enchman, thinking them either charming or merely
"queer," according to his temperament.

If the French are the more admirable, the Italians are the more lovable;
if the French are the more creative, the Italians are the more
receptive. In the French, though not so much in the Italians, one does
find that "sheer brutality of the Latin intellect," which, since the
French Revolution, has dethroned many previously dominant ideas and
institutions. One finds in the French a tradition of limpid precision,
of concise and ordered logic, while the Italians are still groping
rather turgidly among those great abstract ideas which the French handle
so easily. The spirit of France shines with the hard splendour of the
noonday sun, of Italy with the soft radiance of the light of early
mornings and late afternoons.

The French are proud and sometimes intolerant, the Italians tolerant and
often diffident. It has been truly said that in every modern Frenchman
there is still something Napoleonic, however subconscious it may have
become. One could never be surprised if, in the midst of conversation, a
Frenchman should suddenly draw himself up and cry "Vive la France,
monsieur!" But one does not expect an Italian in like circumstances to
cry "Viva l'Italia!" In general, the French are the more tenacious and
clear-visioned in adversity, but none are more irresistible in success,
nor more conscious of its drama, than the Italians.

The low birth-rate of France, as compared with Italy, is a fact of deep
and permanent importance. In years to come the French will grow more and
more negligible, numerically, in world politics, but the French spirit
is immortal and unconquerable. It will penetrate the hearts of the best
men for ever, and ideas characteristically and originally French will
continue to mould the world's thought and action till the end of time.
The Italians on the other hand will play in future history a greater
part numerically, and moreover, by a greater intermarriage with other
races, will continue to produce fine and generous human types, not
wholly Italian. Italians will continue to show a shining example to the
world by reason of their gaiety and charm of character, their mental
subtlety, which with time will grow less involved and more lucid in
expression, by their art of life, even now not much inferior to the
French, by their sensitiveness to beauty, by their capacity for
enthusiastic appreciation, and by their technical ge