FRENCH REVOLUTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 February 1939, Page 9

FRENCH REVOLUTION

CELEBRATION OF ANNIVERSARY. NATION-WIDE COMMEMORATION. Preparations being made in France to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the French Revolution have a double significance: not only will the fall of the Bastille and the beginning of a struggle which led to the proclaiming of the First Republic be commemorated, but peoples the world over will be reminded that France is a country where the State is for all, and not all for the State, which, as Mr Chamberlain recently tersely put it, is in reality a small clique of leaders. While details of programmes have not yet been made public, it is understood that July 14 will be the occasion for ceremonies of great magnificence, with historical pageant processions, in addition to the annual military review and three days of dancing in the streets. Celebrations will not be confined to Paris. In every part of France there will be a series of tions. An Englishman, too, will be honoured in France this year, and in a number of places ceremonies will be held commemorating the journeys through Franco of Arthur Young, as recorded in his “Travels in France in 1787, 1788, and 1789.” French historians consider that this English gentleman farmer, who visited France in order to study the methods of agriculture, left the completes! and most accurate pictures of conditions in France at the time just previous to the outbreak of the Revolution.

When the translation of Young's "Travels in France” appeared in 1793. the Convention ordered 20,000 copies to be. specially printed and distributed gratuitously in each commune of France. Tne Directory, in 1801, decreed that a selection from Arthur Young's other works on agriculture should be translated into French, and an edition was published in Paris in 18 volumes under the title of “Le Cultivateur Anglais.”

Vestiges of the heroic period of the Revolution are to be found in great numbers still in France. Even some of the Trees of Liberty planted in the early days of enthusiasm amidst scenes of great rejoicing. One of the most famous of these Trees of Liberty is that at Bayeux, in Normandy, a magnificent oak standing beside the cathedral and close to the museum where the famous Bavcux tapestry, on which William the Conqueror’s queen embroidered the story of 1066, is preserved. This tapestry came near to destruction at the outbreak of the Revolution, for it was found by the mayor of Bayeux being used as covering for an ammunition wagon. He caused to to be removed and hidden. English souvenirs are not confined to Arthur Young, for there are still relics of the English Revolutionary Club, founded in Paris, of which one of its members was Thomas Paine, author oi “The Rights of Man."