WHAT THE FRENCH ARE DOING

Waikato Times, Volume 84, Issue 13208, 25 June 1915, Page 6

WHAT THE FRENCH ARE DOING

BURDEN OF WESTERN BATTLE. The Boston Herald printed at the beginning of April the following letter From A. Piatt Andrew, formerly a member of the monetary commission mid before that a professor at Harvard, who is now doing hospital work in France:— It is a disappointing hut explicable fact that the Boston Herald and most American papers envisage the war as primarily a struggle between Germany on the one hand and England and Russia on the other, whilst France is treated as a factor of only secondary importance, almost like Austria, or Belgium or Serria. The (Masons io rthis attitude are not far to seek. Whatever news our papers receive from the Allies' side of the scenes of war come through correspondents, who, whether American or English by origin, are affiliated with English papers, and are naturally more interested in providing their readers with accounts of movements and engagements involving British troops, the brothers, sons and acquaintances of their readers, than with stories of the activities and experiences of the French armies, in which their public has no direct personal interest.. Not only is this natural, but it has been made inevitable by the policy of the French" general staff, which has allowed no correspondents, whether English, American, or even French, within their lines. Interested primarily in the military problems, anxious at whatever cost to eliminate the possible dangers of publicity, regardless of any of its possible diplomatic benefits the staff has refused access to the front not only to English and American journalists, but- also their own. Not infrequently the only accounts printed in France of French engagements of no mean importance are the dry laconic two or three lines of the official "communiques," ''our troops made progress," or '-'we made considerable gains" in such and such a nlace. .MODEST ANNOUNCEMENTS.

A fortnight ago I happened to he in the Vosges at the. time of the capture of Hartmansweilerkopf, a ridge on the other side of the Alsatian mountains, which commands the valley, at this point down to the Rhine. For two months (he French Croons had heen contending for the height, and at last it was theirs. Some 400 German prisoners, including five or .six officers, taken in the engagement, were just being brought into Rcmiremont, in the Vosges', the day of my arrival, and the French officials woro elated by the situation. We scrutinised the papers next day for some vivid account of the engagement such as we had heard in the vicinity, hut we could only find the dry and bloodless announcement, "Our troops took Hartma.nsweilerkopt yesterday." French generals and Cabinet officials have rarely, if ever, given interviews, or allowed their names to be signed to articles. No Frenchman of any considerable importance has visited America since the war bi'gjH*. X,,i one &ou has apparently been spent in endeavouring to interest or to influence American opinion in favour of France. France has pursued the even tenor of her way through the vvar. Not only has she not resorted to publicity, agents, press bureaus, special envoys, braggadocio interviews with ambassadors and generals, or any of the other methods of fostering foreign feeling which the Germans have made familiar, hut she has even interfered with the natural and appropriate publication of what has heen happening in France, and of what we in America, because of onr traditional friendship and sympathy with France, and our similarity of political institutions and ideals, would have been glad to know. FRANCE HOLDS ALL BUT THTRTTFITE MILES. These, 1 believe, are the princin.il reasons for the curious undervaluation on the part of the American press -if the contribution which France las made and is making to the war, Probably not one in 10.000 in America knows that of the approximately 500 mifas of the western front, France held n d still holds all but 35, that England has never held more than 20 or 25 miles, and Belgium not more than a < en miles. Yet such are the known a; 1 indisputable facts. I know them :p----cause 1 have several times c>us:cd through the British and Belgian' sections. Up to the end of December, I have boen told by credible authority, it is estimated that Franco had losi about 250,000 killed (not including wounded and prisoners), and I also helis/'?, upon equally good authority, tliat the total of British troops, which until recently had been, sent across the Channel, numbered scarcely more tie a that. In other words, France has lost in actually killed almost the equivalent •- f the whole British fighting army. I say this, not in disparage.p.i-nt 'd England's ocntrihution to the war. Uer assistance on the sea has been af supreme importance and the va'ou.* M her soldiers, both on land and on sea, ha: been demonstrated beyo id (,ue<ti..a. 1 say it only to give a just perspectr.' as to what France is doing.

WHAT WE OWE TO FRANCE. We owe to France, politV.V.'y i'.nd spiritually, debts which we can never repay. It was to the spirit ol revolutionary France that we owe mil h :>i the spirit of our own Revolution. It was to France, with her armies and her fleet and her expenditure of a hundred million dollars on our behalf that we owe our independence. And neither then nor since i'n*n has she ever asked for anything in recompense. France is the only other great country in the world without an hereditary ruling class, where the spirit of democracy prevails and the people rule. To the schools of Trance we owe practically everything that we have in architecture, painting and sculpture. France is a peaceful and unmilitary democracy whose energies for generations have been devoted primarily to the arts of peace. Our sympathies as Americans, beleiving in democratic government, detesting militarism and mindful of what France has done for us, ought to be wholly with France in this struggle agaimst a medieval monarchy opposed in every way to our own historical ideals. I believe that they are so, but I am also confident that we should have been more actively on the side of France if it had been brought home to us by our press how much this is

Fiance's war. To tltosc of us who stiil believe in the ideal of the founders of our government and who have no sympathy with the savagery of medievalism, who believe in popular government and not in hereditary rule, to those who care for the peaceful advance of civilisation ami would like to sec for ever doomed the "kultur" oi mailed fists and war lords without regard for solemn pledges, international law or any other right than that of might, ; t will always be a source of humiliation and regret that America has not displayed a more active sympathy with those ideals for which she used to stand in this momentous period of their history.