Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 49, 8 December 1904, Page 19

Notes

M. Combes. Two caible m essays in Tuesday's daily papers run as lollows :

' The Committee of the Chamber of Deputies has adopted the Disestablishment Bill.'

4 The ' Times' ' Paris 1 coi'resJpiqntfent siays that altogether apart tnom the Disestablishment questioai, there are signs of a coming Ministerial crisis.'

It would seem as if the lodge-propelled Combes is approiaching the close of his career as the little Nero of France. In the October ' Fortnightly ' the Baron de Cioubertiin thus describes the podgy little man of medicare ability w"h,o, dressed in a little brief a-uthlonty, has beeTi playing such pranks before high heaven in western Europe . 'M. Combes is not wi any fetji.se a statesman : he is merely a politician of middling intelligence and ot still moie dubious strupulosity— a man devoid ot consicionce aiud ot will. His every act is based either on an order received from his party or from some Masonic lodge, or on some interest which he cannot a\TOw, but which he awkwarully dissimwlates. Added to this, the quarter-idock airs which he adopts by way ot creating the illusion of commanHm£ axitih/onty one a touc,h of absurdity to a iigure which would otherwise be odio.us '