Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/276

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came to seek him uncourted, and he has not wavered or been bullied into resignation by the most appalling insults, outrages, calumnies, and actual assaults that have ever been showered on one mortal man. As a figure of civic integrity and of unassuming merit, I know none worthier of admiration in France to-day. For the terrible price paid in Paris for public office is not only abuse of person and principles, but the digging into every private corner of family history with a deliberate intent to injure and wound by attacks upon the dead. It is this extraordinary Nationalist Press that has so brutalised the imagination of the great reading public, that its readers do not even exact logic or a shadow of consistency from those who cater their politics for them. A little while ago two French officers killed their superior officer sent to arrest them on their way into the heart of Africa. Those two officers were then despatched by their own men, and the Patrie Française made a great splash in the way of a patriotic funeral for the assassinated colonel. Had the colonel been murdered by two civilians all would have been well. But the assassins were officers, and officers, when they are not Jews, must always be respected, admired, and adored. So when the patriots had done weeping over Colonel Klobb, since he had been interred with national and military honours, MM. Coppée and Lemaître, in