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In 1892, under the leadership of Jules M?line, the Chamber adopted a protective tariff policy. This resulted in several tariff disputes and engendered bad feeling with various countries, including Italy.

The desperate attack of the Royalists, engineered mainly against the Republic in the Panama scandals, helped to bring the Pope and the State still closer together, so that at certain times the Ralli?s or Republican Catholics and the Royalists fought each other violently. The Panama scandal was planned in view of the elections of 1893. During the decade following 1880 Ferdinand de Lesseps, the successful builder of the Suez Canal, had organized and tried to finance a company to construct a canal at Panama. The prestige of Lesseps's name and the memory of his previous achievement made countless Frenchmen invest huge sums in the company. But the expenses were enormous and the financial maladministration apparently extraordinary, for the directors of the company were led into illegal steps in order to influence legislation, or pay hush money to the press to hide the condition of affairs, and then were blackmailed into further outlays. The company failed in 1888, and efforts to put it on its feet proved abortive. Hints of the scandals leaked out, and the Government played into the hands of its opponents by trying to conceal matters.

In November, 1892, some Royalist members of the Chamber brought matters to a head and the Government was obliged to do something. It was decided to proceed against Ferdinand de Lesseps, his son Charles de Lesseps, Henri Cottu, Marius Fontane, members of the board of directors, and G. Eiffel, an engineer and contractor and the builder of the famous Eiffel Tower. At this juncture a well-known Jewish banker of Paris, Baron Jacques de Reinach, died suddenly and most mysteriously on November 20. He was openly charged with being the bribery agent of the company, and his sudden death was by some called suicide, while others hinted that he had been put out of the way because of his dangerous knowledge.

A commission of thirty-three was appointed under the chairmanship of Henri Brisson. The Royalists and Radicals were having their innings against the Government, and their newspapers continued to publish rumors and "revelations." The commission called for the autopsy of Reinach. The Loubet Cabinet, refusing to grant it, was voted down and resigned. The Ribot Ministry was then constituted, but at intervals lost successively two of its most prominent members, Rouvier and Freycinet, accused of complicity in the scandals. Even the leaders of the Radicals, Clemenceau and Floquet, in time found themselves involved. The former was charged with tricky dealings with Cornelius Herz, the latter was shown to have demanded money from the company, when Minister, in order to use it for political subsidies.

In December the Cabinet decided to arrest Charles de Lesseps, Marius Fontane, Henri Cottu, and a former Deputy, Sans-Leroy, accused of having accepted a bribe of two hundred thousand francs. At the same time, on the basis of the seizure of twenty-six cheque stubs at the bank used by the baron de Reinach, the Minister of Justice proceeded against ten prominent Deputies and Senators, among whom was Albert Gr?vy, former Governor-General of Algeria, and brother of Jules Gr?vy. The Government seemed panic-stricken in its readiness to sacrifice, on mere suspicion, prominent members of its party. All the parliamentaries accused were, in due time, exonerated.

The directors of the company came up for trial twice. The first time, with M. Eiffel, in January-February, 1893, and the second time, with other defendants, in March, before different jurisdictions on varying charges, they were condemned to fine and imprisonment. On appeal, in April, these condemnations were revised or annulled. One person became the scapegoat, a former Minister of Public Works named Ba?haut, condemned to civil degradation, five years' imprisonment, and a heavy fine.

Scandal was, however, not satisfied with these names. There was also talk of a mysterious list of one hundred and four Deputies charged with accepting bribes from Arton. Moreover, it was felt that quashing the indictments against prominent men like Rouvier and Albert Gr?vy was poor policy. If they were innocent they could prove their innocence. Under the circumstances suspicion would still be rife. The state of general anarchy was also revealed by the evidence of the wife of Henri Cottu, who testified that agents of the Government had offered her husband immunity if he would implicate a member of the Opposition.

The Panama scandal was largely the work of the Monarchists angry at the failure of the Boulanger campaign. It did them no good, as the elections to the new Chamber proved. On the other hand, it worked havoc among the leaders of the Moderates, who, innocent or blameworthy, fell under popular suspicion, and were in many cases relegated to the background in favor of new leaders. Moreover, it helped the Socialists, and even, by throwing discredit on parliamentarism, it encouraged lawless outbreaks of anarchists.

