Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, JANUARY 29, 1934. BRITISH TRAITS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 54, Issue 92, 29 January 1934, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, JANUARY 29, 1934. BRITISH TRAITS.

The fierce .attack on Britain made by a French scent magnate the other day lends interest to the views of a countryman of M. Coty’s, M. Andre Maurois, who in an essay on the English character, attempts once more to give a picture of the Englishman as the Frenchman sees him. While disclaiming any idea of analysing national psychology —which he is ■convinced does not exist —he attempts to extract what elements have persisted of the picture which the Frenchman has formed of the Englishman for a hundred years_ past. The characteristic which M. Maurois places at the head of his list is the respect for force, which finds expression in the Englishman’s quality of tenacity. “This conception of invincible tenacity, the well-worn but classic image of the bulldog, who cannot be persuaded to let go, that is the first prop in the image of England as it forms in the mind of the ordinary Frenchman.” The second trait is that the English are a people who are difficult to understand, ihe Frenchman loVes to construct an exact picture of, the future. The Englishman is profoundly suspicious of any such thing. M. Maurois places next the virtue of national unity, to which the ordinary Frenchman ascribes the strength and permanence of England. It is the easier to obtain because party differences in England go far less deep than they do in France, and this quality affords in French eyes the power of collective recovery in times of difficulty. Next comes the capacity of the English people for happiness. The ordinary Frenchman, when he sees the Englishman’s easy leisure, his dislike for too much work, the large place given to sport in his education, obtains the impression of a people always on holiday. M. Maurois admits that there may be a mask of humour, a refusal to reveal feelings that may even be called acute, but there is also the natural optimism of a people that’ has never been beaten. The average Frenchman is apt to think that England after the war is a changed country. M. Maurois does not believe it, and cites all the permanent elements of the country, t e Puritanism of its literature, the toughness of its schoolboys, the solidity of the Monarchy, the revival of Liberalism the power of Methodism, even free trade, which can still excite controversy almost passionately religious.