, if only for the period of the war, and ready to support any one capable of seizing the helm and giving consistency and force to the administration of the Army and the guidance of the campaign. General Boulanger may not be—we should say, certainly is not—the man whom they would choose, if free choice belonged to them ; but if he is the only alternative to the Chamber, he is at least a soldier, and can, if the Army approves, at least suppress the "box-full of attorneys and doctors" to whom the supreme power now belongs, and who are despised by the higher soldiers of France with an energy for which in this country we have no pre- cedent. Our Parliament is older by centuries than our standing Army. General Boulanger at least would know what is neces- sary for a campaign, and would abstain from selecting Generals to command in the field for purely political reasons. If these ideas are prevalent among French General officers—and it seems natural, considering the character and action of the Chamber, and the abhorrence of civil control felt in Continental armies, that they should be prevalent—the alarm of the political leaders whenever a soldier comes to the front is quite explicable, and so is their particular method of action. They do not attack General Boulanger's character. They do not care whether he enters the Chamber or not. They are not solicitous about making him a martyr in the eyes of the civil population. What they are anxious to do is to deprive him of weight with the French Army, and this they hope to accomplish, not by a decree, -which would be impossible, but by his formal con- demnation by a couseil d'euqugte composed of officers superior to himself. If he is declared guilty, he will then have been condemned for his conduct as soldier by a regular military tribunal, and his influence in the Army will thus, they hope, be finally destroyed. Their weapon may break in their hands, or they may be utterly mistaken as to the result of using it ; but this is pretty obviously their plan, and M. Tirard's whole manner in the tribune was that of a man most anxious that his plan should succeed, and conscious of a danger which he did not wish either to reveal or to discuss.
Mark the anxiety with which the civilian Premier emphasised small points of military discipline, and the frequency with which Deputies pleaded the one argument for their action, the maintenance of subordination among Generals, which would tell heavily with the Army.
If the war is not to go forward, the incident is of compara- tively little importance. The French Army is not the Army of Spain, in which officers rise by heading pronunciamientos, nor has it at any time disregarded its official superiors ; but if war is coming, the opinion of the Army as to the competence of the Chamber will be a prime factor in events. What that opinion is we do not profess to know ; but all reasoning would lead us to the conclusion that it is not exactly favourable, and that the Army would hardly expect to be victorious under such incompetent auspices.
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