THE DETHRONEMENT OF PARIS.
IT is nearly five months since we pointed out (May 12th, 1900), rather to the amazement, we fancy, of some of our readers, that the dominant influence of Paris over France had declined and was declining. Throughout the nineteenth century the ascendency of the capital had been nearly absolute, but the decay of mob power through the introduction of arms of precision, the increased prosperity of the great cities, and, above all, the improvement in the means of internal communication, had sapped the sources of metropolitan strength. France is no longer led by Paris ; she not only forms an opinion of its own, but ventures on occasion to express it with decision. The great fête organised by M. Loubet on Sunday last brings this fact, which is of great importance not only to France but to Europe, before every one's eyes. The Nationalists, as the united groups of Reac. tionaries call themselves, have, as our readers will re- member, captured Paris, returning in the municipal elections of May a clear majority of their candidates. The victory put them almost beside themselves with vain- glory. They believed, and with their traditions had good grounds for believing, that the capture of Paris was equivalent to the capture of France, which it was assumed was sure to follow the signal of its representative city. It was necessary to make the fact patent before the Chambers reassembled, and as the quickest method of taking an informal plebiscite, M. Grebauval, President of the Municipality, invited all the Mayors of the thirty-, six thousand communes of France to a grand banquet at the Hotel de Ville. The Government, well aware of the motive of the invitation, and of the impact its success would have on European opinion, looked. on with an anxiety which was, however, speedily relieved. The tocsin of Paris had lost its resonance.. Only sixteen hundred Mayors accepted the invita- tion of the Municipality. That seemed final, but it was still possible to explain it away. The Mayors were too poor to travel, or were too much immersed in private affairs, or were reluctant to affront possible supporters by so decided a declaration of political opinion. The Government, therefore, determined upon a counter-stroke which should make misconception impossible. M. Loubet was advised, to invite all the Mayors to a banquet in the Tuileries Gardens, avowedly that they might by attending proclaim their devotion to the Republic. Twenty-two thousand Mayors, or if we make a most moderate deduc- tion for the sick, the absent, and the very poor, two-thirds of the entire nu mber, accepted the invitation, and, travelling by all routes from every corner of France, attended at the banquet. Old aristocrats from Normandy and Brittany, peasants in blouses from Central and Southern France, grave men of the middle class, each whatever his rank elected by the majority of a commune, and some by the greatest cities, no city in France except Paris being un- represented. they sat down in an improvised hall literally by tens of thousands to a Gargantuan feast, and applauded sentence by sentence a heartily Republican speech from M. Loubet, which did not contain one sentence of the usual fulsonze eulogy for the soldiers of France. The banquet was, in fact, a civil plebiscite intended to show that the civil population of France at least was contented with the Republic. Certainly M. Loubet put it to his guests in an unmis- takable way. He spoke indeed of the "work of pacifica- tion" which the Government were intent on completing, but he made it evident in almost every phrase that the work was to be accomplished through Republican agency. Not content with asserting that France owed a debt of gratitude to the Revolution, he declared the Government convinced that the Republic, its methods and its prin- ciples, must ultimately triumph. "The Republic has always triumphed over its enemies. It has emerged victorious and each time stronger from the trials it has undergone. Doubtless it is possible that it will modify some of its institutions, and, provided this be effected by peaceful and lawful means, we willingly accept the even- tuality of certain changes. But the principles underlying the Republic are intangible. They are its raison d'are, its very essence ; they seem to have the more splendour and solidity because of the length of time which they have taken to evolve themselves from the national con- science. They are the glory and the honour of France. Our duty is to realise them more every day, and to imbue our laws and our morals more profoundly with them." A vast assemblage of representative men of all grades cannot applaud sentences like those as the Mayors did and yet remain at heart devoted to reaction.
We do not say that revolution is impossible in France. The Army is too powerful, the Clericals too active, the Reactionaries too bitter, for any certainty of that kind, but we certainly think the assemblage proves that we have all been a little misled by the opinion of Paris, that there is less discontent with the Republic in the provinces than was imagined, and that the rural districts have shaken off to an extraordinary degree the influence of the capital. It is not unnatural that it should be so. Parisians do not feel, as the provincials do, how good a Government that of the Republic is, how many abuses it has remedied, how much it has done for the communes, how completely it has opened the path to ability, how greatly it has succeeded in securing the civil equality which the average Frenchman loves. There is not a child in France who may not end his career as President of the French Republic. It has not been splendid,' thinks the Parisian ; 'but then,' thinks the provincial, 'splendour has always been mainly confined to Paris." It has not given us glory." But,' is the retort, 'it has given us peace, which we value at least as much." It is too com- pletely in the hands of plain men,' sneers the Parisian, who have neither genius nor achievements to illustrate their names." That means,' responds the provincial, that they are very like us. It is we who rule the Republic, and if we desire changes we can make them.' That sense of complete self-government is new in France, and it supplies, we suspect, much of the vacuum left by the perception that France has no man of genius at her head, no Dictator who can rapidly put straight all that is awry. A whole generation ,it must be remembered, has grown up which has known no Government but the Republic, which does not, therefore, miss the grand figurehead ,and which has found that though the Republic taxes heavily it does intro- duce improvements, that though so often threatened it remains stable, and that above all it preserves the peace to which the Frenchman is devoted, and for which, first of all, he bears the heavy burden of the conscription and the endless military expenditure. No outsider ever quite enters into the inner mind of France, but it is at least conceivable that the men in the red scarfs whom the people around them trust, as they ponder these things, are by no means satisfied that change would be for the better. At all events, they would like to assent before the change is made, and not to find it made for them in a moment by the city which has lost, from its increased nearness, much of the glamour it formerly possessed. Paris in the Revolutionary period was seven days' dis. tance from Marseilles, and now it is fourteen hours'. When the next contest occurs for supremacy in France other factors may rule the situation, but it is well for all who watch events to remember that though Paris must always retain a potential initiative in all French move.. ments, it has lost its ascendency over France, and so long as the Chambers are free to act it must obey the national will, which is better represented by the twenty-two thousand Mayors whom M. Loubet entertained, than by any crowd, however excited, which the capital can throw into her streets.
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