A FRENCH VISITOR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 3, 19 August 1911, Page 3

A FRENCH VISITOR.

An interesting visitor to Melbourne is M. Robert Chauvolot, a distinguished Parisian journalist, who is in Australia on behalf of his'papers, “L’Echo do Paris” and “La 1, Presse.” M. Chauvolot is taking the / world’s tour, and has already revisited India and Ceylon, and paid first visits in Java, Singapore, Japan, tho Philippines and Papua, spending a long period m the last-mentioned territority. When in Papua he secured a valuable ethnological collection, which he intends to present to the National Museum at the Trocadoro, Paris. On leaving Australia and Tasmania, M. Chauvolot will proceed to Now Zealand, Tahiti, Canada, and other countries, returning home within the next twelve months. He is contributing articles to tho journals he represents, and has in preparation two hooks through which lie hopes, to help La Belle France to understand the aspirations of the young Commonwealth and the other oversea dominions of the King, in tho course of an interview, M. Chauvelot emphasised the interest with which the average intellectual Frenchman is following Australia’s social and economic experiments. “Wo sometimes think in France that you are more Socalistic than we are,” he said, “hut I find that whereas our Socialists are more logical in theory, Australians are more practical and democratic in achievement. You arc a great democracy, and a practical one. Yon do not seem so dominated by theories and international confederations as are some of our people. Yon aim at the practical, and your reformers seem more bent on some actu-

al practical work of ameliorating tho lot of the worker than on conforming to some theory. That seems to mo excellent, and it makes your progress and economic development, a matter of absorbing interest to us.”