The Daily News. MONDAY, AUGUST 1. "RUE KING EDOUARD VII."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 96, 1 August 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, AUGUST 1. "RUE KING EDOUARD VII."

Time was when the loyal Frenchman detested the English, and the cry, "Perfide Albion," was on every Gallic lip. Time was, too, when every self-respect-mg English motlier hoped her boy would grow big and bony to fight the French. Mere meeting, was sufficient inducement for the English and the French to fight, and the bitterness was in bone and smew and marrow of the peoples. Before the "entente" the French music halls lampooned the English, and the national caricature was of a large, ugly man, with check clothes, big feet, squintmg eyes and paving-stone teeth. In theatres one might hear the common cry, A has les Anglais!" and the cheap tripper from London in the streets of Paris was the butt of the gamin and the ohif■orner. The English were "impossible"; they were "these droll barbarians," "can: aiUe"-any thing detestable. Paris was, and is, the Mecca of art of the holiday- , making crowd, the student's half-way house, and the home of international gaiety. The Englishmen escape to Paris because, the French are frankly joyful, and do not think it wrong to laugh in the streets or to feed themselves on the (boulevards. The English, "who take their pleasures sadly," by contact in Paris, Nice, or anywhere in broad' France, slip out of their cloaks of rigid solemnity and' become gay, too. The English learned to be liked in' Paris,because, reserving the best of their national characteristics, their "sang froid," their assurance and poise, they frankly liked French, cheerfulness. The French have a reputation not only for cheerfulness and gaiety, but for an excess of, the latter; tut it is the foreigner in France who has l made it necessary for the French to pretend to be much more "rapid" than they are. So when King Edward desired to escape from the grind of kingship at Home, he went to France. He charmedl Frenchmen because, nvhen in France, he was French. His simple acts of mere courtesy impressed the most courteous of all peoples. Once, when he had alighted from a carriage j to step into the house of the President, the tricolor of France was laid on the steps. With the utmost simplicity King Edward stooped -and picked it up, hanging it on the balustrade. He would no* walk on the flag that had once been the greatest flag that waved. That touched the hearts of the French people—it was so French! Again, the French are emotional, demonstrative and l vivacious. King Edward, at a public meeting with President Eallieres, saluted him on the cheek in the French way. These cold, unemotional English, these bulldogs; ah no, my friends, you have not seen their King! King Edward appeared at Cannes once wearing a red tie. All France wore red ties thereafter. The French are distinctive and individual in their manners, dress and action, but the influence of King Edward was so great in France that he was the leader of men's fashions in the ibouleyard, as well as in "the R'ow." It is notalble that in France, where King Edward was so well liked, that he was, except on State occasions, "a citizen." There is a photograph >=howin,e the King, at Aix to eee an aeronlane flight. The King is merely one of the French crowd; there is no limelight, no isolation, no hi.n+n-'r. and for this the French liked Kin? Edward and learned to like the English better, because of him. The Kinp saw in the French the ingredients for lastinnfriendship, the healing once and for all of old sores, the joint appreciation of national greatness and qualities. And so he founded "L'Entente Cordiale" in 1898. It was founded in sentiment, and in sentiment it lives. The six hundred members are banded together to perpetuate friendly intercourse between Gaul and Briton. The scholarships that enable the winners to study in France are by way of cementing international understanding and sympathy, and the entry of Englishmen into French universities (and vice versa) is useful. Seeing that King Edlward was a great moral and social influence in Republican France, as in his own monarchy, the French naturally hold his memory in reverence; and we are told' in the cables that the municipality of Paris, in completing a new road, will call it "Rue Edouard VII." A more graceful tribute could not be paid "by a great republic to a great monarch and monarchy. In order to understand how potent has been the influence of King Edward! on foreigners and in foreign countries, it is necessary to examine their public acts, read . their sight's, and note their tributes. The other day Sjr Wilfrid Laurier, a French Canadian, told a fpreign audience mainly composed of United States Americans—that the British Monarchy was the finest system in the world, and. in similar words, General Louis Botha, the Dutch Prime Minister of a British dominion, has repeated'lv referred to the privilege of living under the English Crown. The unique tribute Parisians pay to the late Kins Edward is by way of showing grati- , hide for the greatest diplomatist's greattest feat of unstudied diplomacy.