The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 13, 1918. NATAL DAY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 253, 13 July 1918, Page 6

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 13, 1918. NATAL DAY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The month of July is rich in national anniversaries. The. fact that the fourth of July was the birthday of the United' States was made known in celebrations throughout the world, and the declarations then evoked from President Wilson have added a new glory to tho day. The fourteenth of July is the natal day of French freedom—tho fiery birthday of the French Revolution. It is said that a prophet's bones brought life to a dead body. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the memory of the past deliverances of a nation has an inspiring and cheering influence on a people, and nerves them to braver and nobler deeds. The celebration of the fourteenth of July, 1789, by Frenchmen everywhere and by the friends of France, will have this beneficial influence. France to-day as she recalls her past deliver&iiiv , from despotism and injustice will find now courage and new strength to fight the "enemy of tho human race" that has : turned her soil into a shambles' and , ■her land into a bloody battlefield. In the cheerless, hopeless days before the fourteenth of July, 178 C, the land was in pain and in darkness. Tyranny and injustice had reached a climax. On the throne was Louis XVI, a weak, corrupt, useless creature, utterly destitute of the qualities that make a- real king; and by his side was his Austrian wife, whoso folly, pleasure-seeking, and evil advice encouraged the King iii his mad policy of driving his kingdom to the abyss of ruin. The people, ground down by injustice, oppression, and , poverty, were ripe for revolt. Starvation was known and familiar. The poor toiling millions were not the only victims of the tyranny of Louis XVI. The man of business and the so-called • capitalist were treated also as helots and ground down by unjust laws. When 1789 came round the King found his treasury empty and national bankruptcy staring him in the face. This financial crack of doom had been brought about by.bvs'and his predecessors' policy of spoliation. 'In the French Constitution provision was piade for a House of .Commons, bufc.it had'not mot for twoMir three generations. Louis,.in his financial distress, resolved to call the Commons' together, and the States-Gen-eral met to. heal the nation's economic and other wounds. . It only made these wounds bleed afresh. The King would-surrendor none of his absolute power, and the privileged classes clung to their exemption, from taxation and other unjust, "rights."' A deadlock was the result, for the Commons declared that there would be, in future, no taxation without.thcir consent. Tho King shut, the doors of-tho Hall of Council-.against further meetings, but the Commons gathered in a tennis court and Rwnyc that they would not separate - .until tho question of the Constitution of the kingdom was settled. About. ]50 nobles and clergy came over to the side of the people; and tho gathering declared itself-the-National Assembly. The King wavered in bis sibsohitiwu, and then he honed to crush the Assembly, by the Army, but-the Assembly funned a citizen army, and the King found that his own army w;is on the.sido of thc-neople.

This was the condition of things when morning dawned on the fourteenth of July, 1789. The fires of insurrection and revolt wore smoking in Paris and throughout France, ready to lie fanned into a fierce flame. When the King refused to .recall his threatening troops insurrection broke out in Paris. .There was one building in thu city that was specially the emblem of kingly cruelty, oppression and injustice, and that .was the fortress of the Bastille. For years it had been a prison, and within its gloomy walk the patriots who h,id championed the people's rights had been imprisoned, and there, without trial, they suffered and died. The angry mob, representing an exasperated nation, singled out this building for attack. It fell, and it was razed to the ground. Its fall thrilled Paris, moved the whole of Franco, and made a profound impression or. the world. Gkeen, our modern English historian, writes that it was taken as a sign of "a new era of constitutional freedom for France and for Europe." Everywhere men thrilled with a strange joy at the tidings of its fall. "How much is this the greatest event that ever happened in i the world !" Fox cried with a burst

of enthusiasm; "and how much the bast!" As the' United States has hoi , "glorious fourth,'' so France has her glorious fourteenth of July. .The evils that have cursed the world in the past arc ever prone to reappear in the present in new forms. The evils of the absolutism of tyrannous kings or of the. military despotism of a Napoleon have revived in an intensified form in the ambitions of the Potsdam military autocracy with their brutal weapon of empire expansion by "blood and iron." The Bastille that calls for destruction .in our day is. tho enemy of the world's peace and freedom iu the persons and policy of the. Kaiser and .his War Lorda. When the Bastille i.s destroyed tk sun will shine on a freer world, and the words of Fox-may express our. feelings—"How much is this the greatest event that ever happened in the world, and the best!" In Franco's great deliverance of 125 years ago, the United States rendered much help. Lord Acton, in his Ledums, on the French Revolution, says that the spark that changed thought into action was the Declaration of American Independence. That Declaration fired th-j mine of insurrection . against absolutism in France. It said that government existed for the well-he-ing of the people, and that from the people all.its powers weic derived; and "that whenever any form of government became destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organising its powers in such a form as to. them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." For years before the French people struck for freedom, Americans in France had sown the seeds of national liberty and justice. For ten years and more before the Bastille fell, Fraxklin, America's Minister in France, had sown such seeds, and he had inspired men to go to- America to fight for independence there, and they returned to. France to be the apostles of democratic freedom. He was succeeded' by Jefferson,, and the writings of the author of tho Declaration of American Independence were read throughout France, and acted as , a powerful influence in dissolving the doctrines of the divino rights of kings and the passive obedience of subjects. In Britain, a!so,_ leaders of opposite political parties \yerc at one in their sympathy with the French people in their struggle. ■ for. freedom, which culminated in the revolt of 1789. Today, France, a victim of the cruelty of the Potsdam "blood-and-iron" policy, has on her side the United Britain, and the Powers of the civilised world, and there can be no doubt about the certainty of her deliverance and her enlargement. Her second emancipation will be better than ljer first. The year 1*789 was followed by years of insane ex- , cess, by <i. reign of- terror, and by Napoleon's wild effort after world dominion. No nation in Europe has been more sternly disciplined and purged by suffering than France, and it is to be hoped that. France after tho war will find compensation for her sufferings in long years of peace and in abundance of material and moral prosperity. What France needs, and what the nations need, is an answer to the cry of (ho American poet; "Oh mnka Thou us, through centuries ■lung, In peace secure, in justice strong; Around, our sift ot'.freeilo.n draw Tho safc'simrils of Thy riKhlixms lew! And, cast in some diviner mould. Let tht!.new cycle shame the old!"