ed Deputy in 1876; has been eight times Minister; was
President of the Senate during the seven years of President Loubet's
term of office; and January 17, 1906, was elected to the highest
position in the state. The appointment of M. Sarrien, with his
well-known sympathies, to the office of Prime Minister, sets at rest
any doubt as to the policy initiated by M. Waldeck-Rousseau, and
consummated by M. Combes.

With each succeeding administration France has gained in strength and
stability, and in the self-control and calmness which make for both.
The government and the people have learned that the spasmodic way is
not a wise and effectual way.

The monarchist party has disappeared as a serious political factor.
There is peace, external and internal. And there is prosperity--that
surest guarantee of a continued peace.

One source of the phenomenal prosperity of France in this trying period
since 1871 has been her mastery in the art of beauty. Leading the
world as she does in this, her art products are sought by every land
and every people. The nations must and will have them; and so, with an
assured market, her industries prosper, and there is content in the
cottage and wealth in the country at large.

What a change from the time less than four decades ago, when, with
military pride humbled in the dust, with national pride wounded by the
loss of two provinces, and loaded down with an immense war indemnity,
the people set about the task of rehabilitation! And in what an
incredibly short time the galling debt had been paid, financial
prosperity and political strength restored.

For thirty-four years the republic has existed. Communistic fires,
always smouldering, have again and again burst forth--demagogues,
fanatics, and those creatures for whom there is no place in organized
society, whose element is chaos, standing ready to fan the flames of
revolt: with Orleanist, Bonapartist, Bourbon, ever on the alert,
watching for opportunity to slip in through the open door of revolution.

Phlegmatic Teutons and slow-moving Anglo-Saxons look in bewilderment at
a nation which has had seven political revolutions in a hundred years!

But France, complex, mobile, changeful as the sea, in riotous enjoyment
of her new-found liberties, casts off a form of government as she would
an ill-fitting garment. She knows the value of tranquillity--she had
it for one thousand years! The _people_, who have only breathed the
upper air f