FRANCE IS NOT BLED WHITE.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16141, 20 February 1918, Page 4

FRANCE IS NOT BLED WHITE.

ARMIES NEVER BETTER. (By Edward Price Bell, ibc well-known American Press Correspondent.) "France is bled white." So we have been told. After eight busy days in that wonderful country, I hare a fresh sense of tlio wideness of the gulf between rhetoric and reality. France is not bled white. France has less red blood than she did have, but she has an ocean of red blood yet. Many hundreds of thousands of glorious Frenchmen have died in this war, but many more hundreds of thousands ard alive and well and ready to give their lives for the cause in which their compatriots perished. Of course it was only a glimpse I had of France; 110 one can get more in eight days. But I saw masses of Flench soldiers and of Fronch civilians. I saw divisions on the march, and saw scores of hamlets, villages, and cities. I saw something of France's broad agricultural acreage. . Not a soul I saw in the Army or out of it, nor anything that came before my eyes, lent the slightest colour to the RUg-; ge.stion that France is bled white. I Never before have her armies been so good though this is saying almost incredibly much. It can be said only ' because her armies are still sufficiently numerous .and arc more highly skilled than at any previous time. They are more highly skilled because in this' war armies learn every day. Experiments are ceaseless. Strategy, tactics, and machinery are progressive. In none of these things are the French second to anyone. Most of the roads foe miles behind the French front resound by day and by night with the tramp of troops, iiowerer far one motors ono seems never to come to the end of them, Stury men they arc, in the pink of condition, tough as leather. Infantry, cavalry, and artillery alternate. I travelled from Amiens to. Paris and from Paris to Havre, and found the IVench nation—tho substructure of French civilisation—at the back of the armies, industrially and commercially holding, like a citadel, the foundations of those armies. I went to Franco expecting to find melancholy covering the country as with a veil] I expected that at best tho nation would seem, gaunt and haggard. Surely I should find something answering to the phrase "bled white." Not at all. Instead of these things I saw shining through tho handsome faces of the men nnd the beautiful faces of the women and children the old, naignificent spirit that has filled Frenelj history with splendour. Paris, with that mvfill flood of Prussian savagery held in check by French and British manhood only a few miles away, is as selfpossessed as. is London. If the military dam broke, Paris would be inundated; but Paris lives, works, and plays, unafraid. Factories, shops, theatres, music-halls, picture palaces, hotels, restaurants, and the streets of tho great and beautiful city are a-quiver with. lifo. . True, darkness claims the whole outer world- of Paris at night. True, coal is dear, food is -dear, and tho pinch of war is felt Jar and wide. But what matters is that the spirit of the people is not only ■unbroken but unbent. If tho streets are smothered in gloom after sunset-, lights g!on- within tho dark walls. People eat, drink, watch the play, chat, laugh, niako love as in happier days. Any great restaurant r.fc night furnishes an absorbing spectacle of animated manhood and woman, hood. Some of the finest faces ono can sec in tho world are there—faces of soldiers and civilian men, faces of woriicn remarkable alike for personality and for beauty. These mirrors one searches in vain for evidence that France suffers Jier misfortunes with anything but invincible moral. Go among the crowds that throng the •streets in daylight and you get the samo impression. If you expect languor and depression you find vigour and buoyauey to a degree nothing short of astounding. In a word, in spite of all its losses and sorrows, Paris rings with the old voices and leaps with the old .vivacity. Mourning is visible everywhere, but how charmingly, how brightly it is worn! Parisian women appear to regard it as a patriotic duty, while showing by their clress that they have been bereaved, _ not to spread an atmosphere of grief. Their" black frocks are beautifully cut and worn with incomparable charm. It is the same with the little girls: in their costumes of unrelieved sombreness they are tho perfection of dainty elegance. ■ France, as f her, has more and Octter food than has Britain. I saw , rectangular lumps of luminous white sugar that made my mouth water. I brought a few of these back to London, • not to eat, but to exhibit! Britons of all classes, I feel sure, are on shorter rations than are the IVench; yet even British rations are adequate, and promise to become better rather than worse. , Such are my impressions from a kind of kinematographic glance at parts of 1 France and at the French capital. I went expecting to be saddened, and . came away deeply gladdened. Yet I would not project a false perspective. France's miseries, her sacrifices, hei j effiux of energy, blood, money, and ma- ( ten JI have been stupendous. She could • not go on for ever as she has been going on for three and a half years. With ( all hcv might America should hurry. ] Already the American uniform meets • one at every turn in Paris and is Been ] at every Parisian centre. American 1 6oldiers are streaming to the front. But 1 where we have thousands, hundreds of j thousands, possibly millions, will bo needed. Unlimited numbers of cannon £ also are a crying necessity. America ] can make them and transport them , and save innumerable lives. France , believes she will do it. Every officer. s British or French, that I saw in France, ( believes she will do it. I certainly be- t lieve sho will do iu. ;