The elections in August and September resulted in a large Republican majority and a corresponding decline in the anti-Republican Right. On the other hand, the Radicals rose to about a hundred and fifty, and the Socialists were about fifty, forming for the first time a large party able to make its influence felt. The "Socialistic-Radicals" represented an effort toward a compromise between the advanced groups.

The desire of the Moderate leaders of the Republic to meet the Pope halfway in his policy of conciliation was expressed in a noteworthy speech made in the Chamber in March, 1894, by the then Minister of Public Worship, Eug?ne Spuller. Answering the query of a Royalist Deputy, the Minister declared that the time had come to put an end to fanaticism and sectarianism, and that the country could count on the vigilance of the Government to maintain its rights, and on the new frame of mind which inspired it, which tended to reconcile all French citizens and bring about a revival of common sense, justice, and charity.

But the anarchists were not moved by any spirit of conciliation. Borrowing methods of violence from the Russian nihilists, they used bomb-throwing to draw attention to the vices of social organization and to themselves. During 1892, 1893, and 1894 they tried to terrorize Paris. The deeds of various criminals, including Ravachol, Vaillant , Emile Henry, among others, culminated at last in the cruel murder of President Carnot. On June 24, 1894, while at Lyons, whither he had gone to pay a state visit to an international exhibition, President Carnot was fatally stabbed by an underwitted Italian anarchist named Caserio Santo, and died within a few hours. Never were more futile and abominable crimes committed than those which sacrificed Carnot and McKinley.

FOOTNOTES:

M. Dupuy, then President of the Chamber, got much credit for his calmness and his remark, as the smoke of the bomb cleared away, "La s?ance continue."

THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF JEAN CASIMIR-PERIER

June, 1894, to January, 1895

January, 1895, to February, 1899

During the whole Dreyfus affair Casimir-Perier had chafed because his ministers had constantly acted without keeping him informed, particularly when he was called upon by the German Government to acknowledge that it had had nothing to do with Dreyfus. He had lost by death the support of his friend Burdeau; he was discouraged by the campaign of abuse against him, especially the election as Deputy in Paris of G?rault-Richard, one of his most active vilifiers. In particular he felt that his own Cabinet, and above all its leader Dupuy, were false to him. A discussion in the Chamber concerning the duration of the state guarantees to certain of the great railway companies ended in a vote unfavorable to the Cabinet, which resigned, whereupon Casimir-Perier seized the opportunity to go too. The Socialists declared that Dupuy had provoked his own defeat in order to embarrass the President by the difficulty of forming a new Cabinet, and make him resign as well.

Two days later the electoral Congress met at Versailles. The Radicals supported Henri Brisson. The Moderates and the Conservatives were divided between Waldeck-Rousseau and F?lix Faure, but Waldeck-Rousseau having thrown his strength on the second ballot to Faure, the latter was elected.

The new President, recently Minister of the Navy, was a well-meaning man, but full of vanity and na?vely delighted with his own rise in the world from a humble position to that of chief magistrate. The extent to which his judgment was warped by his temperament is shown by the later developments of the Dreyfus case.

In October, 1895, the Moderates gave way to the Radical Cabinet of L?on Bourgeois. It was viewed with suspicion by the moneyed interests, who accused it of gravitating toward the Socialists. The cleavage between the two tendencies of the Republican Party became more marked. The Moderates joined forces with the Conservatives to oppose the schemes for social and financial reforms of the Radicals and of the representatives of the working classes. Prominent among these was the proposal for a progressive income tax. The Senate, naturally a more conservative body, was opposed to the Bourgeois Cabinet, which had a majority, though not a very steadfast one, in the Chamber of Deputies. The Senate, usually a nonentity in determining the fall of a cabinet, for once successfully asserted its power and, by refusing to vote the credits asked for by the Ministry for the Madagascar campaign, caused it to resign in April, 1896. The enemies of the Senate maintained that the Chamber of Deputies, elected by direct suffrage, was the only judge of the fate of a cabinet. But Bourgeois's hold was at best precarious and he seized the opportunity to withdraw.

