2 FEBRUARY 1940, Page 14

I like to believe that our French colleagues will return

to Paris encouraged by the spirit and the energy of the British people. They were almost as much impressed by our climate as they were by the black-out. "These heavy hyperboreans," they must have said to themselves, "may be stupid and slow- minded. But what courage, in a capital which during the winter months is submerged under polar snow-drifts, to abolish all light whatsoever! What daring, what reckless- ness; what flegme, what morgue! Clearly a people of such civic endurance cannot be defeated."