With Love's old gifts once kissed by long-drowned lips;

And round some wrought gold cup the sea-grass whips,

And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell

Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell

And seek dim sunlight with their restless tips.

So lie the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes

Beneath the now hushed surface of myself,

In lonelier depths than where the diver gropes;

They lie deep, deep; but I at times behold

In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf,

The gleam of irrecoverable gold. Eugene Lee-Hamilton.

When friends from abroad come to see me in Paris and express a wish to go to the Chamber, I must own that I feel a pang of despair. My national self-respect is put to a severe test. Alas! the Sessions of the Palais Bourbon do scant honor to my country.

It would be good, it would even be natural, if the legislators of a great nation were superior both in mind and character to the moral and mental average of that nation. More than this, since our deputies and senators are our representatives, they should, surely, represent France; they should make, as it were, a portrait of her, a portrait if not flattered at least faithful. But look at them; examine them; listen to them. In every way they are inferior, greatly inferior, to the average man in France; instead of a portrait, they give us a sad caricature.

And so, when my foreign friends come back from a Session at the Palais Bourbon, I invite them to consider that a country which can resist such a parliamentary system must be very strong and very admirable. And this will, I hope, be the conclusion which my readers will draw from an article in which I have tried to set forth the deplorable condition of politics in the France of to-day.

The political health of a nation seems to me to be the result of the equilibrium of two opposed forces-one a change-seeking, the other a conservative power. When one of these forces destroys the other, the consequences are terrible. For some years now we have been watching tormented Russia in all the agitation of a crisis, the cause of which is the formidable supremacy of the conservative over the changeseeking power. Russia, thus dominated, has been impotent to adapt herself to new circumstances, and she is

suffering from having wished to perpetuate an impossible archaism. On the other hand we see France imperilled by the mad domination of innovators who are no longer trammelled by the slightest resistance. It is thus that she is led into extravagant adventures, the end of which no man can foresee. Let us leave Russia and confine ourselves to France, where I shall try to analyze these symptoms as accurately as I am able.

With this view I must first of all enumerate existing parties, and indicate their character and their position.

There are a great many parties. This is a principal feature-the first sign-of political anarchy. For the rest, whatever the number and diversity of parties in an organized society, the confusion they make only serves to re-open the deeply-rooted quarrel between Conservatives and Reformers. Their antagonism is more or less clearcut, their combat more or less even. But if we look more closely at the struggle, we shall find it simple enough behind its screen of tricks and intrigues. In France three main parties divide the honors between them-the honors of an immense disorder extending to every detail. These are: the Right, the Radicals, the Socialists. Within the pale of the Right I set the Royalists, the Bonapartists, and the Nationalists. The Radical label covers the Radicals, the Radical Socialists, and the Independent Socialists; while the term "Socialists" practically comprises the Unified Socialists alone. I do not even mention the Moderates. Later on I shall have occasion to allude to the vacillation and uncertainty of their present rôle.

"The Right" hardly counts any longer. There are in fact but few Royalists, either in the Chamber or the

ment, it is true, the monarchic idea has its votaries, its hardworking partisans. The Bonapartist cause also has its faithful, but these cannot be said to work hard. The Royalists have their newspapers, their circle, their writersmany of them with big literary names -their controversialists, who want neither fire nor talent, their orators who parade a passionate propaganda in the provinces. They have their theoreticians, too, who afford an elegant practical demonstration of the unity of monarchy and democracy; and their men of action, who are by no means lacking in zeal and enthusiasm and courage.

What will come of all this endeavor? The elections of next year will tell us something. Just now French politics exist without either Royalists or Bonapartists. As for the Nationalists, the Dreyfus business ruined their game. They were clumsy, and then they had no luck. All the same, their doctrines were noble, and now we should find their influence very opportune. They have been, in large measure, wiped out.

This is what the Right of to-day is reduced to. You may join a few Moderates to the rest. But the Moderates have lost all practical value. They had their day of power; not long ago they governed France. They govern her no longer. How many are there? and what are they doing? There are not many, and they are doing nothing. The little remnant of their party, once so flourishing, is scattered. Some of them, scared by the rise of the Left, have gone to the Right. With considerable ill-humor they have given up the Republican fiction which has cheated them. But the Right is not very fond of them, and they stand by her side in the sulks. The rest, worse luck, have gone to the Left; they felt that the Radicals had won the battle, and they

I have already said that the Right hardly counts now in the French Parliament. But Parliament makes use of it in rather funny fashion. For when the members of the extreme Left need the help or support of the Radicals for one of their brand-new undertakings, they pretend that they will have to fight fiercely against the dread ventures of the reactionaries. They announce that the Republic is in mortal danger from the existence of its irreconcilable enemies. They announce that the Republic must be saved. icals to the rescue. In a moment the Radicals are there. It is all a piece of deceitful artifice, a stratagem that takes in nobody, but one which bears fruit. In reality the Right, the Parliamentary Right, is no more.

They call the Rad

The Radicals have the majority; they have it in the Chamber and in the Senate; and they have it in such a way and to such a degree that they could rule the roost all by themselves, without any alliance with other parties, if they wished to, or if they knew how to wish to. But that is not in the least what they are at. By "Radicals" we must understand something more than the Radicals proper and the old Moderates who have gradually turned into the Radicals of the hour. We must include two more groups, the Radical Socialists and the Independent Socialists. These two groups spring from a different ancestry although they have the same kind of outlook. The Radical So

cialists are the Radicals of yesterday, who, afraid of seeming over-pusillanimous, have tried to lend color to their superannuated Radicalism by giving it a fashionable name and adding to their ancient title the flattering epithet of Socialist. In spite of which they remain nothing but Radicals, poor old Radicals, nervously anxious to be in the forefront and never to be taken for reactionaries; yet in the end still nothing but Radicals, the same as any others. As for the Independent Socialists, they are, so to speak, the misfits of organized Socialism. Whether it is that the revolutionary excesses of Socialism have finally frightened them, or whether they have had other kinds of trouble with this difficult-tempered party, whether they have resigned, or whether they have been expelled, they have gone over to the Radicals although they keep the name of Socialists. Their independence need not delude us. They are simply Socialists who have turned out badly and have been adopted by the Radicals.

