FRANCE SINCE SEDAN

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21992, 16 January 1937, Page 15

FRANCE SINCE SEDAN

The French Republic, 1870-1935. By Jacques Bainville. Jonathan Cape. 254 pp. (12/6 net.)

The development of political affairs in France after the fall of Napoleon 111. in 1870 would have led the of the day into thinking that the Republic, which was established in haste while the Germans were still occupying northeastern France, could not be of long duration. Time proved the opposite. Unlike its two precursors, it was to last long, covering a period of 66 years. M. Jacques Bainville has left us a careful diagnosis of that Republic, and it is of greater est because he is himself an ardent Royalist. Not that he strives to prove that the Republic might easily have been a monarchy, but he does, establish the strange anomaly .that the system only lasted because, in spite of its being a Republic, it was consistently and obstinately conservative. This is pot an easy book to read. The fault lies, not with the translator, who has been so successful in translating M. Andre Maurois, but with the writer. The sentences are obscure and the construction of them is awkward. M. Bainville has not the gift of insight into personality; or it may be that he does not consider it a matter that suits the scope of the book. We do not get that flash of epigram which is so peculiarly French. He does not throw any new light on his. characters, which is the more disappointing as his book includes such outstanding and dramatic figures as Gambetta and Dreyfus, or more recently, Clemenceau, Briand, and Poincare. For the ordinary English reader the interest is too narrow. Mr Bainville directs a spotlight on the merely political workings of the Republic at a time when the historical stage is set for the World War and the cataclysmic years following it. He was not writing for the English; and this book must have a much greater interest for the Frenchman who presumably understands the shifting parties, frequent elections, and many ministries of France, .which so completely baffle those of us brought up in a steadier, constitutional atmosphere.