Pasteur Centenary and Other Commemorations Held in France: Banque Industrielle Investigation From Our Own Correspondent, Paris, June 1.
The hundredth anniversary of the birth of Pasteur has been celebrated with many ceremonies and floods of official eloquence. The President of the Republic made a special journey to Dole, where Pasteur was born; to Besancon where he spent 12 years of his life; and to Strasburg, where he studied. After this, the journey was extended to so many other places in Alsace that it was difficult to tell where Pasteur ended and propaganda began. On the Sunday, during the celebrations, collections were made in the streets of all. the chief towns in France in aid of the fund for the scientific labor-atones; but as the weather was bad and the collections suffered accordingly, it has been decided to have another Pasteur Sunday this month, so that a further appeal may be made to the public. Many Frenchmen are far from pleased with this method of helping scientific study. They feel that, in view of the importance of scientific research to the entire community, it is pre eminently the duty of Parliament to vote enough money to place the laboratories on a proper footing and not leave them in their present poverty-stricken and dilapidated state. Unfortunately, the State is hard up, and if the laboratories are to be properly equipped there must be a further increase in taxation.
This, from the Governmental point of view, would be a greater evil than subscriptions, which help to keep patriotic and public-spirited motives alive.
We have also had two other celebrations within a few days of each other—one British and the other American. They admirably illustrated the respective capacities for national advertising. Empire Day was marked by concert in the British Hall, intermingled with addresses by Lord Birkenhead and a couple of mem bers of Parliament. The purport of these speeches was to assure the French that we would do all we could to make their Olympic Games next year a success. The Americans simply mobilized the French authorities to help to boom their Memorial Day observance. They dedicated and unveiled tablets in the "battle cloister" of the American' Episcopal Church; they brought 75 bluejackets from a cruiser; they laid wreaths on the grave of the unknown French soldier; they held half-a-dozen other ceremonies in Pang and waved the Stars and Stripes in every French
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