Part 23

How often has one read this type of appeal in England. The sentences are taught in English commercial correspondence classes:

"I want to make a proposition to you, a strictly commercial proposition. How can we help one another to do more business? How can we be mutually serviceable to one another? Think it over. I do you a good turn now because I know you are certain to be in a position by and by to do me a good turn."

It has been open for England to say this to Germany, France, Serbia, Czecho-Slovakia, the United States, and to many other countries, but for some reason or other we have held off. We have substituted another and not very worthy phrase, "Let them stew in their own juice," forgetting that if we let them stew there we shall stew, too, in ours. And it is not likely to be a very good stew.

"The Times" has given its powerful influence to promote the idea of an alliance with France. But it came at a moment when France had just been thwarted by Great Britain in her European policy. Moreover, it was not inspired by either the people or the Government of England. France understood this. "The Times" also has been developing the idea of Anglo-American friendship, and that has made more progress there. The many titled American women in England naturally desire it, and collectively they have considerable power. Most American writers in England and English writers in America work for it.

"If we can't run together, we of the same blood and of the same tongue," says Sinclair Lewis, to a literary club one June night, "let's give it up. Let's cry off altogether and admit that we are all a lot of savages."

The English masses are indifferent to the idea of alliance. The real opposition to it is not in England, but in America where Anglophobes abound. There are more haters of England in America than in the countries of Europe--more lovers also. Both are sensitive, and the game of mortifying one another goes on.

Germany, Czecho-Slovakia, Serbia, Hungary, are more eager for a constructive friendship with Great Britain, and indeed generally speaking Europe needs England more than America needs her.

There is one slight exception to the general apathy, and that is the abandonment of anti-Bolshevik hate, and the signing of a trading treaty with Russia--a long-delayed fruit of common sense. Russia is in a desperate plight, and we cannot live by what she yields alone, but it will help. But if we can shake hands with Bolsheviks why not with Germans? It is curious that despite the strong sympathies for Germany in England there is no public move for a friendly understanding between the two powers. Pro-Germans are still a little afraid of the war-epithets and abuse. Commercial travellers in their quiet way are steadily placing orders for cheap German goods all over England, but there is no effort to exploit the situation to the mutual advantage of English and German. Alone Sir Reginald MacKenna, the chairman of the London City and Midland Bank, in a remarkable speech to the shareholders and directors indicated our astonishing passivity. The war has brought Germany low, and the lower she goes the more dangerous she is to the rest of us. But no one will face it. If we did resolve to face it we should find many Germans ready to co-operate and give help in exchange for help. The low German mark may seem to mean the ruin of English manufacturers, but we ought to bear in mind that there is no nation more direly in need of international help than this same fearsome Germany. The trade slump is great, but it is perhaps only the beginning. People ignorantly blame the strikers, but many manufacturers have secretly not been sorry for the strikes. The strikes have damped down production. They have brought down wages, they have not raised them. It is of little use going on producing great quantities of goods for which there is at present no market, and no use producing above the European market price. It would be truer to say that the strikes are partly the result of the depression. Most of the strikes have been caused by "cuts" in wages. Wages have been sought to be reduced in order to turn out cheaper products and so be able to compete with other cheap European goods. The secret of the obduracy of the coal-owners has lain in the fact that British coal costs more than the world-price per ton. The difference in price could be put on to the private consumer but there are limits to his means of purchasing. It is impossible to do more trade with the consumer. The main coal business is with the factory and the ship, and these compete in world-markets for their own business. All want to keep the cost of production low in order to compete with the countries of low exchange.

The European exchange is proving to be the most vital matter for English trade. Its irregularities reflect the irregularities of our Europe and they must be met. An equality of values must somehow be obtained, and it could be obtained in a spirit of general friendship and good-will. Great sacrifices would be necessary from rich people of all the nations concerned, and large schemes of revenge and punishment would have to be abandoned. But in doing so we should all save one another; in not doing so we are likely all to ruin one another.

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

XVII. FROM PARIS

France is the mainspring of the new mechanism, and Paris the control. That is why I chose to go to Paris last--so that all, even London, could be related to her. The initiative in European politics is taken by France and she has the most active policy. Most other States wait to see what France is doing and shape their policies accordingly. London is generally in opposition to Paris, but English action is so sluggish and so independable that even those States who loathe the new France are obliged to assume that England does not really count. With the exception of Greece, England is not giving active support or practical sympathy to any other country in Europe. But France backs Poles and Turks and Hungarians and Serbs, and is carrying out a grand scheme of world-policy clearly--if not very effectively.

France has made great progress since the war. Alone among the warring powers in this respect she stands higher than she did in 1914. She stands higher than she has done at any time since the great Napoleon. The Government it is true is in direful need of money, and has always a difficult political path to tread, but both the French individual and the nation as a whole have gained enormously. Peoples and governments are too often confused, and the plight of M. Briand sometimes deceives people as to the position of France.

