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No. 1.

Vienna, 6 January 1899.

Third Year.

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France in Constantinople.

By O. Erter.

The French Republic is sending one of its most artful and most unscrupulous politicians as ambassador to Constantinople. The name of Constans is uttered, and the last decade and a half of France's internal history stands bodily before the eye. Constans has been deputy, Governor-General of Tonking, Minister, Senator; he has been everything and done everything, never producing the impression of a distinguished, sympathetic personality, but always that of a brutality wholly undiscriminating in its shifts and its means. As Minister he overcame General Boulanger by an insidious manœuvre; he purposely left a secret warrant of arrest against the General, signed with his own hand, lying open upon his writing-table, and the General, whom an obliging sniffer did not fail to apprise of the danger threatening him, fled to Brussels, whence he never returned. In the Palais Bourbon Constans dealt the deputy Laur, who had attacked him from the tribune, a blow of the fist in the face; and because Freycinet thrust him out of his Ministry, he revenged himself by setting the Panama affair in motion, whereby Freycinet was, as is well known, compromised and put out of action as a statesman for five years. It has the look of a jest of history that the Ministry to which Freycinet once more belongs as Minister of War should now despatch Constans to the ambassadorial post at Constantinople; but it is no jest, for in the French Republic all the dead rise again. Especially when they are as serviceable, and let themselves be used for everything, as Constans.

For the sake of the new ambassador's person we should assuredly not devote any special consideration to the change in the French representation on the Golden Horn. Yet this change occurs at a moment which makes it intelligible that France should wish to be represented at Constantinople by a man as crafty as he is energetic and undiscriminating; and this situation is of more interest than the man who, under other circumstances, might have gone on eking out his sallow reputation unnoticed in his senator's seat in the Palais Luxembourg. For Constantinople is at present the scene of a diplomatic duel between France and Germany, or, to speak more exactly, France is fighting desperately for the last remnant of diplomatic influence still left to her against Germany, which has obtained precedence over all the other Powers in the Sultan's palace. For that, of course, an ambassador is required who can set a particular dot upon the customary diplomatic intrigue — one after the recipe à corsaire corsaire et demi; and Constans has, upon his antecedents, the presumption in his favour that he possesses the qualities needful thereto. Only, as things lie, it is nevertheless doubtful whether even this condottiere of politics will succeed in forcing back the German influence in the Yildiz Kiosk in favour of the French; nor is it in any way to be desired that he should succeed.

Since the German Emperor's journey to the Orient a panic terror has seized upon Paris; men tremble there not so much for the so-called protectorate over the Catholics of the Orient as for the preponderance which France has hitherto possessed in Syria. The loss of the protectorate, which at bottom had long been nothing but a historical decoration, might perhaps be borne; but Syria was regarded as a piece of French prestige, as a moral and economic domain of France, and now the Oriental journey of William II. has entirely transformed the state of things. The prestige in the Orient has passed over to Germany, and German capital, favoured by the Sultan, is building railways in Asia Minor, by whose help it, of the entire economic development of the