292 



FRANCE. 



Chamber on July 26 by 168 to 163 votes, and the 

 Senate on the following day by a majority of 

 205 to 35. It provides that persons accused of 

 infractions of the antianarchist acts of July 29, 

 1884, and Dec. 12, 1893, are to be tried without 

 a jury by the police magistrates ; that any in- 

 dividual* inciting to dynamite outrage, murder, 

 pillage, incendiarism, or theft by provocation or 

 apology, shall be punishable by three months' to 

 two years' imprisonment as guilty of an act of 

 anarchistic propaganda ; that convicted anarch- 

 ists are subject to solitary confinement, or, at the 

 discretion of the magistrates, to transportation ; 

 and that the magistrates may forbid the publi- 

 cation of any part or the whole of the proceed- 

 ings of the court. The scope of the bill was re- 

 stricted by the amendment of M. Bourgeois pro- 

 viding that only press offenses that have an 

 act of anarchistic propaganda for their object 

 shall bo tried by the correctional magistrates in- 

 stead of by a jury. M. Jaures, who said that 

 the cause o'f anarchistic crime was the greed and 

 corrupt practices of politicians, financiers, and 

 editors, almost carried an amendment to the 

 effect that public men, ministers, Deputies, or 

 Senators who trafficked with their mandates, 

 received bribes, or took part as directors or pro- 

 moters in swindling companies, should be held 

 guilty of anarchistic incitement. The day after 

 the bill passed Parliament was prorogued. In 

 the election at Nogent of a successor to M. 

 Casimir-Perier in the Chamber the Moderate 

 Republican, M. Robert, was defeated by M. 

 Bachimont, a Socialist. 



Retirement of Casimir-Perier. Though 

 President Casimir-Perier retained the Dupuy 

 Cabinet having a Radical complexion, he was 

 the object of malignant attacks from the Radi- 

 cals and Socialists in the press and in the Cham- 

 ber. Near the close of the year a number of 

 prosecutions were instituted against editors sus- 

 pected of blackmail. When the Chamber reas- 

 sembled in November the Socialists demanded 

 an investigation of the railroad compromise of 

 1885 and of the arrangement for the renewal of 

 the charter of the Bank of France, and by con- 

 stant innuendo called into question the probity 

 of the President, some of whose friends and 

 associates in business were interested in the set- 

 tlements made with the Government, while 

 others who had been intimate with him in polit- 

 ical life were spoken of as corruptionists, and he 

 was accused of shielding them from publicity 

 and punishment. When the courts decided that 

 the period for which the state was obliged to 

 pay interest on the railroad bonds extended till 

 1954, instead of terminating about 1916, both 

 Dupuy and the President were made the object 

 of violent attacks. M. Dupuy and his colleagues 

 offered their resignations, and Henri Brisson, 

 the Radical Speaker of the Chamber, refused to 

 undertake to form a Cabinet. At last, soon 

 after the opening of the new year, Casimir- 

 Perier, declaring that as irresponsible President 

 he was powerless to meet the attacks upon his 

 character, and that his former political friends 

 neglected to do so, placed his resignation on the 

 table of the Senate and of the Chamber. The 

 National Assembly met, and on Jan. 17 elected 

 the Minister of Marine, Felix Faure, President 

 on the second ballot by 430 votes to 361 cast for 



Henry Brisson. In the first balloting Brisson 

 received 338, Faure 244, and Waldeck Rousseau 

 184, while 28 went to Meline, Dupuy, Gen. Saus- 

 sier, and other candidates. Rousseau retired in 

 favor of Faure, who was thus elected by Con- 

 servative Republicans and Monarchists, receiv- 

 ing, like his predecessor, a minority of the votes 

 of the Chamber, though he stood personally in 

 much higher esteem among the Socialists and 

 Radicals. 



Military Scandal. Capt. Albert Dreyfus, 

 an artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish extraction, 

 was tried on Dec. 22 by court-martial for trea- 

 son. A letter in his handwriting had been 

 found by a detective in the house of an attache 

 of a foreign legation, containing information 

 and promises of information regarding the plans 

 and armament of French fortresses. He was 

 convicted by his brother officers, and the severest 

 penalty applicable in time of peace imprison- 

 ment for life in a fortress and degradation from 

 all military rank and honors was pronounced. 



Sanitary Conference. An International 

 Sanitary Conference meeting in Paris adopted a 

 convention looking to the prevention of the in- 

 vasion of cholera from Asia, which was signed on 

 April 4 by plenipotentiary delegates from Aus- 

 tria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Ger- 

 many, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, the Nether- 

 lands, Persia, Portugal, Russia, and Spain, and 

 with reservations by the delegates of the United 

 States, while the Swedish and Turkish delegates 

 referred it to their governments. The British 

 Government made reservations as to the stipu- 

 lations that Indian pilgrims to Mecca should 

 prove their possession of sufficient money for 

 traveling expenses, and that ships carrying pil- 

 grims should give double the amount of space ; 

 also as to the regulation of the maritime traffic 

 of the Persian Gulf. All ships carrying pilgrims 

 must henceforth have a physician^ and furnish 

 an adequate quantity of wholesome drinking 

 water. The proposals for the reorganization of 

 the Turkish sanitary service were afterward ac- 

 cepted by the Ottoman Government ; also a pro- 

 vision for the return of pilgrims by way of the 

 lazaretto of Tor in Arabia Petraea, and one re- 

 ducing the quarantine period for ships from 

 India, which will be detained only long enough 

 for inspection, and not more than five days if 

 contaminated or suspected. Vessels entering 

 the Suez Canal from the Red Sea will be in- 

 spected and quarantined unless they receive a 

 clean bill of health. 



Institute of International Law. At the 

 fifteenth session of the Institute of International 

 Law, which was opened on March 27 and closed 

 on April 4, in Paris, the question of territorial 

 waters was the only business concluded. The 

 3-mile limit was pronounced to be insufficient 

 for the protection of spawning and immature fish 

 and the preservation of the sea fisheries. It was 

 originally based on the range of cannon on shore, 

 but this idea has no longer any significance. 

 It is recommended to extend the limit by inter- 

 national agreement to 6 marine miles from the 

 shore at low tide, the boundary to follow tlie 

 sinuosities of the coast except where the mouth 

 of a bay or the distance between promontories 

 does not exceed 12 marine miles, or where im- 

 memorial usage recognizes a larger bay as terri- 



