THE UNITY OF FRANCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1639, 18 November 1916, Page 4

THE UNITY OF FRANCE.

In an article in the Fortnightly Review, Miss Winifred Stephens writes interestingly on the patriotism of France. She shows that at no period of French history had the waves of party strife risen higher or beaten more furiously than in the years which immediately preceded the war. “Then suddenly one summer day the tocsin rang over the fields of France; and instantly at that sound, which announced that la patric was in danger, every other voice was still, the noise of discord ceased; for in all minds, wore they Socialist, Nationalist, Anarchist, or Pacifist, there was hut one thought, la patric, the deliverance of la patrie from that German peril which for centuries has lowered through (he gap in the Vosges. At the tocsin’s lirst peal there vanished, or rather, there merged into one, all those various aspects of Prance or which we used to hour so much before the war; the New Franco, the Young France, rhe Real France, the False Prance, the Prance of Rome, the France of Geneva, the France of the Classicists, the Prance of* the Romanticists, the Prance of Combes, the France of Ban-es; there remained only la France. That then' exist in France many conflicting opinions as to the conduct of the war no one could deny. But the complete suspension of parly discord as to all the main issues is proved by the eons! it ill ion of the present Ministry. There we see silting side by side in amicable conference moderate Republicans like M. de Freyeinet, ardent antiClorieals like M. Emit Combes, Syndicalists like M. Thomas, and an advanced. Socialist like M. Marcel Semhat, who does not refuse to serve in a Cabinet presided over by a Prime Minister once regarded Inline and his comrades as a renegade. The unanimity of the governing class extends throughout the whole French nation —to men, women, and children, to aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and proletariat. Pew people in England have any idea how completely, how intensely, during this war time, the whole mind and heart of Prance a're set upon one thing, one thing only; the deliverance of la patrie. All harriers of class and creed and opinion have been broken down; and now at length the two hitherto divergent nationalist and internationalist currents How in one broad, stream of palviotism. Well may cosmopolitans and nationalists now tight side by side, for they see. as we see, that the Gorman peril, which for so long threatened Prance threatens the whole civilised world, and that (he cause of Prance is indeed the cause of Immanitv.”