Ask France To Go Slow.

New York Times 100 years ago today, March 13, 1913:
Scholars and Students Fearful of Consequences of Army Bill.
By Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph to The New York Times.
    PARIS, March 12.— Two weighty protests against the French Army bill are published to-day. One, representative of the most authoritative university opinion, includes among its thirty-six signatories Anatole France, Louis Havet, Charles Seignobos, Charles Andler, and Gabriel Seailles. They say:
    "The undersigned, being greatly perturbed by the outbreak of madness which has made it likely that there will be effected with totally unprecedented haste such a grave measure as a change in the military law of the country, and considering that such a project will have a profound effect on the intellectual and economic life of the country, and may even produce a retrograde movement in French civilization, express the hope that the measure will be submitted to most careful discussion."
    The other protest is signed by 300 students of all Faculties in the University of Paris and the Ecole des Beaux Arts, who declare themselves systematically hostile to three years' military service, and urge public opinion not to let itself be intimidated by the powers of reaction.
    "Remember," says the protest, "that in such circumstances as the present, peaceful submission and blind confidence will deliver the country up to the worst kind of adventures and will ruin, in its very principle, the Republican regime."