OUR DEBT TO FRANCE.
[To THIN EDITOR OF THR " SPECTATOR.”] Sin,—My opinion in the present war of nations is of little consequence, but I should like as a unit to express a truth which I think has not as yet been fully recognized by individual Englishmen ; namely, the enormous debt the Allies owe to the French nation in the present conflict. Fifty years ago we were brought up on the creed that one Englishman could defeat five Frenchmen, and there was a story told that when a Frenchman and an Englishman fought a duel in a dark room, the Englishman fired up the chimney and down tumbled the Frenchman, though the narrator was honest enough to say : " When I tell this story in France, I put the Englishman up the chimney." When the war began the popular opinion of my friends, who had been fed on the same bread and butter as myself, was that the Frenchman would talk much and do little. As matters have turned out, it is we who have to take off our hats and apologize, more par- ticularly perhaps to our great Commander-in-Chief, who has given us an example in dignity and reserve which we shall do
well to follow.—I am, Sir, &c., H. G. T.
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