NEW SPIRIT OF FRANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 July 1939, Page 5

NEW SPIRIT OF FRANCE

. MORE UNITED THAN EVER. France is more solidly united today than at any time since the Great War, says the American journalist Miss Virginia Cowles, writing of her recent observations in France. The feeling of despair that swept the country last autumn has given way to a new spirit of resolution. France’s land frontiers are fully manned and her coastal lines bristle with anti-aircraft batteries and new Bin coastal guns. The nation has risen again in its ancient strength to save its civilisation from destruction. As Andre Siegfried once said, “It is only the threat of war than can make the French abandon the luxury of fighting among themselves." France is a nation of individuals, and each individual maintains his own carefully cultivated point of view. But today you will find the waiter, the taxicab driver, the dressmaker and the newspaper dealer all of the same opinion. The situation, they say, is intolerable; it is impossible to live in such tension; if war is inevitable, let’s have it over and done with and get back once again to the business of living. This question is not only confined to Paris. On a trip which I took with a friend along the Franco Belgian and German frontiers, through the manufacturing towns of the north and the villages of Alsace, I found the same resolute spirit. To the average Frenchman war is not glory; it is an unpleasant business that must be got over as quickly as possible. But all along the way we were told that France could no longer make concession; whatever the sacrifices demanded of her, her civilisation must not perish.