"THE SEA GREEN"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22344, 15 February 1936, Page 10 (Supplement)

"THE SEA GREEN"

ROBESPIERRE'S SPEECHES

Students of history, and the French Revolution in particular, cannot afford to omit from their reading Mr. J. M. Thompson's two new volumes entitled "Robespierre." Mr. Thompson is a university locturer in history at Oxford, and the author of several important books on men and events in the days of the French Revolution. He has written for the serious student. There is no attempt to dramatise the subject. Tho aim has been to collect the fresh materials that have come to light in the last half century, since Hamql's standard biography of Robespierre was published.

Time has given a better perspective of the Revolution and its main actors, and his readers will appreciate tho author's judgments: "That the French Revolution was not tho work of a class or a clique, but of a whole nation; that all its stages must be judged as parts of a single movement; that tho men, who from time to time, were thought to direct this movement, did littlo more than follow it; and that Robespierre, in particular, owed his repute to tho thoroughness with which he realised, expounded, and embodied the revolutionary spirit of the French people." Thus, after 140 years, Robespierre stands forth as an astute demagogue, who read tho signs aright and for years kept one jump ahead of the mob, which in his time had a particularly sharp medicine for those politicians who dallied.

Maximilien Marie Isidore de Robespierre, of Arras, was born in 1758 of family of small lawyers. Undistinguished in appearance in his youth, ho suffered from literary ambitions, upon which politics supervened and he became a literary vote-catcher. From this ' stage it was an easy transition to tho demagogue. He never made more than a bare living at tho bar and soon found himself out of sympathy with the profession and hotly engaged in politics. The Revolution, which in 1789 was well under way, was an invitation to Paris and fame. So Maximilien Robespierre borrowed his coach fare and embarked on his career.

Within tho next two years he had talked himself into a leading role in the National Assembly. # < Mr. J. M. Thompson has studied his speeches and writings exhaustively and tolls the full story, but it is unnecessary to follow tho author through his reconstruction of the career of this champion of liberty. The first volume takes us up to the execution of Louis XVI., the second through that nightmare of the shambles that followed, until Madame Guillotine severed the Dictator's eloquent head from his broad shoulders in 1794. He had failed to keep his one jump ahead of the mad blood-lusting multitude that was France liberated. In his conclusion, Mr. Thompson exonerates tho great revolutionary leader from tho charge of hypocrisy. Hq believed in liberty; honesty was a cardinal principle; he will live forever in Carlyle's phrases in his "French Revolution"—"Sea Green Robespierre, _ Oh, Sea Green uncorruptible;" he believed all his life in the wisdom and goodness of the common people. And by their hand ho fell. In these days of popular cinema history, what fine material is hero for Mr. George Arliss, tho uncrowned king of quick-change artists. "Eobespiene." Two volumes. By J. M. Thompson. (Basil Blackwell)