Again 1830

Since New Year's, Frenchmen have celebrated with pomp & circumstance the hundredth anniversaries of Romanticism, of the conquest of Algeria, of the invention of the sewing machine.* Last week in Paris, their centennial enthusiasm undiminished, President Gaston Doumergue and Prime Minister Andre Tardieu clapped on their silk hats, motored to the Hotel de Ville behind a clattering escort of brass-helmeted cuirassiers of the Garde Republicaine to make oratory on the Hundredth Anniversary of the Revolution of 1830, which in three days of furious street fighting/- swept Charles X from the throne of France, installed the amiable umbrella-wielding Orleanist, Louis Philippe.

The morning of the celebration, to the huge amusement of Socialist deputies and editors, Prime Minister Tardieu had had a long interview with the military commander of Paris discussing precautions that must be taken to prevent any Communist demonstration on Aug. 1. A trifle tartly M. Tardieu explained the subtle difference between the revolutionists of 1830, whom he delighted to honor, and the revolutionists of 1930 whom he was eager to suppress:

"The legitimacy of this commemoration has been contested, and it has been said that republican governments have been no less firm than were their predecessors in defense of public order. It is the public order. It is the public sovereignty, now firmly established by the franchise that the republican governments defend in maintaining public order. These men of 1830 did not have this guarantee. Furthermore their revolution was neither directed nor subsidized from abroad."

*By one Barthelemy Thimmonier, a tailor of St. Etienne.

/-Though that inveterate attender of revolutions, the Marquis de La Fayette, was one of its leaders, the real hero of the Revolution of 1830 was a 14-year-old ragamuffin who, unarmed, charged the blazing muskets of the royal grenadiers with the stirring cry: ''Comrades, let me show you how to die! Remember that my name was Arcole."

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