enly upon
France's greatest vice and weakness--avarice.

It is France's penuriousness and meanness and her exaggerated thrift
that stands most in the way of her material greatness now. The
Government needs to spend a great deal more than it used to do before
the war, must spend it, if it is to do the best for France. France has
the consciousness of being the greatest power in Europe, and she has
the will to play the role of the greatest power, and she is called upon
to do things in style.

France is romantic in ambition, she is vivacious and happy and
dignified, till she is called upon to pay anything. Then the
Frenchwoman in the French nation reveals herself. The eyes become
small, the lips thin, the cheeks pale, the whole being shrinks into
itself and goes on the defensive.

France wishes to run this new Europe which has come into being, on the
old lines, playing with hatreds and jealousies and conflicting
interests as a chess-player with his pieces. The idealists of England
and America want to eradicate the jealousies and hatreds and run the
same new Europe on principles of pure love. France says human nature
never changes. Britain and America say human nature has progressed
with them and it must progress similarly in Europe. France's final
answer is laughter. So constant is France's amusement at the expense
of the Anglo-Saxon that she has adopted the _sourire ironique_ as
something necessary to typical beauty in a Frenchman.

It is, therefore, not surprising that M. Octave Duplessis in the
"Figaro" should find that characteristic work of H. G. Wells, the
"Salvaging of Civilization," quite ridiculous.

Il nous ramene aux reves ineptes des Fourier et des Cabet, effacant de
la surface de ce pauvre globe terraque toutes les barrieres,
aplanissant avec intrepiditee les plus grands obstacles, niant le fait
concret des nationalites, de plus en plus positif pourtant a mesure que
progresse la civilisation, et saluant deja l'aurore du jour ou

Ce globe deplume, sans barbe et sans cheveux
Comme un grand potiron roulera dans les cieux

M. Britling nous ramene donc de cent ans en arriere, au mauvais
socialisme primitif de l'epoque romantique. Il ressuscite de
poussiereuses momies.

By denying the possibility of realizing the dream of a world-State or a
collective European State, the Frenchman speaks for his country.
France regards the development of European history with simple realism
and without idea