FOUL ATTACKS ON THE QUEEN

Evening Post, Volume LIX, Issue 10, 12 January 1900, Page 5

FOUL ATTACKS ON THE QUEEN

■ « . ACQUITTAL OP THE FRENCH OFFENDER. [press association.] (Received January 12, 9.10 a.m.) PARIS, 11th January. Recently the police seized an indecent caricature of Queen Victoria, which had been circulated on the Paris boulevards. The persons who were arrested in connection with its publication haye been brought to trial on a. charge of having published an obscene drawing and have been acquitted. Apparently the French Government feared to prosecute the offenders for insulting the sovereign of a foreign nation. Our London correspondent writes, under date X%\, December: — "The outrageous attacks on our Queen have utterly disgusted every civilised and decentminded person of whatever nationality he or she may be. True, they are not approved by the better class of Frenchmen, but unhappily it seems only too evident that they are keenly relished by the majority of the Parisians. Else the papers publishing these infamous obscenities would soon be put down with a strong hand. What has started the latest and vilest phase of this bestiality is the Queen's decision to visit Bordighera instead of Nice, which' is stated on the Riviera to have given immense satisfaction in Italy, the press of that country being full of cordial expressions on the subject. It appears that in October Nice had 35 cases of typhoid fever, and that the new drainage works having been, stopped there can, be no expectation of a better state of public health- this season. So a regular panic Ha,s been created, and the Queen's decision has proved the climax. The hotels in Nice are empty, while those in San Remo, Bordighera, and Ospedaletti are rapidly filling, and all along the Italian littoral there is unexampled prosperity. For this year, and perhaps for a year or two to come, the French Riviera must be ruined. And so as a Paris correspondent forcibly puts it, "Those filthy publications, tho vermin press of tho boulevard kiosks, at all times a scandal of public life, have vied with each other like so many licensed Calibans during the last week or so in spurting venom •and obscenity against the Queen of England. The Intransigeant, the Libre Parole, the Echo de Paris, and uvery other virulent print of the baser sort were left behind on Thursday by two "comic" illustrated papers, th©. Rire and the Caricature. The issue iof the Caricature in consequence of a protest by the British Embassy, was confiscated on Saturday morning, but not before large numbers of it had been sold. The Rire is still in circulation." In fairness, it must be mentioned that somo papers of real standing, the Dix-Neuvieme Siecle, the Debats, the Figaro, .and the Petite Republique have been driven to protest. Others have disgraced themselves by offering lame excuses.