Life — May 18, 1922 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MAY 18, 1922 “While there is Life there’s Hope” Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY London Offices, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs., London, E. C. Paris, France. ene has been in a news- OME saying fe »paper or a review that in it a sense of sin. That “means that there is a difference between right and wrong and that it belongs to aspiring writers to acquaint themselves with it, and to disclose their knowledge by their atti- tudes of mind about behavior. So the Greek poets conveyed that there were some lines of conduct that were wicked and did not bring good results, and Shakespeare did the like. He does not invite you to approve of Lady Macbeth. There is a fair supply of the sense of sin in the world we now live in, but not enough agreement about what is sinful. Doubtless. the French have a sense of sin. They have courts and churches and newspapers and other fa- cilities for impressing it upon the minds of people that some lines of conduct are better and more advisable than others, but one needs only to go about a little in Paris to realize that the French don’t see sin as a majority of the voters in Kansas see it. That they are wickeder than the Kansans one may not say who has only hearsay and sta- tistical acquaintance with Kansas, but surely France and Kansas would not get far in the details of agreement about what is wrong. Make it bigger than that. Say that France and the United States would agree no more than imperfectly about what is wrong. Consider the matter of wine-drinking. All over the United States there is more or less of a senti- ment that it is wrong to drink stimulat- ing beverages, but in France, certainly in Paris, ene does not notice that senti- ment at all. With us the beverages 598 Madison Avenue, New York ruled out by the Volstead law are con- siderably associated with hilarity, lav- ishness and the disturbance of the peace, but in France they are associated mainly with food and are details of diet, though it is evidently felt to be nothing against them that they con- tribute to toleration of life and even to enjoyment. One of the most ex- acting duties we encounter in this life is the vast inexorable duty of digestion, which never stops until we do, and can- not be sidestepped with any comfort. Volstead framed his law as though this duty did not exist, but the French rec- ognize it and one suspects’ as he looks about in France that such liquids as they take with their food help them to meet it. ERTAINLY they get along with food remarkably well. They are husky people. We learned in the war that they are not easily brushed aside. One gets the same impression from looking at them here. Pilgrims from Vol- steadia who come to France this sum- mer and inspect the inhabitants, will be likely, if not too positively fastened to prohibitive convictions, to take a course for themselves of the treat- ment on which the French so visibly thrive. If they are moderate it will probably do them good in mind and body. A man at the Ritz complained that he had been getting fat on it, but it is worth some fat, especially if one starts lean. And it is even worth some rheumatism—though not too much—if that should be a consequence. Volsteadism looks upon wine not only as disorderly but as uneconomic. Apparently the Frenchman doesn't. He could bear its being disorderly, but there is no telling what he might lo if he became convinced that it was un- economic. For he is sensitive about gain, and liable to take an obstinately serious view of anything that seems to interfere with it. His sentiment, as we all recognize, is all for France. His conception of his duty to the world is to defend France and make her power- ful, prosperous, and keep her func- tioning. He feels that the greatest service that France can do the world is to be France, and out of that feeling, which has so much foundation, comes the great political sin of France, the propensity to live for herself alone. 7 @ Bo can you wonder that she should have that propensity, with the memory of England sitting open- mouthed across the channel for five hundred years waiting for chances to bite pieces out of her and lately with Germany bulging out with a hugh com- mercial aggrandizement, and threaten- ing, and actually attempting, to roll over on her and squash her into shape- lessness? One cannot wonder that she is what she is, but so intense and con- centrated a nationalism is an embarrass- ment in these days when the inter- dependence of nations is so obvious, and co-operation between them so in- dispensable. France will co-operate if it looks good for France, but she is nct for any details of co-operation that will tend to make France any less French than she is at present, or impede Frenchmen in their great duty of stand- ing off intruders and having their say in the management of the world, and collecting what is coming to them. comicbooks.com