The author’s qualifications for talking about France and the French people rest on the facts that France has been the home of his choice for over twelve years, that he has lived intimately with the people in their own homes, and that his friends are of various classes and opinions, including the proletariat and the rural folk, and that the more he saw of them the more he loved them. The object of the book is to draw attention to certain defects in French institutions and methods, to show that the political situation gives signs of nearing the end of a régime and is full of glaring fundamental inconsistencies; and that in other than political respects, also, France is behind the times and in need of drastic changes. Contents: The French character; Problems of reconstruction; The administrative and political systems; The discredit of parliament and its causes; Results of the revolution; Small property and its results; Socialism, syndicalism and state capitalism; Back to Voltaire; Index.
“When we leave actual people, and come to institutions, the political system, banking, railways, religion, etc., Mr Dell displays all the peculiar excellences of his type. His analysis is acute, modern and thoroughly interesting.” J, W. N. S.
+ − Ath p178 F 6 ’20 1050w Booklist 17:26 O ’20
“His book is a bitter attack upon France, her people and her institutions. Where are the ‘fondness’ and the ‘sympathy’ that the author claims in his introduction?”
− Boston Transcript p6 Je 30 ’20 500w Cleveland p90 O ’20 40w
“A book of real illumination, one wonders whether any one will really like it.”
+ Dial 69:666 D ’20 90w
“I know of no recent book which gives a better picture of the French people as they really are, both of their lovable and unpleasant qualities, nor of the economic and political and intellectual life of present day France than that by Mr Robert Dell, ‘My second country.’” Harold Stearns
+ Freeman 1:595 S 1 ’20 2050w