The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1896. THE ENGLISH.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 147, 21 December 1896, Page 2

The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1896. THE ENGLISH.

Notwithstanding the fact that a certain amount of jealousy exists between certain sections of the peoples of France and England, yet their are Frenchmen who are prepared frankly and honestly to do justice from a ] French standpoint to the English character. Among others M. Henry de Lourville in his preface to " The Labour Question in England" by Paul de Rousiers says : — " There is a certain feeling of astonishment at the sight of this people^ believed by its neighbours to be rather boorish, neither refined nor well instructed, and but summarily educated, coming ro the front everywhere, not by force of arms — for your Englishman is not a fighting maD, and does not boast of cementing society by blood end iron — but by persistent, prompt, daring, and intelligent action in every direction. As manufacturers and traders, Englishmen have surpassed Carthage or V T enice or any other power that ever was, and at the same time they are pioneers and colonists of the first order. . . . Not one empire, but a series of empires, has arisen as if by ma<?ic in the most distant parts of the globe, founded by the unfetted enterprise of British colonists. . . . Never before have such freedom and such dispersion and yet such unity of views ancl action been seen in any people, without fixed plan, without centralised administration, and unassisted in any way by official control. The whole is but the natural outcome of the individual organisation which to a French eye seems so incomplete. This great work has really been done by these ignorant, half educated barbarians I ... England has conceived education as a simple thing. Her characteristic method can only be described as an endeavour to make men, as the prime element of all prosperity England is first and toremost a great school for men." M. Rousier?, to gather material for his book, travelled about the country, and made a point of interviewing the working man in bis bone. Tie " Spectator" says

that he is as entertaining as Herodotus, which, although well meant is rather a doubtful compliment.