IS GOD A FRENCHMAN ?
By Friedrich Sieburg When M. Briand apostrophizes France as the "soldier of peace," he states, all unwittingly, the dilemma of the present- day world. For no one is more hungry for peace than your twentieth-century Frenchmah, the epitome of all the bourgeois virtues ; yet the conception of " peace " as a French per- - quisite, an established set of circumstances which must be defended by force against the onward stream of life, carries with it its own condemnation. This lesson is underlined with a charming persiflage such as only a few foreigners acquire by living among French people by Friedrich Sieburg, the author of Is God a Frenchman? or The Gospel of St. Joan (Cape, 10s. 6d.). Herr Sieburg evidently loves France—perhaps like a woman. But his appreciation of the Frenchman's indomit- able individualism and unequalled sense of values does not blind him to the fact that the mystical Nationalism which goes with the French monopoly of " " is the despair of those of us who have not had the good fortune to be born French, but are imbued with a determination to live in the light of—and by means, of—international„ co-operation. He has written a delightful book which everyone with a spark of interest in the world as it is to-day should read. The litany of reasons " why I am writing about- France " can only be described as impayable (for which there is no English equivalent). The translation by Mr. Alan Harris is very good.
Previous page
