MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
THE British visitor, passing casually or in transit through France, will be amazed by the evidences of prosperity and comfort which he observes. To him Paris will seem to have recovered almost the whole of her pre-war glamour. The sun flashes again upon the dome of the Invalides, the unrivalled perspective of the Champs Elysees still sparkles with magnificent vitality, and from the Pont des Arts he can look down upon the Seine glittering as gaily as if the Germans had never come. He will notice also that the traffic in the boulevards, which for months after the liberation was sparse and halting, has resumed its old congested dash. All around him are displayed posters of art exhibitions and of concerts, the theatres and the cinemas show long queues outside their portals, and the bookshops are full of new books beautifully illustrated and produced. To the casual visitor this impression of returning prosperity will be confirmed by a glance at the shop windows. He will see them packed with scent-bottles, with pipes, with fountain-pens, with all manner of male and • female attire, and with those, to me, rather horrible objects which are known as " articles de Paris." He will notice that the hotels are full to overflowing, that all rooms are booked up for months ahead, and that even in the most expensive restaurants it is difficult to find an immediate seat. And as he waits for a table to be evacuated, his eyes will drink in a rich display of langoustes and melons, of grapes and foie-gras, of hams and fat French pears. He will be shocked, perhaps, to discover that even in a luxury hotel soap is not available and bath towels difficult to obtain. He will find it almost impossible to acquire cigarettes. But as he sips his armagnac in a crowded café he will forget all these things ; he will not notice even the fantastic sums that he is charged for all these luxuries ; and remembering the soggy cod of London meals he will imagine that the French, with astonishing resilience, have restored to man the pleasures of life.
* * *
In coming to these conclusions he will be unfair and incorrect. He will have failed to reflect that he is being treated, not so much as a rich and honoured guest, but as an invisible export. The French have always realised the immense importance of their tourist traffic and they well know that the pleasure.; and luxuries of Paris constitute one of their most valuable export assets. They have thus flung themselves with commendable energy into the task of refurbish- ing their capital and rendering it as attractive as ever to the foreign visitor. The absurd fallacy that they ere a pleasure-loving race obscures the fact that all this is an economic policy as deliberate and as planned as that which rightly induces Sir Stafford Cripps to restrict home consumption in order to redress our foreign trade balance. What is so curious is that this policy is to a very large extent understood and tolerated by the French themselves. If foreigners are so indulgent as to spend large sums of foreign ex- change upon eating and drinking, then the French bourgeois is quite content to watch these invisible exports gorge. Yet the fact remains that at few epochs of history, and in few countries, has there existed so vast a difference between the standard of living of the rich and the poor. It is difficult to believe that the manual or black-coated worker can view with contentment this ghastly contrast between luxury and indigence. The French student at the Universities is, and looks, definitely underfed. And meanwhile the foreign tourist wallows in the black market, glutted but unashamed.
* * * *
The British visitor, once he becomes aware of these terrible dis- proportions, is apt to experience an extreme reaction and to imagine that, below this glittering surface, there is a revolutionary situation Which is bound before many months to burst into barricades. He observes that the three-party system under which the French are now suffering appears to paralyse all constructive effort and incidentally (if it be incidental), to render impossible any clear formulation of French foreign policy. To him it seems that the three great parties —the M.R.P. on the right, the Socialists in the centre and the Com- munists on the left, cancel each other out and bring the machine of
State to utter stoppage. And he assumes inevitably that this deadlock will continue until the proletariate rise in their wrath and seize power by force. He may be correct in this assumption ; we in England often underestimate the fact that the spirit of revolution is endemic in France. But we also underestimate the amazing strength and consistency of the republican tradition, which is a tradition, not of revolution, but of bourgeois stability. Beneath all the intransigence and corruption of French politics flows this silent republican river, powerful and undeterred. Few people really imagined in 1875 that the Third Republic would survive for long. In its early years it was threatened by Bonapartism, in its middle life it was shaken by Boulanger. It was born of defeat and suffered terrible humiliations: it was exposed to the Macmahon crisis in 1877 and the Jules Grevy scandal of 1887 ; its public men were discredited by such appalling revelations as those which emerged from Panama and the Stavisky case; it was almost rent asunder by anti-clericalism and by the Dreyfus crisis. Yet it created a vast and prosperous Empire and, owing to a brilliant foreign policy, and intense military training, it was able to defeat Germany in 1918. The French people remember the Third Republic as an era of internal prosperity and external strength.
* * *
It could not be denied that France at the moment is passing through a phase of difficult transition. For complete recovery she requires three things : —first coal, secondly stable institutions, and thirdly foreign labour. Conscious as he is of the vital part which coal must play in French reconstruction the ordinary Frenchman is enraged by what he regards as our selfishness, or at best our blind formalism, in regard to the Ruhr mines. His longing for stable institutions, while it explains the passionate interest taken in the draft constitution, may have further consequences. It may lead to the elimination of the centre party of the Socialists much as the Liberal Party has unhappily declined with us. And it may lead many small proprietors, who constitute such a power in France, to feel that the certainty offered by a Communist system is preferable to the ceaseless uncertainties of the old parliamentary manoeuvres. It is interesting to watch the tactics now being followed by the Com- munist Party in France, under the very able direction of their Secre- tary General, Monsieur Duclos. In so far as the factory workers are concerned, it is believed that the Communists have now reached saturation point and it is sometimes said even that they are losing ground. They are thus concentrating their energies upon the rural population, the intellectuals, and the black-coated worker. Their propaganda, which is immensely patriotic in tone and conducted amid a blaze of tricolors, is astute. They represent themselves as the pioneers of the French renaissance. Only through them, they argue, can France recover unity and strength. Only through them can the small proprietor retain the value of his savings and increase his wealth. I am assured by French friends that the small farmer in France is not, as we suppose, shrewd and cautious, but immensely gullible. This propaganda is having its effect.
* * * *
If these tendencies are correctly analysed, then the results of Sunday's referendum can only be provisional. They cannot give to France the stable institutions which she so desperately needs. Most serious Frenchmen regret that General de Gaulle, whose prestige in the country is still immense, should on the very eve of the referendum have issued a pronouncement urging his countrymen to vote against the compromise draft. By taking so definite a line the General exposed himself to two awkward alternatives. If the country rejected his advice, then he would lose his authority. If they accepted it, then he would, as the Figaro observed, find himself "at the head of troops which are not his own." The rigidity of General de Gaulle is something almost superhuman ; it constituted his strength, of course ; it also constitutes his weakness. Seldom in the eternal jig-saw of French politics has there ever been so large, or so unaccommodating, a piece.
Previous page