"France is bankrupt," says a leading publicist, in one of the London reviews. But the French people are not bankrupt. Far from it. On the average they are a very rich people. Even in the devastated areas there has been a rapid financial recovery due to the hard work and perseverance of the returned inhabitants. The constant talk about the ruined North of France has been more a matter of propaganda than verity. Though war was not carried into Yorkshire and Lancashire, it is quite clear that England is to-day in a much more ruinous state than France. The French drove our sentimental politicians through carefully chosen routes and showed them the grand spectacle of war's ruins. And they were impressed. But there is ruin which cannot be seen from a car window. An economic dry-rot at the heart of a country is more terrible than excoriations on the surface.

In Paris you realize at once a remarkable change in atmosphere after London. The barometer has risen. It suddenly feels better to be alive. There is a sense of something in the air; something doing. Yes, the people are smarter and cleaner; their eyes are brighter. The streets are better kept. Amour propre is expressed in all the shop windows, in the manners of 'bus conductors, waiters, salesmen, chance acquaintances, in the tone of the Press. What is the matter? Can it be that Paris has become first-class and London has ceased to be first-class? Paris was not like this in 1913. She was decidedly down-at-heel. There was no particular verve or dignity in the ways of Parisians. They carried on in a second-rate way in a civilization which to the general European traveller seemed inferior both to London and Berlin.

Something has intervened, and that something is not merely war but victory. Victory has intervened and has fed the French soul with the thing which it required. We know now more of what France was like before 1870. Evidently for fifty years she has lived in a state of depression and spiritual thraldom, and now she has escaped and is more herself. France has recovered her national pride and self-consciousness. She has expanded. Increase of territory and of national interests has given to French self-consciousness more room, and you behold the opposite type of development to that which is in process in Germany, where national self-consciousness has been turned in on itself. That is why it is good to be alive in Paris and not so good in London or Berlin.

It is possible to be winning and still remain down-hearted, but this is not the case at Paris. The supposed fear of Germany is only political bluff. France fears no Germans. She fears nobody. Perhaps she ought to fear--for the far future. But she has always had a belief in herself and her way of doing things and an inbred contempt for other races as for barbarians, and it has only needed this colossal victory in a world-war to set her on her pedestal of fame once more.

It was in doubt for a while before the war, but now it is sure--all the world must learn French; if it cannot speak French it must at least think French. French is the universal medium of civilization and good manners. The emissaries of France in every country of Europe carry France's civilizing mission and tell the foreign statesmen of the young States what to do and how to do it. As England sends missionaries to spread the gospel of Christ so France sends hers to spread the gospel of France.

The sense of this glorious activity comes back to the heart and the brain at Paris, and it is small wonder that steps are lighter and eyes brighter.

If only the Government could fill its exchequer! France lives by loans, and even an interest of six per cent free of income-tax will not tempt the citizens to invest sufficient money to pay the Government's way. The Government cannot raise its revenue by taxes. An Englishman slavishly pays half his income in taxes, but not a Frenchman. It is difficult to get five per cent. And there one comes suddenly upon France's greatest vice and weakness--avarice.

It is France's penuriousness and meanness and her exaggerated thrift that stands most in the way of her material greatness now. The Government needs to spend a great deal more than it used to do before the war, must spend it, if it is to do the best for France. France has the consciousness of being the greatest power in Europe, and she has the will to play the role of the greatest power, and she is called upon to do things in style.

France is romantic in ambition, she is vivacious and happy and dignified, till she is called upon to pay anything. Then the Frenchwoman in the French nation reveals herself. The eyes become small, the lips thin, the cheeks pale, the whole being shrinks into itself and goes on the defensive.

France wishes to run this new Europe which has come into being, on the old lines, playing with hatreds and jealousies and conflicting interests as a chess-player with his pieces. The idealists of England and America want to eradicate the jealousies and hatreds and run the same new Europe on principles of pure love. France says human nature never changes. Britain and America say human nature has progressed with them and it must progress similarly in Europe. France's final answer is laughter. So constant is France's amusement at the expense of the Anglo-Saxon that she has adopted the sourire ironique as something necessary to typical beauty in a Frenchman.

It is, therefore, not surprising that M. Octave Duplessis in the "Figaro" should find that characteristic work of H. G. Wells, the "Salvaging of Civilization," quite ridiculous.

Il nous ramene aux reves ineptes des Fourier et des Cabet, effacant de la surface de ce pauvre globe terraque toutes les barrieres, aplanissant avec intrepiditee les plus grands obstacles, niant le fait concret des nationalites, de plus en plus positif pourtant a mesure que progresse la civilisation, et saluant deja l'aurore du jour ou

Ce globe deplume, sans barbe et sans cheveux Comme un grand potiron roulera dans les cieux

M. Britling nous ramene donc de cent ans en arriere, au mauvais socialisme primitif de l'epoque romantique. Il ressuscite de poussiereuses momies.

By denying the possibility of realizing the dream of a world-State or a collective European State, the Frenchman speaks for his country. France regards the development of European history with simple realism and without ideals. The only weak link in her chain-mail is the belief in the civilizing mission of France. If there is no progress why have a mission to civilize?