A FRENCH VIEW.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9174, 18 June 1908, Page 3

A FRENCH VIEW.

Speaking of duty, there is an interesting estimate of the place of duty in the British character in a recent issue of the “Revue dea Deux Mondes,” written by a well-read and travelled Frenchman. M, (Jhevrillon is a keen student of English literature, and in support of his contentions quotes from Tennyson and George Eliot, Browning and Mrs Humphry Ward. He believes that the basis of the British character is duty. The cardinal difference between the British and the French is that the British have “duty” for their ideal, and the French “rights. ” He sees this overmastering conception of duty, and its consequent subordination of self, “in the cold and silent Wellington, as well as in the simple private who stands for hours in his place in the bulletriddled square. We see it in the laconic Nelson, who in the hour of battle pronounces but the single word, ‘Duty,’ and ,in the humble sailor nerved to face danger and death by that simple word more than by the most eloquent proclamation.” The French pursue the ideal of the equality of all men, but the English ideal is aristocratic and a survival of feudalism. This French observer sees in the “fagging” in the English public schools an instance of the value placed by the national mind on discipline. Cricket and football, in which subordination to the captain is essential to the success of the side, afford him similar evidence. In the observations of Kipling’s Scotch engineer about his engines he finds crystallised the instinct for order in the British race:— “They are all awa’; true beat, full power, the clanging chorus goes. Interdependence, abselute, foreseen, ordained, decreed, Now a” together, hear them lift their lesson, theirs an’ mine ; Law, orrder, duty, an’ restraint, obedience, discipline!” As a natural correlative to this conception of duty exists a demand for efficiency. The only test by which a British institution is judged is, “How does it work?” The institution may be illogical and irrational, but if it has practical value it is maintained. This he holds to be one of the secrets of the nation’s xaatness.