LOUBET, ÉMILE FRANÇOIS (1838- ), 7th president of the French republic, was born on the 30th of December 1838, the son of a peasant proprietor at Marsanne (Drôme), who was more than once mayor of Marsanne. He was admitted to the Parisian bar in 1862, and took his doctorate-in-law next year. He was still a student when he witnessed the sweeping triumph of the Republican party in Paris at the general election in 1863. He settled down to the exercise of his profession in Montélimar, where he married in 1869 Marie Louis Picard. He also inherited a small estate at Grignan. At the crisis of 1870 he became mayor of Montélimar, and thenceforward was a steady supporter of Gambetta's policy. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1876 by Montélimar he was one of the famous 363 who in June 1877 passed the vote of want of confidence in the ministry of the duc de Broglie. In the general election of October he was re-elected, local enthusiasm for him being increased by the fact that the government had driven him from the mayoralty. In the Chamber he occupied himself especially with education, fighting the clerical system established by the Loi Falloux, and working for the establishment of free, obligatory and secular primary instruction. In 1880 he became president of the departmental council in Drôme. His support of the second Jules Ferry ministry and his zeal for the colonial expansion of France gave him considerable weight in the moderate Republican party. He had entered the Senate in 1885, and he became minister of public works in the Tirard ministry (December 1887 to March 1888). In 1892 President Sadi Carnot, who was his personal friend, asked him to form a cabinet. Loubet held the portfolio of the interior with the premiership, and had to deal with the anarchist crimes of that year and with the great strike of Carmaux, in which he acted as arbitrator, giving a decision regarded in many quarters as too favourable to the strikers. He was defeated in November on the question of the Panama scandals, but he retained the ministry of the interior in the next cabinet under Alexandre Ribot, though he resigned on its reconstruction in January. His reputation as an orator of great force and lucidity of exposition and as a safe and honest statesman procured for him in 1896 the presidency of the Senate, and in February 1899 he was chosen president of the republic in succession to Félix Fauré by 483 votes as against 279 recorded by Jules Méline, his only serious competitor. He was marked out for fierce opposition and bitter insult as the representative of that section of the Republican party which sought the revision of the Dreyfus case. On the day of President Faure's funeral Paul Déroulède met the troops under General Roget on their return to barracks, and demanded that the general should march on the Élysée. Roget sensibly took his troops back to barracks. At the Auteuil steeplechase in June the president was struck on the head with a cane by an anti-Dreyfusard. In that month President Loubet summoned Waldeck-Rousseau to form a cabinet, and at the same time entreated Republicans of all shades of opinion to rally to the defence of the state. By the efforts of Loubet and Waldeck-Rousseau the Dreyfus affair was settled, when Loubet, acting on the advice of General Galliffet, minister of war, remitted the ten years' imprisonment to which Dreyfus was condemned at Rennes. Loubet's presidency saw an acute stage of the clerical question, which was attacked by Waldeck-Rousseau and in still more drastic fashion by the Combes ministry. The French ambassador was recalled from the Vatican in April 1905, and in July the separation of church and state was voted in the Chamber of Deputies. Feeling had run high between France and England over the mutual criticisms passed on the conduct of the South African War and the Dreyfus case respectively. These differences were composed by the Anglo-French _entente_, and in 1904 a convention between the two countries secured the recognition of French claims in Morocco in exchange for non-interference with the English occupation of Egypt. President Loubet was a typical example of the peasant-proprietor class, and had none of the aristocratic, not to say monarchical, proclivities of President Fauré. He inaugurated the Paris Exhibition of 1900, received the tsar Nicholas II. in September 1901 and paid a visit to Russia in 1902. He also exchanged visits with King Edward VII., with the king of Italy and the king of Spain. The king of Spain's visit in 1905 was the occasion of an attempt on his life, a bomb being thrown under his carriage as he was proceeding with his guest to the opera. His presidency came to an end in January 1906, when he retired into private life. Entry: LOUBET
