VALIANT AND STRONG AS EVER.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 4817, 14 March 1918, Page 3

VALIANT AND STRONG AS EVER.

FRANCE HAS NOT BEEfc “BLED WHITE.” ' ARMIES NEVER SO GOOD. (By Edward Price Bell, in tlie Daily > MailJ • Mr. Edward Price Bell is the doyen of the United States newspaper correspondents in England. A native of Indiana, he has represented the Chicago Daily News m London continuously since 1900Mr, Bell achieved national celebrity a year ago by his series, of striking letters to The Times foreshadowing the certainty of American intervention in the war. Latterly he has been devoting himself “interpreting” America and the Americans in lectures at English public: schools. “France is bled white.” So we have been told. After eight busy days in that wonderful country, I have a fresh sense of the wideness of the gulf between rhetoric and reality. France is not hied white. France has less red blood than she did have, but she has an ocean of red blood yet. Many hundreds of thousands of glorious Frenchmen have died in this war, but many ’more hundreds of thousands are alive and wel| and ready to give their lives for the cause in which tlioir compatriots perished. *Of course, it was only a glimpse I had of France; no one can get more j in eight days. But I saw"masses of French soldiers and of French civilians. I saw divisions on the march, and saw scords of hamlets, villages, and cities. Not a soul I saw in the Army or out of’it, nor anything that came before m v eyes, lent the slightest color to the suggestion that France is hied white. Never before have her armies been so good, though this is saving almost incredibly much. It can bo said only because her armies are still sufficiently numerous and.' arc more highly skilled than at any* previous time. They arc more highly skilled because in this war armies learn every dayExperiments are ceaseless. Strategy, tactics, and machinery are progressive. In none of these things are the French second to anyone. Mo_st of the roads for miles behind the' French front resound by day and by night with the tramp of troops. However .far one motors one seems never to come to the end of them. Sturdy men they are, in the pink of condition, tough an leather. Infantry, cavalry and artillery alternate. I travelled from Amiens to Paris and from Paris to Havre, and found the French nation —the substructure of French civilisation —at- the back of the armies, industrially and commercially holding, like a citadel, the foundations of those armies. I went to France expecting to find melancholy covering the country as with a veil. 1 expected that at best the nation would seem gaunt and haggard. Surely I should find somethin- answering to the phrase “bled white.” Not at all. . Instead of these things I saw s!i ning through the handsome faces of the men and the beautiful faces of In women and children the old. mag" mficent spirit that has filled French history with splendour. lans, witn that awful Hood of Prussian savagery held in check by French and But sh manhood only a few miles away is as self-possessed as is London. Jr the military clam broke, Paris would be inundated; but Pans lives, w.iiks, and plays, unafraid. Factories, shops, theatres, music-halls, picture palaces, hotels, restaurants, and the streets of the (neat and beautiful city are nquiver with life. True,.darkness cla ms the whole outer world of Pans at night. True, coal is dear, food is dear, and the pinch of war is felt tar and wide. But what matters is that the spirit of the people is not on.y unbroken but unbent. If the streets are smothered m o-looni after sunset, lights glow within the dark walls. People eat. ch ink, watch the play, chat, laugh, make Jove as in happy days. Aliy great restaurant at night furnishes an absorbing spectacle of animated manhood and womanhood. Some of the finest faces one can see in the world are there —faces of soldiers and civilian men, faces of men remarkably alike for personality and for beauty. These mirrors one searches in vain for evidence that France suffers her m sfortunes with anything but invincible moral. Go among the crowds that throng the streets in daylight and you get the same impression. If you expect languor and depression you find vigour and bouyancy to a degree nothing short of astounding. In a word, in spite of all its losses and sorrows, Paris rings with the old voices and ( ieaps with the old vivacity. Mourning is visible everywhere, but how charmingly, how brightly it is worn! Parisian women appear to regard it as a patriotic duty, while showing by their 'dress that they hav e been bereaved, not to spread an atmosphere, of grief. Their black frocks arc beautifully cut and worn with incomparable charm. It is the same with the little girls; m their costumes of unrelieved sombreness they' are the perfection of dainty elegance. France, as I saw her, has more and better food than has Britain. I saw 'rectangular lumps of luminous white sugar that made my mouth water. I brought a few of these back to London, not to eat hut to exhibit! Britons of all classes. I feel sure, nfc on shorter rations than arc . the LGench; yet even British rations are better rather than worse. Such are my impressions from a kinematographic glance at parts of France and at the French capital. 1 went expecting to he saddened, and came away deeply gladdened. Yet I would not project a false perspective. Franco’s miseries, her sacrifices, her efflux of energy, blood, money, and material have been stupendous. She could not go on for ever as she has been going on for three and a-lialt years. With all her might America should hurry. Already the American un form meets one at every turn in Paris, and is seen at every Parisian centre. American soldiers are streaming to the fipnt. But where we have thousands, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions. will be needed. Unlimited numbers of cannon also are a crying necessity. America can make them and transport them, and save innnme'nblc lives. France believes she will do'it. Every officer, British or French, that 1 saw in Franco believes she will do it. I certainly believe she wil] do it. *