to find himself compelled to let it sink into the scabbard forthwith. If this Minister, with the air of a Richelieu, a Polignac, a Drouyn de Lhuys, had not laid pretensions to the luxury of a naval expedition and an ultimatum, France would not have undergone the humiliation of seeing her fleet stationed before Alexandria to witness the massacre of Frenchmen and then retiring at the sound of the cannon. A rather novel experience for the descendants of the sailors at Aboukir Bay and Navarino!
We do not say that it is absolutely impossible that France should form alliances or fill a distinguished place as long as she remains Republican. We only wish to point out that to accomplish this she must clear away many obstacles, overcome many repugnances, triumph over many difficulties. The work of rehabilitation demands time, labour, and skill of the highest order. Where is the Republican statesman capable of playing such a great part? Could this rara avis be found on the Left, he would not be allowed the time necessary for maturing his ideas. In Foreign policy five, six, ten years even, of uninterrupted labour are needed before a result is achieved. Under the present system the Minister for Foreign Affairs can hardly count on more than six months of office. To remain a year on the Quay of Orsay would be an unexpected favour from the fickle goddess. It is not difficult to understand that under such a system there could be no sequence or connection in the foreign policy of France.
M. Gambetta has not disguised to himself that an almost insurmountable antipathy reigns between Republican France and Monarchical Europe. This is the secret of the obstinacy with which he clings to an alliance with England; the peculiar characteristics of the English Constitution, more akin to Republican principles than to Imperial notions of centralization and authority, were, in M. Gambetta's idea, well calculated to facilitate a reconciliation between these two great Western nations.
But the Anglo-French alliance projected by him, and which was to have given rise to a political intervention in Egypt, would have exposed France to a danger the consequences of which it was impossible to foresee. The difficulty England experienced in raising an army of from thirty to forty thousand men proves that she could have tendered but slight aid to France if a Continental
