(By arrangement with the writer.)
into three classes. And each of the three Society in Tongking is sharply divided is at daggers drawn with the other two. They are the official, the military, and the conviction that if he could only once get rid of nearly all of them the country would pacify" itself fast enough by commerce and agriculture, which it will never do so long as it is a happy hunting-ground for crosses and promotions. And how can he feel either come and go like the leaves of the trees, respect or ayupathy for the Governors who and who must needs hold the helm in Hanoi with their eyes fixed on the Quai d'Orsay? Tongkingese society isa perpetual triangular duel.
I do not flatter myself for a moment that the foregoing will be believed as a calm statement of fact. Let me therefore hasten to give a few of the experiences upon which it is based. The first person with whom Thad any conversation after setting foot in Tongking was a well-informed intelligent bourgeois who had passed six years there. L began by saying I was sorry to hear of the heavy casualties of a column then operating in the interior, " hundred men having been lost in one action, He'll get there, all the same," he replied, speaking of the officer in command. He wants his third s and what does he care if it costs him five hundred men. He'll yet it, too, nile:!" There is the civi-ian's view of the military, Now for the functionary's view, and T should not tell this story if M. Richaud's terrible death let me throw a word of gratitude and respect over towards his "vast and wandering grave"—had not untied my tongue. When I was at Hanoi T asked him, on the strength of my official letter, for an escort of afew men to me to a place one day's mar interior. Certainly," he replied, "with pleasure. They shall be ready the day after to-morrow." The same evening 1 was dining with him, and when I entered the drawing-room he took me on one side and said, "By the way, about that escort, Lam exceedingly annoyed, but it is impossible." And answering my look of surprise, for my official letter had been given for the very purpose of making such facilities certain, he continued: ''The General replies that he has not five men of whom he can dispose at the moment. Frankly, you know, you should properly have asked him, in the first place, ry not tu? the GovemonGenmale exmnpanes and embarrassment at having to acknowledge to a stranger this humiliating snub were 50 visible that of course I dropped the subject, and his secretary's whispered request afterwards not to reopen it was unnecessary. But I could not help asking him next day as we were driving whether in French colonies, asin English, the chief civil authority. was not ex officio commander-in-chief. He saw the point instantly and replied, Yes, that is my title too," and after a pause, "but I delegate my powers—seulement, jo déléque mes pourvirs After thus being refused an escort Iwas refused permission to go alone at my own risk, so my proposed journey was doubly impossible. At the time the General had not five men ' disponibles" there were, of course, ten times that number kicking their heels in barracks. The Governor-General had promised the escort, therefore the General refused it. That was the only and the universal explanation offered me. And it was the true one.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.