La Puissance de la France

The Qualities That Will Win the War

ALLEN TUCKER

IT was in Paris, at the Hippodrome, that I saw a cinema called "La puissance de la France."

It showed the whole war effort of the French; the cattle in the pens, the foodstuffs, the factories, the munitions, the workmen in shop and field, the fighting at the front, and the battles in the air. The whole film gave an excellent idea of the work that France is doing.

It is this same Hippodrome that is the background of the picture that Degas painted of the acrobat hanging in midair; and it was curious to recognize it, and then to think of another picture, which, recently, I had been shown by a friend. It was an early

portrait by Degas; a man, seated, and a woman standing with two children by her side. The woman and the children were all in full-skirted dress, with the hair brought smoothly back from the faces.

The three figures, seen and apprehended so largely, so calmly, so simply, make one almost regret that Degas—(but I must not run into picture criticism)—the three figures had been painted so greatly, that suddenly the idea came to me, that they might also stand for a vision of La Puissance de la France. For that is how the French are standing now, calmly facing the facts, looking steadfastly at the foe, with their children beside them. And one feels that art, as always, shows the essential, is the essential; and that to her artists as well as to her soldiers, France owes the creation of that spirit that has made the world stand amazed, with eyes wet with tears of pride and gratitude.

We outsiders never really know much about France; a little is all that any of us can ever know. She is so self-contained that we do not get inside. All we can do is to apprehend, from the outside, the things that are within.

IT was strange to be back again; once more to slide up the Gironde; to see the buildings, the deep yellow of the autumn vine leaves, the grey of a church tower—that warm grey, the quality of which cannot be conveyed in words —to see again (one always sees them newly, freshly, they have that quality), the poplar trees rising against the grey sky, with a poignancy that is almost like a cry.

There it all was; the same, and yet quite different, for in the two years that I had not seen her, France had won victory after victory, from Verdun to Malmaison, had given and given of her strength and then had had enough to spare, so that she was the first to get her troops into Italy.

In spite of all her victories I had arrived at the black moment. Russia collapsed, Italy in rout, and France facing it all as calmly, as nobly, as the woman in the picture by Degas.

THE lot of some of us is to see things, in France, with our eyes, and we get our impressions, not from the talk of generals or statesmen, but from finding the roses still blooming in the Tuileries, blooming in December, while the fountain, where as a little boy, I sailed boats, is covered with ice, or from seeing the plane-trees holding back the setting sun with their glittering, glistening leaves, shining against the side of the Madeline that shows— only a flat, quivering grey—against the light.

One understands France more easily when one sees Petain's headquarters, "Le Grand Q. G." Here, with no bustle, no foam-flecked horses, with only an occasional motor, only two sentries, one realizes that this people has settled down into the business of war. When one finds in an office of the Ministre de la Guerre, one room filled with typewriters and, in the next, two women doing embroidery, somehow one understands that this nation can accomplish the task, the biggest task in the world, with an ease and calmness that is almost disconcerting.

I think at present one feels the power more, the steady power that has replaced or reinforced what I felt in France so strongly two years ago, that sense of a leaping spirit, the power that will see this thing through to the end.

On a morning, I saw, turning by the Obelisk, vaguely through the suncolored mist, a little black funeral. The hearse and the walking people, so very black, and the flame of the tricolor over the coffin; and I thought of Napoleon's phrase, at the battle of the Pyramids, "Forty centuries look down on you," and I felt that here again was the same people that carried Democracy over the face of the world, and made the thrones of the kings shake and fall, until crowns and sceptres were only rattles to play with, and the doctrine of the rights of man was an established fact. And I

knew that the dead boy ot the so little funeral, gave himself, as this people have all for so long given themselves—for liberty.

PARIS, of course, always gives visually, to everyone, the emanation of her spirit. One cannot escape it, and now, at night with only dim lights, she is more wonderful, more beautiful than ever. Frémiet's Jeanne d'Arc, the light reflected from her gold, suggesting rather than defining her against the tall dark of the houses, the houses entirely deep dark blue, except for a line of orange light, where a curtain is not tightly drawn, seeming almost like the ghost of the glorious Maid, come back from the land between the stars, to revisit the city where sleeps that other great soldier "among the people that he loved so well." And then the Place de la Concorde at night, faintly lit, the Obelisk, pinkish, looking like a thin shaft of pale flame, rising behind the figure of Strassburg, sitting in deepest shadow.

