MAKERS OF NEW FRANCE,
Ma. DAWBATtri has given ns an interesting little collection of short biographies of contemporary, or all but contemporary, French men and women. The only fault we have to find is with the title. That is to a great extent misleading. Of the seventeen portraits, there are only six that have any relation to the new France of which so much has lately been written. What, for example, has M. Clemeneeau to do with a new France ? In the France that, according to some observers, is rapidly passing away the " Tombeur des Ministerea " holds a very large place. He was, says Mr. Dawbarn, "one of the first to support the principle of increased effectives" But he was also the successful assailant of a Cabinet which had made the Three Years' Service Bill its own, and had it not been for M. Barthou's intervention France might have had to meet the war without the measure which played so large a part in her preparation for it. Only one novelist appears in this little gallery, and he ie neither M. Bazin nor M. Bordeaux, nor even M. Bourget, but M. Anatole France. But on what is his claim to inclusion founded? On his share in the "scepticism and spirit of mockery at things that are the fetish of mankind " which is the special characteristic of the eighteenth century. "Anatole France has imbibed that spirit from his grand- mother, who was born in the century and partook of its character. . . . ' Gmndmama was frivolous, grandmama bad an easy moral system. She had no more piety than a bird." This is a description, no doubt, of a very attractive old lady, and the charm of her conversation lives again in her descend- ant's novels. But what connexion have these merits with that new France which so many of us look to see emerging from the present war? When Mr. Dawbarn confines himself to his proper chronological field his sketches are very much to the purpose. In his introduction he lays his finger on the change that has come over the French people. Only a few years ago "laxity was everywhere, tradition held no longer; neither patriotism nor the Church prevailed against a universal scepticism. And in this rank soil materialism raised its head. Nothing mattered except financial success. . . . Contrast this with the picture of France to-day, her strength and silence, her attach. ment to a high ideal."
Of this new spirit IL Poincard is the fitting embodiment. He "has given to the Elys6e a cachet and prestige that it has not possessed for years.", He is worthily seconded by General Joffre, who, though a Republican and a Freemason, " showed his utter indifference to mere polities by taking into his closest
• Maker, of Nna tryout. By Charles Mayhem. London, Mills and Boon. [10o. tkL net.1 confidence Generals Pau and (le Caatelnan, both of whom are Clerical, if not anti-Republican, in their sympathies." Ifs has an" immense rapacity for silence," be " rejoices in respon- sibilities." A great worker," on campaign he resists the tempts. tion to overwork." Even in the field he refuses to give up the wholesome habits of home. He still "retires to bed at ten o'clock, to a lullaby of cannon, and at dawn he is afoot again." His capacity for sleep "is one of the secrets of his success." He has the true French sense of economy, and he applies it to human lives. He "will not throw away a man if he can avoid it."
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