Europe-Whither Bound? Part 15

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 pa.s.sivity. 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 quant.i.ties 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 a.s.sume 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-cla.s.s and London has ceased to be first-cla.s.s? 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 n.o.body. 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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?

Perhaps the religious sentimentalism of Western politicians was a revelation to French statesmen. France, for all her cosmopolitanism, has always been badly informed as to the life of the people in England and America. Something of the general astonishment was voiced by Clemenceau, if the story of him is true. He is supposed to have said of Wilson: "He is an excellent man, but he thinks he's Jesus Christ."

In France all excellence is excellence of form. The idea of the growth of the soul and of germinal excellence of any kind is foreign. For our part in England and America we understand little of form. France therefore can upon occasion show the world something which no one can deny to be excellent.

The Parisian can very well say in London or New York: "You have much that is large and fine, but it is clear that you do not understand Art and have very little taste. In France we do things better than this."

He does not put his _poilu inconnu_ in the depths of a cathedral in order to bring an unbelieving crowd into the house of G.o.d, but puts him in the public way under the Arc de Triomphe. He does not say that the soldier died for King and Country, and then mutilate a text--"Greater love hath no man than this," but he inscribes--"_Ici repose un soldat francais mort pour la patrie_," and leaves the living to make their own reflections. His Paris is a city of statues and gardens but it is all dignified, it is all in good taste. Even the houses and the shops conform to the general idea of the fitness and elegance of Paris.

Among the emblems of the time, however, there is in Paris one statue on exhibition which offends good taste, and even an Englishman can see that it may become ludicrous. It is the marble figure representing the "_Republique Francaise pendant la guerre_," now placed at the head of the Tuileries Gardens. It is Madame France wearing a _poilu's_ helmet.

There is a look of triumph in her upturned face. France in her has become younger. Most figures of France are Diana-like, but here apparently is one the tender contour of whose limbs is not official but intimate. A policeman is in charge, but it verges on the indiscreet to ask him any questions. One dare be certain that Paris will not accept this statue, for though it expresses something of the new spirit of France, it is not in perfect taste, it is not quite dignified.

There is something very characteristic of France in the thousands of seeming-widows whom you see clad in becoming weeds. The widow's veil raises the dignity of the Frenchwoman and confirms her piety so that she feels like a Madonna when her husband is dead, and loves to walk like one. Some wear this attire without being widowed--it conforms so well to a secret desire. The demure widow so dressed has much charm.

There is, however, another and a better type, and that is the Joan of Arc type of young Frenchwoman so often overlooked in a survey of French reality. The new, bright, white marble figure of Joan in the cathedral of Notre-Dame is worth a prayer for France. One has met Joan in life, she is generally sixteen or seventeen, ardent, heroic, romantic, with the poetry of Corneille and Racine upon her lips. She is full of effervescent devotion, impetuous and entirely "pure." What happens to her in modern France it would be difficult to say. The English do not come and burn her for a witch; but English people do not like the type, do not understand it, and generally prefer the insincere Madonnas or the Madame Bovarys of France. But to understand France one must take cognizance of this feminine crusading spirit. Much that is genuine and worth while in France can be a.s.sociated with the type of Joan. Even in the midst of modern politics one should look for Joan. French aspirations has a grand turn. We think of the French as realists, but they are romanticists. They look back and then look forward. They see events with long black shadows as at sunset. They harangue themselves.

In the English people humour comes to chase the romantic away and it will not let us get into a heroic vein. But not so with the French.

Their humour is weak. So at school, in books, in inscriptions on statues, in public speeches, you will constantly come upon the heroic, romantic strain, and you will find adjurations to the French people: "_Francais, elevez vos ames et vos resolutions a la hauteur des perils qui fondent sur la patrie. Il depend encore de vous de montrer a l'univers ce qu'est un peuple qui ne veut pas perir_," as it says on the Gambetta monument.

This splendid spirit is betrayed by the sordidness of modern life. The exchange for romantic idealism is cynicism and soullessness. Joan does not remain Joan all her life--if she 'scapes burning she is quickly destroyed by the world. The philosophy of _Voila tout_ soon possesses her. I always remember the end of Octave Feuillet's "_Histoire d'une jeune Parisienne_"--

Dans l'ordre moral, il ne nait point de monstres: Dieu n'en fait pas; mais les hommes en font beaucoup. C'est ce que les meres ne doivent pas...o...b..ier.

In France's plan for Europe there is both the idealistic romantic and the cynical materialistic. If England really understood the spirit of France she would strengthen the former. And France might really take England into her confidence. England, and indeed most other nations, see in France a selfish, narrow, matter-of-fact power, and in seeing these things they help to make France so.

If France took Britain into her confidence she would possibly explain her policy in this way--"The great war which has just pa.s.sed was first and foremost a war between Germany and France. The Germans do not understand us; they loathe and despise our civilization. They have been entirely wrong, but they had the big battalions on their side.

Once they beat us in the field and they took away and subjugated two of our provinces, almost killing the French spirit there and Germanizing to the utmost of their ability. A second war has taken place and we, thanks to the help of allies, have won. We have gained an overwhelming victory. The Germans have made a complete surrender. President Wilson deceived them into thinking that they might arrange an easy peace, and they surrendered their weapons. France was glad to see her vain enemy fooled and despoiled of her means of continuing the strife. France, however, never accepted Wilsonian idealism. Why should she? America has never bled as France has bled. She has never lived in the danger in which France has lived. She does not understand Europe. But France owed America a great deal of money and could not afford to offend her.

She had the mortifying and difficult role to play second to Wilson at the peace-table though first in sacrifice and first in danger.

France's object has been and is to place Germany completely _hors de combat_. Her mortal enemy is in her power. France's first desire is not money or territory, but just security. France does not fear Germany in her present spiritless, unarmed state. France does not fear Germany at all. But the fruit of victory which she desires is that she should put it entirely out of the power of Germany to return to the struggle. The League of Nations is being arranged to stop warfare among all races. France does not believe that that is practicable, human nature being what it is. But France does see that one war of the future can be eliminated, and that is another Franco-German struggle.

With that in view France has embarked on a real policy embodied in the following programme:--

(1) The complete demilitarization of the German people. We will not allow her to have an army or a navy.

(2) The dismantling of the German Empire. We would undo what Bismarck accomplished; for in destroying the unity of Germany we should destroy most of its power to reorganize after defeat. The dismantling of modern Germany implies for us:

(a) Alsace and Lorraine for France.

(b) Upper Silesia for Poland.

(c) A separate State of Bavaria.

(d) A separate State of Westphalia.

(e) A Polish corridor to Dantzig, separating East and West Prussia.

(f) No union between Austria and Germany.

"France is not in favour of plebiscites, as the war was won not by a plebiscite but by a superior number of cannon. The plebiscite was a Wilson invention and France regards it pa.s.sively. If plebiscites stand in the way of a real policy in Europe they ought to be disregarded. As regards questions such as that of the Ruhr Valley occupation France is ready to take any avenue which leads to a furtherance of her fundamental policy. The saddling of Germany with an immense indemnity is primarily necessary in order to pay off the war debts of France and Britain to the United States. For the rest, the indemnity debt can be used as a check on Germany so that we can watch her."

Such is in any case France's policy. She pursues it in subterranean ways and through intrigue and by all the old tricks of secret diplomacy, evidently trusting no one but herself. It is unfortunate.

Much could be gained both in England and America by a clear, frank statement.