Professor Barrett Wendell '77 delivered the last of his series of lectures on "Impressions of Contemporary France" in the Fogg Lecture Room yesterday afternoon. His special subject was "The Republic and Democracy."

To a casual traveler in France the Republic seems to have been extraordinarily efficient in securing the prosperity of the nation. Poverty, which is all too ubiquitous in this country, does not force itself upon one in France, and the amount of idleness, as well as of all forms of human misfortune, is incredibly small.

The intensity of patriotic feeling in France is not stirred in these days by men who fill the public imagination. The watchwords of the Republic are the same as those of the Revolution, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"; and any disagreement with these principles is hailed as treason. A popular uproar arose at the proposition to erect a monument to Taine, who through his stimulating and ultimately creative power was one of the greatest minds of his time, and added widely to the literary reputation of France. People believed that his principles, if carried out, would undo the Revolution. He was in their eyes criminally neglectful of the rights of the common people. The national idea of democracy is the breaking of tradition, violently if necessary, in order to uphold the mass against the upper classes.