July Mentat pictures of the grey rime-covered fields of Normandy. and toy farms with advert ments of unfamiliar things, Amer Picon, Printemps and so forth, equally unfami lumbering three-h the incredible noise of Paris streets; of the tremendous diffe: ence between the French lar; uage in England and the same in France; of one's confusion on' being served with rolls and butter plus the coffee when ordering a cafe complet in mistake for: what one came to know as cafe) creme; of an adorably pretty! waitress in the Restaurant of the Beautiful Milleress, J—where she serves Her chestnut chignon thrills my, senses —only it was black, not chest-j nut; of expeditions by.bdtcau mouche to the Pont d'Austerlitz jand then to feed the bears in the Garden of Acclimatation and, wander back through old Paris) by the Roman Arena and the St. Louis and Notre Dame, and peculia.ly excellent cake' shop not far away; of the Allée des Acacias and its beautiful and far from nameless ladies; of other expeditions in the bantieu, Jwhere every name conjures up a fresh vision of charmingness, Suresnes, St. Cloud, Versailles, St. Germains, Poissy; of President Loubet opening the not~ and of one Fourteenth of July when the thermometer register ing 104 at Auteuil"gave one a scale by which for ever one learnt how to turn Centigrade into Fahrenheit and vice vers, With experience of not a few other countries, one can "lay one's hand on one's heart" and say that there is none of the same forgotten charm of France, Nor would one be behind in paying 4 like tribute to its inhabitants, No doubt they have their faults like other peoples, but these do not, or certainly need not, appear in every day life. On the contrary, there is 'a freedom, a tolerance and a spirit of friend-lines in little every-day things for the equal of which one look: in vain in other lands. It happened that the writer went to France in the height of the Boer war, when, by popular report at home, Englishmen could—not appear on the boulevards without being insulted, Undoubtedly the newspapers were rather rude, although, as Frenchmen justly observed, they were infinitely ruder to' their own Government. But not once, in any crowd oF public resort or personal interview, was there anything but politeness, and that notwith-/standing the excuse that could have been found in the still recent episode of Fashoda and the things we had said in England about the Dreyfus Affair, And in the quartier surrounding that tiny flat up one hundred and twenty-seven mortal stairs, how. soon one began to make friends—Madame la Bianchi from the Mich; the, proprietor' of the debit de yins who sent up occa: sional meals, coarse but savoury' ithe baker; the lady of the dairy the épicier (so much more exch ing in his wares than a mer grocer); and the quineaittion who sold everything in metal from a bicycle to old bunches of keys. Still one can hear their friendly greetings on one's return from week-ends in England and their polite inquiries after the health of one's famille. may have meant nothing. But did it not really mean everything?
Whether it is the French who make their country or the country that makes the French, who shall say? Certainly the pas-ate devotion that a Frenehman pours into his native soil, which, like the flowers of a true gardener, alike deserves and responds to it, has no superior in all the gamut of patriotism. And this fact should be taken carefully into account by others, both for explanation of the past and for light on the future. Tt is so short a time since the French people saw this dearly loved country torn and wasted and made hideous by invasion, since they poured out their blood like water to win her back; and they have laboured so hard to heal the scars and make her once more smiling and fruitful; that is little wonder if it seemed incredible to them that they should be asked to make any more sacrifices, and that, so far from anyone having claims upon them, they truly had a claim on the sympathy of all the world. But this is only a phase. Where the honour of the country is involved, the French perception will not be slow to understand it. For the moment only the issues have been confused by politicians and partisanship and jas always, one remembers, est un sale gouvernement. But the voice of France herself will be heard presently and in no uncertain tone.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.