The M?line Cabinet which followed was a return to the Moderates supported by the Conservatives. Its opponents accused it of following what in American political parlance is called a "stand-pat" policy, but it remained in office longer than any ministry up to its time, a little over two years. It afforded, at any rate, an opportunity for the adversaries of the Republic to strengthen their positions and encouraged the transformation of the Dreyfus case into a political instead of a purely judicial matter.

From this time on, Picquart worked, with extraordinary tenacity of purpose and against all obstacles, for the rehabilitation of a stranger. Everybody was against him. His chief subordinate Henry dreaded revelations above all things, and set his colleagues against him. His superiors disliked any suggestion that an army court could have made a mistake, the remedying of which would help a Jew.

Once more the Dreyfus affair seemed permanently settled, and once more the contrary proved to be the case. In August Cavaignac discovered, to his dismay, that the document he had sent to the Chamber, with such emphasis on its importance, was an out-and-out forgery of Henry. The latter was put under arrest and committed suicide. Discussion followed between Brisson, now converted to revision, and Cavaignac, still too stubborn to change his mind with regard to Dreyfus, in spite of his recent discovery. Cavaignac resigned as Minister of War, was replaced by General Zurlinden, who withdrew in a few days and was in turn succeeded by another general, Chanoine, thought to be in sympathy with the Cabinet. He in turn played his colleagues false and resigned unexpectedly during a meeting of the Chamber. Weakened by these successive blows the Brisson Cabinet itself had to resign, but its leader had now forwarded to the supreme court of the land, the Cour de Cassation, the petition of Dreyfus's wife for a revision of his sentence. The first step had at last been taken. The Criminal Chamber accepted the request and proceeded to a further detailed investigation.

The Brisson Ministry was followed by a third Cabinet of the unabashed Dupuy. It became evident that the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation was inclining to decide on revision. Wishing to play to both sides and, yielding in this case to the anti-revisionists, early in 1899 Dupuy brought in a bill to take the Dreyfus affair away from the Criminal Chamber in the very midst of its deliberations and submit it to the Court as a whole, where it was hoped a majority of judges would reject revision. Between the dates of the passage of this bill by the Chamber and by the Senate, President Faure died suddenly and under mysterious circumstances on February 16, 1899. He had opposed revision and his death, attributed to apoplexy, was a gain to the revisionists who were accused by his friends of having caused his murder. On the other hand, stories, which it is unnecessary to repeat here, found an echo some years later in the scandals repeated at the sensational trial of Madame Steinheil.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF EMILE LOUBET

February, 1899, to February, 1906

The successor of F?lix Faure, Emile Loubet, was elected on February 18, 1899, by a good majority over Jules M?line, the candidate of the larger number of the Moderates or "Progressists" and of the Conservatives. Loubet was himself a man of Moderate views, but he was thought to favor a revision of the Dreyfus case. Among the charges of his enemies was that, as Minister of the Interior in 1892, he had held, but had kept secret, the famous list of the "Hundred and Four" and had prevented the seizure of the papers of Baron de Reinach and the arrest of Arton. So Loubet's return to Paris from Versailles was amid hostile cries of "Loubet-Panama" and "Vive l'arm?e!"

On February 23, after the state funeral of President Faure, a detachment of troops led by General Roget was returning to its barracks in an outlying quarter of Paris. Suddenly the Nationalist and quondam Boulangist Paul D?roul?de, now chief of the Ligue des Patriotes and vigorous opponent of parliamentary government, though a Deputy himself, rushed to General Roget, and, grasping the bridle of his horse, tried to persuade him to lead his troops to the Elys?e, the presidential residence, and overthrow the Government. D?roul?de had expected to encounter General de Pellieux, a more amenable leader, and one of the noisy generals at the Zola trial. General Roget, who had been substituted at the last moment, refused to accede and caused the arrest of D?roul?de, with his fellow Deputy and conspirator Marcel Habert.

Meanwhile the Dreyfus case had been taken out of the hands of the Criminal Chamber and given to the whole Court. To the dismay of the anti-Dreyfusites the Court, as a body, annulled, on June 3, the verdict of the court-martial of 1894, and decided that Dreyfus should appear before a second military court at Rennes for another trial.

