There
is a plenty of nothing to do, now, in the Lower Town; pipe-smoking
and heated discussion of parish politics are incessant; an inconsiderate
quantity of bad liquor is imbibed, _pour faire passer le temps._
Suddenly--if anything can be said to happen suddenly in Quebec--bad
news comes from the Lower Town. A riot has broken out, an insurrection
of the French-Canadians against the new military service act, an
armed resistance to the draft. Windows have been smashed, shops
looted. A mob, not very large perhaps, but extremely noisy, has
marched up the steep curve of Mountain Hill Street, into the Upper
Town. Shots have been exchanged. People have been killed. The
revolution in Quebec has begun.
That is the disquieting rumor which comes to us, carefully spread and
magnified by those agencies which have an interest in preventing, or
at least obstructing the righteous punishment of the German criminals
in this war. Can it possibly be true? Have the French-Canadians gone
crazy, as the Irish did in 1916, under the lunatic incantations of
the Sinn-Feiners? Are they also people without a country, playing
blindly into the hands of the Prussian gang who have set out to
subjugate the world?
No! This riot in the old city is not an expression of the spirit of
French Canada at all.
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