When the Allied armies withdrew, the Bourbon reaction set in with a headlong rush. The veteran soldiers of the army were affronted brutally by young aristocratic officers who had never smelled gunpowder. Napoleon’s officers who had won renown on scores of battle-fields were contemptuously maltreated. The wives of the officers were snubbed by the high-born dames of the old nobility.
The revolutionary and Napoleonic system was being uprooted in various directions, and the people of France realized that the Bourbons meant to restore the Old Order with all of its brutal inequalities and injustice and oppression. The people saw that the Bourbon restoration meant once more the galling chains of the noble and the priest. Hence, when Napoleon came from Elba, the masses of the French hailed him wildly. They followed him with mad cries of “Hang the priests!” The Masses clamored for arms, asking to fight and die for The Man, Napoleon. Even after Waterloo, they clung to him frantically, tumultuously rallying to him, and begging him to give them guns. Had Napoleon frankly thrown himself into the hands of the masses of the French people, he could have hung the Talleyrands, Fouchés and Marmonts, and driven the Allies out of France.
But Napoleon was a soldier of the Military Academy. He had no faith in the fighting quality of “the mob.”
Another hundred years had to elapse before the Boers of South Africa could show to the world that if your mob is the right sort of mob, and has the best guns, and can shoot with the best aim, it can knock your painfully disciplined army into a cocked hat.
Yes: Clarence Darrow is a writer of marvelous power. Read his “An Eye for an Eye,” and you will realize that the Chicago lawyer has all the genius of Tolstoy when it comes to making a story of thrilling interest out of the commonest human materials.
Van Dyck, Tenn.
Hon. Thomas E. Watson,
Dear Sir: I have seen it stated that the working people of this country make or create $7 worth of wealth for each day in the year. For every man engaged in gainful pursuits do the statistics justify such a statement. If so, we do not get our share. My father is a very great Populist and I aim to make some speeches in the future and will take it as a very great kindness if you will let me know if I will be perfectly safe in making that declaration.
Thanking you in advance I remain your great admirer.