FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 116, 14 November 1896, Page 2

FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

■♦- 1 The French are an amiable, bravo, but peculiarly irritable people. Just now they are amiable in their relations 3 with Russia, brave in their attitude towards Germany, and in a state of irritation with Great Britain. On ' Lord Mayor's Day in London some of i the vehicles carried designs emblematical of the victories o£ Waterloo and I Trafalgar, at which the French press was annoyed. That was a trifling ' matter from either the English or r French point of view. On the other j hand the French Chamber of Deputies carried shortly afterwards a resolution . expelling the English Missionaries from Algiers, a den;and was made foi * the English to relinquish Acre, in 1 Syria, but of course the English Press took no notice of the fate of the unlucky Missionaries, while Lord Salis 3 bury continues on his way — placid r but firm. In fact John Bull remains stolid after the manner of his kind ' while the Gallic cock struts and crows like the handsome and musical bird '' so typical of the ra,ce. We do not suppose anything very serious will result because, even admitting that the British occupation of Egypt may ' be the " head and front of our offending," no European nation dare attack England single handed, and even a combination powerful as that which got such a smashing at Trafalgar, would very likely meet a similar disastrous fate. France no more desires war than does England, and her vapourings are useful if only as a safety valve for superfluous steam. [It will be seen from cablegrams received ' to-day that France is annoyed with the United States because the latter has claimed absolute supremacy in the ' western hemesphere (the term is vogue, but that is of no consequence) anil considers it a menace to the rights of Europe. The citizens of the United : States consider that the only nation • in Europe which has any rights in ■ America — North or South— is Eng i land : the others Russia, France, Spain and Portugal having either been bought out or kicked out.]