19. JOURNALISM IN FRANCE (1631– 1918). Without exaggeration it may be said of France that all the °real( in the political, social, economic and artististic life of that country has been reflected in the formidable museum of public prints which opened in the 17th century with the first Gazette of Theophraste Renaudot, and which, in the ages to come, will never cease to be enriched with new acquisitions. For the French, indeed, and especially since the Revolution, the newspaper has become not only the mirror of the daily events, but also a fighting weapon, one of Freedom's tools, a polit ical force, a tribune for the orators of all parties, but also a real battlefield in moments of stress, when blows were exchanged and men killed. After having been an instrument wielded by Power, the newspaper in France averred itself the spokesman of all great popu lar enthusiasms, of all popular explosions, of the wrath of the lowly against the great. It became the clarion of all free ideals, of all generous or mad utopias. It spoke for the multitude with the yoke of the multitude. It became a soldier and an insurgent. And like seeds, it cast on its path the coming ideas. It was one of the feverish workmen who threw down the Bastiles. The legislators' decisions were dictated, provoked and compelled by it. Carried away by its enthusiasm, it became a poet with Chenier, a despot with Marat, an idealogue with Babeuf and a dreamer of too magnificent visions with Desmoulins.
An iron hand that wanted to put a stop to it did not even check it on its passionate way. For years, like a subject liable to suspicion, like a dangerous citizen, it was thrown into prison by the rigor of the law. But on an evening in 1814 its prison-gates were shattered. Captivity had not injured its spring. Greater, stronger, firmer, French journalism stepped out of the prison cells of the First Empire. It was to show, in the course of the century, that it had remained the organ and means of all living ideas, the forerunner of progress, the rallying point of all those who in that country, where spiritual forces are inexhaustible, fight for the Good and the Better, and are willing, in ad vance, to suffer for this noble cause. The
history of French journalism during the 19th century assumes for the historians the aspect of a long and bitter fight. There certainly were papers which flattered the authorities, who followed the taste of the day, and which pre ferred the art of pleasing with accepted ideas to the talent of fighting for ideas considered subversive. But, on the whole, the part played by the French press was a warrior's part, whether preparing for 1830 or 1848 or trying to fight against 1851 and the Second Empire, or upholding the young Republic of 1871 against the perils which encompassed it on every side. This characteristic of the newspaper in France does credit to it. In this indefatigable stride the best qualities of the French temperament found their true vent. The warmest initiative, the most beautiful aspirations toward human happiness, all the sparkles of wit, all the re sources of satire and pamphlet, the finest out bursts of fraternal and humanitarian eloquence, the fiercest • addresses against injustice; nay, even the deepest errors of opinion, but the more excusable because of their thorough disinter estedness; all that adorns the French soul with a fine, warm. m with flame, with an endless idealism, with a wi a courage some times inconsiderate, but always spontaneous; all the splendid virtues and the generous de fects of the race, thronged in the columns of the newspaper in one continuous meeting — the voice of a nation that was ever a lover of progress and justice. Indeed, to know the best part of France one has only to glance through several collections of its big and small new: papers; the wise work of time has withou. more ado separated the tares from the wheat. Whatever excessive passion, violent anger or impracticable dreams may be found therein, they have given way to the luminous outburst of the tenacious will of the French (even and above all in the fever of momentous crises) to remain the apostles and if need be the martyrs, of a free civilization ever on the way to new conquests by the weapons of mind and heart alone.