a merry one; for no Minister has ever fallen without at least half-a-dozen candidates for the vacant folio cropping up in the Chamber. M. Loubet, the latest retired Prime Minister, has done better than most people expected, and though his last days were not by any means pleasant, his short tenure of office has not used him up, and some day he will reappear in one of the kaleidoscopic Ministerial combinations which the future has still in store. The course of events which led to the downfall of M. Loubet began with the strike at Carmaux, which had the effect of bringing M. Clemenceau, the "King-Maker" of French politics-if we may apply that term to one who is much more remarkable for demolishing Ministries than for making them-into line with the Socialists. It also created an uneasy impression on the part of the timid bourgeoisie that the Anarchist element was lifting its head again, and this impression was deepened by a dynamite explosion in the heart of Paris. M. Loubet was regarded as having been weak, and an attempt made by him to strengthen the law directed against incitement to outrage on the part of the Press terminated, after a threatened crisis, in something like a fiasco, the Chamber accepting the Bill, and then turning it inside out in Committee.

The

The Carmaux Strike was chiefly imPanama portant as preparing the way for the upScandal. set which terminated the life of the Loubet Ministry. From his place in the Tribune M. Delahaye created a tremendous hubbub in France by declaring that the Panama Canal Company had obtained exceptional privileges which it had used for the purpose of defrauding the investors, by the bribery of no fewer than 100 Deputies. To all cries to name the offenders, the speaker replied by challenging the Government to appoint a Committee of Inquiry. The Government had already decided to prosecute M. de Lesseps and the rest of the Directors of the Canal Company on what was tantamount to a charge of fraud, and it was therefore most difficult to institute another inquiry by Committee into the conduct of those who were already on trial before a judicial tribunal. Such, however, was the sensation produced by the charges launched from the Tribune against the honour of French Deputies that the Ministry consented to allow the whole question to be submitted to a Parliamentary Committee. That Committee, up to the time of writing, has not received much evidence of value, but in the middle of the investigation Baron Reinach, a banker who was accused of being the instrument or agent of much of the corrup

tion of the Canal Company, opportunely died, and was buried. Death is so seldom so convenient in coincidence that rumour was soon busy, and before long it was roundly asserted by one set of gossips that Baron Reinach had poisoned himself, while another set maintained as positively that he was still alive, and that the coffin which was supposed to have contained his remains was filled with gravel. So confident did the rival rumourists wax in asserting their mutually contradictory stories, that the Committee of Inquiry decided to demand the exhumation of the coffin. Against this the Minister of Justice, M. Ricard, whose conduct throughout the prolonged crisis has been by no means calculated to exalt his

reputation, protested; but in spite of his protests the Chamber, on November 28 defeated the Government by a small majority. Thus, in order that a corpse should be exhumed, a moribund Ministry was slain. As to the merits of the question in dispute, there can be little doubt that the Panama Canal Company was one of the most gigantic frauds of our time. Sixty millions of hard-earned money was sunk in what every one who looked into the matter must have known was an absolutely impossible attempt to cut a ship canal across a mountain range shaken with earthquakes and crossed by a devastating torrent. The glamour of M. de

Lesseps' name was sufficient to blind investors to the risk which they were running, and the press was bribed by lavish advertisements. Whether the Panama Canal Company bribed the deputies as well as the journalists is a matter upon which Parisian rumour for a long time past has made up its mind. Certainly, unless many deputies were grossly maligned, they would have had no moral scruple about "accepting" recompenses for voting for the Canal Company.

G.O.M.

While in France dark clouds have

The German gathered over the head of the French Grand Old Man, across the Rhine the German G. O. M. has been doing his best to make his friends and admirers regret that when he retired from the Chancellorship he was not snatched by some beneficent eagle and carried to the knees of Jove. The cartoon which I reproduce from one of the Paris newspapers represents only too accurately the effect produced on the reputation of one of the few remaining great names in Europe by the recent utterances of Prince Bismarck. If there was one thing more than another that turned the whole tide of European feeling against France at the beginning of the last great war, it was the announce

ment that the French Envoy, Benedetti, had forced the quarrel upon the King of Prussia by springing upon him a fresh demand that he should never recognise a Hohenzollern on the throne of Spain immediately after he had succeeded in averting a quarrel by securing the withdrawal of the candidate. The Benedetti incident at Ems was accepted almost universally as a proof that the Emperor Napoleon was bent on forcing on a war, and I remember-how long ago it seems!-writing a leading article when I was a youth of one-and-twenty urging that Napoleon and his Ministers should be tried and executed as criminals for this wanton forcing on of war, which, but for the Benedetti incident, might have been avoided. Prince. Bismarck, in an interview published in a Leipzig paper, calmly announces that this famous insult was practically his own invention. His exact words were:

It is so easy to change completely the meaning of a speech by omissions and suppressions. I myself once tried this game as editor of the famous Ems despatch, which the SocialDemocrats have for twenty years been harping upon. The King sent me the despatch, with instructions to publish it wholly or in part. After I had prepared it for publication, by omissions and contractions, Moltke, who was with me, exclaimed, "At first it was a call to a parley, and now it sounds the charge."

Vindicated

The effect produced by this confession Against His can be imagined. A cry of vindictive Will. delight arose from Paris, while the Germans were troubled and sore at heart. Count Caprivi, however, took an early opportunity of proving from his place in the Reichstag, by the production of the original despatches, that Prince Bismarck had been maligning himself in order to deal a stab at the reputation of the Emperor William. It is evident from the despatches which the Emperor sent to Bismarck, and which Bismarck subsequently edited and toned up with an eye to influencing public opinion, that he (the Emperor) had put his foot down, and that the popular impression at the time was correct. Bismarck's excuse is, that he believed war was inevitable, and knowing that the moment was propitious for Germany, he seized the opportunity of precipitating hostilities. His cue is to represent the Emperor William as hesitating and shivering on the brink of a resolution while he, the Chancellor, forced the hand of his Imperial master. It is a sorry spectacle, and almost makes one wish that when greatstatesmen fall from power they should be treated as Oriental princes sometimes deal with those who have been trusted with State secrets-have their tongues cut out.