Sni,—Speaking (for once) on behalf of the British Army, I
say ditto to Daniel George. If I am permitted to say more, I will add that although I have never been a patient in a field hospital, I have been a soldier long enough, and am sufficiently acquainted with my opposite number in France, to feel confident that a discussion on literature (or, for that matter, on music, painting or philosophy) is far more likely to occur among wounded " Tommies " (stupid word) than among poilus (not so stupid). Moreover, I should say that even my un- wounded countrymen know more about French literature than French- men know about English. Byron and Wilde are apparently the only authors from this side of la Manche that they've heard of, while our range extends at least from Villon to Simenon.
See a Frenchman in train or restaurant: what is he reading, if he is
reading at all? Almost invariably a wretchedly printed newspaper with the never-absent femme coupie en morceaux, coups de revolver, affaires de moeurs, and a feuilleton full of beaux seins and young men who &latent en sanglots. If by any chance he is reading a book, it is of the kind known as gai. From what the French call gai, heaven defend us. Quelle naivete!
Never mind, they're charming, the French ; their soldiers are excel-
lent, so are their cooking and their wine and their literature—some of it. But, taking them by and large, to say that their culture (mean what you will by the word) is wider and deeper than ours is to promote the growth of a popular fallacy. Oddly enough, this one is usually cherished by people who have been told, and believe, that Scottish educational methods are superior to ours, and that Germans are Royal Corps of Signals.
P.S.—Perhaps it would impress Mr. Nevinson (who should know better) to learn that two privates of the Buffs have even been overheard discussing articles in The Spectator by" Strategicus," while it was only last week that I heard an A.T.S. volunteer, who should have been working, talking about Verlaine to a Signalman who was.
Sril,—When I worked at a French convalescent hospital in 1915, the French army surgeon lamented to me the fact that there were so many in the French army who could not read or write. He said that the authorities had been disagreeably surprised to find what a large number of peasants had managed to evade the compulsory education laws and had kept their boys and girls at home to work on their farms.
The patients with whom I had to do read, so far as I lemember, little more than the local newspaper. Certainly they never held dis- cussions on literary questions.
On the contrary, when working in the Y.M.C.A., where one of my jobs was to give out books, I was sometimes asked for a better class of book than that library supplied. Thus at Suez I was asked for books on Egyptology. I was asked for more poetry than I could
supply, and my Masefield was borrowed when I was working near Le Havre.
The armies of France and Great Britain consisted of almost the whole of the yo:ing men of both countries. Therefore men of all degrees of culture were to be found among them.—Yours &c.,
M. E. DURHAM.
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