THE DEAR NEIGHBOURS. [By Max O'Rell.]

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 79, 6 December 1884, Page 4

THE DEAR NEIGHBOURS. [By Max O'Rell.]

Some little time ago a rumour reached j London in the afternoon that the Chinese I had annihilated the French troops in Ton- j kin. The great event was immediately! announced in the newspapers' contents bills in letters five inches long. The rumour turned out to be a hoax. Two days later the little French garrison gained an important victory over the Celestial troops, and the same contents bills announced the sad intelligence in minute type, carefully hidden among other more or less uninteresting news. Oh ! the dear neighbours ! A Royal English prince dies in the south of France. From Cannes to Calais, let the French nation, along the whole line, pour forward to show their sympathy with a Queen and a nation in mourning, and not a leader will appear in England to comment on the fact. But let an anonymous pamphlet, not even written by a Frenchman, appear on the Boulevards, calling upon the French people to sink the island of John Bull at the bottom of the sea, and although no serious French paper will so much as notice it, the "Time3 n and all the English dailies will for days be filled with leaders on the subject. Oh ! the dear neighbours ! Let books appear in France, written with a view to acquainting the French people with the virtues as well as the oddities of this great nation, and some brutal English penman will immediately publish his experience of Parisian ill-famer 1 resorts— which he, of coui'se, visited en tout Men tout honneur, for the benefit of his countrymen. Oh ! the dear neighbours ! If you go to certain dark by-streets in London, you will see advertised in some shop windows, "French specialities." If you go to the same kind of streets in Paris you will see " Specialities Anglaises." Oh • the dear neigh 00ur.% ! Let the French send an army of 200,000 men to the Crimea to assist the English in keeping the Russians out of Constantinople, and you will read in English books : — " We prevailed against Russia with but a very small force. " IS ot a word will be said about General Bosquet, who, atlnkermann, 1 prevented the whole of the " small force " from being annihilated. I have seldom met ' Avith Englishmen who even remembered the tname of Bosquet, or had heard of his Zouaves. Oh ! the dear neighbours ! ! Lot the French cast loving glances at the I western coast of Madagascar, and John Bull, who always bears the Tenth Commandment in mind as he looks at the map of the world, is the first to exclaim, "Stop thief ! " Oh ! the dear neighbours ! Let the English honestly ask the French to join them in trying to put down anarchy and Arab! Pashai n Egypt, and they will refuse ; but some French papers will be found ready, when the work is done, to set down in black and white their disappointment at seeing Arabi on the losing side ; nay more, should the cholera break out in the land of the Pharaohs about the same time, charitable suggestions will be heard about its having been imported from India, in order to give the English an excuse for not leaving their poor victims too hurriedly. Oh ! the dear, dear neighbours ! When I look around among ray friends and acquaintances in Franco and England, and think of the kind manner in which 1 invariably hear France and the French spoken of by Englishmen, and England and her people spoken of by my countrymen, I ask myself : Where are the haters ? Who wants to fight ? It seems to be a thousand pities that two regiments cannot be formed, one in the Faubourg Montmartic, the other in Fleetstreet. Then, perhaps, the two bellicose parties might be induced to go and light it out to their hcait's content in some neutral spot in the distance— say Jericho.