FRENCH AND ENGLISH.

Auckland Star, 2 September 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

FRENCH AND ENGLISH.

COMPLEMENTARY CULTURES. RUDYABD KIPUNG'S TRIBUTE (By CYRANO.)" A recent conversation with a travelled New Zealander turned to marriage customs, and he told me that on a visit to France he had been surprised at tho frankness of a prospective husband. This Frenchman, speaking to one who apparently was a stranger, referred openly, to the business side of the contract. If the bride did not bring the exact amount of the dowry stipulated for—l gathered that her father was trying to drive a bargain—there would be no marriage. There seems to have been precious little affection on his side at-any rate. I remarked to my New Zealand friend that euch an attitude was hard for Britons to understand and that I thought it primitive. I added, however, that we Britons perhaps did not realise that the "arranged" and bargained marriage was much more the rule in the world as a whole than our own romantic system of personal choice. I might have added that in the opinion of so good a judge as Miss Bctham-Edwards, ono of the most sympathetic and competent of English interpreters of France and the French, tho results of this marriage system are at least as satisfactory of our own. And probably few Frenchmen express themselves in such a mercenary spirit to strangers. Also, I read recently that a change is j coming over France in this respect, and that the marriage of personal choice is now more popular. In reply to my somewhat strong comment, my New Zealander said that lie thougUc in some respects French civilisation was ahead of English; it was much easier, for example, to talk to the French wage-earner about the affaire of the world than to his English prototype. I hastened to say that I believed it was so, and I recalled what an Englishman had told me who was an interpreter with the British Army in France throughout the whole of the war. Hie comment on tho difference between the intellectual atmosphere of a British mess and that of a French mess was incisive. Differences Between Allies. In the same week I read Mr. Rudvard Kipling's little tribute to France' iust published at the same time as his election to a French Academy—ami my thoughts turned again to the differences 'between the English and the French, differences which it would be useless to pretend did not and could not exist in the atmosphere of a life-and-death alliance. As the war years recede into the past, it is being admitted more.

I freely that the British did not get on with the French as well as was desired. You will find colonial and British soldiers who will say quite frankly that when they ecttled down in Cologne ae part of the army of occupation ' they found theinselvee more at home with the Germans than they had been with the French. It was not a fair comparison, for they had known France only in war, and now they were living in peace. Moreover, even in peace the Frenchman is chary about admitting strangers to his home circle, but apparently the German's hospitality is easier. At any rate, numbers of British soldiers sampled German home life and liked their hosts and hostesses. French Virtues. In his brief sketch of French virtues and his many experiences in France, Mr. Kipling offers an explanation that should be noted. English and French had been close companions through four years of agony, and had got on one another's nerves. "Think how one sickens after four hours in a crowded railway compartment." This, however, is far from accounting for everything. There are fundamental differences in customs and philosophy of life. The Englishman, besides perhaps making the profound tut common error of thinking the French frivolous, regards them as narrow, hard and unforgiving. On his part, the Frenchman thinks the Englishman stupid, hypocritical and sentimental. Mr. Kipling's analysis nclps us to understand both points of view, but tho Frenchman's more fully than, the Englishman's. He has written this book to explain France and not England. Like King Edward, of whose French leanings I wrote last week, he was piven a proFrench leaning as a boy, for his father, sent to Paris to organise the Indian court at' an international exhibition, I took his son with him. In later years! Mr. Kipling was much in France, and he saw it in the only way that can give an observer sight of tie full truth —he went off the beaten track and mixed with the people. There are fascinating little pictures of French peasant life in his book painted witli his charac-1 teristic descriptive touch. We see thepeasant carting manure loads on. a dou-j key's back up the terraced slope of his vineyards all day long, :iri<) spreading the stuff by hand among•.Ms vines. We. sen the farmer leaning against a slock, j immovable ox, and expounding the philosophy of "La Terre." Here is the [ basic fundamental fact of France, the! numbers, industry and thrift. of her peasantry. In any body of Frenchmen, iavs Mr. Kipling, the probability is that 75 nor cent will have plough-mould on j their boots. It is very different in Eng-; land. i The thrift tliat is such a feature of French life, and gives them a reputation for hardness, is linked with these deep roots in the soil. The Frenchman is thrifty by habit, and that habit is born of necessity. France is not so rich as England. Across the Channel wealth has flowed bounteously from manufacturing, but France has. chosen I

to keep her peasantry on the land, and as a consequence money is less plentiful. Another basic difference is that France is part of tho Continental system, and Britain is not. Britain is of Europe and yet outside it. The Briton in consequence cannot regard the German with the Frenchman's eyes. To the Englishman he is a former enemy, but why perpetuate enmity? Let us be good sportsmen and forget and forgive. The Frenchman sees the German as a neighbour across a land frontier, who twice j within lift} , years invaded his country. Besides, the Frenchman, being much the more logical of the two, does not confuse war with sport. He cannot understand the Englishman's attitude, and perhaps he murmurs the old phrase "Perlido Albion." Mr. Kipling shows how not only war, but preparation for war, colours the Frenchman's life differently from tho Englishman's. As he says, the British have never realised fully what conscription means. The English boy goes straight from school to work. The French youth has to do his service—in the days before the war two years, and for a while even three years of it. Now it is one year. He has to live in barracks, to eat very plain food, to herd with all classes, to march for long hours. What-we New Zealanders used to grumble about in our compulsory territorial system was a mere circumstance compared with what every young Frenchman has to go through. Mr. Kipling heard a foreign professor say to a French philosopher that he "guessed France lacked a certain seriousness of moral purpose"—by which probably he really meant that it did not adopt American "uplift" methods—to which the philosopher replied: "Ye-es. I' did my service with the Artillery." j "Who (asks Mr. Kipling) would more surely extract fun, irony and their true taste out of things as they pace, than | one who had boon forced to live under j bodily stress in the face of fact, to sweat and pant and cast him down in the mud, dust, and heat of manoeuvres—a unit among many thousands V A Complementary Civilisation. Mr. Kipling's tribute doe* not claim to be exhaustive, but it contains much to make the Englishman think Hβ ha-i lessons to learn from France, from the unwearying industry of her peasants and the good housekeeping of her wives to thi) " camaraderie" between French i officials and the coloured peonies of her j Umpire. The stage Frenchman of tradition is as ridiculous as the stage Irishman, and this book heightens his absurdity. There .are many Britons «ho love France and more who admire her. They will realise more fully than tl'O masses \ of their countrymen the truth of Mr. Kipling's summing-up that tlio civilisation of France is as incomprehensible as Britain's, but complementary to it. We are vitally interested in the fate of that civilisation. Only the othtr day an English journalist, who some years ago was expelled from France for the line he took over French policy, wrote of France ! as the last bulwark of freedom in Europe proper. •"Souvenirs nf Franco,," by KuJyard lypl.iug (Macuiillau uu.il Co.). J