FRENCH CHILDREN OF TO-DAY

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2747, 15 April 1916, Page 2

FRENCH CHILDREN OF TO-DAY

"ENFANTS Dl 5 LA PATRIE."

Poulbot is the great French artist of ti ~!v on ' wl 'ttos a correspondent in the ' limes." If there is an. appeal to be made on their belief his pencil is at once enlisted,' and ho gives to his littlo characters a winsowencss that is irresistible. He has tho peentration of Ahil May with more emotion, bilt with less pure quality of draftsmanship in ins work, but then he works in softer medium. Poulbot's drawings appear everywhere at this moment; tho war has given his talent,, subtle and charming, a public promincnco that it hardly possessed before. And the'war has ctfectcd a change in the countenance of his subject.. There burns there a new courage and resolution. Those gutter children of Paris were always very forward for their years; they were never very innocent. To-day they hivo become symbolical. Their games bespeak tho hopes and preoccupations of all the world. Never before have they been quite such little men and women. If they do not read the papers they know all about the war, and it is a war in. which very bad people have to be beaten and very good people have to bestir themselves to slap and bang with vigor. And I notice that the slum brigade, not ragged and shoeless, for that, happily, does not exist here even amongst the very poor, is quite happy to elap and bang in earnest and enjoys it. In the summer time the children at' the seasido, little refugees, or those who were escaping for a tew weeks from tho common round of lessons, abandoned the traditional sand castle to build trenches under '.the- direction of some bcmedalled, and wounded hero from the front; And tho'other day by the blue Mediterranean I saw the same phenomenon .on tho shingly beach at Cannes. Children have caught the war infection even more strongly than their elders. Tho childhood of France ia mobilised under its own captains. The captain may be Maman, a bigger boy, or even a small boy with a big martial spirit. Each one is doing something, M. Emile Magna tells us in the "Mercuro de France." Jnfant imagination's are filled with the prodigies of tho war. and their school exercise books are filled, with wondrous sketches of aeroplanes and th'o 75 m.m. To these young people the bird-man is a kind of god, tlia greatest of all creatures here below, and their awkward lingers try to draw- tha hero in wobbly red and blue lines. For the first time in their short lives they have begun to doubt a littlo their pictorial powers. ; Little people work also in dull grey worsted for tho cause. Their untrained needles clash in an effort to convert the thin grey line, into socks and comforters for tho favourite poilu. If they, spoil wool it is for sweot charity's sake. And they are ready to deprive themselves, in scoret, of cakes and. oranges that they may givo tho accumulated sous to tho fund for tho soldier's outfit. Here is a new form of widow's mite pleasing to the Lord. Evidently we are far from the days of fairy tales, of tho Booted Cat, the'. Red: Riding Hood and Cinderella of 'Perrault and the children's poets. A new generation has. arisen, infintely advanced, which listens with grave tense faces to the elder's story of deeds of daring anil fame and glory in tho battle lines there to the north- of Paris. French children have grown older since the war began, and the war, has brought them, as never before, . within the circle' of their parents. That is the French way. When there is a crisis and tho air quivers with great events the: children are not shut out, but ecoouragcd to feel and understand. To them are the joys and ills of an intelligence prematurely awakened. It is tho result, no doubt, of tho present tumult. French children have grown closer to lite adult sufferers of this war. The nursery has become a -hopeisss myth.' Such email' cipation from childish things is tha price of a tremulous progress. . The little girl who stops from I'er playmates and rushes forward to the limping figure in a uniform of faded blue Js the prettiest 6ign of the.war. 'Hen warm little hand placed iii his and the' .secrets that she delivers to n bended ear are, I suspect, as sweet a compensation for tthe deadly perils of many months as tho wav cross which shine's upon his breast. Tho children liavo become the little mothers of the sol« dier and his most- cherished confidant.