ce of her nationality too much. The French are perhaps the
only civilised nation whom no people of other nations can thoroughly
understand, and who, with very few individual exceptions, do not
understand any people but themselves. They have a way of looking at
life which surprises and sometimes amuses men of all other
nationalities; they take some matters very seriously which seem of
trivial consequence to us, but they are witty at the expense of
certain simple feelings and impulses which we gravely regard as
fundamentally important, if not sacred. They can be really and truly
heroic, to the point of risking life and limb and happiness, about
questions at which we snap our fingers, but they can be almost
insolently practical, in the sense of feeling no emotion while keenly
discerning their own interest, in situations where our tempers or our
prejudices would rouse us to recklessness. In their own estimation
they are always right, and so are we in ours, no doubt; but whereas
they consider themselves the Chosen People and us the Gentiles, or
compare themselves with us as the Greeks compared themselves with the
Barbarians, we, on our side, do not look down upon their art and
literature as they undoubtedly do on ours, and a good many of us are
rather too ready to accept them as something more than our equals in
both. When I say 'we,' I do not mean only English-speaking people, but
other Europeans also. I have overheard Frenchmen discussing all sorts
of things in trains, on steamers, in picture-galleries, in libraries,
in the streets, from Tiflis to London and from London to the Pacific,
but I have never yet heard Frenchmen admit among themselves that a
modern work of art, or book, or play was really first-rate, if it was
not French. There is something monumental in their conviction of their
own superiority, and I sincerely believe it has had much to do with
their success, as a nation, in the arts of peace as well as in war. A
man who is honestly convinced that he is better than his opponent is
not easily put down in peaceful competition, and will risk his life in
action with a gallantry and daring that command the admiration of all
brave men; and it is a singular fact that German soldiers did not call
Frenchmen cowards after the great war, whereas it was a very common
thing to hear Frenchmen inveigh against 'those dirty, cowardly
Prussians' who had got the better of them. Men who can take such a
point of view as that must be