CHAPTER X
A Glimpse of America's Friend—France
Although great in history, France is but a small country. It is interesting to note that all France could be placed in the state of Texas and there would be room enough left for Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Switzerland, one in each corner. Even then, Delaware and the District of Columbia could be put in for good measure and the Lone Star State would still have more than eight hundred square miles to spare.
About half of the people of France depend wholly upon agriculture for their living. Instead of living on farms as we do they live in small villages. Their farms are very small, generally running from two to fifteen acres. As a rule, the soil is thin and unproductive, but with their patient toil, careful methods of farming and a very liberal use of fertilizer they raise abundant crops. Just about half of the soil of France is tilled and about one-eighth is used for grazing while all the famous vineyards of this country cover but about four per cent of the ground. The balance is in forests and streams, highways, canals, and railways.
When the war broke out there were about four million French families who owned their homes and a thriftier and more industrious people could hardly be found. In 1871, when the heartless Bismarck insisted on having a one billion dollar indemnity, besides the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, he thought he had the people of France throttled for a generation, but to his very great amazement every dollar of this huge sum was paid in less than three years. This fact is but an indication that the French are a race of savers.
A silent revolution in the habits of the peasant people has been the outcome of the war. Ages ago an uprising took the land away from wealthy owners and gave it to the peasants. A few years later Napoleon had enacted or rather established a Code by which a man's property was equally divided between his children. Thus, if a man died leaving four children and an eight-acre farm, it was divided into four strips of two acres each. Then, in the course of time, one of these children died leaving four children, his two-acre farm was divided into four strips of a half acre each.
Thus a great portion of the land is cut up into little strips and gardens. Through the intermarriage of children a family might own several of these strips of land, often miles from each other. This often brought complications and made it impossible to introduce modern farm implements and do away with much of the drudgery of peasant life.
This is one advantage that grew out of the war in many places. In the devastated areas all landmarks were often obliterated and in many cases the government brought in tractors and plowed great fields which before the war were hundreds of little farms and gardens. Then, too, many of these peasants became greedy, selfish individualists. Each man worked by himself and for himself and the idea of co-operation was almost unknown. No ordinary farmer ever became able to have modern farm implements himself and they never dreamed that several of them could go together and purchase a binder, a thresher or tractor. Their one standby was the hoe and not only the man but his wife and children often had to work from daylight until dark to keep the wolf from the door.
Since the war a new day has dawned for the French peasantry. It was very hard for some of them to give up their old notions and customs, but it meant a new order for all who were in the pathway of the war. While the city of Paris has been always known as the Gay City, yet the people in the country did not enjoy life in any such way. They had no amusements, no daily papers, and in some places no songs. The famous Man with the Hoe is a picture of the French farmer. In many of the rebuilt villages now they have amusements and movies and in many cases public libraries have been started.