MAY DAY IN FRANCE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 148, 23 June 1906, Page 9

MAY DAY IN FRANCE.

As wo expected, May Day passed quietly in France. Some of our contemporaries were so vexed by the absence of anything like a sensation that they made up a grand story about two thousand arrests, repeated charges by Dragoons, and a "scene" in tho Place de la Republiquo ; bnt iD reality nothing occurred that might not have occurred in London on any day which called tho public into the streets. We aro slower to supersede police and batons by cavalry and sabres, but that is all. M. Clemencesn's wise policy of displaying irrestiblo force cowed tho dangerous daises — who, it should never bo forgotten, have all passed through barracks — not only in Paris, brut in tho great Southern cities, where, partly from inadequate garrisons and partly from the "merKiional' 1 emotions of tho mob, dangerous riots aro mnch more easily manufactured. The Clerical, Monarchical, and other .organised parties, who had hoped to benefit by an cmcuto of tho anarchical factions or of the "strikers," were paralysed by find- ■ ing their secrets known to the police; ■ and the" workmen took advantage of the holiday only to protest in favour of an eight-hour day, a question which they can settle for themselves by universally quitting work at . the end of the eight hours. The Republic has not been threatened, much less overthrown ; and though there has been some charges by mounted gendarmerie, there has been none of the slaughter which has often in tho^. history of urban France made revolt appear to tho citizens a question of self-respect. Nor do we see any I evidence that the events of May Day will strengthen the opposition at the polls to-morrow. The friends of order, always so strong in France, where the owners of property form so largo a portion of the population, will be contented because they perceive thajit M. Clemceau holds down the cities as sternly as any Military Dictator could ; while the artisans have nothing to complain of in the way of violent repression. The "Nationalists" may "talk loudly of the "manufactured" plot which M. Lepine declares to have existed ; but talk of that kind will not move tho Republican majority, which knows quite well that its opponents are always looking out for an opportunity, and expects them secretly to assist all disturbers' of order. "Box it about, it will come to my father," was the motto of our own Jacobites, and the I idea expressed in that rough sentence is familiar to both sides in France. . .There remains, however, still something to be explained. What makes such a scare, a scare that drove twenty thousand well-dressed people out of Paris, possible in France anu not possible in England, where the Government are not so fully armed with facilities for repression? We believe there are two causes, one of them peculiar to France, while the 'other, though it is generalon tho Continent, is almost imperceptible in this country. A traditional dread of revolution possesses all order-loving French minds. The Terror is for them the one fully known event in their history. They think of that short but frightful period as our own people in the Tudor times thought of tho Wars of the Roses, — as a horror which, whether liberty is sacrificed or not, must never be permitted to recur. They cannot get rid of the feoling that its recurrence' is possible, if not easy, and are as ready to fly before' it as citizens of Edinbargh would be if they believed that a threatened earthquake was immediately at hand. What they expect is not rioting, but , successf nl rioting followed by open war between the mass of citizens and the privileged classes. In their panic they seek safety cither in tho bayonets of the soldiers, or in a fight which amazes Englishmen, but which is no more the result of cowardice, in the proper acceptation of the word, than was the flight of the titled emigres across the frontier. Every one of these emigres would have faced a foreign invader with a laugh in his eyes; but the rising of the mob was to them what an earthquake is to all men, something before even the bravest must skulk in hopeless terror. It is this obsession, strengthened as it has been by the rising oi the Commune in 1871, which renders the well-to-do classes in all the cities of France so strangely liable to panic. Our own bourgeoisie chuckle over their superior courage — and no donbt our intenser individualism does help to strengthen us both in social risings and in epidemics — but we have never seen the guillotine set up in London, nor our capital in flames, with an .army of the discontented spreading the conflagration. _ This liability to horror is increased by something which we frankly confess we do not fully understand, — the feeling prevalent thronghout the Continent that a great strike is in spirit and in dangerousness akin to a greater rebellion. The employers think that their rights are struck at — for example, the proprietors at Conrrieres have resisted acute pressure from the Ministry to make _ some concession to the miners, and a similar sympton has been witnessed in Westphalia — and as # a consequence the workers, despairing of concession, are far more ready thin Englishmen to resort to bloodshed. A strike therefore tends to become a modified civil war, and on the infrequent occasions in which, as in Milan some years ago", great parties are inciting the strikers a strike becomes a movement against society. An epidemic of strikes produces an impression that society i 3 going to pieces, and there has been quite recently an epidemic of strikes m France. The cause is probably in part the illusion, universal on the Continent, that every reduction of hours means an equivalent reduction of output, and m part the growing consciousness of the workers that they do not obtain a fair share of Che profits of labour. They see everybody else comfortable without being comfortable themselves, and aro particularly exasperated because their houses are in most cases held from their employers on a weekly tenure. Capital and Labour, in short, agree much less well than in Great Britain, and the well-to do therefore hold that troops most always be ready to check, or in many cases to pnnish, economic movements which ought to bo settled by arbitration. The remedy cleaTly is M. Clomenceau's, to maintain order without bloodshed, by displays of irrestible force, nnd utilir.o the order thus guaranteed through Boards of Conciliation. Franco is never sure that this will bo done, and thus we havo the astonishing, and, to tell tho wholo truth, rather rienctilous, spectacle of a great and wonderfully organised society shaken ,to its base by the recurrence of a holiday which it re known will be used »s an opportunity for the statement of workmen's grievances in the open air. All this, however, is becoming aa clear to Frem&mea as t» observern abroad, nnd we ia not, therefore, believe that the election*, trto'jcjli tboy will be disturbed in places by As iirtTrusbn of the clerical question, will result in favour of' the parties wfcich are against the Repvbhe. Note as a most unusual circumstance that it ia doubtful in whose interest the treasonable proclamations' seized by the police havo been drawn up. Their draughtsmen obviously intend mischief, but as yet all that is clear in their plan is that they wish disorder because tho man who suppresses it may bo a Monarchist or a cleric, and therefore an enemy of the Republic. — i Spectator.