Thus party antagonisms were becoming more and more acute. In addition Dupuy, the head of the Cabinet, seemed to be spiting the new President. On the day after the verdict of the Cour de Cassation, at the Auteuil races, President Loubet was roughly jostled by a band of fashionable young Royalists and struck with a cane by Baron de Christiani. A week later, at the Grand Prize races at Longchamps, on June 11, Dupuy, as though to atone for his previous carelessness, brought out a large array of troops, so obviously over-numerous as to cause new disturbances among the crowd desirous of manifesting its sympathy with the chief magistrate. More arrests were made and, at the meeting of the Chamber of Deputies the next day, the Cabinet was overthrown by an adverse vote.

The ministerial crisis brought about by the fall of Dupuy was as important as any under the Third Republic because of its consequences in the redistribution of parties. For about ten days President Loubet was unable to find a leader who could in turn form a cabinet. At last public opinion was astounded by the masterly combination made by Waldeck-Rousseau, Gambetta's former lieutenant, who of recent years had kept somewhat aloof from active participation in politics. He brought together a ministry of "d?fense r?publicaine," which its opponents, however, called a cabinet for the "liquidation" of the Dreyfus case. The old policy of "Republican concentration" of Opportunists and Radicals was given up in favor of a mass formation of the various advanced groups of the Left, including the Socialists.

Waldeck-Rousseau was a Moderate Republican, whose legal practice of recent years had been mainly that of a corporation lawyer, but he was a cool-headed Opportunist. He realized the ill-success of the policy of the "esprit nouveau," and saw the necessity of making advances to the Socialists, who more and more held the balance of power. He succeeded in uniting in his Cabinet Moderates like himself, Radicals, and, for the first time in French parliamentary history, an out-and-out Socialist, Alexandre Millerand, author of the famous "Programme of Saint-Mand?" of 1896, or declaration of faith of Socialism. Still more astounding was the presence as Minister of War, in the same Cabinet with Millerand, of General de Galliffet, a bluff, outspoken, and dashing aristocratic officer, a favorite with the whole army, but fiercely hated by the proletariat because of his part in the repression of the Commune.

The Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry took up the Dreyfus case with a queer combination of courage and weakness. Insubordinate army officers were summarily punished for injudicious remarks, but in order to appear neutral and to avoid criticism, the Cabinet held so much aloof that the anti-Dreyfusites were able to bring their full forces to bear on the court-martial. For a month at Rennes, beginning August 7, an extraordinary trial was carried on before the eyes of an impassioned France and angry onlooking nations. Witnesses had full latitude to indulge in rhetorical addresses and air their prejudices; military officers like Roget, who had had nothing to do with the original trial, were allowed to take up the time of the court. Galliffet, though convinced of the innocence of Dreyfus, was unwilling to exert as much pressure as his colleagues in the Cabinet desired. It soon became evident that, regardless of the question involved, the issue was one between an insignificant Jewish officer on the one hand and General Mercier, ex-Minister of War, on the other. The judges were army officers full of caste-feeling and timorous of offending their superiors. Thus, on September 9, Dreyfus was a second time convicted, though with extenuating circumstances, by a vote of 5 to 2, and condemned to ten years' detention. This verdict was a travesty of justice, and a punishment fitting no crime of Dreyfus, since he was either innocent or guilty of treason beyond extenuation. The Ministry, perhaps regretting too late its excessive inertia, immediately caused the President to pardon Dreyfus, partly on the ostensible grounds that Dreyfus by his previous harsher condemnation had already purged his new one. This act of clemency was, however, not a legal clearing of the victim's honor, which was achieved only some years later.

The Government, having got wind of a project of the conspirators to seize the reins of power during the Rennes court-martial, anticipated the act by wholesale arrests on August 12. Jules Gu?rin barricaded himself with some friends in a house in the rue de Chabrol in Paris, and defied the Government to arrest him without perpetrating murder. The grotesque incident of the "Fort Chabrol" came to an end after thirty-seven days when the authorities had surrounded the house with troops to starve Gu?rin out and stopped the drains.

