KEYNOTE OF FRENCH UNITY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1542, 25 April 1916, Page 4

KEYNOTE OF FRENCH UNITY.

“We are all of one mind in admiring, and often with an admiration bordering upon amazement, the magnificent temper in which the heroic French nation has faced its stupendous hour ot trial,” says Mr Edmund Gosse. “From every point of view it is unjust and unseemly to proclaim our surprise at the heroism of the French, and to assume that the calm of the population, and its confidence, and its unity, are due to a sudden miracle supernaturally brought about by the act of mobilisation in August, 1914. The France which is now so gallantly fighting with us and with the rest of the allies to prevent the triumph of Teutonic evil is simply the France which has long been in preparation for a life-struggle with the powers in darkness. The intellectual basis upon which the splendid unity of France is built has no exact parallel elsewhere in the world of to-day. Without derogating in the smallest degree from the signal merits ot our own national system, or of that of our other allies, it can hardly be questioned by any impartial ob server that we see in France the riper results of a more consistent and a more complicated civilisation than is presented by any other country. Nothing is more striking in conversation with very young Frenchmen than the enfranchisement of their intelligence and their habit of dealing rather with general principles than with individual cases. This faculty of intelligence has had a great deal to do with the blessed unanimity of French opinion, a unanimity of the highest importance to the world in general, since in our sacred common resistance to the brutality of German arrogance it is the noble apostolate of France which leads the intelligence of the allies. Continuation! That is the keynote of French unity. The spiritual treasure which has been handed down by an unbroken line of ancestors must be guarded and transmitted at all hazards, and in spite ot all sacrifices. Few expressions have been more widely repeated in France this year than the saying attributed to a soldier in the trenches who, at the moment when an assault on the enemy was ordered, cried out, ‘Debout les morts!’ It is the. dead, the dead of ten centuries of vicissitude and glory, who rise at this moment to fight with their living brethren for their heritage of humanity and liberty and light against the dark genius of Prussian slavery and tyranny.”