"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 rôle 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.