Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-09-24
IS FRANCE DECADENT ?.
Impressions of Celebrated Men
 on the Question.
HOPEFUL SIGNS TO THE CONTRARY

ZangvvilI Regards France as Too
 Great to Be DesDaared of and Too
 Necessary For Civilization = No
 Country So Full of Intellectual
 Youth and Hope, Says Edmund
 Gosse.
 Theodore Stanton sends the Open Court number of letters on "The De cadence of France" written by celebri- ties. We give several letters:
 Colonel Sir Howard Vincent, M. P.:
 ITO this question there IS only one response: No; thousand times noy ] find myself in the happy condition to make this statement. I have just com pleted journey through France. Ev- anywhere is order, everywhere prosper fty, everywhere a quiet and happy people, well fed, we'll nurtured, gay, content, hospitable, generous. The poor are not to be seen. Luxury is ex. tensive. Such are the Impressions re- ceived by my colleagues and myself, and this is the reason why I answer, No, no, no.
 Edmund Gosse, librarian of the house of lords:
 My reply is peremptorily, categor- ica1ly, no.
 What is 'decadenceg Is it not q phrase by which the timid often at temptl to mask their fear of what is new, active and rebellious?
 "The only decadent nations are those which do not dare to change, which 31, ,,+ 4<.. >A aging a1dacity of thought or perver- sity of conduct. The living nations>are forever making new experiments at which conventional people shildder and scream.
 "We may SCOUT the horizon of the world at this hour and see no nation which seems so little to deserve the re- buke of decay as the French. To my apprehension no country at the present hour Is so full of intellectual youth and hope, offers to the observer so great a variety of points of vitality or draws the attention of the thoughtful to it with so vivacious sympathy as France.
 "If by .decadence' you mean evolu- ton, the painful metamorphosis of life yes! If.by 'decadence' you mean dull ness, apathy, sinking of the moral and mental temperature, thousand times-nop
 Lucas Malet.
 ''The question which you propose, I, as lover of France, venture to an- swer with an emphatic negative. France is not in state of decadence, but she Is, in my humble opinion, in a state of convalescence-and the symp- toms of the latter condition may easily, by superficial observers, be mistaken for those of the former. From the middle of the eighteenth century she has passed through series of con- vulsions. both moral and material, of experiments, of splendors and dis asters, eliminating in the cruel trag- edy of 1870-71, which must always remain to the student one of the amaz- ing chapters of human history. That she should have retained her solidarity, her genius and revived as nation, shows a vitality so enormous and an intelligence so adaptable and fertile that it is impossible to entertain mis- givings as to her future. But the ef- fleets of her past sufferings are still upon her i'll certain nervousness and sensitiveness, which result in episodes painful to her admirers. She is taken with unreasoning fears, and these lead to violence both of feeling and of action which strikes the observer as unworthy and exaggerated. Two very dissimilar episodes, having their rise in these nervous terrors, appear especially un- fortunate-I refer to the .Affaire Drey- fus' and the expulsion of the religious orders. Tn the first case there was a fear of abstract justice, in the second a fear of religious liberty. As Catho- lie and n Eiberal alike, it is incOnceiv able to me that the highest interests of any nation can ever be served by the repudiation of such fundamental prin- ciples of social existence and of prog ress Such repudiation, like all other recourse to artificial and arbitrary rem edies, suggests lack of faith in her. self, and in her splendid destiny, which might be alarming, did one not remem- Der that she still bears the scars of the tremendous adventures of the later years of the eighteenth and nearly the whole of the nineteenth century. Her convalescence must of necessity be long, but there are surely already signs that her restoration to health will be complete and lasting. There are perhaps nations in Europe whom we could do without but France very certainly is not among these! Indeed, it is not too much to say that never have the influence and traditions of the Latin races beer of more vital i'm portance to the evolution of true and noble civilization than at the present moment"
 Gilbert Murray, formerly professor of Greek at Glasgow university:
 q hesitate to pronounce any opin- ion upon a subject so vast and so in- tricate, but there are two remarks that venture to make.
 "First-If France is decaying, then the whole European civilization as at present understood is decaying. The same bad symptoms which appear in EN,,o ,ooo also fr EnuIoud Gnp-