The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-02-07


 ruled them out of the library in my home town. Now the average Amer ican conception of France is that it suggests something like pay night in mining town with the rough edges worn off.
 A million or so doughboys went to France and the million or so have brought back stories of France. They observed, in the village where they were billeted, that the richest man had the largest pile of refuse in his stable court. They observed that the French did not give them any more for nothing than they would have re- ceived at home. Their impressions of Paris seen through a haze of pre- judice or win rouge take in tho Place de FOpera, tlIe Foiles Bergere, perhaps a hotel il that notorious neighborhood of the Care de IEst where they were swindled outra- geously; perhaps they went to the Louvre, most assuredly they went for a walk through the Champs Elysees - So this is Paris!
 American fiction, American drama, American movies, those three fault less interpreters of foreign life. have succeeded in placing, before our peo- pie, a conception of the people of most other foreign lands-which is zero.
 Judging from the only material at hand that which our best selling novelists and playwrights have pre- sented to us, France is composed Of extraordinary people who spend the day chasing errand gifts of millinery shops, of men, who, when they be- come footsore, sip vivid colored liquors under the awnings of side IT, fnc 1i1,cr iy, I1n iY11fS the passers-by. A nation of beloved "cheaters,'' but then, of course, they are French, and one can excuse much. An impossible people, efferve scent, excitable, inclined to fly off the handle, always doing chivalrous things, throwing money around like cigarette coupons, @ nationality de- voted to pleasure who somehow managed to buck up during the war. Let us see:
 The F'renchman's extravagance? With one exception, the French man is the most frugal man in Eu- rope. He doesn't care any more for | the coin of his realm than the Pole 1 does for his-which is saying all that can be said.
 He is not impulsive; on the con- trary, he is an extremely calculating person who rarely does anything until he has deliberated long about it.
 Excitab1e7
 On the surface only. The German is infinitely more ex- citable than the average French man.
 Romantic?
 He is not as romantic as the Irish man. or the American. Troro
 1 He is not any more immoral than l the dwe1lers in the average Ameri- | can town.
 Chivalr ous?
 In his subway, he is like we in ours-a seat hog.
 1 But Paris? Surely that is Sodom. ! the Barbary coast, and the Winter Garden rolled into one. Look at the Paris theatres; look at it's streets; look at those restaurants with their chambres separees. As for the thea Yorks or Chicago's or any other American citys; but adroit rather ! than bana1 when 1t is risque. AS for it's wickedness, have you | ever walked along Broadway or, ir a, carefully observant mood, along the | main street of your own home town To one who has lived in France, il | is impossible to find more inm oralit3 | there than in the United States. Also | home life is valued a little higher 1T l France than it is among us-be1ieve l that or not.
 The French people may be broadly l divided into five groups-the Royal ists, the Bourgeois (upper middle class), the Petit Bourgeois (lowel middle class), La Classe Ouvriers ] (the factory workers), the Peasantr1 | (the farmers).
 Each class has it's distinct influence upon the government and upon tht French thought.
 The Royalists are signif1ed by theil name. They long for a court; the! ! adore titles and ceremony; the, whisper in their homes of a Restora ton, but take it out in talk. The! are made up of most of the so-caI1et leading families of French society They are strong but their organiza, tion is held in check by the govern ment. They almost all make tn gesture common to Royalists wh
 cling to the fatuous belief that tn
 people should be set good example.
 They have little or no following il
 the active government; rather thei
 strength lies, in the army where the
 are represented by such prominen
 men as Marshal Foch and Genera
 de Castelnau-
 It is this royalistic element in tn
 army which has inspired in Franc
 that deep grained fear of "The Ma ] on Horseba ck''-that some day h < 1 may come clattering under the Ar | de Triomphe and place a king 0 | the throne. . The Royalists are sti 1 entrenched in the landed interests C | France. They have many follower
 among the peasantry, strange to re
 late, doubtless due, however, to thei
 powerful connections with the churc which ever breaches contentmer
 for peasant consumption.
 Their official organ is '11Actio
 F'rancais'' which, however, circulate
 only among themselves. They al
 the predominant intellectual eleme1
 of France but they have no monopol
 upon Gallic Brains.
 Frances real strength lies in i
 Bourgeois class and in it's PeasantI'
 The Bourgeois is representative | the business interests of the countr He is the most progressive elemel
 in France but he is very. very co1