ANGLOPHOBIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 2237, 14 January 1897, Page 50

ANGLOPHOBIA.

Once upon a time three Frenchmen, augurs all and members of the Academy, sat them down to Condemn the island whose name is vaguely familiar and whose inhabitants they imagine aboriginal 6avages. " Tha English, 1 ' declared the first, in that gaily tone wbich is assured by ignorance — " tbe English are all drunkards." " Yes," murmured the second, complacently nodding his head like a Chinese toy, " the countiy of fog." The third flashed a smile of approval upon his colleagues, and for his share of the controversy demanded the assent of an Englishman. "Yes, we are all drunkards," agreed tho Englishman with a stout gravity, unwilling to shake their child- like credulity ; and instantly the question wai brushed

aside as though it had received a final, Irrevocable answer. Such is tho temper wherein we are considered hy our next-door neighbours, and we shall have a right to resent the heresy when our own judgment of Franca is clarified. Tbe un travelled Englishman appear* to believe that Paris is inhabited by » mob of ruffians, who cultivate loose morals upon a diet of *nails; at any rate he persists in regarding bit traditional enemy with an unreasoning contempt wbich the slightest knowledge of the truth would dispel. Insular prejudice on the one hand, continental obstinacy on the other, are ceaselees hindrances to an amicable approach, and, remembering oar own misjudgment, we contemplate the fallacies of France in a spirit rather of curiosity than of indignation. In truth, the two countries are separated by something else than the winds and the waves of the Chancel. The Straits of Dover are tho very begetters of mystery, and though they may be traversed in a brief two hours, the voyage from either shore seems enough to obscure the keenest vision and to tangle the freest intelligence in the meshes of superstition. And if he who sets out upon the enterprise commonly returns with a trunk full of falsehoods, what shall be his fate who warms bis hatreds at his own fireside?. His lack of* adventure shall prove a constant stumbliug- block to peaceful amenity ; he shall sit and mumble in impenetrable ignorance ; in. age be shall repeat the tales wtaerowith tbe old wives beguiled his childhood. And since it 'n upon our side that the greater cumber embarks, it is upon theirs that the misunderstanding is the more wilful and desperate. Paris, then, 1b suffering most acutely from Anglophobia, and one knows not to what indiscretion the madness will hurry her. The disease, old as history itself, has changed with thti centuries, and to long aa it sprang

from an acknowledged enmity, it waa neither virulent nor incurable. Tbe hatred which incites two combatants of tried courage yields easily to honourable treatment; and even when Joac< of Aro died a martyr's death at Rouen, w-fceti Calais was scored or Mary's h6art v wl-eii Marlborough routes? tbe forces «£ th* great- king, t,h*' malady wai leao violent than at this prevail fc day, wtten you must seek its causes in prejudice and catchwords. For how much folly has Albion's imagined perfidy been responsible 1 Aad it is the phrase, not the reality, that sows the seeda of poison. Indeed, the disease gtew as th* infection declined, and it waa alr^dy dacg6rons whesv Napoleon the Tnird held court at the Taileries, and the masterpieces of Offenbach were whistled upon the Boulevards. Ridicule was then the rampant symptom, and the keenest sufferers were the authors of vaudeville and comic opera. They, in their hallucination, invented a monstei such as never whs seen, ami dubbed him an Englishman. He was portentous, indeed, this sorry child of darkness and of fog. No sunshine sparkled on his duaky youth, and stern vulgarity wrapped round his middle age as with a mist. Meanwhile, as if to atone for the sourness of his temper, his fancy was loudly expressed in whiskers, red waictcoats, box-coats, and buttons big as saucers. He was as impossible mixture of Pecksniff and little Mr Bouncer. Not the mo9t grimly hag-ridden country in the world could have produced him ; yet he appeared like as life to a generation of sightseers, and since less tfaaa a year ago he walked the stage digguised in the trappings of a mediaeval herald, iz i% plain that he still serves to void the s^iean of iha belated Parisian. But the last viedins of Anglophobia are at once more dangerous and less amicable. It is the journalists of Paris that are now most bitterly infected with the hatred of England. In their loudly-expressed loathing of the unknown country acroaß the Channel they forget their legitimate revenge; anel they would pretend to fold the German to their breast, as they long since welcomed his beer, it by the crete&cd fchw could put another

insult upon th« loajfc«d tatand. JFqx tfeeffl tbe Englishman, is a veritable bogey~a composite monster with tha maw of the outriob, the beak of a hawk, tha claws of a tiger, the manner of a clergyman, and tbe cunning of an ape. This terrific oroature, lays the French journalist, roams up and down the world, impelled only by the lost; of plunder and blood; bat he It happiest when he i» robbing tbe honest Frenchman of hit due or cajoling the mild-mannered Belgian on the Congo into tho forfeiture of bit ivory. Above all, this shamelet* hybrid it alert : if the son never sets on bis empire bit eye never closes in sleep ; and ever from beneath his drooping lid be espies some fresh occastou for rain and outrage. To his impious ingenuity no limit is set. — Macmillan's Magazine.