ONE loves old things because of the people who have owned them, lived in them, worn them, cared for them. Old things have picked up and keep alive the souls of the splendid dead, and seem to understand one, else why should the buttresses of the side of Notre Dame all seem to lean toward one, to wish to enfold, to comfort us as one passes? Inside, once again, with the nave, soaring higher than a sky, and there at the altar, near the door, are the Allied flags, the quiet, terrible flags, hanging so still, our own now with them, its gallant stripes and field of shining stars never looking more beautiful, hanging so still, while, in front, flame the tall candles for the repose of the souls of the men who have died for—for you and for me.

It is another experience to go to -⅛ studio. You hear him fumbling to find the door. It opens and he stands there, blind, and receives you, and then, in his faded uniform, sitting in his chair, under the high thin light that he cannot see, he is among his pictures, and talks of art, and seems, with his so recently blinded eyes, moving behind the dark glasses, a complete realization of the greatness of France.

(Continued on page 98)

(Continued from page 39)

Painter, warrior, artist, man!

He was a painter, he was a warrior, but now, perhaps more than ever, he is an artist and a man,—but one could not look at the clean paint brushes, waiting, waiting,—it was too dreadful.

Some people may think that the Bodies have changed, that it is only lately that they have behaved like Bodies. Listen! I passed, one day, in a small village, a monument that looked quite new, and that bore on it the inscription "Oublier? Jamais," and wc spoke of it and said that the Germans after the war would find "Jamais" was a long time. A few days after, I passed the monument again, this time on foot, and, walking around it, read the inscriptions on the side opposite to the "Oublier? Jamais." I saw, first, a list of civilians who had been murdered by the Germans and I saw that the date was, not as I had expected, 1914, but—1870.

The German has not changed! This time let us make the "jamais" really mean "never," so that the children's children of the entire world shall never forget the German, what he is, what lie thinks, what he does.

AT Soissons, the French are busily at work repairing the cathedral, the cathedral the Germans tried to destroy. And could one get a better idea of the calm balance of France than in seeing these men beginning to repair the damage to the great art of the past, while shells from time to time still fall upon the city. Over here we think that the arts must be dropped. We are busy; we have a war on; away with the unimportant things. But the Frenchman understands that of the power of a nation, art is the sign, no, not the sign, the essential creative force of a nation, for, without art, there is not a nation, not a complete nation.

Without lessening their war effort by

a jot, the French conserve and create art, for they know that "where there is no vision, the people perish."

Again, on another day, a bright sunny day, I had a quite different sensation It was at Noyon, Noyon that had only lately been vacated by the retreating Germans. It was a pleasure almost too deep, to sec the shops full of new things everything new; the windows bright with new wares, and the town itself seeming to smile with joy over its deliverance. Why, one almost felt that the organ in the church would, if reverently touched, still play, in spite of the fact that all its pipes had been stolen away by the invader.

In the cake shop the old woman said, "Oui, Monsieur, I have been here all through. It was bad, very bad. Did I go? Me? No, I have always been here. I am old; I stayed."

And that is France! She is old; she stays.

IT is this staying power of France that we are slow to comprehend over here But we are not over here any longer. We are over there, at last. A strange new face is in Europe. We may not yet be a nation, complete or closely knit, but, in some curious way, we are a race and there, in Flurope, is that face among all the other faces; a face so strange, so different, so stern, so delicate, so serious, so fine. Yes, a new face is in Europe! What will it do? What will it give? What will it receive?

War cannot be waged without the spirit behind it and, while everything possible must be done in a material way —for we live in a material world—we must remember that without the spirit no amount of material can avail anything, and that it is for us to have our spirit and mind so formed that, under the drive of our relentless will, victory will come and come speedily.

If we wish to understand France, we must remember that within her splendid material achievement it is always in the spirit of France that her real power lies; that it is that same spirit that is really "La Puissance de la France!"