THE SOUL OF FRANCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16020, 11 September 1915, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE SOUL OF FRANCE.

BT TORTjNGA. As Belgium at her Calvary so France in her Gethsemane is purifying and ennobling her soul, that wonderful national soul of hers which has so long been the pride of Western Europe and to which the proudest of British birth may gratefully acknowledge their debt. France has always had in unstinted measure the power of thinking forward on human lines and of idealising her thoughts. Her conquests, her true conquests, have been over the minds of men not over their bodies; her empire, her true empire, is found under every civilised flag and nowhere more, than among the British, so long her seeming enemies but now her sworn friends and trusty allies. We have never admitted the constant claim of all good Frenchmen that Paris is the centre of civilisation, but we can freely acknowledge that our own national genius for practical compromise has again and again received its. idealistic and spiritual elements from the indomitable soul of France.

Nationality, for example, the idea that has lifted Em-ope against the Kaiser, the passionate instinct that stirs the very coward to action and fills the brave with heroic contempt for death ! From France we had it first in Western Europe, and then by the mouth of a woman. Jean of Arc, peasant-girl, mystic, warrior and martyr, heard the voices that whisper now to countless millions of men. Under English feet France lay bleeding. Divided in itself ; Frenchman fighting against Frenchman : kings, dukes, barons, counts, seeking each his own gain and caring nothing for the people; the spoil of the strongest, the prey of the raider : France was to Joan of Arc a country 'to love and cherish, with a people to save. When Joan drove our English fathers from France, driving them with her immortal spirit after her mortal bodv had been scattered to the four winds of heaven, she did more than foil the attempt of the Angavin kings to make themselves masters of Europe and tyrants of the western world. She gave to Europe and the world, to her enemies as to her friends, an ideal of nationality against which every subsequent tyrannyhas had to contend. H think foul scorn," said English Bess, when the Spaniard was in the Channel, "that Parma or Spain or any prince of Europe, should ( dare to invade' the borders of my realm." In which crisp words you have the thought of peasant Joan, done into English so as to be understanded of our cruder spirit, which is not mystic but mysterious, as the Kaiser is finding to his cost.

In the sublime spirit of Joan, the apostle of nationality, the martyr of national independence, the Dutch called in the "sea to drown out the invader, and bore the brunt of the struggle against the French King who would be tyrant; and the very Germans exorcised with it the Napoleonic domination. Concerning these Germans, it is noteworthy that they have lost all sense of true nationality, have deliberately abandoned the greatideal. Poland they hold in fetter; the Danish provinces they have torn from our Scandinavian cousins Alsace-Lor-raine are subjugated departments of France. That they should aim at conquering and annexing Belgium, Holland, Northern France— New Zealand—is only the natural sequence to the many crimes against nationality which are their boast and their shame. In their lust for world dominion they do not only fight France and her allies; they fight every nation which has been made conscious of that principle of nationality which was conceived, long centuries ago, in the agonising soul of France. ;f -' Z, And democracy! French-: ,K also in - Its spirit," though British arid . Scandinavian in its most successful material forms! For this, also, France passed through- the fire'of' suffering, seemed to die and was reborn. Perchance, her nationality flowered too soon. Perchance, Joan was sent as a bringer .of light into darkness, because the soul of France could endure no more in the black years of the Angeyins. The martyrdom of Joan for nationality's sake symbolic of the long martyrdom of France for nationality's sake martyrdom in which the Huguenots were driven into exile and autocracy flourished and humanity mourned, • until democracy came to France and by France was given to th» western world. , .When we wonder at the great revolution and seo how France, in the enthusiasm of her new-found faith, followed a false leader who sought an Empire of sordid pomp, while she dreamed of ah Empire over men's heart* alone, we must realise that democracy also was born prematurely, was an inspiration that could then have come only among the fearless thinkers of France. In truth, it was 80 years before France rid herself of Napoleonism, while half a generation before the great revolution the French gospel of democracy had been seized upon by British colonists, and embodied in the American Declaration of Independence. Sheltered in our islands, girt by our seas, we British have long been able to take lessons from our continental neighbours, and to weave their ideals into our everyday life without danger of interference. Secure behind our fleet we work out our problems of nationality and selfgovernment, make and unmake kings and dynasties, dispute and combine, quarrel and learn. No European combination hurled itself at England when a king's head fell to the Cromwellian axe, for 'Blake was on guard in the narrow seas. No European combination struck at colonial Englishmen when they asserted that all men are created equal" and that " government existed by the will of the governed," for the Atlantic was wider j then than now and the British do not ens- ' tomarily invite the foreigner to their domestic broils. But France has always had the enemy at her gate, and has had to work out her national destiny by strange paths and in stranger workshops. That she has become what she is testifies to her greatness. She has given us spiritual light and leading, 'and in spirit she leads us still. She is the Eternal feminine of civilisation: in peace bewildering and entrancing, attracting and repelling; in war end storm, in stress and peril, serene and sublime; always, thinking in flashes, aspiring to the ideal. Our political freedom, our civil liberties, our forms and our precedents, we owe to our unbroken inheritance from AngloSaxon forefathers, whose souls were strong enough to endure . the infamy of Norman conquest and whose impaired customs were strong enough to devour in the end the Norman and all his veneer. Incidentally it may be pointed out that it was against the territorial pillage represented by this same Norman that Joan of Arc raised France. What we owe to France are the two great political inspirations of nationality and democracy which have prevented our freedoms and liberties from becoming paralysed and petrified, with other great inspirations which have equally enabled us to adapt ourselves to the changes which are inevitable in the nature of things. And the secret of France? Well, the secret possibly is the same as that which underlies British hope of future progress and true greatness—that she is compounded of the two great western races, is both Celtic and Teutonic, has in her nature the imagination of the Gaul and the adventurousness of the Frank. " For six hundred years." asserted Mr. Herbert Spencer, " the genius of England has arisen on the line where Celt and Saxon met together. In France Gaul and Frank have long been churned into one, not in name but in very being, every Frenchman outside of Brittany is of the mixed people. In France, prophetic genius arises among a population that feels with genius. When purified as by. fire from sloth and selfishness and self-seeking, France sees into the future and moves trustfully into the unknown. Shall we count it against I her that often she has stumbled in following her voices, while we use the upward ' path that she ever blazes and are served ■in our cooler temper by the impetuous [daring of her idealising soul!