DOUKHOBORS, a name given by the Russian Orthodox clergy to a community of nonconformist peasants. The word etymologically signifies "spirit-fighters," being originally intended by the priesthood to convey that they fight against the Spirit of God; but the Doukhobors themselves accepted the term as signifying that they fight, not against, but for and with the Spirit. Of late, however, they have decided to give up this name and call themselves "Christians of the Universal Brotherhood." This religious community was first heard of in the middle of the 18th century. By the end of that century or the beginning of the 19th their doctrine had become so clearly defined, and the number of their members had so greatly increased, that the Russian government and Church, considering this sect to be peculiarly obnoxious, started an energetic campaign against it. The foundation of the Doukhobors' teaching consists in the belief that the Spirit of God is present in the soul of man, and directs him by its word within him. They understand the coming of Christ in the flesh, his works, teaching and sufferings, in a spiritual sense. The object of the sufferings of Christ, in their view, was to give an example of suffering for truth. Christ continues to suffer in us even now when we do not live in accordance with the behests and spirit of his teaching. The whole teaching of the Doukhobors is penetrated with the Gospel spirit of love. Worshipping God in the spirit, they affirm that the outward Church and all that is performed in it and concerns it has no importance for them. The Church is where two or three are gathered together, i.e. united in the name of Christ. They pray inwardly at all times; on fixed days they assemble for prayer-meetings, at which they greet each other fraternally with low bows, thereby acknowledging every man as a bearer of the Divine Spirit. Their teaching is founded on tradition, which is called among them the "Book of Life," because it lives in their memory and hearts. It consists of sacred songs or chants, partly composed independently, partly formed out of the contents of the Bible, which, however, has evidently been gathered by them orally, as until quite lately they were almost entirely illiterate and did not possess any written book. They found alike their mutual relations and their relations to other people--and not only to people, but to all living creatures--exclusively on love, and therefore they hold all people equal and brethren. They extend this idea of equality also to the government authorities, obedience to whom they do not consider binding upon them in those cases when the demands of these authorities are in conflict with their conscience; while in all that does not infringe what they regard as the will of God they willingly fulfil the desire of the authorities. They consider killing, violence, and in general all relations to living beings not based on love as opposed to their conscience and to the will of God. They are industrious and abstemious in their lives, and when living up to the standard of their faith they present one of the nearest approaches to the realization of the Christian ideal which have ever been attained. In many ways they have thus a close resemblance to the Quakers or Society of Friends. For these beliefs and practices the Doukhobors long endured cruel persecution. Under Nicholas I., in the years 1840 and 1850, the Doukhobors, who on religious grounds refused to participate in military service, were all banished from the government of Tauris--whither they had been previously transported from various parts of Russia by Alexander I.--to Transcaucasia, near the Turkish frontier. But neither the severe climate nor the neighbourhood of wild and warlike hillmen shook their faith, and in the course of half a century, in one of the most unhealthy and unfertile localities in the Caucasus, they transformed this wilderness into flourishing colonies, and continued to live a Christian and laborious life, making friends with, instead of fighting, the hillmen. But the wealth to which they attained in the Caucasus weakened for a time their moral fervour, and little by little they began to depart somewhat from the requirements of their belief. As soon, however, as events happened among them which disturbed their outward tranquillity, the religious spirit which had guided their fathers immediately revived within them. In 1887, in the reign of the tsar Alexander III., universal military service was introduced in the Caucasus; and even those for whom, as in the case of the Doukhobors, it had formerly been replaced with banishment, were called upon to serve. This measure took the Doukhobors unawares, and at first they outwardly submitted to it. About the same time, by the decision of certain government officials, the right to the possession of the public property of the Doukhobors (valued at about £50,000) passed from the community to one of their members, who had formed out of the more demoralized Doukhobors a group of his own personal adherents, which was henceforth called the "Small Party." Soon afterwards several of the most respected representatives of the community were banished to the government of Archangel. This series of calamities was accepted by the Doukhobors as a punishment from God, and a spiritual awakening of a most energetic character ensued. The majority (about 12,000 in number) resolved to revive in practice the traditions left them by their fathers, which they had departed from during the period of opulence. They again renounced tobacco, wine, meat and every kind of excess, many of them dividing up all their property in order to supply the needs of those who were in want, and they collected a new public fund. They also renounced all participation in acts of violence, and therefore refused military service. In confirmation of their sincerity, in the summer of 1895 the Doukhobors of the "Great Party," as they were called in distinction from the "Small Party," burnt all the arms which they, like other inhabitants of the Caucasus, had taken up for their protection from wild animals, and those who were in the army refused to continue service. At the commencement of the reign of the tsar Nicholas II., in 1895, the Doukhobors became the victims of a series of persecutions, Cossack soldiers plundering, insulting, beating and maltreating both men and women in every