PERFIDIOUS ALBION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 87, 3 October 1911, Page 4

PERFIDIOUS ALBION.

Since I'entente eordiale has existed .between Briton and Caul, it is less the habit of the latter to accuse the former o! l-cin«r the unspeakable person most nations believe him to be. It. is still the custom for most nations to regard the Englishman as ''impossible," the chief grounds for the accusations being the Englishman's calmness and success. Pierre de Coulcvain, a brilliant Frenchman, Ims set down a written portrait of vlut lie believes is an Englishman, but it is obvious the Englishman he writes of is the Englishman of wealth and station. Listen:—"hi all languages the Englishman has been proclaimed a hypocrite. egotistical and perfidious. Hypoci isy and perlidv would be incompatible with the simple mind and powerful physique of the Englishman. Egotism would be a more natural outcome. The Englishman is less perspicacious than the 1' reiK'hman. but he is much more refined. He is | he mail who eats most elegantly! and wiio has more respect for others and for himself. Thanks to his early education, lie has a clean imagination, a nram in which there are, the fewest possible coarse pictures, as he has received no coarse impressions from an uncultured peasant woman, lie owes his individual distinct inn, his frank, youthful look, and perhaps the limpid expression of his eyes this dean imagination. The strong English language, devoid of delicate shades, would make it impossible to talk of the low realities of life. The French language allows us to plav with such subjects without any great,'inconvenience. The Englishman has been brought up not to speak of them, and they are always repugnant to him. hi England it is understood tliat certain subjects of conversation must be reserved for the club, the smoking-room, the room, or the bed-room, and, as a rule, they are not discussed elsewhere. This is merely a matter of discipline! Thanks to snobbishness, this reserve is imitated by the lower classes. Tn a good family in England a cook presiding at the servants' dinner-table would no? tolerate such conversation and allusions as we hear oil our stage and in our social circles. She would consider all this fit for the stables. An Englishman may have the lowest of vices, but, his words will be all right. This is not the effect of hypocrisy, but of education and civilisation. Our neighbors are better educated and more civilised than we are That, is all. John Bull does not, resist the temptation of stealing his neighbor's wife and ass. nor of infringing the sixth commandment any more than any other man. Tie docs not boast of this, Ihoush. and he even al tempts to conceal his delinquencies. This is not due to hypocrisy. but to an innate reserve. ITo'has the natural modesty peculiar to all binanimals. I have several limes had a revelation of liis higher instinct which is really virile. Women learn modesty, but, with men it is natural. I remember once meeting a young Englishman coming along the line de Rivoli. 1 was smiling to myself at his British walk, when I saw an individual holding a card out to him. probably a transparent one. the blood rushed to the young man's face, coloring it to the very roots of his hair He was carry a very carefullv rolled umbrella, which lie held horizontally. With this he fashed aside the lile wletch, just as he might have m©vcd some filth from his path. He then, continued his way, unmoved. The blush which came involuntarily to his fate was not due to hypocrisy, but to the revolt of his instincts as a. gentleman." On the other hand, the habit or intro-

spection and self-accusation is stronv in the class of which de Couvelain writes. He is much fonder of praising tlvo foreigner than himself, and is repeatedly a.sking himself to "wake up."