13 FEBRUARY 1942, Page 9

It is encouraging to feel that these diseases to which

old civilisations are prone need not be mortal diseases. China has been born again, and it may well be our privilege, as Mr. Collis suggests, to assist in her regeneration. The mistakes which China made can prove a warning to us ; the ills which we did her call for. recompense. And Pierre Laval, the peasant who was so unlike a peasant, the Frenchman who was so unworthy of France, may also serve as a salutary example, and may also prove but a symptom of a transitory illness. When I think of that brown, vivacious man with his horrible white tie, I feel sickened that such esurient flippancy should have affected the destinies of his own country and of Europe. But it is a comfort to reflect that forty-two million Frenchmen feel the same.