way. More than 400 families of Doukhobors who were living in the province of Tiflis were ruined and banished to Georgian villages. Of 4000 thus exiled, more than 1000 died in the course of the first two years from exhaustion and disease; and more would have perished had not information reached Count Leo Tolstoy and his friends, and through them the Society of Friends in England. Funds were immediately raised by sympathizers for alleviating the sufferings of the starving victims. At the same time an appeal, written by Tolstoy and some of his friends, requesting the help of public opinion in favour of the oppressed Doukhobors, was circulated in St Petersburg and sent to the emperor and higher government officials. The Doukhobors themselves asked for permission to leave Russia, and the Society of Friends petitioned the emperor to the same effect. In March 1898 the desired permission was granted, and the first party of Doukhobors, 1126 in number, were able in the summer of 1898 to sail from Batum for Cyprus, which was originally chosen for their settlement because at that time funds were not sufficient for transferring them to any other British territory. But as contributions accumulated, it was found possible to send a number of Doukhobor emigrants to Canada, whither they arrived in two parties, numbering above 4000, in January 1899. They were joined in the spring of the same year by the Cyprus party, and another party of about 2000 arrived from the Caucasus. In all about 7500 Doukhobor immigrants arrived in Canada. The Canadian government did their best to facilitate the immigration, and allotted land to the Doukhobors in the provinces of Assiniboia near Yorktown and of Saskatchewan near Thunder Hill and Prince Albert. They were very cordially received by the population of the Canadian port towns. In April 1901, in the Canadian House of Commons, the minister of justice made a statement about them in which he said that "not a single offence had been committed by the Doukhobors; they were law-abiding, and if good conduct was a recommendation, they were good immigrants.... The large tracts of land demanded population, and if they were not given to crime, the conclusion was that they would make good citizens." About eighteen months after they arrived in Canada the Doukhobors sent the Society of Friends a collective letter in which they sincerely thanked the English and American Friends for all the generous help of every kind they had received at their hands, but begged the Quakers to cease sending them any more pecuniary support, as they were now able to stand on their own feet, and therefore felt it right that any further help should be directed to others who were more in need of it. At Yorktown in the summer of 1907 the Doukhobors established one of the largest and best brick-making plants in Canada, a significant testimony to the way in which the leaders of the community were working in the interests of the whole. Now and again small bodies broke off from the main community and adopted a semi-nomadic life, but these formed a very small percentage of the total number, which in 1908 was over 8000. Entry: DOUKHOBORS
Rostov was not far from the trumpeters, and with his keen sight had recognized the Tsar and watched his approach. When he was within twenty paces, and Nicholas could clearly distinguish every detail of his handsome, happy young face, he experienced a feeling of tenderness and ecstasy such as he had never before known. Every trait and every movement of the Tsar's seemed to him enchanting.
Beneath all this external rottenness moved the old-time Dark Forces, unchanged since the fall of Nicholas the Second, secret still and very active. The agents of the notorious _Okhrana_ still functioned, for and against the Tsar, for and against Kerensky--whoever would pay.... In the darkness, underground organisations of all sorts, such as the Black Hundreds, were busy attempting to restore reaction in some form or other.
IGNATIEV, NICHOLAS PAVLOVICH, COUNT (1832-1908), Russian diplomatist, was born at St Petersburg on the 29th of January 1832. His father, Captain Paul Ignatiev, had been taken into favour by the tsar >Nicholas I., owing to his fidelity on the occasion of the military conspiracy in 1825; and the grand duke Alexander (afterwards tsar) stood sponsor at the boy's baptism. At the age of seventeen he became an officer of the Guards. His diplomatic career began at the congress of Paris, after the Crimean War, where he took an active part as military attaché in the negotiations regarding the rectification of the Russian frontier on the Lower Danube. Two years later (1858) he was sent with a small escort on a dangerous mission to Khiva and Bokhara. The khan of Khiva laid a plan for detaining him as a hostage, but he eluded the danger and returned safely, after concluding with the khan of Bokhara a treaty of friendship. His next diplomatic exploit was in the Far East, as plenipotentiary to the court of Peking. When the Chinese government was terrified by the advance of the Anglo-French expedition of 1860 and the burning of the Summer Palace, he worked on their fears so dexterously that he obtained for Russia not only the left bank of the Amur, the original object of the mission, but also a large extent of territory and sea-coast south of that river. This success was supposed to prove his capacity for dealing with Orientals, and paved his way to the post of ambassador at Constantinople, which he occupied from 1864 till 1877. Here his chief aim was to liberate from Turkish domination and bring under the