The present year has witnessed a violent outbreak of the decoration fever in France. Not a month has passed without the publication of long lists of gentlemen on whom the Government has thought fit to confer the right of wearing a bit of ribbon in the button hole. The Socialist Minister of Commerce, M. Millerand, has been conspicnously lavish in his distribution of ribbons and crosses; and it would be safe to say that not a single person, prominently connected with the Exhibition and not already decorated, has aseaped. This week the malady has assumed a tery curious form. The Government suddenly awoke to the fact that the city of Paris had nobly resisted the Germans thirty years ago and that the village of Bazeilles, in which a handful of French soldiers kept a whole brigade of Bavarians at bay, had also deserved its historical researches further back, the Government discovered that the towns of Lille and Valenciennes had displayed conspicuous courage in resisting the invader in the years 1792 and 1793. Convinced that the heroic conduct of these three towns and one village had not been adequately recognised by the State, Waldeck-Rousseau and his colleagues set to work to make up for lost time, with the result that the President of the Republic has just signed decrees authorising the inclusion of the cross of the Legion of Hon-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.