Understanding France
Over to France. By Pierre Maillaud. Translated by Francis Cowper. (Oxford University Press. 7s. 6d.)
ON the minds of many who love and admire France the reading of Professor Brogan's Development of Modern France must have had a chastening effect. That scholarly, authoritative and exhaustive his- torical study revealed weaknesses, unresolved tensions and unspoken fears in the French social structure which gave at least a superficial justification to those claiming to have anticipated the events of May and June, 1940. In particular the sense of demographic and indus- trial inferiority was an underlying theme in modern French history. A valuable and just corrective to any exaggeration of this is to be found in Professor Brogan's 'collection of essays chosen from all those he wrote on various aspects of French history, politics and literature between 1935 and 1945. The texts have been printed without modification, and Professor Brogan admits the resulting repetitiveness. But it is, on the other hand, an advantage to have a good point driven home more than once ; it is also interesting to see what aspects of French thought have had an especial attraction for the writer.
The most important point' which Professor Brogan emphasises is that, whatever the weaknesses and fears, or worse, that marked French political life before 1939, it is a capital fact that France (alone among all nations except our own and the Commonwealth) declared war by her own choice and with the approval of most of the country. Hence he pleads that we should—and perhaps we have got, partly in response to his essay written in 1943—get out of the habit of talking of the " fall " of France, and speak rather of the "defeat." It is, he argues in another essay, just because France made a choice, however disastrous its immediate outcome, that she remains a Great Power, and lie asks us not to lose sight of the military causes of failure, and dwell less on the moral and psycho- logical. The second service this book does to intelligent under- standing of France lies in its calm, scrupulous balance- between rival ideologies. "Both on the Right and the Left," says Professor 'Brogan bluntly, " there were doctrinaire, personal, financial affiliations with foreign Powers "—and not to Hitler or Mussolini alone.
It is necessary to draw, particular attention to these two outstanding qualities of Professor Brogan's volume. Yet it does it an injustice if it leaves the impression of monotony. On the contrary, there is abundant variety. The first essay, called Alexander the Great, is an enthusiastic reconsideration of Alexandre Dumas, not wholly irrelevant in i942, when France appeared to have abandoned not only the Maginot line and, in the phrase of Georges Duhamel, the Descartes line, but also the "'Dumas line " to which, however, Pro- fessor Brogan foresees a glorious return. Other notable literary essays are on Proust as a social historian and a review of the Scott- Moncrieff translation—in which, incidentally, the writer spots one or two mistakes. The other authors discussed belong more to the political and historical categories, including an estimate of the Nationalists Jacques Bainville, Leon Daudet and Maurice Barres, and two long essays on Charles Maurras, written in 1935 and 1944. The later essay is not less sympathetic and judicious than the earlier ; Professor Brogan refuses to place Maurras among the traitors, and both artides form an admirable summary of the rise and fall, the strength and weakness, of one of the chief figures of French intel- lectual and public life. Here is something more than " occasional " writing—though the fact that such writing can be of notable his- torical interest is proved by the essay on De Gaulle. More than "occasional," too, is The Case for French, in which a convincing argument is given,for the retention of French as the second language in English schools. Professor Brogan recognises all the economic and political reasons against this predominance, but since, as he points out in a later essay, " the France we need " is one who goes back to her tradition as the teacher of Europe, his moral and cultural argument for teaching French literature, language and, history immediately after our own seems unanswerable.
Practically all Professor Brogan's essays during the war were written in anticipation of a French revival, a re-entry into the struggle and full participation in the national liberation. Monsieur Maillaud's book is a first-hand account of the way in which this anticipation was fulfilled. From being—under his nom-de-guerre of Pierre Bourdan—a world-famous radio commentator on French affairs during the war, the writer, despite the physical disability which had barred him from active service, received permission to accompany the French Division under General Leclerc when it landed in France not long after D-Day, attached to the Third American Army. From that beginning until the joy of entering Paris, and still more Strasbourg, Monsieur Maillaud traces with pardonable emotion the French Army's progress and his own adventures, which included capture by Germans already conscious of impending defeat. The story of the Leclerc Division deserves to be better known, and this readable account fills a gap among English books.
JOHN STAPLETON.
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