FROM A PARIS WINDOW

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 25, 29 January 1921, Page 14

FROM A PARIS WINDOW

rmiNiNo a bltx;et. PARIS, November. What a fluttering there has been this week in the French .Parliament spending departments! What a revision of financial estimates! The Economy Committee made it plain that spending had been confined to absolute essentials, and felt they had cut the estimates to the narrowest limits until President Millerand came alon>jr. Where others had been ■ paring with a knife he used an axe, a weapon with which he had provided himself when ho made clear the terms under which ho would become Presidential candidate. Some of tin* older departmental experts were aghast at Hie apparent, rnthlessness with which the President laid about him. One stroke, and off came £."»on from an estimate that, seemed impossible of reduction. A second stroke, and half n million was taken from t.he shoulders of the tax-payers. And thn beauty of it is. is that the President i had touched nothinp that would have impaired a einele service. When he hart I finished, even expert' admitted lhat. he j hud used wonderful discernment and disI eret.ion in trimming the Budget, while he had displayed an almost uncanny knowledge of the minutest details of] i expenditure. It is tne hTinninjj t ni*y apree. of a new era in French affnir«: the first real attempt at nn-tional economy. i REMTXISCEXT KX-PRESIDENT. ! Asked by the President of a new Latin Quarter students' journal for a few- j lines. ex-Pre«ident Poincare has contri- ■ buted a long article in which he relates his first meetine with M. Millerand. It whs in 1577. when they were both students in Paris. One day M. Poincare found himself sitting next, in a lecture ; room, 1o a broad-shouldered vounir man with a magnificent head of curly bair, heavy eyebrows, and a square jaw. The two students opened a conversation, which proved to be the betnnninß of a friendship which has la«led ever «inw. At this time \T. Poincare had no desitrn on either Parliament, or the Bar. Let- j . . 1 1 4 n him ns ' worthy nf a sntierior intellect. TTe ; I chanp-ed his views in time to pram the j I chief prizes, not only of the bar, but of politic. WmtAVS riFT>DPnATKT) VATJT? Mm. Robert de Hers and Francis de | ! Croissct havo woven a play around a ! scene in the third net of "I>e Retour," at flip Athenee Theatre, Paris, that takes I .place between two men who hai- , shared f the same dangers :" the war. This seen.- ■ made a jrreal hit anfl retrieved whatever there might ha\e been of a trivial nature j in the preceding ones. 1 Two men. Jacques and Marcel, are left ! alone to discuss the consequences of 'their love f.>r Colette, JaeqilP's wife There is every possibility of serious con- ! sequences, but the conversation turns on I the war, and in a very dramatic and j I emotional manner tho two men describe ; , the tragic incidents they had both pone through. It is a poignant moment, and J they heartily shake hands, forgetting the woman who is waiting anxiously in the j adioininp room. The moral of the story is that women j Iplav a much smaller nart in men's lives, to-day than thoT di.l five years aco. and. as one of the philosopWal characters in | the play p.ufs it: "Women have de- j j crease,! in value as much as the 100 franc j banknote, that is to save. 3f> per cent." WIZARD OF SinE-SHaWS. I Mii-romarv-aoi. ecll-rtyied Brahmin. • should have been contented with his lablity to interpret dreams, tell fortunes [with cords, prophesy the future, and cure a-ll t'-ie ailments mankind is *ie:r to, without ficWmiz water at 100 francs a ■bottle, .but In- was not For somp time I tins piftod .pers-ontige has bren minieterI ing to the mental and phys>al distress lof h> leJiow men in divers sideshows I ami on the boirlevard of the Rdbiirbs. One of his clients, a working woman. who was impressed by hie Oriental nil ture. counted <nit a hundred bard-earned francs for a bottle of an e-lixir w:\oi the Brahmin specially recommended. It came he said, from fhe sacro 1 rive,r of Ravi.' when half the precious chxir, i measured out in carefu.l spoonfuls, was I pone and the clont had experiem-cd ■none of the boons she hau been led to '.iwfle for. her suspicions were iand sKe took her bottle to the pMiee station where it wn.s established that ' i the sacred waters of the Ravi have an : ; aiiraiin" resemblance to tfhe wa-ters of ' ' the Se ; n«. In ardor to follow up this '■J interesting discovery. M. Oontairt «•> ■ am : n"urs mapistrute. hns instrt-uted a ' j search for tie gifted Brahmin. TO WORK TV TAXICAE. '■' TUe. rat campaign, having passed through the familiar early stapes of ; war has now achieved the maximum ' S£iS which rynu-,\ people, in the I light of post-Armistice development, believe that war can achieve, namely the creating of the war plutocratrich on !W centimes for each rodent killed. The "Ficjnro" is authority for the facts of ! ! the case, which are a* follows:—A road '! mender, who for months past has appeared lUirlv every morning in corduroys land working jacket to lake his pick and ■ shovel from a little tool-house situate ': in the Avenue Mozart, failed to turn up I a-s usual the other morning, a fact j ; which caused some comment among the ' persons of the neighbourhood who baa ' come to know him. ■ The hours went by. when a taxicab ' drove up to the tool-house, and a corf rectly dressed gentleman got out, paid - his fare, and disappeared into the little • shid. It was not until he had cTOe.rccd ■ again in the familiar corduroys and blue ? jacket, sihoulderinjr the familiar pick and ? shovel, that the neighbours recognised ■'him as t.he humble road mender. - I Now they address him as "vous , ' inI 1 stead of "tv," nod tlieir heads signifii cantly when his name is mentioned, ■ 'with "the respect due to one who i = s known to have money in the bank: and .when asked for an explanation of their ■" significant nods, answer simply: "Rats." . I Coming down to mere statistics, ~>! which is less picturesque but no less p significa-nt than the evidence of a new c war-enriched class of society, it must be s noted that 101,458 i»f the alleged 5.000,000 i, rats of Paris have now "jjone west.' , t Even more striking than theee statistics iis the actual disappearance of the rate i from the streets. Either there are c fewer than 7,808.542 rodents still at I large, or el.se the revived lighting syse torn along the boulevards has underr minded their moral. rl Whether they are discouraged or c simply non-existent, the fact remains t. that the day has pjoiie by -.v-'ien a "midy nifrht son" from the last cluh and finding liini.-.elf in the midst of a d liich rat revel, stopped in fear and beiwilderment to compute the nnmber of h pints of champagne he had consumed, c then whipped out with his stick in I nervous haste to sec "whether they were Jreal or imaginaxT,