Correspondence
[A LETTER PROM PARIS.]
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—One begins to wonder if the Naval Conference, from the French point of view, was a failure after all. For France did achieve two things : she left the Conference without yielding a gun or a ton in her programme and demands ; and, further, she left without incurring—consciously at any rate—the blame of having caused its partial failure, Italy, of course, being the villain of the piece. On these two achieve- ments the newspapers have duly congratulated the country's delegates. M. Briand is enjoying a sudden and unwonted reputation for " firmness " in the conduct of international affairs, and there, it would seem, for the moment the matter is to be allowed to rest. With regard to a continuation of the discussions through ordinary diplomatic channels there is little said, and, indeed, the question of the reduction of naval armaments seems to have become in Paris one of the remotest of issues.
What most English people would like to know, I fancy, is the attitude of the French people to this question. Are the reduction of armaments and the promotion of world peace vital issues in its mind ? Perhaps the answer to the question can best be given by presenting a picture of Paris as I see it to-day. For where the masses are concerned it is mood rather than mind that counts. • To anyone living in the French capital it is quite obvious that France has at last turned the turning of her long lane of post-War tribulations. Her credit is restored. There is a gold reserve in the Bank of France sufficient to cover more than 50 per cent, of its note issue. Taxation is being reduced to the tune of £15,000,000 and there is a prospect of cheaper living as a consequence. One observes an air of complacency abroad. Paris is gay and disposed to lean back and forget its troubles. Armies and navies, of course, cost a great deal, but France is a great nation and can afford to pay. Paris, indeed, has so far forgotten its troubles that it is beginning to take an exceptional interest in the troubles of other people. There is Gandhi, for instance, and Great Britain's trouble in India. While London has been bothering itself over the non- success of the Naval Conference Paris has been reading columns about Gandhi. The Petit Parisian and the Journal, two of the most popular papers, sent special correspondents to follow the Mahatma on his march and their articles have been " splashed " on front pages many days in succession. Paris is watching Great Britain's management of the Indian situation with a detached though studious interest.
And this brings the Parisian back to the idea that France is a great nation, a great colonial nation, possessing an Empire with vast resources. And if he needed a further reminder, he finds it in the domes, minarets and pagodas of next year's Colonial Exhibition which become more and more imposing as the days go by. And on Sunday Monsieur and Madame and their little family take the noisy tramway-car to the Bois de Vincennes to mark the progress of the great temple of Angkor Vat modelled on the original in Indo-China. Two hundred and fifty acres of grounds there will be, and around the pretty lake of Daumesnil will spread the wealth of Algeria and Morocco, Tunis and the French Congo, of Indo-China and Madagascar, all thriving colonies, with never a Gandhi to trouble them. France, the Parisian is realizing more clearly every day, is a great Empire.
And Paris itself is in the throes and thrill of a mighty activity. The city is being turned upside down, inside out. Easter visitors must have wondered what had happened to the prim Paris of former days. The Grands Boulevards from the Place de la Republique to the Opera suggest a cross between a builder's yard and a mining camp—hand winches in rough shelters piling up red earth from deep excavations into great mounds on the pavement side ; motor-winches engaged in the same never-ceasing process ; rough hutments on the roadside ; huge spaces enclosed by hoardings ; gaps in the sky-line where buildings two centuries old stood solidly until a month ago • scaffolding and cranes that swing giant arms across the sky. Paris grumbled at first. But now these things have meaning. They spell prosperity and achievement. Even the dirt heap on the pavement side is a link with Empire. For beneath the Grands Boulevards a at engineering work is being carried out. FoUr tunnels are being constructed, two of them superimposed on two below, and the tunnels will carry new Metro " lines, and the " Metro " lines are destined to link with an underground extension to Vincennes and -the Colonial Exhibition of next year._. The Empire is omnipresent in Paris to-day.
All this is blended with the vanishing of old. Paris and the unmasking alniost every week of the tall, milk-white buildings of the Paris which is new—palatial banks; grandiose hotels, soaring blocks of flats, huge new Government offices to house a gigantic insurance scheme. These • phenomena all tend to give the Parisian, and France too, a lively impression of national prosperity and importance.
Nor may one altogether neglect the influence on the national temperament of the celebration of the centenary of Roman- ticism. The bookshops are full of the books of the last century —Victor Hugo, Lamartine, de Vigny, Alfred de Musset. At the Bibliotheque Nationale you may see in a specially organ- ized exhibition the manuscripts of many of their most famous works. Now if the Romantic movement meant anything it meant a protest against formulas. It was a claim for individual liberty of expression, and to-day the Romanticists and their works bring to the Frenchman an influence as of old wine. They exalt him, and he, too, becomes perhaps a little inclined to chafe against formulas. In this picture of Paris to-day, then, I think we may find the evidence of a wave of nationalism which is passing over the country. France, for the time being at any rate, is impatient of external restrictions. The country has an appetite for national freedom and individual achievement. To sum up, while France may be pacifist at heart, the country has not that passion for peace- that one finds in England, not that passion that willingly sacrifices national aspirations and vanities for the sake of the common good. And if France to-day has an idea that she requires a big navy she will be little inclined to listen to the arguments of other countries against her having it.
To the detached observer, however, the situation is not without its danger. Into the somewhat richly charged atmosphere of Paris to-day the telegraph wires strike dis- turbing currents—reports from across the frontier of speeches, of newspaper articles in which Italy declares that she also is a great nation, and in future must be given the attention and room in the world that her greatness demands. France through the same medium is told that Fascist. Italy at the Naval Conference in demanding naval parity with France has shown to the foreigner—Paris reads "France "—Italy's true face of a Great Power." The Paris Press on the whole main- tains a cool and dignified attitude in the face of it, and the French Latin may perhaps understand that the Italian Latin is often wiser than his words. But one does get the im- pression that the question of the reduction of naval armaments as it concerns France and Italy is far removed from that stage when it is merely a matter of finding a formula. There is clearly a conflict of interest between Italy and France in the Mediterranean, and it can only be settled by a frank dis- cussion on the realities of the situation by the representatives of the two countries. Until that takes place and some kind of political agreement is arrived at there would seem little hope of any naval pact worth its paper being formed between the two countries.—I am, Sir, &c.
YOUR PARIS CORRESPONDENT.
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