t of some of the decisive steps which were taken to stop the
Boulangist agitation. The Prefect of Police of that time was summoned to
the Ministry of the Interior, where two or three members of the
Government awaited his arrival. Amongst other orders given him was one
(if I remember rightly) for the dissolution of M. Deroulede's 'League of
Patriots,' which then, as more recently, was at the bottom of much of the
agitation.

The Prefect hesitated; he was afraid to execute his orders. 'Very well,
then,' said M. Constans, M. Guyot, and others, 'you may regard your
resignation as accepted; you are not the man for the situation; if you
are afraid, there are plenty who are not; and we shall immediately
replace you.'

The threat of the loss of office wrought an immediate change in the
Prefect. He became as brave as he had been timorous, and with all due
energy he proceeded to carry out his instructions. Boulangism was crushed
and held up to public opprobrium and ridicule; and but for the culpable
weakness and connivance of M. Felix Faure and his favourite Prime
Minister, M. Meline, it would never have revived in its varied forms of
anti-Semitism, anti-Dreyfusism, etc.

French functionaries, those of the Civil Service, are, as a rule, a
docile set; but every now and again a Government finding some laxity
among prefects and sub-prefects makes a few examples. Three or four
prefects of departments are transferred in disgrace to less important
towns; two or three are cashiered, and the same method is followed with
some of the sub-prefects. Thereupon, all the others, prefects and 'subs,'
throughout the eighty and odd departments of France, hasten to show
themselves vigilant and, if need be, energetic. Taking one consideration
with another, this system of frightening the prefects into obedience and
vigilance has, so far as the maintenance of public order is concerned,
answered admirably well whenever it has been applied during the last
fifty years. It has undoubtedly been adopted at times for the furtherance
of purely despotic or arbitrary aims; but if ever it was justified such
was the case during the Dreyfus agitation. If the Government had not
connived, for purposes of its own, at the proceedings of what the French
call the 'militarist' party, there would have been no turmoil at all.

But those in power desired to shield culprits of high rank and to defend
the effete organisation of the French War-office. And those who thus
mi