influence of Russia the Christian nationalities in general and the Bulgarians in particular. His restless activity in this field, mostly of a semi-official and secret character, culminated in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, at the close of which he negotiated with the Turkish plenipotentiaries the treaty of San Stefano. As the war which he had done so much to bring about did not eventually secure for Russia advantages commensurate with the sacrifices involved, he fell into disfavour, and retired from active service. Shortly after the accession of Alexander III. in 1881, he was appointed minister of the interior on the understanding that he would carry out a nationalist, reactionary policy, but his shifty ways and his administrative incapacity so displeased his imperial master that he was dismissed in the following year. After that time he exercised no important influence in public affairs. He died on the 3rd of July 1908. Entry: IGNATIEV
Upon the formation of the coalition ministry between the Whigs and the Peelites, in 1853, under Lord Aberdeen, Lord Clarendon became foreign minister. The country was already "drifting" into the Crimean War, an expression of his own which was never forgotten. Clarendon was not responsible for the policy which brought war about; but when it occurred he employed every means in his power to stimulate and assist the war departments, and above all he maintained the closest relations with the French. The tsar >Nicholas had speculated on the impossibility of the sustained joint action of France and England in council and in the field. It was mainly by Lord Clarendon at Whitehall and by Lord Raglan before Sevastopol that such a combination was rendered practicable, and did eventually triumph over the enemy. The diplomatic conduct of such an alliance for three years between two great nations jealous of their military honour and fighting for no separate political advantage, tried by excessive hardships and at moments on the verge of defeat, was certainly one of the most arduous duties ever performed by a minister. The result was due in the main to the confidence with which Lord Clarendon had inspired the emperor of the French, and to the affection and regard of the empress, whom he had known in Spain from her childhood. Entry: CLARENDON
Until 1820 the south-eastern district of Pechersk was the industrial and commercial quarter; but it has been greatly altered in carrying out fortifications commenced in that year by Tsar >Nicholas I. Most of the houses are small and old-fashioned. The monastery--the Kievo-Pecherskaya--is the chief establishment of its kind in Russia; it is visited every year by about 250,000 pilgrims. Of its ten or twelve conventual churches the chief is that of the Assumption. There are four distinct quarters in the monastery, each under a superior, subject to the archimandrite: the Laura proper or New Monastery, that of the Infirmary, and those of the Nearer and the Further Caves. These caves or catacombs are the most striking characteristic of the place; the name Pechersk, indeed, is connected with the Russian _peshchera_, "a cave." The first series of caves, dedicated to St Anthony, contains eighty saints' tombs; the second, dedicated to St Theodosius, a saint greatly venerated in Russia, about forty-five. The bodies were formerly exposed to view; but the pilgrims who now pass through the galleries see nothing but the draperies and the inscriptions. Among the more notable names are those of Nestor the chronicler, and Iliya of Murom, the Old Cossack of the Russian epics. The foundation of the monastery is ascribed to two saints of the 11th century--Anthony and Hilarion, the latter metropolitan of Kiev. By the middle of the 12th century it had become wealthy and beautiful. Completely ruined by the Mongol prince Batu in 1240, it remained deserted for more than two centuries. Prince Simeon Oblkovich was the first to begin the restoration. A conflagration laid the buildings waste in 1716, and their present aspect is largely due to Peter the Great. The cathedral of the Assumption, with seven gilded cupolas, was dedicated in 1089, destroyed by the Mongols in 1240, and restored in 1729; the wall-paintings of the interior are by V. Vereshchagin. The monastery contains a school of picture-makers of ancient origin, whose productions are widely diffused throughout the empire, and a printing press, from which have issued liturgical and religious works, the oldest known examples bearing the date 1616. It possesses a wonder-working ikon or image of the "Death of the Virgin," said to have been brought from Constantinople in 1073, and the second highest bell-tower in Russia. Entry: KIEV
PRINCE GORCHAKOV, ALEXANDER MIKHAILOVICH (1798-1883). Russian statesman, cousin of Princes Petr and Mikhail Gorchakov, was born on the 16th of July 1798, and was educated at the lyceum of Tsarskoye Selo, where he had the poet Pushkin as a school-fellow. He became a good classical scholar, and learnt to speak and write in French with facility and elegance. Pushkin in one of his poems described young Gorchakov as "Fortune's favoured son," and predicted his success. On leaving the lyceum Gorchakov entered the foreign office under Count Nesselrode. His first diplomatic work of importance was the negotiation of a marriage between the grand duchess Olga and the crown prince Charles of Württemberg. He remained at Stuttgart for some years as Russian minister and confidential adviser of the crown princess. He foretold the outbreak of the revolutionary spirit in Germany and