MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON.
ALWAYS, whenever I return to Paris, I pass through two suc- cessive stages of sensation. First comes the delight, forever startled and renewed, at her august and emphatic beauty. Then comes the appreciation of subtle change. The outward appearance of prosperity appeared to have increased (if increase were possible) since my last visit of a few months ago ; but the underlying uncer- tainty had become more deep and tense. I detected also among the varied and familiar sounds of the Parisian streets a new sound which I was at first unable to identify—the hollow sound of wooden soles clocking on stone pavements. Charming indeed was the effect of this zylophonic symphony, varying from the heavy crunch of elderly wooden shoes to the quick tockle of the midinettes. I noticed also that although the sun beat upon the streets with unusual ardour, as if to compensate us for his long absence, yet only a few women, and scarcely any men at all, wore hats. Sauntering along in my black trilby, which, but for some signs of hair oil upon the crown, has survived at least one world war, I felt as odd as if I were arrayed in a turban or a kola ; I felt like a bishop watching aquatic sports. The exuberant intellectual energy of Paris seems to be impervious to external or internal crisis. In the Orangery of the Tuileries the exhibition of French Impressionists, with its curious charts and diagrams, still convinces one that there never was an Impressionist school but merely a coincidence of five or six great painters. Only a few yards away, in the Tennis Court, the centenary exhibition of David reminds us of the long sweep of French tradition. One has the feeling that, whatever misfortunes may accrue, whatever turbu- lence may be occasioned, the river of French intellectual and aesthetic life will never lose itself in the marshes of conformity. That what- ever the Communists may do or threaten, the boys and girls of France, under the little trees of the Tuileries gardens, will continue to embrace each other with overt and entrancing tenderness.
* * * * Even more than when I was in Paris last March, I became conscious that the French have, for the moment at least, lost confi- dence in each other and in themselves. All my life I have been accustomed to the French habit of taking it for granted that they are themselves naturally right and that all other nations and peoples are equally naturally wrong. The distrust of foreign ideas and intentions has ever been endemic in the French people ; what seems sad and new is their present almost despairing distrust of themselves. It is tragic that this great people, who have done so much to mould the minds of modern man, should in sudden lassitude have come to doubt the validity of their own formulas. Their old arrogant certitudes were never irritating since they sparkled with wit and were softened by courtesy ; to find that they have lost these certitudes comes as a painful shock—as if some serene and confident woman, whom one had known and loved for years, were to tumble, a heap of disordered millinery, from a bus. It must be admitted, of course, that the French have good cause for their present lassitude and apprehensions. It may be true that their economic situation is more immediately hopeful than our own, but their political, social and defence condi- tion is far worse. Such hopes as they may have entertained that the Third Force would be able to muster all that was most stable and patriotic in the nation have been dashed by the fall of the Schuman Government ; if party politics, at a moment of such international tension, can indulge in paltry manoeuvre, then it does indeed look as if the Third Force were neither very forceful nor very united. Monsieur Andre Maiie, heroic invalid as he is, may have succeeded for the moment in forming a Government of men of good will ; but there are few Frenchmen who really believe that this Government can maintain itself for long. It is a disagreeable circumstance more- over that those who disliked General de Gaulle in 1940 are now his most fervent supporters, whereas those who were with him in the great days are now, in many important cases, his adversaries.
* * * * It seems at moments as if the majority of the French people have lost the faith in their own institutions, that the old republican and liberal doctrines have ceased to make any further appeal, and that great sections of the community would acquiesce in the aban- donment of the parliamentary system with which they have for so long been familiar in favour of some more centralised polity either of the extreme Right or the extreme Left. It may be, of course, that in our anxious sympathy we tend to exaggerate the divisions and animosities of French political life. Since 1789 the French have remained at heart egalitarian and do not surrender as easily as we do to personal myths ; authority for them is always suspect and their extreme individualism renders them almost as difficult to govern as, were, and are, the Greeks. Always, except in moments of intense national danger, they have allowed personal and party dislikes or affections to override and hamper the public weal. On my return journey from Paris I was consoled by reading Monsieur Jacques Suffel's biography of Anatole France. By the younger genera- tion Anatole France is, I know, regarded as an outworn sentimentalist who can provide no guide or example in the altered world of today. On the very day of his funeral a manifesto against him was circulated under the title " A Corpse " and above the signatures of Aragon, Eluard and Soupault ; he is as much a back-number among his own countrymen today as Galsworthy is with us. Yet I persist in regarding Anatole France as one of the most illuminating exponents of the French mind ; to read his opinions, his prophecies and his criticisms of the Third Republic in the days of its grandeur serves to remind us that we should not be too distressed by the depressing things which the French are apt to say about themselves.
* * * * Monsieur Suffel is one of the officials of the Bibliotheque Nationale; his biography of Anatole France is scholarly, unbiassed, richly docu- mented, respectful and acute. I had always regarded Anatole France as a man of extreme and venerable sagacity, humane, tolerant and consistent in his views. He appeared to be aloof from the dust and turmoil of politics and to follow events with a detached irony. I now find that I was incorrect in this assumption; Anatole France was no more capable than any other Frenchman of taking an impersonal attitude towards his country's statesmen or misfortunes. " I was brought up," he confessed, " under the Third Empire and I there- fore had a passion for the Republic." But once he met the object of his affections and hopes he was assailed by deep disillusion. For many years Anatole France worked in the library of the Senate and was thus able to observe at close quarters the working of the parlia- mentary machine. " Except," he wrote, " for a tiny group of superior people, I found our politicians the most third rate collection of people that I have ever observed." Nor did Anatole France manage to apply to politics that unruffled sanity of judgement which we find in his books. There was a moment during which he flirted with Boulangism and he was observed on one occasion running, with anxious subservience, to help the General on with his coat. Many years later, when in the first war Clemenceau was at last called to power, the comments of Anatole France on that event were audacious and wrong. " If Clemenceau," he wrote, " is made our Prime Minister, the result will be catastrophe after catastrophe, paroxysms of disorder, and the unleashing of uncontrollable passions."
* * It is thus useful to be reminded, as Monsieur Suffel's book has: reminded me, that even the .most temperate Frenchmen are apt to lose their tempers with each other and to say wild things. One should discount their habit of proclaming to foreigners that all their potential leaders are either dotards, knaves or fools. When one revisits their wonderful city, when one observes how serious and how gay are the younger generation, when one admires the wonders of their intellectual achievements, one is convinced of the immense fecundity of the French nation, a fecundity of thought and energy which no misfortunes can' diminish and no lassitude can sterilise. Anatole France, in common with the majority of his compatriots, regarded the Third Republic as a temporary expedient ; yet it survived for seventy successful years.
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