In November a motley array of conspirators, ranging from Andr? Buffet, representative of the pretender the Duke of Orl?ans, to butchers from the slaughter-houses of La Villette, were brought to trial before the Senate acting as a High Court of Justice, on the charge of conspiracy against the State. After a long trial lasting nearly two months, during which the prisoners outdid each other in declamatory insults to their enemies, the majority were acquitted. Paul D?roul?de and Andr? Buffet were condemned to banishment for ten years and Jules Gu?rin to imprisonment for the same term. Two others, Marcel Habert and the comte de Lur-Saluces, who had taken flight, gave themselves up later and were condemned in 1900 and 1901, respectively, amid a public indifference which was far from their liking.

Thus the year 1899 had proved itself one of the most dramatically eventful in the history of the Republic. It was also to be one of the most significant in its consequences. For the new grouping of mutually jealous factions against a common danger had, in spite of the fiasco of the second Dreyfus case, shown a way to victory. And exasperation against the intrigues of the Clericals and the army officers was going to turn the former toleration of the "esprit nouveau" into active persecution, especially as the Socialists and Radicals formed the majority of the new combination.

In November, 1899, Waldeck-Rousseau laid before Parliament an Associations bill to regulate the organization of societies, which was intended indirectly to control religious bodies. The leniency of the Government hitherto and the commercial energy of many religious orders, manufacturers of articles varying from chartreuse to hair-restorers and dentifrice, had enabled them to amass enormous sums held in mortmain. The power of this money was great in politics and the anti-Clericals cast envious eyes on these vague and mysterious fortunes. There were in France at the time almost seven hundred unauthorized "congregations." Against the Assumptionists in particular the Government took direct measures early in 1900, such as legal perquisitions, arrests, and prosecution as an illegal association.

The campaign went on through the year 1900, the Exposition of that year helping to act as a partial truce. The expedition of the Allies to China to put down the Boxer rebellion also diverted attention. Waldeck-Rousseau was sincerely desirous of bringing about a pacification of feeling in the country, and he felt bitter practically only against the Jesuits and the Assumptionists. He even succeeded in carrying through Parliament an amnesty bill dealing with the Dreyfus case and destined to quash all criminal actions in process, whether of Dreyfusites or anti-Dreyfusites. The former fought the project vigorously on the ground that it opposed a new obstacle to ultimate discovery of the truth, but they were unsuccessful. Waldeck-Rousseau remained at heart, none the less, a believer in Dreyfus's innocence and in spite of his amnesty project, he could not always hide his true feelings. In consequence he offended his Minister of War, General de Galliffet, Dreyfusite as well, but tired of the struggle now that the Rennes trial had made the task of rehabilitation apparently hopeless. Galliffet resigned his office and was succeeded by General Andr?, a politician soldier, who started out at once to purge the army drastically of its Clericalism.

Matters had progressed even further than Waldeck-Rousseau himself perhaps desired. In the spring of 1902, new legislative elections took place for the renewal of the Chamber of Deputies. The policy of the Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry was endorsed by a sound majority, and yet at this moment of triumph, after the longest rule as Prime Minister of any hitherto in the history of the Republic, Waldeck-Rousseau resigned his post without an adverse vote. Undoubtedly the state of his personal health was partly responsible for his departure from office and he was destined not to live beyond 1904. The last important events of his administration were a visit of the Czar to France and a return visit of President Loubet to Russia.

Combes cut matters short. He lumped fifty-four individual applications into three batches, teaching orders, preaching orders, and the commercial order of the Chartreux, manufacturers of the liqueur called "chartreuse." Then, presenting these batches of applications collectively instead of individually to the Chamber, he caused their rejection and proceeded to dissolve the orders and close their fifteen hundred establishments. Through the spring of 1903 there were turbulent scenes in consequence in various parts of France, the monks trying sometimes passive resistance, sometimes actual violence. In the reactionary districts the population attempted to stir up riots. Occasionally, even, a military officer whose duty it was to evict the monks refused to obey orders. But, nothing daunted, Combes went on, with the support of the Chambers, to reject a large mass of applications from teaching orders of women. Even Waldeck-Rousseau was led in time publicly to declare that he had never contemplated the transformation of his Associations law of 1901 from a measure of regulation to one of exclusion, nor the assumption by the State of expensive educational charges hitherto carried on by religious orders. At last the law of July, 1904, put a complete end to all kinds of instruction by religious bodies, thereby insuring, after a lapse of time for liquidation, the disappearance of all teaching orders.

