In contrast to Paris, where the general public looks at things to come with more or less marked indifference and apathy, in the provinces, where the democratic-republican tradition has survived more vividly than in the capital, the violent politics of those acting as mandataries of heavy industry shines through Briand, Poincaré and Barthou met with strong opposition.
In addition to the communists, the socialists, together with the League for Human Rights, held impressive protest rallies in a number of large provincial towns yesterday, and criticism is also stirring in individual provincial organs of bourgeois radicalism.
Even if manifestations of this kind are no longer able to stop the course of events, they are not entirely without repercussions on political and parliamentary circles,
The march on Essen should be a done deal and Mr Poincaré has already indicated that he expects to be able to report to the Chamber on Thursday on the conduct of the French action.
But the enthusiasm that freedom of action aroused in the first few days did not last long, and the closer the day of execution draws, the more subdued the mood becomes.
If the newspapers affirm tonight that the French government has no other intention than to secure the pledges it deems indispensable, if the "Intransigeant" in open contradiction to the fact that military operations involve the use of no less than nine divisions is envisaged, writes that military involvement will be limited to the measures necessary to protect French civil servants and engineers and will only require a few units to be moved east, if Poincaré declared today after the outcome of the Council of Ministers that the government intends not to mobilize either a railway worker or a reservist, these attempts at appeasement seem primarily aimed at public opinion in the departmentssecondarily perhaps to be addressed to that of England and America.
More interesting is another expression of the "intransigeant" of the content, when Germany comes to its senses after the occupation of Essen and when it then has to make definite proposals, it is at least given the opportunity to do so.
Not only does it show the direction in which the thoughts and wishes of the relevant authorities are moving, but in connection with the omissions of other papers, especially those of the "Temps", which is appealing to the German Republicans this evening, it does not allow itself to be confused by the machinations to let the nationalists go down the wrong path, to see very clearly that even if the invasion of the Ruhr area can no longer be stopped, its originator has nothing less than good courage in doing it.
It is gradually becoming clear here that