Such is the Radical party. It has now been in power for some ten years. It is still in power to-day, although the President of the Council calls himself a Socialist-an old-fashioned Socialist, of course, but one who has settled down into Radicalism in the most comfortable way conceivable. On every side now, however, there is talk of a crisis in the Radical party. He himself has more than once confessed to uneasiness. What is it that is actually happening?

It is an absurd story and it would be almost pathetic if it were not even funnier than it is sad. And here it is, in two words: now that the Radicals are masters, they have not got any programme at all; they are strong enough to do what they want, only they have nothing now to do. There they stand, powerful, opulent, deplorable.

They once had a programme. They

even succeeded in rousing a good deal of commotion round about their projects. At that time Radicalism was to transform this country, to animate it with unimaginable vitality. Well, it has all been done, and now that it has been done, we can attest that the Radical programme was purely and simply anti-clericalism. Yes, it was really nothing more. From the dis

tance what did we not dream of? And this is all. The politics of these arrogant innovators was inspired by hatred of the Catholic clergy and by hatred of whatever was spiritual. They came into power and they lost no time in going to work.

What have they achieved? They have achieved anti-clericalism. In other words, they first attacked the regular clergy and then the secular. begin with came the suppression of the religious Associations, next the separation of Church and State.

Το

The suppression of the religious Associations is the work of the minister, Combes; the separation of Church and State of the minister, Briand. Combes and Briand are the two great men of triumphant Radicalism. Significant gallants these the one at the end of his career, the other at his zenith. Combes is a terrible old fellow. He, at all events, has not been a sceptic. But he has thus avoided the inconvenience of uncertainty, seeing that he possesses no more than one idea. This fact has preserved him from the fatal embarrassments of choice. Besides, the one idea in his possession was not one of these complicated, difficult, metaphysical ideas in which the intellect loses itself. Not at all. Frankly, old Combes detested monks and nuns. had a horror of them, he execrated them. And his very simple plan was to suppress them. He gathered round this elementary idea every fanatic that he could find among the Radicals, the Socialists, among all the forces of the

He

Left and the extreme Left. He was rabid, he was skilful and mischievous. Every means was fair that could help him to gain and keep his majority. He had it in his grasp. He sacrificed all else to his idea. He gave the War Office to his comrade, General André; the Admiralty to his comrade, Pelletan; these two, like himself, revelled in anticlericalism and disorganized respectively the Army and the Navy. So the monks and the nuns were sent off; the police and the military were despatched to the assault of the convents; they forced locks, they scaled walls, they made an end of innocent and pious persons who had an inveterate habit of prayer and of devotion. Ridiculous successes, such as, in better days, would have dishonored Radicalism. Old Combes, by virtue of his fanatical obstinacy, had achieved his ends. France was emptied of monks and nuns. He is considered a very remark. able statesman. And he did, indeed, expend an amazing amount of energy; but it was expended in the service of a detestable cause and with all a sectarian's signal malevolence.

M. Briand is not quite of the same mould. He is another type of Radical politician. And he has only lately be come a Radical. He has arrived at Radicalism as well as at a sort of relative wisdom. We knew him as a revolutionary Socialist, the vehement apostle of universal strikes and of anti-militarism, an internationalist, an advocate, in short, of the worst follies of the most advanced party. Intelligent he was, however. But hardly did he come into power than he modified his views -it must be owned to his advantage. He did so visibly. His dress improved. In the afternoon, frock coats were noticeable; in the evening, his dress-coat was well-cut; his neckties were in good taste.

His equipment was no longer that of the fanatic. In the days of his fanaticism his face was cut in two by

a thick moustache which overspread his cheeks and turned into a bushy beard; as a minister, he took care to shave off this excessive growth and to leave only enough upon his upper lip to shade it with elegance. He presented the appearance of a man of the world. And his ideas underwent a like transformation. They grew tamer, more moderate. In fact, he was overtaken by the crisis that overtakes all revolutionaries who make up their minds to settle down. From the moment they own something to preserve the Conservative comes into them, and directly their position puts them in direct touch with reality they give up the impossible dreams of their phase of vehemence. M. Briand made his appearance as a kind of Radical. His measure of reform was the separation of Church and State-an ancient project of the Radical party.

And this, when all is said, is the baiance-sheet of Radicalism. Its universal panacea was an anti-clerical programme; the two reforms that it boasted, the expulsion of the "Religious" and the separation. These measures are now fulfilled. Whether for good or evil-and to my mind it is for evil they have acquired the force of law.

As far as the Radical party goes, what remains then? Nothing.

Now let us give a glance at the wholly Socialist party. It is much smaller than that of the Radicals; it is composed of people who are, for the most part, very mediocre. Only-they possess a programme. From a parliamentary point of view their party is stamped by the character of one person-one of little intellectual value, but of great political influence-the Citizen Jaurès. This big, burly figure of a man, bearded, thick-haired, red-complexioned, gives you an instant impression of friendly vulgarity. He takes up a great deal of room because of his