In the autumn of 1903 the King of Italy made a visit to France, and in 1904 it was deemed advisable to have President Loubet return this visit to emphasize the new cordiality between France and Italy, the settlement of long-standing difficulties, and to cultivate as much as possible one member of the Triple Alliance. The Pope protested violently against this visit to his enemy in Rome and made it clear that he would refuse to see Loubet. The diplomatic crisis became acute and the French Ambassador to the Vatican was recalled.

Soon came a complete rupture over the treatment by the pontifical authorities of two French bishops, Geay of Laval and Le Nordez of Dijon. They had shown themselves loyal Republicans and had become the object of attack in their own dioceses until personal scandals were imagined or raked up against them. Combes took the part of the bishops and, to punish the Vatican for interfering with the French prelates, definitely broke off diplomatic relations in July, 1904, withdrawing even the charg? d'affaires who had been left after the departure of the ambassador.

It cannot be denied that there was a considerable deterioration in government during the r?gime of Combes. In attempting to thwart the Clerical Party he let himself lapse into methods as objectionable as theirs. His anti-clericalism breathed the spirit of persecution, as much as did the intrigues of the clergy during the early days of the Republic. He transformed Waldeck-Rousseau's plans for the regulation of religious orders into a measure of proscription. He countenanced underhanded intrigues, and allowed his Minister of War to undermine army discipline by his methods of political espionage almost as much as it had been undermined in the days of the supremacy of the Clericals. The concessions of the Ministers of War and of Marine to the Socialists and pacifists considerably weakened the efficiency of both army and navy. Combes's administration was pre-eminently one of self-seeking politicians.

The year 1905 is noteworthy for two other important events. One was the reduction of the term of compulsory military service from three to two years. This measure was carried through largely under the auspices of General Andr? and proved an over-dangerous concession to the anti-militarists and pacifists, since it was destined so soon to be repealed. The other was the sensational diplomatic dispute with Germany over Morocco, which resulted at first for France in a worse humiliation than Fashoda.

Germany under Bismarck had encouraged the numerous French colonial schemes, as a way of keeping her busy abroad and of diverting her thoughts from Alsace-Lorraine. But as the Empire began to develop its Pan-Germanism and its aspirations to world-power under William II, it grew jealous of England and France and of their arrangement of 1904 to settle the interests of Morocco. Forthwith Germany began to intrigue with the Sultan of Morocco against the French, and declared that, as it had not been officially informed of the agreements between England, France, and Spain, it intended to disregard them. The defeat of Russia by Japan, in particular, encouraged Germany to feel that France, deprived of its ally, could be bullied with impunity. On March 31, Emperor William landed at Tangier and proclaimed that his visit was to the Sultan as an "independent sovereign." Germany also called for the convocation of an international meeting to regulate the Moroccan question. The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Delcass?, objected to the thwarting of his plans, but because of the deterioration of the army and navy and the lack of hoped-for Russian support, Rouvier was obliged under German threats to drop him from his Cabinet and to agree to the convocation of the Conference of Algeciras.

FOOTNOTES:

It should be remembered that, in France, the Freemasons are an anti-religious political quite as much as a benevolent order.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF ARMAND FALLI?RES

February, 1906, to February, 1918

The international conference for the regulation of the Moroccan question met at Algeciras in southern Spain, in January, 1906. Twelve powers participated, including the United States. The negotiations were prolonged until the end of March owing to the unconciliatory German attitude, and resulted in an arrangement which the Germans looked upon as totally unsatisfactory to themselves. In the shaping of the general results the United States had considerable influence. The agreement put out of discussion the sovereignty of the Sultan, the integrity of the empire, and the principle of commercial freedom, and was largely devoted to the question of the establishment of a state bank and the organization of the police in international ports of entry. In the bank France was to have special privileges, and the police was to be under the supervision of France and Spain. Germany was eliminated.

In the midst of the uncertainty over the outcome of the Conference two important events took place in France, the second of which came near seriously weakening the French position. These were the election of a successor to President Loubet and the downfall of the Rouvier Ministry.

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