FRENCH VIEWPOINT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 March 1939, Page 6

FRENCH VIEWPOINT

WAR AND OTHER LOSSES. Nothing makes a Frenchman dislike the English more than the assumption that in the pext way his country should provide the infantry while the English fight on the sea, in the air and in the factory, writes Mr D. R. Gillie in the “Spectator.” He is acutely aware that the very stuff of France is threatened, its flesh and blood. There were 43,000 more deaths than births in France in the first half of 1938. The suggestion that this irreplaceable material should be used as cannon-fod-der while the Anglo-Saxon makes shells strikes him as indecent. In the Great War 1,325,000 Frenchmen were killed as compared with 744,000 soldiers from Great Britain. Since the total population of France is smaller and more stable (so that the age groups are more equally proportioned) this meant.; that 8.8 per cent of the men of the United Kingdom between 20 and 45 were killed, but 18.2 per cent of the Frenchmen of the same age. This proportion was only surpassed in the case of Hungary with 18.7 per cent, whereas that for Germany was 15.5 per cent. In comparison with England the losses of the agricultural population were probably proportionately still heavier, for the industrial workman was rarer and could therefore be less easily spared from the factory. English visitors to France will do well to count the names on the village war memorials and ask what is the population of the parish. They ’"ill then understand why the country population is inclined to support M Bonnet and the Munich agreement.