Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/192



other people; but what we do not understand is the assurance with which the journalists of London explain to us what is taking place in our own country, and point out to us the best means of getting out of the difficulty. The whole, watered with crocodile tears, forms a picture at the same time melancholy and burlesque."

After some sharp comments on the language of several organs published in London, the article proceeds thus:

"We are indebted for this bright school of literature to the military correspondents. A civil war is a war like any other, and so a journal dispatches to Paris or Versailles a man who has perhaps taken out his university degree, who has even travelled on the Continent, but who carries about everywhere with him that thick armor of British notions by means of which he is sure of never entering into real contact with the spirit of the nations he visits. That gentleman displays the most praiseworthy activity; he shrinks from no fatigue, or even danger, to obtain information for the paper which he represents; but he necessarily remains outside the political world; he only sees the external and military side of events, and the same individual who might have been well placed for the siege of Paris by the Germans, is completely bewildered amidst the events now passing on the same theatre. But what is most remarkable in the journals to which we refer, is the absence of sympathy for the party of order and for the Government of France, all having a weakness for the Commune.

"All agree to cover M. Thiers with contempt and ridicule for not having long ago put an end to the insurrection. He should have crushed it in the bud, they say; his weakness and indecision has given strength to the rebellion; all his policy consists in waiting for he knows not what; he has no fixed object in view. M. Thiers has