One may aptly compare France, as a contemporary compared Parnell, to a granite rock overlaid with a shallow drift of detritus. In politics, especially in Parliament, the most distracting flurries of dust succeed and displace one another with a sort of constant inconstancy. Penetrate them, and you come upon an economic and social fabric characterised by massive stability. Nobody who bears this in mind will be blinded by whatever chances to be the latest sand-storm. _La nouvelle France_ was not abolished by the political manœuvre that placed M. Doumergue at the head of the State. It remains, and it grows stronger. This new France means the birth into the moral order of Europe of a fresh and strong reality. What had been for many years a mere vision, glimmering through banked clouds, has become a tangible and habitable fact. The election of President Poincaré, accepted on all sides as the token of a profound change of spirit, has not in its results belied the prophets. Now, beyond all doubt, deference must be paid to the tradition which regards the French as an instantaneous, and, so to say, hair-trigger people. Formulæ seem to change as rapidly as fashions; and the possibility of return to a period of Saturday-to-Monday ministers has not yet been banished to the limbo of the ridiculous. Allowance must be made for the swiftness, the genius for falling into line, the brief passions of unanimity so “temperamental” to the Republic. But at the end of the account the change has lost nothing of its impressiveness. It is a true, not a false dawn.