The Czar’s Tour.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 228, 4 October 1901, Page 4

The Czar’s Tour.

,’hk visit of the Czar to I-ranee has ! irovod satisfactory to ail parties. The j Emperor of Russia was delighted with I he respect and honor that was accorded j lim. All along the route of his tour i soldiers were so thicMy deployed that tuo | scene bore all the evidences of a military j tamp. Fiftv thousand of the French Jinird lined the railways used by the dear and Czarina during their visit to the . j land of the old Napoleon. No discordant note was sounded, and thousands of ; visitors to ’Dunkirk hailed the arrival of the Emperor and Empress with shouts of ( exultation, such as may have greeted Napoleon when he rcsich.cd Paris after his escape from Elba. But Paris was not on this occasion visited by the Czar, who on his arrival on French territory, expressed his pleasure at being again under the French ling. President Loube-t. in the name of the French Republic, welcomed the visitors as they stepped ashore at Dunkirk, and six thousand were released to announce throughout France their arrival. The fare presented by_riie Mayor of the historic port to the Czar was frugal, but it was an evidence of good-will, and in keeping with the ancient custom of the City. Then came the presentation by the wife'of the Mayor to the Czarina of the traditional silver fish, and much banqueting and speech-making followed. Compliments to the army, the navy, and to the Republic, were numerous, and were evidently paid with sincerity ; although it is difficult to conceive how a republic, where equality, liberty, and fraternity are the watchwords of the constitution. can truly pay respects to a country where semi-slavery still exists, where equality is unknown, and where political liberty is only an aspiration among the more advanced thinkers of the Czar's subjects. Still, it shows how the duel's of nations, widely dissimilar, may fraternise and express good wishes towards each other without detriment to themselves or their peoples. When we listen to the Czar’s paying compliments to the French army we realise how far a . cry It is from the time when the Russian Emperor cursed the French soldiery and I lived the capital of his country that it j might not be despoiled by them. When his” Majesty drank prosperity to the French fleet, our thoughts naturally turned to the time when French men-of-war harassed the Russians less than fifty years ago. To crown all, the Emperor slept at Rheims in the bedroom formerly used by the first Napoleon. Was it not at “ royal Rheims ” where the populace destroyed the saintc ampoule in their detestation of royalty '! Vet this week they have been paying homage to the mightiest autocrat the world knows ! Amid all the complimentary speeches and incongruities of this visit of' the Czar to France, success to the Russian Army was toasted, and President Loubct asserted that it was united to that of France by a profound feeling ol' confraternity in amis. After telling us that the Czar was much interested in a new quick-living gun which has no recoil, the cablegrams state that these interchanges of civilities will preserve tiro Peace of Europe for many years to conic '■ None will wish it otherwise, but just prior to the outbreak of the Crimean war. the “ greatest statesman of his age ” declared that the peace of Europe was assured for twenty years.—Times.