Austria, and was credited with counselling the abdication of Ferdinand in favour of Francis Joseph. When the German confederation was re-established in 1850 in place of the parliament of Frankfort, Gorchakov was appointed Russian minister to the diet. It was here that he first met Prince Bismarck, with whom he formed a friendship which was afterwards renewed at St Petersburg. The emperor Nicholas found that his ambassador at Vienna, Baron Meyendorff, was not a sympathetic instrument for carrying out his schemes in the East. He therefore transferred Gorchakov to Vienna, where the latter remained through the critical period of the Crimean War. Gorchakov perceived that Russian designs against Turkey, supported by Great Britain and France, were impracticable, and he counselled Russia to make no more useless sacrifices, but to accept the bases of a pacification. At the same time, although he attended the Paris conference of 1856, he purposely abstained from affixing his signature to the treaty of peace after that of Count Orlov, Russia's chief representative. For the time, however, he made a virtue of necessity, and Alexander II., recognizing the wisdom and courage which Gorchakov had exhibited, appointed him minister of foreign affairs in place of Count Nesselrode. Not long after his accession to office Gorchakov issued a circular to the foreign powers, in which he announced that Russia proposed, for internal reasons, to keep herself as free as possible from complications abroad, and he added the now historic phrase, "_La Russie ne boude pas; elle se recueille_." During the Polish insurrection Gorchakov rebuffed the suggestions of Great Britain, Austria and France for assuaging the severities employed in quelling it, and he was especially acrid in his replies to Earl Russell's despatches. In July 1863 Gorchakov was appointed chancellor of the Russian empire expressly in reward for his bold diplomatic attitude towards an indignant Europe. The appointment was hailed with enthusiasm in Russia, and at that juncture Prince Chancellor Gorchakov was unquestionably the most powerful minister in Europe. Entry: PRINCE
While the decadence of the Triple Alliance had this important effect on the domestic affairs of France, its inception had produced the Franco-Russian alliance, which took France out of its isolation in Europe, and became the pivot of its exterior policy. It has been noted that in the years succeeding the Franco-Prussian War the tsar Alexander II. had shown a disposition to support France against German aggression, as though to make up for his neutrality during the war, which was so benevolent for Germany that his uncle William I. had ascribed to it a large share of the German victory. The assassination of Alexander II. by revolutionaries in 1881 made it difficult for the new autocrat to cultivate closer relations with a Republican government, although the Third Republic, under the influence of Gambetta, to whom its consolidation was chiefly due, had repudiated that proselytizing spirit, inherited from the great Revolution, which had disquieted the monarchies of Europe in 1848 and had provoked their hostility to the Second Republic. But the Triple Alliance which was concluded the year after the murder of the tsar indicated the possible expediency of an understanding between the two great powers of the West and the East, in response to the combination of the three central powers of Europe,--though Bismarck after his fall revealed that in 1884 a secret treaty was concluded between Germany and Russia, which was, however, said to have in view a war between England and Russia. Internal dissension on the subject of colonial policy in the far East, followed by the fall of Jules Ferry and the Boulangist agitation were some of the causes which prevented France from strengthening its position in Europe by seeking a formal understanding with Russia in the first part of the reign of Alexander III. But when the Boulangist movement came to an end, entirely from the incompetency of its leader, it behoved the government of the Republic to find a means of satisfying the strong patriotic sentiment revealed in the nation, which, directed by a capable and daring soldier, would have swept away the parliamentary republic and established a military dictatorship in its place. The Franco-Russian understanding provided that means, and Russia was ready for it, having become, by the termination in 1890 of the secret treaty with Germany, not less isolated in Europe than France. In July 1891, when the French fleet visited Kronstadt the incident caused such enthusiasm throughout the French nation that the exiled General Boulanger's existence would have been forgotten, except among his dwindling personal followers, had he not put an end to it by suicide two months later at Brussels. The Franco-Russian understanding united all parties, not in love for one another but in the idea that France was thereby about to resume its place in Europe. The Catholic Royalists ceased to talk of the restitution of the temporal power of the pope in their joy at the deference of the government of the republic for the most autocratic monarchy of Christendom; the Boulangists, now called Nationalists, hoped that it would lead to the war of revenge with Germany, and that it might also be the means of humiliating England, as shown by their resentment at the visit of the French squadron to Portsmouth on its way home from Kronstadt. It is, however, extremely improbable that the understanding and subsequent alliance would have been effected had the Boulangist