FRANCE AT WAR

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXXI, 10 January 1916, Page 4

FRANCE AT WAR

Mr Rudayrd Kipling, in "France at War," has told the world what he saw , and learned during a prolonged visit to the French lines. As he shows, he | was'taken everywhere, from the Champagne country to the snow-covered Vosges; ,he saw villages over which the tide of invasion had. flowed and. ebbed; towns where bombardment was part of the daily routine; fields where women, children sand old men worked unconcernedly though an occasional shell dropped dangerously close. And, finally, he came away wondering. Was this the France of tradition—cynical, flippant and decadent? Were these quiet, self-possessed people related to the volatile Gaul whom we used to know? Here was a nation that meant to go ..through" with /the Vtask it had undertaken, however" long was its duration and however enormous the sacrifice. The composure masked a passionate intensity of purpose. The discovery of their new psychology has surprised even themselves a little. They say when they talk, "We did not know what our nation was. Frankly, we did not expect it ourselves. But the thing came, and—you see, we go on." Mr Kipling lets the reader see what the work of war really is as carried on by France in this campaign, and, as he, says, "all France* works outwards [to the front precisely as an endless • chain of fire buckets works towards the j conflagration. Leave the fire fcehind you. and go back till you -each the source of supplies.* You will find no heat, no pause, no apparent haste, but never any slackening. Everybody has ihis, or her bucket, little or big. and nobody disputes how they should" be | used. It-is a people possessed of th* precedent and tradition of war for I existence, accustomed to hard living j and hard labor, sanely economical by j temperament, logical by training;. and ( illumined and transfigured by resolve and endurance." The French are now a people with no illusions. They are I supremely confident, but they expect no miracles presently to be performed which will sweep out £he,Boch^ by one dramatic stroke> Thej^; recognise that the old-fashioned . b victory which decided a campaign is as obsolete as a rifle in a front line trench. They know what is before them, and they are cheerfully .prepared for it. These are the great and effective facts, which lead; Mr Kipling to conclude that "even if France to-day stood alone against the world's.;enemy, it would be almost inconceivable to imagine her defeat now; wholly, so to imagine any surrender. The war will go on till the enemy is punished. The French do not know! when-that hour will come; they seldom speak of it; they do not amuse i themselves with dreams of triumphs or terms. Their business is war, and they do. their business." If this is not a guarantee of success, what else is it that would create such a guarantee?