THE CONSCIENCE OF FRANCE
By PHILIP CARR
T requires a certain knowledge of Paris to understand the signifi- cance cance of the imminent closing, as announced by the Paris police, of the police-licensed and inspected brothels, for which the right name is "maisons de tolerance," and not "maisons speciales," as given by one correspondent, since the latter term also covers unofficial, and therefor:, for the purposes of prostitution, illegal, establishments, such as the lowest class of " cafés-concerts," ?rid those hotels and " maisons de passe " in which only the manage- ment consists of professionals.
It has been stated that the system which is now coming to an end gave France a special reputation among the nations of Western Europe. The statement is misleading in two ways. It assumes, firstly, that France is the only one of those nations in which police- regulated brothels are to be found, whereas in fact they are common to all of them except the British Isles. It implies, secondly, that the police regulation of prostitution, apart from brothels, is to cease in Paris, whereas in fact it is to be tightened up.
What is to cease is the horrible slavery of the brothels, where women do not sell their bodies but are forced to allow other people to sell them and to take the enormous profits of the sale, while they themselves are paid a bare living wage, and are often not given enough clothes to enable them to walk out into the open air. These brothels are a huge vested interest, in which shares are bought and sold at great profit, and are held as the soundest of investments by respectable family men—and also by bishops, say the anti-clericals, in France and in certain other countries. When I was in Brazil there was a lawsuit between two priests, one of whom had been swindled by the other of some money which he had handed to him to place in this way. The comments of the judge were severe.
The anti-social economics of this side of the question have, of course, been handled by Bernard Shaw in " Widowers' Houses," and the moral paradox of the highly respectable brothel-owner, whose daughter is making her First Communion, was set out as long ago as 2881 by Guy de Maupassant in La Maison Tellier ; but it has been left to two French dramatists of what was, before the war, the younger school to point the pitiful irony of the brothel prison. One was Bernard Zimmer, whose target was the tyranny of the barracks, as well as the " maison close " ; and he presented an analogy between the soldier and the brothel prostitute as two beings who had surrendered all initiative and responsibility and freedom :or the sake of a lazy and bestial life. The other, and by far the more important, was Simon Gantillon, whose " Maya," produced .with great success in Paris, was a touching picture of idealism lowering in the unexpected surroundings of a low seamen's brothel n Marseilles.
This play also furnished a rather terribly eloquent illustration of 'low the authorities and the public of English=speaking countries ook at subjects of this kind—how, at least, tlpy looked at them afore the war. The verformance of the piece was forbidden in New York, and it did not pass the Censor in London, although there was nothing either offensive or indecent in it, and its atmosphere was, on the contrary, one of elevated sentiment. Then an ingenious American, who knew his audience, gave some performances of it in English in Paris, and advertised it as " the banned play." It drew crowded houses.
There is a basic difference between both the public and the private attitude towards prostitution of the British and the French peoples. In Britain, while the private attitude is usually that of either the salacious leer or the solemn blind eye, or both, the public attitude is that prostitution has no recognised existence at all, and, if it does exist, it must be suppressed, or at least concealed. Hence the hideous scene, so often witnessed by us all, and described, I think by Arnold Bennett, of the British middle class father hurriedly shepherding his family after the theatre to the Tube station at midnight, and all pretending not to see what is going on in the street.
For more than a hundred years the French attitude has always been that the existence of prostitution must be recognised, if it cannot be prevented, and that at least it must be sufficiently regulated to protect the health of the people. This medical inspection and super- vision was the one foundation of public policy on which the horrible system of brothel slavery was built up. France is now going to abolish the brothel slavery ; but it would be a great mistake to suppose that the medical inspection will be abolished also.
Quite apart from the inmates of the "maisons closes," every independent prostitute in Paris has to be the holder of a police card and to submit herself to regular medical inspection. Failing this, she can be arrested, but with this she can practise her profession, subject to certain conditions of discreet behaviour. There is a section of the Police Force called the " Police des Moeurs " (Police of Public Morals) which deals with these questions. Hitherto its personnel has been exclusively male ; but now a female section is to be enrolled, and, with the disappearance of the brothels, the male branch will presumably be considerably reduced.
How great the victory for human dignity in the abolition of the brothels has been can perhaps never be fully appreciated in a country where the secret but enormous power of money and black- mail of this parasite on the social system has not been built up. The victory shows a splendid and encouraging centre of moral vitality in the French people—a vitality which found its expression in the Resistance movement, but which those of us, who have lived in France have seen to be rising long before this war.
There is hardly a Frenchman of the younger generation who does not recognise the brothel for what it is—a shameful and a cruel thing. In recent years its customers have belonged almost exclu- sively to the older age groups. That was the sign which foretold the victory of today.
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