THE ENGLISH MIRACLE.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 July 1916, Page 9

THE ENGLISH MIRACLE.

GLOWING TRIBUTE BY M. CLEMENCEAU.

WAR HAS MARE US NO LONGER INSULAR,

M. Clemenceau, the redoubtable French statesman and editor of that 'most pungent of newspapers, L'Homme Enchaine, contributes a remarkable preface to the French translation of a book describing Great Britain's effort in the war, by M. Jules Destree, the Belgian Socialist deputy. M. Destree gives almost unmeasured praise to the British nation; Mr. Clemenceau endorses his eulogy with enthusiasm, and his endorsement has a special value, as M. Clemenceau is the most typical Frenchman of this day. He frankly takes a purely French standpoint, and starts by stating the French "will-to-win." From that stand: point and by that aim England is approved for what she has done and is doing. "This war," he writes, "is not being waged for the possession of a town, or a province, or a colony. We arc fighting for our freedom, for the existence of our race. There is no longer any other question but this: Which of the two hostile groupings will survive and continue its history down the centuries? A frightful death struggle is on, into which each people throws the last ounce of its gold, the last drop of its blood.

'"Monseieur Destree, in the book before us, tells ns about England, about her naval and military effort, the resolutions that inspire her. and he tells us the finest and most comforting things. "England did not want war; one must repeat this in her praise; bvit one must add, alas! to her confusion, that she did not at all foresee it. But fertile violation of Belgian neutrality no one can say when she would have drawn the sword.

•'Behold her now in the struggle. Slowly, but with an obstinacy that nothing shakes or disturbs, great Albion ha is made herself a military Power. She has piled up guns, shells and battalions. She bristles witnyOOO/lflO of bayonets. Over the whole vast globe, wherever the Cicrman nettle has had to be torn up, her soldiers have turned up their sleeves and cleared the field.

"One renders thanks to tlie English Fleet because it lias been able, without stirring, without firing a gun-shot, to annihilate the Merman menace, to blockade the enemy, to assure supplies for our armies. It is true; though silent, its mounting guard is none the less full of grandeur. "But tlie English miracle is not there. The English miracle lias not been wrought at sea, Dreadnoughts, cruisers, torpedoes! Well, it is only the English tradition. But what has made the ancient northern island soar in the esteem and admiration of mankind, is that she has, for the first Jime in her thousand years of history, ceased to be an island, ceased to think and act as a mere island. She has embodied herself into the Continent by her fine, handsome men who have heroically held the line in the trenches of Flanders, their short pipes in their teeth, by her guns and her convoys, and, above all, the high serenity with which she has accepted, on our ancient soil, a destiny of pain and hitter struggle.. "Yes, that is splendid., because it is not at all the work of an hour, but the inevitable conclusion of a history of ten centuries.

"Other, nations have, on these epic battlefields of Europe, shed more blood than England. Others have undergone assaults more violent, have had te tie-, velop a mote desperate heroism before the onrush of tlie barbarians. But no nation has resolved, with mora method or decision, to go on to the very end of the task. No nation has experieuasd so complete a metamorphosis in its manners, in the exercise of its rights and its claims to be independent."