New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-08-07
(Wiliam Dean HozeHs in Hdrper's
Mn9dzine.)

(Waiam Dean HozoeHs in Hdrper's
Mdgazine.)
II any reader of ours has a mind for some
thing that will more powerfully and unquali-
fedly restore his dropping self-esteem in
these days when it may so well have ma
tionally sickened, we may confidently advise
his reading Mr.. J. J. Jusserands volume
called with Americans of Past and Present
Days" There is a chance that he may not
know who Mr.. Jusserand is; and at any rate
we will make bold to tell him that he is that
French author, equally known as an English
author who has been the Ambassador from
the French Republic to ours for the last
thirteen years, and who could easily know us
better than we know ourselves in our being
as we'll as our having been.
For the admirable book he has given US
we will briefly, all too briefly, explain that i:
covers the whole ground from the first period
of our uprising against England, when the
French became less her foes than our friends,
to the time when they sent, in the fifth year
Of our instruction, the help by land and by
sea which saved US alive and gave US back
from the mortal pass we had reached, free
AID independent nation. This is fact which
every American ought to remember every day,
say over with his prayers at night and utter
in grace before meat, lest he forget the great
magnanimous people who are now revealing
themselves to the world as they always were
The story from sources hitherto uneXplore1
is told in the great chapter on "Rochambeau
and the French in America" Then there are
three middle chapters on major LEnfant and
the Federal City" which should always be
remembered with the French engineer who 50
splenddly imagined it, then there are two
most important chapters on Washington and
the French" and oil Abraham Lincoln" with
teree other papers, more relevant than they
might seem, on "The Franklin Medal" on
Horace Howard Furness" and on From War
to Peace" Whether they are strictly rele-
want to the main theme or not, all these
chapters are fused together in the glow or
the humane spirit in which the great fact is
treated and in the unfaling gentleness of the
authors good taste. At the moment when
France and England are allied in titanic
struggle to dspel the danger of world
despotsm, it is his Office to recall the circum-
stances and incidents of the French aid 70
the rebellion which was wrenchng half or
England from the other half. The perfect
frankness together with the perfect gentle
ness which ne uses in this very difficult and
delicate Office may well be studied in time
when we are so apt TO let our convictions run
away with our manners, and keep a lasting
lesson in the art of not saying the things we
would rather not have said. England fairly
drops out Of the question; it is truly as our
friend rather than her foe that France ap-
pears from first to last.
This is one Of many things which give al
most unique value to an admirable book. It
ought to be studied at first hand rather than
in any secondhand report of it. In no other
book that we can think OF s the constancy %
France finely and strongly portrayed. II
we have forgotten this, or imagined from the
behavior Of this or that French government
that she had grown cold in her affection, we
can learn from Mr.. Jussersnd that il was
never the French people who had faltered.
The First Napoleon or the Third may have
wished u.s. or done US, harm, but not France.
She remained true to US in the ideal OF Us
which was one of her great ideals. She
visioned in us the fulflment Of her own hopes
rof liberty, equality and fraternity; and
though when We are honest with ourselves
we must own that we are
The conservation and the poets dream"
for her rather than the reality we ought TO
be, still it is something to have inspired such
an illusion, even if We can only wish n
shame and sorrow il were true. We have
faith TO believe il will yet be true; this land
is often
"The land Of Broken Promise"
as Lowell called it, yet somehow the promise
seems always mended and kept TO such hope in
US as France has cherished But II the promise
of our radiant infancy, when heaven lay about
US. is never perfectly mended, it is to the
honor Of the most generous Of the nations
that she has had IN. ideals. the III sion 81 ia