LEAGUE OF PATRIOTS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 896, 3 May 1889, Page 21

LEAGUE OF PATRIOTS.

Touching the “League of P‘air^ot3,’' , of whiah so much is being heard now by cable, the London Daily News has tha following ; —“ The League 13 only Boulangist by accident, and in its origin and aims it is a good deal more. No organisation could have had a fairer beginning. It was designed on the model of the marvellous Tugenbund, which so effectually revived the spirit of Germany for the war against Napoleon. Tho end wa3 tha same, and so, in great part, were tho means. The Germans saw the supremo necessity of physical education, both for itself and as a mode of moral discipline. The French, were no less profoundly impressed by tho same idea. Water Jahn, accordingly, had his modern counterpart in M. Sansboeuf 4 who formed the youth of France in gymnastic battalions, and led them through the streets to the music of the clarion. The next step was to take thorn: to the rifle butts, and here the league found its model in England. For a time,, at least, Vincennes became the French, Wimbledon ; and the first meeting, in the. number and value of the prizes, and in. the enthusiasm of the public, promised, the most brilliant results. For all this, todo him justice, Franca was mainly indebted to At, Deroulhde. M. Ddroulede was to some extent framed on a German: model ; for Kornev was tha inventor oi* the genre. The elements were not quite; happily combined in the case of At DdrouIbde. There was too much of the poet,, or, at any rate, ha was prone to be toobusy with his tongue and his pen. He wasp unequal to the conception of a pure propaganda of deeds. Ee seemed to tire o£ the gymnastics and the shooting, and ho began to scold the Germans a long rime l before he was ready to fight them. He was happiest when he was demonstrating: against them in fiery speeches, or in defiant processions to the statue of Strasbourg. Occasionally his followers went beyond his wishes in demonstrations of brickbats apainst German tourists in the* streets. He began to share with Madame Adam, the honour of acting as a volunteer ambassador of France. He fraternised with foreign peoples c*n his own account, and without troubling the Government for a. commission.. He rushed across Europe, to speak, in tip* name of France, at thegrave of Skobelefr. It was not his fault that he missed, the opportunity of speaking in her name to the Czar, His tales

escapade is of precisely the same sort. He has undertaken to speak over the head ( f his own Government to the Russian people, at a moment when every patriot who cannot help the country out of its dituculty should hold his peace. He has, in short, become a most pernicious nuisance, and he has driven the Government to the desperate resolve to put' him down. No other course could have seemed possible to men trained like M. Constans and M. Tirard, though a milder alternative of contempt might have been found by men trained in a different way. ”