FRANCE MUST BE HELPED

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 10, 7 October 1918, Page 6

FRANCE MUST BE HELPED

GENERAL PAU IN SYDNEY

(From the Sydney, "Daily Telegraph.")

. Sydney's beautiful harbour has become a jest in the mouths of many. Mark Twain, looking down on the boatload of pressmen that went to meet him, anticipated them.' "It's beautiful!" he said. Mark Twain had then seen about! as much of it as any other traveller who. says'itj is. beautiful.

The French mission saw it from its utilitarian y,ide—saw most of its 'wharves, inspected them slowly. And not ouo of them could find words to express himself. - The Harbour Trust were the hosts. The Premier, talking French, was along. He and General L'aii got togother and cracked jokes. At the point, of embarkation a score nf people assembled, and as the tricolour fluttered to the masthead and General Pau skipped aboard—his alertness is an extraordinary (feature about him—a oheer, like' a running' fire f of musketry went up. The general beamed and bowed. A minute later; as the launch sped around Dawes Point, he was standing in the bow, glasses' in hand, scanning the seascape, anon asking a question of a bystander. Meanwhile Commander d'Andre—he. of the all-conquering, moustache—was having a battle., witti the wind that tempered a glorious day afloat. : That moustache is not ornamental in a breeze. The remark was passed to—well, a Frenchman less gifted with such adornment, and not so .much in 'malice as in envy, ho declared: "That moustache; surely ho takes it qfJF every nightf" Well, he doesn't; it has braved the'battle—and the breeze.

General Pau has a good memory. A' day or so ago Mr. Holinan referred to the other States as parvenus. After seeing the wharfage at Woolloomooloo the general returned to that remark. "You are not parvenus," lie" said in French, "and you are certainly ■ not nouveaux venus."

"Ah," said Mr. Holman, "I referred only to the other States." "

■'_ There was more than a spirit of jocularity behind the general's' remark. The thing that struct him, he said, was the fact that so;much had been accomplished on the waterfront. The extraordinary field for development was what appealed to M. Mathieu —a young man with the visions -of youth still' before him.

* Of all the visitors perhaps none was better fitted to appreciate what he had iseen than M. Motte, a big-woollen f manufacturer at Boubaix.

'"What do I think of it!" he exclaimed. "Sir, if you had 100,000,000 people the port would carry the population. {I have seen your immense stores of wool. How we do want that on the other side I We want it to give work to our men. In the Nord.Department; where I come from, there (ire certainly a million people who live' oh wool. The men are fighting now, of course; their wives and children have entered on the fifth year under the German yoke. But when the war is over we shall want your support to give them working material. We'want to organise now, so that the day the war is over the raw material will be poured from your vast stores to set our men at" work immediately. Else they will starve as their women and children are even now starving. "France must be helped I" he declared with emphasis. "The alliance must go on after the war. We must never forget the bond that has been established. The North of France is certainly among your best customers. It is but business to support a customer, and especially a customer like us I"

And then he added naively: "We are good pays, ,you know!" ' "We are full of spring—full of'buck, But now we have, no tools in our hands. . When wo do get them" back again we will work—work—work as we have always done, work as our fathers did before us. Lot.us never-forget there has been a war. Tell your tradesyour commercial travellers,, your consumers, your workers —'Never forget.' Never forget that Germany has been our enemy for four years—and more. Germany set the world on fire, and for four years.the best of mankind has been killed. It would be too easy if the , Germans wero not punished. They must be made to feel and realise what they have done. The Germans went .to war, as General Fochhas always insisted, to satisfy their passions. ' If they had waited 50 years they would have been masters without a war. But they wanted to settle tilings by military means to satisfy their passions. They must suffer. It only to civilise them, must be made to realise their position. And your workmen. They must realise that they must support their brothers—the workmen of Northern France."