FRENCH AND ENGLISH. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—So
much is said of the rudeness of the French to English travellers, that I feel bound to bear witness that, after spending more than twenty successive winters at Biarritz, I have been treated with great and uniform kindness, and never more so than during the present war. Nay, further, after inquiring of several acquaintances, I have come across no one who said that he or she had personally been treated with incivility, though some cases of such incivility were reported to me at second hand. But are not the English too sensitive? A eonspicuously attired and aggressive-looking John (or Jane) Bull has now and then been greeted by the gamins of Bayonne with a " Vivent lee Boers !" A worse case of rude- ness was on the part of Frenchmen who, after reading tele- grams, true or false, reporting our disasters, clapped their hands in ignorance or negligence of the fact that there were English bystanders ; but, even under this provocation, should not the bystanders have a fit of that discreet blindness which consists in being unwilling to see? The oddest indication of the
Anglophobic, or rather Anglomisic, proclivities of the French that came personally under mynotice took the form of an elabo- rate toy. An angry Boer is represented with an uplifted stick, and before him is a pig wearing a soldier's cap and marked with parallel stripes of red, white, and blue in derisive allusion to
the British flag. When the toy is wound up, down comes the stick on that arnica luto .sus, that victim of a Batavian Circe ; and, thus impelled, the metamorphosed "Tommy Atkins" goes on his way anything but rejoicing ! Assuredly this prophetic plaything should be matter for mirth rather than for anger ; for not only has the implied prediction been happily unfulfilled, but also, were it not for the vicinity of the belabouring Boer, the parallel stripes on the pig would be more suggestive of the Tricolor than of the Union Jack. The clumsy device reminds me of a story of my father's, that long ago, when he was making a speech as a candidate
for the representation of South Cheshire, be saw in the crowd a rustic politician holding a stick to which was attached the effigy of a man hanging, and which was now and then vigorously shaken ; and my father declared that it was impossible to guess whether the effigy was meant for him or his opponent. On the whole, a traveller in France is made to feel that, however kindly he himself may be treated, his countrymen are, at best, tolerated with unsympathetic for. bearance ; and he is apt to be in the dark as to why the prevalent sentiment is so strong. As I was brooding on this topic, a light flashed on me from an unexpected quarter. I happened to be going through a course of the .neid, and was startled to observe that some episodes in the 9th and 10th Books recalled what is going on in South Africa, and helped me to understand why many honest foreigners, and, alas ! not foreigners only, censure our policy in the present war. In particular, the angry speech of Juno to Venus, virtually asking what business the Trojans had to set up a pirate. Empire in Italy, contains lines which might have been ad- dressed by an adverse French critic to Britannia. I will quote an extract from that speech, and, for the convenience of your readers, I will make use of Dryden's translation. It is, forsooth-
" Hard and unjust indeed for men to draw Their native air, nor take a foreign law.
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But yet 'tie just and lawful for your line To drive their fields, and force with fraud to join : Realms not your own among your clans divide, Petition while you public arms prepare; Pretend a peace, and yet provoke a war."
Yet, plausible as all this sounds, the cause of .Eneas deserved to prevail, and it did prevail. Let us hope, too, that on the cause of the English, future historians will be able to pro- nounce, in an ethical sense and without the irony of the original context, that Victrix causa deis placuit,—that Might and Right are on the same side.—I am, Sir, &c., Albemarle Street, W. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE.
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