FOR AND AGAINST

This year, the most popular meetings of the "big week" took place at the Palais-Bourbon. The budget took precedence over the thoroughbred, and "the glorious uncertainty of the turf" was beaten by the no less glorious uncertainty of politics...
As misfortunes never come alone, our friendly equine breed didn't have to suffer only from parliamentary competition. It was also struck to the heart by a momentous and painful event... Drag Racing Day, of noble memory, passed without drag racing. We didn't see a single shadow of a mail coach at Auteuil on Friday... Can anyone imagine anything like that, and in what times do we live?... The traditional parade of these aristocratic carriages was such a proud spectacle!... Inside, as in the imperial, there were what one might call the beautiful people, gentlemen in top hats and ladies in great splendor - if I may put it that way... Naturally, the gentlemen and ladies in the imperial were particularly noticed, as they made a great impression and a great noise too. For stylish and impressive valets played the trumpet, like angels on Judgment Day...
We can expect to read many saddened chronicles about the disappearance of these drag queens!... Many clichés about the good old days, about tradition and elegance could be usefully employed...
As for me, I refuse to join the chorus of lamentations... The disappearance of drag queens is, in my opinion, a happy little event... The mail coaches, in fact, which were wildly elegant in 1889, were no longer elegant at all in 1924. They were as out of fashion as leg-of-mutton sleeves, like bustles, like hobble dresses... They were from another era...
Well, they were out of place, it must be said... In the present circumstances, which are not excessively cheerful, the aristocracy, both in name and in money, must refrain from certain Archaic parades that can give people an unfortunate, and moreover false, and unfair, idea of ​​one's mentality, one's pleasures, one's concerns, and one's occupations...

Maurice PRAX.