HOW THE FRENCH ARE TAUGHT REVENGE.

Evening Star, Issue 3278, 22 August 1873, Page 3

HOW THE FRENCH ARE TAUGHT REVENGE.

We make the following extracts from a very chattily and pleasantly written letter lathe Aye, by Mr G.O. Levey, the secretary to the Victorian Commissioners at the Vienna Exhibition. He has been describing what he saw and heard in his journey through France :

Scarcely two Frenchmen entertain the same political views, but Republicans, Legitimists, Orieanists, and Bonapartists are all agreed upon one thing : that so soon as th*army can be thoroughly reorganised, a work which, according to the French, is not likely to occupy more than ten years, a desperate attempt will be made to revenge Sedan, Metz, and Baris, and to drive the Germans from Alsace and Lorraine. So far as one can judge, there is no danger of young France forgetting its mission. Every child is taught to regard war with Germany as an inevitable necessity, and every Gallic mother imitates the example of Hamilcar, and makes her son swear eternal hostility to Germany, for if she does not compel him to take a vow upon the altar, she instils a feeling of hatred upon every possible occasiou. Thieves, robbers, and assassins are the mildest of the. epithets showered upon the conquerors. It is, however, only fair to say that even those persons who have suffered most from the invasion bear testimony to the excellent behaviour and strict discipline maintained by the German troops. One young lady told me that during the four months the town in which she resided was occupied by Prussian and Saxon troops, she went regularly about her avocations, and was never exposed to the slightest insult or annoyauce. Troops were quartered in every house except those inhabited solely by women, and these were exempt from any interference. Would the French, had they been the victors, have shown as much chtvalric feeling ? But when the necessity for action arose the German commanders did not allow sentiment to interfere with their duty. Upon one occasion some franc-tireurs established themselves in an empty house, and as a party of Uhlans rode through the next morning the men in ambush fired at and killed three troopers. A few hours afterwards the Germans returned in force and burnt down the whole street. The house of my informant was one of those doomed to destruction, although she had known nothing of the presence of the franctireurs, and felt very much disgusted at their conduct, which she said was assassination, and not warfare. There was, however, a ludicrous side to the picture. The landwehr officer, who was intrusted with carrying out the operation, knocked at the door, and asked to see the lady of the house, Madame was too ill, but Mademoiselle would receive him. The captain with tears in his eyes explained what he had to do, allowed the ladies half an hour to pack up thoir clothes, and protested that he would have preferred to die rather than ho compelled to injure such charming ladies ; but as there was no help for it, would Mademoiselle be so good as to give his sergeant a few matches ? This was seething the kid in its mother’s mi.'k with a vengeance. The Government seemed to take especial pains to keep alive amongst all classes the loss which France had sustained in the annexation by Germany of Alsace and Lorraine. A bazaar waa being given in the New Opera House for the benefit of the orphans of Alsace and Lorraine. A la ville de iStraabourg or a la ville de Metz were the most popular signs, and all the print shops were filled with pictures which had a tendency to remind the people of defeat. There was no attempt to gloss it over; on the contrary, every one seemed anxious that the iron should thoroqghly enter his soul. The French have often been accused of vainglorious boasting ; the silly excuses which their historians made for any disaster which sullied their military

history were absurd enough. But just now they are terribly in earnest. I have before mo two sets of photographs, which are fair specimens of the type which are now to be found in every French house. In one picture, avint la guerre, a young Frenchwoman, pretty and charmingly dressed, is wheeling a perambulator containing a little boy ; in the companion, aprts la gueire, dressed in widow’s weeds, the same fa ; rgirlis returning to her lonely home. The other pair are likewise termed avant la guerre and aprts la guerre, but they treat the subject in a manner which, although meant to be amusing, is much more offensive to German eyes. In the one a German girl with a singularly ugly face, with uukempt hair and wooden shoes, is playing an accord eon in a miserable kitchen. After the war the said damsel, who is called Madame I andwehr, is represented in an elegant apartment, dressed a merveille, hex hair decorated in the latest style of fashion, practising upon a piano, while around the room are articles de Paris, clocks, vases and Sevres china. The moral to be deduced is very simple ; it charges the Prussians with wholesale pillage.