WHITHER FRANCE?-HER HERITAGE OF 1789.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 235, 3 October 1936, Page 7 (Supplement)

WHITHER FRANCE?-HER HERITAGE OF 1789.

Hou) As A Nation She Is Set Apart.

IDEAS OF THE REVOLUTION LIVE ON,

(By ANDRE MAUROIS.)

ARISTIDE BRIAND, speaking of another French statesman, once remarked: "The trouble with X is that he knows history. He lives in a .cemetery. He takes himself for Mirabeau one day, Danton the next, Robespierre the next. He governs in the past. And the result is he neglects to understand the present, although it's right in front of his nose." And a Frenchman could say as much mi many cultivated foreigners. These foreigners are thoroughly familiar with the history of the French Revolution because the drama of its story makes it fascinating to read and has fixed it in everybody's mind. When they think of France they, too, are living in a .cemetery. Whenever a political tremor shakes •the country they remember the taking of the Bastille. They are not altogether wrong, as modern France can show some of the characteristics which led her into the Revolution of 1789. but they are mistaken inasmuch as the industrial revolution and the effects of ■the World War caused as great an upheaval in France as in the rest of the world. Let us here try to see how •much of the revolutionary tradition in France remains vital and how much, On -the contrary, seems out of date. Before 1789 a deep gulf had opened ■in France between the common people and middle classes on the one hand and the aristocracy and higher clergy on the other. In England the squire might have his faults, but he rendered jrreat services; he lived in his own village and administered it himself, being intimate with his farmer tenants and busying himself with their concerns. The duke might play cricket on the village green with his gardener. Absence of Safety Yalve. But in France the nobility lived at Versailles and had to live there to retain •the king's favour. These nobles enjoyed many privileges long abandoned by the English aristocracy, who were subject, like the rest of Englishmen, to the common law, to taxation, to the authority of Parliament. The primary .objective of the Frcnch Revolution was -to obtain those liberties which Voltaire and Montesquieu had observed in England, although these philosophers may ;have over-estimated their range. The absence of any safety valve, such as Parliament, in pre-revolutionary France, explains the violence of an .explosion long pent up. In the years following 1789, concurrently with the ■uprising of the townspeople, the village -was in revolt against "the chateau," and 'French political life still shows unhealed scars left by this often ferocious struggle. The equalitarian spirit of •1789 still glows among the common -people and the lower middle class, and -resentment still lingers among the descendants of those who suffered in 1793.

Even to-day the peasantry obscurely /dreads the domination of "the chateau, 3 although the aristocrats are now generally poverty-stricken and in any case harmless. Broadly speaking, it may be said that in France the "little man" 'i 3 always in more or less open conflict with the "bJjjr man." In other countries —in the United States, for example —the head of a great enterprise has long been the object of admiration rather than of hostile envy. In France, ever since 1875, the popular suffrage has nearly always been aimed against the "men of substance."

Wide National Differences. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, therefore, the legacy of the Revolution created wide differences between France and other nations. An Englishman's ' choice between being Liberal or Conservative was a free one and did not profoundly sunder one man from another. Between Democrat and Republican in America there was no deep emotional cleavage, at any rate; until recent years. But a Frenchman of the Right and a Frenchman of the Left (a "blue" and a "white") could find no common ground, except a patriotic one and in resistance to an external enemy. Internally, everything divided them Certain families stood firm for the spirit of 1789 and others as stubbornly against it. Men were Right or Left, blue or white, in every activity of life, in their philosophic ideas, in their literary tastes. These passions were transmitted in the blood. They .were vigorous and rigorous. They may b<! seen portrayed by a writer of the Left in Anatole France's "Historie Contemporaine" or, as depicted by the Right, in the novels by Maurice Barres, or viewed objectively in the "Tableau des Partis -en France," by Andre Siegfried. The first demand of the Revolution was for liberty. Did it succeed in giving this, to Frenchmen? That is open to question, and Andre Tardieu. in a recent book, says boldly, "No." But the fact remains that the Frenchmen desired, and believed they had gained, liberty. * Therefore it is impossible, even to-day, to compare France with nations like Russia and Germany. These two countries, subject to authoritarian government until the World War, have never regarded liberty as the highest good. To attain certain ends or advantages they are prepared to sub mit uncomplainingly to a tyrannical' discipline. The Frenchman has always been capable of discipline in time of war, but, in default of proof to the contrary, I believe that in peace-time he is more impatient of any hierarchy than other men. Even the trade union authority in Franoe must constantly request approval of its actions. An lndiviaualiot. The Frenchman, far more than the German, and more .even than the AngloSaxon, is an individualist. The Revolution gave deeper roots to that individualism by achieving the partition of large properties. France contains 9.000,000 peasants who own their land. That is another trait which make 3 any comparison between France and Eus3ia, or France and Spain, very rasji. Communism may attract the industrial working classes in France, but to conquer the peasants and the lesser bourgeoisie it would have to accept private property on a small and a medium scale. France is also indebted to a Revolution and to Napoleon, its soldier-organ-iser, for the completion of a process of centralisation begun by Louis XIV. In -pre-revolutionary times, whereas England was governed by local authorities and numerous justices of the peace, the whole of France was ruled — often very well ruled —by a few royal intendants sent to the several provinces from Paris. The capital remained the brain of the country, in France more than elsewhere. The Revolution destroyed the old framework of provinces and opposed any federal feeling. The prefects and sub-prefects, heirs of the intendants, administer the provinces in the name of Paris.

