The Press Saturday, August 15, 1925. An Interpreter of France.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18461, 15 August 1925, Page 12

The Press Saturday, August 15, 1925. An Interpreter of France.

A man may be justly proud if at the end of his life he can look back and say that he has done something to interpret sympathetically .another nation to his countrymen and thereby helped to develop a better international understanding. James Bryce could lock back 011 such a record. Ilis " American Commonwealth " was, and is, a classic in the British Empire and the United States. Mr G. 31. Trevelvan, the historian of the Risorgimento. has done more than any man of his time to educate British people in the making of modern Italy, and his enthusiasm has sped far beyond his books. A third such interpreter, less well known to the average reader than either of these men, was J. E. C. Bodlev, who died the other day. Bodley was an English Conservative who at one time promised to have a distinguished political career, but turned from home affairs to a study of French politics. The chief fruit of his study was his " France, 1 ' which, published in 1898, soon took its place as the best book in English on the French political system. This, however, is quite an inadequate description of the work. Though it Is not encyclopaedic, it deals with a good deal more than politics. It is a history of French political ideas, and it contains shrewd observations on French customs and character. In point of style it is superior to Bryce's famous study. It is more polished and more ironical. On such subjects few books so readable can have been written. Such sentences as " The tradition of Republican purity "is like that of the smoothness of " the Mediterranean, which survives "the adverse testimony of the ages," mark the stylist. Of the maxim that " every people has the Government it " deserves," and its application to France by some English critics, he remarks that " for England to apply "•it to France in her distress is like '' a matron, prosperously married and " settled, telling a less fortunate sister, " whose chosen lord and master has " turned out a riotous spendthrift or "an unseemly lunatic, that every " woman has the husband she deserves." Bodley illustrated the contention of the literary school of historians that there need not be a livorce between learning and style. The method of the writer who wrote so penetratingly, so lucidly, and withal so sympathetically, of what to nearly ill Englishmen was a dull tangle, is vorthy of notice. He spent seven rears in France before he finished his )ook, and when he went there he was 10 stranger to the country. He made t his business to study all phases of French life, and no one knew better ;han he that Paris is not France. This is a mistake, however, that one is liable to make even to-day.' If a eolonial takes an intelligent interest in English affairs, he knows that Lonlon is not England. He reflects that ;he provinces have a vigorous political individuality; sometimes the leading Drovincial newspapers are quoted in lis cable news. He has no such knowedge of France. How often is a provincial French newspaper mentioned in tur news? Bodley studied the pro•inces, where tha roots of French life ire strongest, and this helps to give lis book its unique value. His ability ind' sincerity were warmly recognised n France itself. The book received he compliment of French translation, ind it was Bodley himself who, after >ain£ul experience of two other transators, prepared the version. The took and the translation appeared rhile relations between the two >eoples were far from friendly, but te said in the preface to the 1902 dition (when the Entente was about o be made) that he had suffered no liscourtesy in France, either from ritics or from the public. " The 'latter years which I have spent in ' France were enfevered by the ' Dreyfus affair, the Fashoda incident, 'and the Boer War, during which 'journalists on both sides of the ' Channel have done their best to cn- ' venom the relations of our two ' nations; yet never once during that ' acute period have I had a disobliging 'word addressed to me by a citizen ' of France in my capacity of an Eng'lishman." It was not that he was lot critical of French institutions and ,vays. His criticism of the weaknesses of the Parliamentary system s acute, and should be read by all students of democracy. Of the bitterless of controversy in France, he says that at the Revolution French people " acquired the habit, never 'since lost, of regarding all political ' controversy as a desperate struggle ' between irreconcilable elements, in ' which every lethal weapon was law- ' ful to use, and all tics of racial kin'ship Averc to be ignored." Wc may ake it that French opinion was inJuenced in its reception of " France " )y the rare equipment of the author, lis evident sincerity, his appreciation >f what was best in French life, and he irony and lucidity of his style. French critics recognised in this Engishman a writer with something of he French genius for exposition. Bodley's '' France " helped to make listory. Appearing a few years before he Entente was formed, it did somching to prepare English opinion for he change. It taught the truth that t is unfair and dangerous to judga a ation solely or mainly by its politics, le branded as a superstition the idea hat because the French were less apt han the English in their use of Parlialentary institutions, France was acordingly inferior to England. The Inglish Parliament, he said, exhibited he merits and not the defects of the ation; the Parliamentary system objured and crippled the finer qualities £ the French, to whose genius it was ot suited. Wc do not know whether lodley modified his opinions before e died; it would be most interesting » have his comments on the French

Republican system in the light of the war. To an outsider French politics do not seem to have improved materially, but the nation held through the agony of the war, and conquered. It is curious that in the greater Republic, America, there is a similar gap between politics and the finer qualities of the nation. It is said that dissatisfaction with Congress is increasing; indeed with many it has become despair. There is, therefore, tho same obligation as in the case of France not to judge the nation only by its politicians, but to look beyond, into the life of the people in all its aspects. The greatest value of the work of writers like Bryce and Bodley lies in their breadth and depth of view. j