From Our Own Correspondent, Paris, Jan. 31.
The Republican regime in France has always been unfortunate in one respect, It offers irresistible temptations to clever and unscrupulous men and favours the development of the political parvenu. This may be because no one in the country is above party. Nominally the President is in this position, but as his entire career has been mixed up with politics, he cannot be a thing apart, however - independent his character may be. The majesty that hedges a king has its uses even in these democratic days.
It is conceivable that had France possessed a head who could rise superior to party considerations we should not have been confronted by the latest scandal—the arrest of M.
France Desclaux, a high official of the Army Pay Department, with a rank equivalent to that of colonel. It seems that for some time he had made a practice of sending quantities of tea, coffee, sugar and other army provisions to a fiat in the Avenue Henri Martin, Paris, _occupied by a lady whose husband is the principal partner in a large dressmaking firm. This lady's husband, originally an Austrian, became' a naturalized Belgian and afterwards, by a similar legal process, a Frenchman, and is now with his regiment at the front. For this reason we are not acquainted with the feelings with which he has doubtless read in the papers of his wife's "goings-on" with M. Des-claus, which are taken for granted in the usual Parisian sense.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.