VALIANT AND STRONG AS EVER

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 136, 26 February 1918, Page 7

VALIANT AND STRONG AS EVER

9 FRANCE HAS NOT BEEN "BLED WHITE" ARMIES NEVER SO GOOD (By Edward Price Bell, in tho "Daily Mail.") [Mr. Edward Price Bell is the doyen of tho United States newspaper correspondents in England. A native of Indiana, he has represented the "Chicago Daily. News" in London continuously since 1900. Mr. Bell achieved national celebrity a year ago by his series of striking letters to "The Times" foreshadowing the certainty of American intervention iu tho war. Latterly he has been devoting himself to "interpreting" America and the Americans in lectures at English public schools.] "Franco is bled white." So wo havo been told. After eight busy days in that wonderful country, I have a fresh sense of the wideness of the gulf between rhetorio and reality. France is not bled white. France has loss red blood than she did havo, 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 are alive and well and ready to give their lives for tho xiause in which their compatriots perished. Of course, it was only a glimpse I had of Franco; no one pan get more in eight days. But I saw masses of French soldiers and of French 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 cam© before my eyes, lent the slightest colour to the suggestion that France is bled white. 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 are 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 tho French second to anyone. ' , Most of the roads for miles behind I the French front resound by day and by night with tho tramp of troops. However far one motors one seems nover to come to the end of them. Sturdy men they are, 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 tho French nation—the substructure of French civilisation—at the back of the armies, industrially and commercially holding, like a citadel, tho foundations of those armies. I went to France expecting to find melancholy covering the country as with a veil. I expected that at best the 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 the faces of the men and the beautiful faces of the woman and children die old, magnificent spirit that has filled _ French history with splendour. Paris, with that awful flood of Prrussian savagery held in check | by French and British manhood only 'a few miles away, is as self-possessed as is London. If the i .military dam broke, Paris would be inundated; hut Paris lives, works, and plays, unafraid. ' Factories, shops, theatres, music-halls, picture palaces, hotels, restaurants, and the streets of the great and beautiful city are _ aquiver with life. True, darkness claims the whole outer world of Paris at night. True, coal is dear, food is dear, and the pinch of war is fait far and wide. But what matters is that the spirit of tho people is not only unbroken but unbent.

If the streets are smothered in gloom after sunset, lights £low within the dark walls. People eat, drink, watch the play, chat, laugh, make love as in happier days.' Any great restaurant at night furnishes an absorbing spectaclo of animated manhood and womanhood. Some of the finest faces one ran see in tho world are there—faces of soldiers rnd civilian men, faces of men remarkable alike for personality and for beauty. These mirrors one torches in vain for evidence that France suffers_ her misfortunes with anything but invincible moral. Go among the crowds that throng the streets in daylight and you get tho Bame impression. If you expect languor and depression you find vigour and buoyancy to a dtogree 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 men appear to regard it as a patriotic duty, whilo showing by their dress that they have been bereaved, not tospread an atmosphere of grief. Their black frocks are beautifully cut and worn with incomparable charm. It is the samo with the little girls; in their costumes of unrelieved sombreness they are the perfection of dainty elegance. France, as I saw her, has more and better 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 Frehoh; 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 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, her efflux of energy, blood, money, and material have been stupendous. She could not go on for over as she has been going on for throe and a half years. With all her might America should hurry.

Already the American uniform meets one at every turn in Paris, and is seen at every Parisian centre. American i soldiers are streaming to the front. But where we have thousands, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, will be needed. Unlimited numbers of cannon also are a crying necessity. America can make them and transport thorn, and save innumerable lives. France believes she will do it. Every officer, British or French, that I saw in Fiance believes she will do it. I certainly believe she will do it.