With a weak Government in office, one with a policy of drift, everything may become possible; but, so long as foresight and vigilance are shown, the Republic remains impregnable.  If military malcontents become obstreperous it is only necessary to treat them as General Boulanger was treated.

I recollect hearing M. Yves Guyot, who was a member of the Cabinet which put down ‘the brave general on the black horse,’ and who was also one of the few French friends who visited M. Zola during his exile, give a brief account of some of the decisive steps which were taken to stop the Boulangist agitation.  The Prefect of Police of that time was summoned to the Ministry of the Interior, where two or three members of the Government awaited his arrival.  Amongst other orders given him was one (if I remember rightly) for the dissolution of M. Deroulede’s ’League of Patriots,’ which then, as more recently, was at the bottom of much of the agitation.

The Prefect hesitated; he was afraid to execute his orders.  ’Very well, then,’ said M. Constans, M. Guyot, and others, ’you may regard your resignation as accepted; you are not the man for the situation; if you are afraid, there are plenty who are not; and we shall immediately replace you.’

The threat of the loss of office wrought an immediate change in the Prefect.  He became as brave as he had been timorous, and with all due energy he proceeded to carry out his instructions.  Boulangism was crushed and held up to public opprobrium and ridicule; and but for the culpable weakness and connivance of M. Felix Faure and his favourite Prime Minister, M. Meline, it would never have revived in its varied forms of anti-Semitism, anti-Dreyfusism, etc.

French functionaries, those of the Civil Service, are, as a rule, a docile set; but every now and again a Government finding some laxity among prefects and sub-prefects makes a few examples.  Three or four prefects of departments are transferred in disgrace to less important towns; two or three are cashiered, and the same method is followed with some of the sub-prefects.  Thereupon, all the others, prefects and ‘subs,’ throughout the eighty and odd departments of France, hasten to show themselves vigilant and, if need be, energetic.  Taking one consideration with another, this system of frightening the prefects into obedience and vigilance has, so far as the maintenance of public order is concerned, answered admirably well whenever it has been applied during the last fifty years.  It has undoubtedly been adopted at times for the furtherance of purely despotic or arbitrary aims; but if ever it was justified such was the case during the Dreyfus agitation.  If the Government had not connived, for purposes of its own, at the proceedings of what the French call the ‘militarist’ party, there would have been no turmoil at all.

But those in power desired to shield culprits of high rank and to defend the effete organisation of the French War-office.  And those who thus misused the power they held, who sacrificed the national interests, who trampled truth and justice under foot, and rendered their country an object of amazement, distrust, and ridicule throughout the length and breadth of Europe (Russia not excepted) will be censured and condemned in no uncertain voice by the France of to-morrow.