France is not Bled White

Levin Daily Chronicle, 16 March 1918, Page 4

France is not Bled White

ARMIES NEVER BETTER, ' (By Edward Price Bell, American Press Correspondent.) "France is bled white." So we have been told. After eighty busy days in that wonderful country, I have a fresh sense of the widenees of the gulf botween thetorie and reality. Prance is not bled white. France has less red blood than L . she did have, but she has an ocean of red blood yet. Many hundreds of thou-, sands 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 the cause in which their compatriots perished. Of course it was only a glimpse I had Of France; no one can-get mOTe 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 I saw something of Franae's broad agricultural acreage. Not a soul I saw in the army or out of it, nor anything that oame 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 inj credibly much. It can be said only bei cause her armies are still sufficiently numerous and are more highly skilled than at anj* 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 for miles behind the FreneH front resound by day and by night with the tramp of troops. However far one motors one seems never to come to thei 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 f6und the French nation —the superstructure of French civilisation —at the back of the armies, industrially and commercially holding, like a eitadel, the 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 the phrase '' bled white." Not at all. Instead of these things I saw shining thrbugh'the handsome faces of the men and the beautiful faces of the women and children of the old, magnificent spirit that has filled French history with splendor. Paris, with that awful flood of Prussian savagery held in check by French and Brtish manhood only a few miles away, is as self-possesed 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 the great and beautiful city are a-quiver 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 felt far and wide. But what matters is that the spirit of the people is not unbroken, but unbent. If the streets are smothered in gloom after sunset, lights glow within the walls. Peoplo eat, drink, watch the play, chat, laugh, make love as in hap-, pier days. Any great restaurant at night furnishes an absorbing spectacle of animated manhood and womanhood. Some of the finest faces one can see in- the world are there —faces •of soldiefs and civilian men, faces of women, remarkable alike for personality and for beauty. These mirrors one searches in vain for evidence that France suffers her misfortunes with anything but invincible morale. Go among the crowds that throng the streets in daylight ,and you get the same impression., If you expect languor and depression, you find vigor and bouyancy to a degree nothing short of astounding. In a word in spite 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 ia worn! Parisian women appear to regard it as a patriotic duty, while showing by their dress 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 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 French; yet even British rations are adequate and promise to become better rather than worse. Such arc 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 ever as she has been going on for three 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 soldiers arc streaming to the front. But (where we have thousands, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, will be • needed. Unlimited numbers of cannon also arc a crying necessity. Amcrica can make them, and transport them, and save innuemerable lives, France believes she will do it. Every officer, Brtish or French, that I saw in France, believes she .will do it. I certainly beJiove she will do" it. .