Revolutionary Survivals. Finally, one last and very dangerous legacy left by 1789 to 1930—the clubs, which presume to impose their will on the elected assemblies. Originally they were known as the Jacobins or the Feuillants; to-day they are styled administrative commissions or party congresses or popular committees. If their authority became too continuous or strong they would completely block the normal running of parliamentary government.

We may now sum up what survives of the French Revolution: the Centralisation of France, the patriotic tradition of the Jacobins, fervour of political passion, the cult of equality and a respect for the idea of liberty. All in all, — it is this revolutionary tradition which has so far dominated the politics of the Third Republic. One of its first actions, the taking of the Bastille, gave France her national festival; its volunteer soldiers bequeathed to their posterity the "Marseillaise" and the "Chant du Depart. Between 1875 and 1935 no Minister of republican France could make a speech without calling upon the "immortal principles" of 1789. But for several years now the prestige of these principles has been threatened, from the extreme Left- and from the extreme Right. Concept of Liberty Undermined. The tradition of 1789 has become attenuated in the eyes of many, but not all, of those Frenchmen who admired,

or even revered it, by reason of three historical facts. These are: the industrial revolution, the war of 1914-18, with its resultant upheaval in the distribution of wealth, and the revolutions in Russia, Italy and Germany. The steady progress of the industrial revolution throughout the nineteenth century slowly undermined the sacred concept of liberty. It was in the name of economic liberty that, during those generations, there emerged the joint stock companies, large-scale manufacture and cut-throat competition. These methods brought happiness to the middle classes, who were the victims of slumps, nor to the workers, who fell a prey to unemployment. Free competition, the fetish of the Manchester school of economists, produced great triumphs in the ninteenth century; thereafter it was less fortunate. By allowing the growth of vast fortunes it made a gulf between rich and poor as deep as that which formerly lay between nobles and commoners. Gradually, a breach has been made in it, by State control on one side, by trusts and cartels on •'the other. Slow to Relinquish Old Beliefs. Then the Socialists, followed by the Communists, tried to supplant the old party struggles by the idea of a class war. This idea met with little success in France before the World War. The Socialist party had considerable power among the working classes ,but its internationalism was repugnant to most Frenchmen, who realised that their own safety was bound up with that of their country. The lower irfddle class and the civil servants favoured the Radical party, which claimed to be the true representative of the Revolution. The Radicals were the most numerous party and were most frequently called upon to form a Government. They held fast, like the men of '89, to the belief that liberty and property are inalienable rights of mankind. This Radical bourgeoisie was shattered by the war, the fall of the franc and the great sluifip of 1931. As its own property melted away, it joined hands with those who were fighting against the great proprietors. The Radicals had often enough been described as having "their hearts on the Left, their wallets on the Right." But when their (vallets emptied their hearts carried them away. At the same time they heard all around them a chorus of voices pouring scorn on the "immortal principles" and especially on the "liberty" which had been lauded by .so many generations of Frenchmen.

His "Cherished Liberty." The truth is that the ideal of 1789, equalitarian in essence, is in conflict with all societies in proportion as these are organised and hierarchical. The people always hope at least to set up the rule of true equality, but the wise men, even among their own ranks, know well that this is utopian. Discipline is always resuscitated simply because society must live. "The basic doctrine of the Revolution, that every individual is inalienably entitled to think freely, to judge for himself, to rule his own conduct without dictation," remains dear to the average Frenchman. Is it compatible with the travail of a world in the throes of transformation? the Frenchman impose a different discipline on himself to survive? That is possible. But I should be surprised if— ruling out a period when national defence demanded it —lie made any prolonged renunciation, in whose favour, so ever it might be, of his "cherished liberty."