movement succeeded. For the last thing that the Russian government desired was war with Germany. What it needed and obtained was security against German aggression on its frontier and financial aid from France; so a French plebiscitary government, having for its aim the restitution of Alsace and Lorraine, would have found no support in Russia. As the German chancellor, Count von Caprivi, said in the Reichstag on the 27th of November 1891, a few weeks after a Russian loan had been subscribed in France nearly eight times over, the naval visit to Kronstadt had not brought war nearer by one single inch. Nevertheless when in 1893 the Russian fleet paid a somewhat tardy return visit to Toulon, where it was reviewed by President Carnot, a party of Russian officers who came to Paris was received by the population of the capital, which less than five years before had acclaimed General Boulanger, with raptures which could not have been exceeded had they brought back to France the territory lost in 1871. In November 1894, Alexander III. died, and in January 1895, M. Casimir-Périer resigned the presidency of the Republic, to which he had succeeded only six months before on the assassination of M. Carnot. So it was left to Nicholas II. and President Félix Faure to proclaim the existence of a formal alliance between France and Russia. It appears that in 1891 and 1892, at the time of the first public manifestations of friendship between France and Russia, in the words of M. Ribot, secret conventions were signed by him, being foreign minister, and M. de Freycinet, president of the council, which secured for France "the support of Russia for the maintenance of the equilibrium in Europe"; and on a later occasion the same statesman said that it was after the visit of the empress Frederick to Paris in 1891 that Alexander III. made to France certain offers which were accepted. The word "alliance" was not publicly used by any minister to connote the relations of France with Russia until the 10th of June 1895, when M. Hanotaux used the term with cautious vagueness amid the applause of the Chamber of Deputies. Yet not even when Nicholas II. came to France in October 1896 was the word "alliance" formally pronounced in any of the official speeches. But the reception given to the tsar and tsaritsa in Paris, where no European sovereign had come officially since William of Germany passed down the Champs Elysées as a conqueror, was of such a character that none could doubt that this was the consecration of the alliance. It was at last formally proclaimed by Nicholas II., on board a French man-of-war, on the occasion of the visit of the president of the Republic to Russia in August 1897. From that date until the formation of M. Briand's cabinet in 1909, nine different ministries succeeded one another and five ministers of foreign affairs; but they all loyally supported the Franco-Russian alliance, although its popularity diminished in France long before the war between Russia and Japan, which deprived it of its efficacy in Europe. In 1901 Nicholas II. came again to France and was the guest of President Loubet at Compiègne. His visit excited little enthusiasm in the nation, which was disposed to attribute it to Russia's financial need of France; while the Socialists, now a strong party which provided the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry with an important part of its majority in the Chamber, violently attacked the alliance of the Republic with a reactionary autocracy. However anomalous that may have been it did not prevent the whole French nation from welcoming the friendship between the governments of Russia and of France in its early stages. Nor can there be any doubt that the popular instinct was right in according it that welcome. France in its international relations was strengthened morally by the understanding and by the alliance, which also served as a check to Germany. But its association with Russia had not the results hoped for by the French reactionaries. It encouraged them in their opposition to the parliamentary Republic during the Dreyfus agitation, the more so because the Russian autocracy is anti-Semitic. It also made a Nationalist of one president of the Republic, Félix Faure, whose head was so turned by his imperial frequentations that he adopted some of the less admirable practices of princes, and also seemed ready to assume the bearing of an autocrat. His sudden death was as great a relief to the parliamentary Republicans as it was a disappointment to the plebiscitary party, which anti-Dreyfusism, with its patriotic pretensions, had again made a formidable force in the land. But the election of the pacific and constitutional M. Loubet as president of the Republic at this critical moment in its history counteracted any reactionary influence which the Russian alliance might have had in France; so the general effect of the alliance was to strengthen the Republic and to add to its prestige. The visit of the tsar to Paris, the first paid by a friendly sovereign since the Second Empire, impressed a population, proud of its capital, by an outward sign which seemed to show that the Republic was not an obstacle to the recognition by the monarchies of Europe of the place still held by France among the great powers. Before M. Loubet laid down office the nation, grown more republican, saw the visit of the tsar followed by those of the kings of England and of Italy, who might never have been moved to present their respects to the French Republic had not Russia shown them the way. Entry: EXTERIOR