A reference in the House of Commons last week to
an article in the current issue of La France Libre on Germany's oil-reserves draws opportune attention to a periodical which has just closed its first year of existence with a commercial record as successful as its editorial. That is a remarkable achievement. To float in London a high-class French monthly—embodying some of the characteristics of journals like the Revue de Paris and the Revue des-Deux Mondes—was an adventure in itself. Its founders had no capital. They lived from month to month. The subscriptions evoked by the first issue paid the expenses of the second and third issues as well. Since then progress has been steady. Of the first issue, 8,000 copies were printed, but a reprint was necessary. The print now is 18,000, and the year has ended with a balance in hand. La France Libre is completely independent, associated with no special group of Frenchmen in this country, but seeking to unite them all, and elements in France itself, on the basis of the preservation of the soul of France and the dissemination of French thought and French culture even in France's darkest day. It owes immensely much to its editor, M. Andr6 Labarthe, whose own contributions are invariably of as high intrinsic worth as anything in each issue of the paper. To anticipate inquiries, let me add that La France Libre is published by Hamish Hamilton
and. costs 2S. 6d. * * * *
Previous page
