SAVED BEFORE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 July 1941, Page 7

SAVED BEFORE

FRANCE WILL RISE AGAIN. There was once a France, corrupt, betrayed and cowardly, that was saved bj r a peasant girl, says the “New York Times.” There was once a France saved by soldiers who were not well armed or Well trained, but who were singing a I new song that would not let them go | anywhere but forward, though all hell .was mobilised to enslave them again. There was once a France that lost a 1 war and paid a ransom, but nevertheless remained free and French. There was once a France whose soldiers laid their bodies down many thousands strong in front of the fortress of Verdun, so that an enemy of the French people and of their civilisation might not pass. There was once a France where liberty had sprung in fire and glory out of a long suppression; where men wrote, painted and composed in a very ecstasy of new freedom; where, for the humblest, life was an art, decent, civilised and individual; which had humanised its cities, wedded tradition with a quick appreciation of all that was witty, precise and novel, made itself a place of pilgrimage and a second homeland for all who loved the fine, the delicate, the genial, the penetrating, the mellow aspects of human existance. That France has been misled, conquered and silenced. Strangers of her own blood and of alie-i blood may now speak for her in Paris. But that France lives. She has the allegiance of her people, though they cannot proclaim it. She has, as ever, the respect and admiration of the free nations, not least our own. No act or word of her temporary lords of misrule will make us think of her as the less our friend. She will rise stronger and better loved from these days cf her tribulation.