The Queen's Visit
B y DARSIE GILLIE Paris rTHE Queen's visit to Paris has been a more I triumphant success than anyone dared hope. What sort of importance should be attached to the occasion it is vain for the moment to discuss. That must be left to later. It may be decided ultimately that the pleasure it gave was the principal result—perhaps no mean one. Neither Britain nor France occupies today the place she did at the time of the Royal visits of 1938 and 1913. If once again we are on the eve of happenings as grave as on those occasions, they certainly did not cast shadows as susceptible. The joint political defeat recently suffered by the two countries must have played a part in the emotions released, but survived rather as a test of friendship than as a discouragement. Politically, indeed, that would seem to be the principal note struck. Doubts about Franco-British solidarity in a grave crisis intro- duced a note of interrogation into the celebrations of the two earlier Royal visits—reassurances that did not quite reassure until the two armies found themselves side by side in a mortal struggle. On this occasion the assumption that France and Britain must stand together when gravely threatened Was fundamental. The Governments might have divergent policies but these would be superficial, not least perhaps because neither is now a power sufficiently first-class to shape events. It was typical of the occasion that the two Govern- ments were almost forgotten. Very few French- men can have been aware that Mr. Selwyn Lloyd was accompanying the Queen. M. Monet and his Ministers were less in the public mind than at any time since they took office.
On the French side, it should be noticed, President Coty filled his part in a manner that his Countrymen found eminently satisfactory. This is the more remarkable because singularly few anecdotes seem to be in circulation about the way he did it. Yet he emerges with enhanced prestige and personality. A widower of seventy-five who had never played a front-rank part until he was elected President, he is believed to have taken the leading share in planning the programme of the visit. Throughout he looked the effective host, filling the part with genial warmth and dignity. He obviously enjoyed himself. There is no close logical connection between his success in holding his on for three days with the most glamorous couple in the world and his political duties as head of the French State—presiding over all councils of Ministers or picking a new Prime Minister, for instance—but his hand has certainly been strengthened.
The visit was certainly the most important festivity in Paris since the end of the war. It is indeed very difficult to imagine any event that Could compete with it. It began as a cheerful Occasion. A reception for a charming young woman who is also the Head of State of a neigh- bour and ally. In both respects the Queen enjoyed in advance the Parisian goodwill. But the feeling quickened with mutual acquaintance. The French took to the Queen in a manner which it is difficult to describe without appearing to indulge in sentimentality or flattery. They immensely and increasingly enjoyed her presence. The Queen, on her side, played her part unflaggingly in a very heavy programme without once being responsible for a disappointment. The French undoubtedly became increasingly aware how uniquely Paris and their own gifts are suited for such an occasion. Even if France and Britain are no longer first- class powers, the powers that have outstripped them have no such capital as Paris and no such representative as the Queen. No capital rivalling Paris in beauty rivals it also in power. Here, therefore, was an occasion that still had meaning and still had grace as no other conceivable one in the same category can do.
France and Britain were equal. Neither was begging from the other. Neither can very well condescend to the other. No one could go away empty-handed or disappointed. They could and did remember recent events experienced very differently but in association. Britain is still to most Frenchmen over thirty the help that was essential if France was to recover from the crush- ing defeat of 1940. The help held; France did recover—not only as a State but as a democracy. The high intention of renewing French democracy that inspired the best Frenchmen in 1944 and 1945 and 1946 is one of which many are grateful to be reminded at the present juncture. The danger that gratitude for Britain's part in the last world war might disturb good fellowship seems to have been finally dispersed by the last joint enterprise. For even those Frenchmen who most disapprove of it are convinced that if it was to succeed it would have been by the methods and in the spirit proposed by France, not those proposed by the United Kingdom.
The visit came at a moment when France and her Government are beset by worries. Algeria seems no nearer a solution. There is a profound moral crisis about methods used there. The country's resources of foreign exchange are run- ning out, and the Government has not yet suc- ceeded in turning the tide. Tax increases, not tax reliefs, are the likely prospect. There are immense difficulties in the way of adjusting France to the common market for whose creation she has just signed the treaty. In addition to these particular worries, France has, of course, all those which are common to the civilised world. All these things seemed for three days to have faded into the background. It is difficult to remember an occasion on which Parisians were so light-hearted and so kindly to one another as on the evening of the Queen's river trip. Was this just a desertion of duty? Should they have gone on being un- interruptedly worried? Is the severe frost which has so severely devastated France's orchards since the Queen's departure a rebuke to the light- hearted? It would ill befit a Briton who enjoyed the friendliness that went with that light-hearted- ness to think so. Certainly the French do not seem inclined to reproach themselves.
Previous page
