The Marlborough Express. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. Friday, August 25, 1899. THE POSITION IN FRANCE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIV, Issue 207, 25 August 1899, Page 2

The Marlborough Express. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. Friday, August 25, 1899. THE POSITION IN FRANCE.

4 The full gravity of the rioting m Paris last Sunday can be more accurately estimated when we read that m the course of the fightiug that went on m the Place de la Republique and the Belleville some 850 persons were badly wounded. This is almost as heavy a list as that which was chronicled on the morning after the fateful 2nd December, 1851, when Louis Napoleon upset the Seoond Republic and proclaimed the military dictatorship, the outcome of which was the Second Empire. To-day, not only is the Third Republic threatened by a military coup d'e'tat, but there is the Anarchist peril to cope with, and the worst of it is that, with the exception of General de Gallifet, the present Minister for War, there does not seem to be a single Republican Minister who has the courage, the determination, and the force of character necessary for the successful coping with such serious and evidently organised disorder as took place on Sunday last m one of the finest squares of Paris, m almost the very heart of the city. Gallifet is bated by the Anarchists and Socialists for the reason that after the suppression of the Commune this General, who was m command of a section of the Yersaillists, shot down men — and so his enemies say — women and children m cold blood m order to restore order. He may be cold-blooded, but such a man is the only man to depend upon when the Anarchist peril is threatening Paris. But he is only one man m the Ministry, and his colleagues, so there is only too much reason to fear, are far from possessing one tithe of his determination. The worst feature of the rioting was the alleged fact that Royalists and Bonapartist agents incited the mob to deeds of unlawfullness and crime. There is little reason to doubt that both 'the Orleanists and Bonapartists have, during the year, striven to create disorder m Paris by the judicious distribution of money amongst the riotous and criminal classes. Deroulede, it has been proved, received money for this purpose, and other anti-Dreyfussites have endeavored to bribe the soldiery. No wonder that the French Government has asked the Belgian Government to warn Prince Victor Napoleon to leave Brussels, which has for the last two years been the scene of Bonapartist plottings. When the true history is written, if ever it is m the Dreyfus case, it will be found, we are strongly of opinion, that a very large degree of blame for the intrigues, the plots, the treachery and general villiany of the antiSemites and tha general staff, have been due to the plottings of tha Bonaparfcista and Royalists. With these people the motto evidently is,

" First let U8 destroy the Republic " and then we m turn will struggle for the mastery. Tbe position m France at tbe present time is one wbioh must naturally cause the gravest anxiety. Should the Court-martial now sitting at Rennes acquit Dreyfus, there is bound to be more rioting, followed, not improbably, by an attempted military coup d'etat, which will receive the assistance of both Royalists and Bonapartists, and against which a weak Republican Government will, we fear, be unable to withstand. And let it not be forgotten that m the opinion of many careful students of modern France and Frenchmen, a military dictatorship or a Bonapartist or Royalist regime would be followed by a war with Germany, and by this pave the way to ' a general European conflagration.