n those States who loathe the new
France are obliged to assume that England does not really count. With
the exception of Greece, England is not giving active support or
practical sympathy to any other country in Europe. But France backs
Poles and Turks and Hungarians and Serbs, and is carrying out a grand
scheme of world-policy clearly--if not very effectively.

France has made great progress since the war. Alone among the warring
powers in this respect she stands higher than she did in 1914. She
stands higher than she has done at any time since the great Napoleon.
The Government it is true is in direful need of money, and has always a
difficult political path to tread, but both the French individual and
the nation as a whole have gained enormously. Peoples and governments
are too often confused, and the plight of M. Briand sometimes deceives
people as to the position of France.

"France is bankrupt," says a leading publicist, in one of the London
reviews. But the French people are not bankrupt. Far from it. On the
average they are a very rich people. Even in the devastated areas
there has been a rapid financial recovery due to the hard work and
perseverance of the returned inhabitants. The constant talk about the
ruined North of France has been more a matter of propaganda than
verity. Though war was not carried into Yorkshire and Lancashire, it
is quite clear that England is to-day in a much more ruinous state than
France. The French drove our sentimental politicians through carefully
chosen routes and showed them the grand spectacle of war's ruins. And
they were impressed. But there is ruin which cannot be seen from a car
window. An economic dry-rot at the heart of a country is more terrible
than excoriations on the surface.

In Paris you realize at once a remarkable change in atmosphere after
London. The barometer has risen. It suddenly feels better to be
alive. There is a sense of something in the air; something doing.
Yes, the people are smarter and cleaner; their eyes are brighter. The
streets are better kept. _Amour propre_ is expressed in all the shop
windows, in the manners of 'bus conductors, waiters, salesmen, chance
acquaintances, in the tone of the Press. What is the matter? Can it
be that Paris has become first-class and London has ceased to be
first-class? Paris was not like this in 1913. She was decidedly
down-at-heel. There was no particular verve or dignity in the ways of
Pa