Manchester Evening News, 20 MARCH 1945
So far as one can judge from casual conversations and from the Press, Britain’s reputation has never stood higher in France than it does now. The attitude of the average man is not only friendlier than General de Gaulle’s speeches would lead one to suppose but it is also far friendlier than one would infer from what might be called the mechanics of the situation.
For four years France was subjected to a barrage of anti-British propaganda, some of it extremely skilful, and at the same time Britain was driven by military necessity to bomb French cities, sink French ships, and commit other acts of war which the average man could hardly be blamed for resenting at the time when they happened. But on top of this, the invasion and the subsequent campaigns have seriously disrupted the economic life of the country. It is generally agreed that in the later period of the occupation France was better off in a physical sense than she is now, in spite of the huge-scale looting practised by the Germans.
The transport system has not yet recovered from the invasion, and the heaviest fighting took place in some of the best agricultural areas, upsetting first the hay harvest, then the grain harvest, and resulting in enormous losses of livestock. One gets some idea of what this means when one sees butter, almost unobtainable in any legal way, being black-marketed at something over £2 a pound. It is the same with many other foodstuffs, and thanks to the lack of locomotives the fuel situation in the big towns is catastrophic. Paris shivered through the winter of 1940, under the Germans, and shivered again through the winter of 1944, under the Anglo-Americans. Moreover it is realised that the food crisis has been accentuated in recent months by the diversion of Allied shipping to the Pacific.
Yet there seems to be remarkably little resentment. No doubt the forces that supported Vichy are still there, under the surface, but the only body of expressed opinion that could be possibly called anti-British is that of the Communists. The Communists are to some extent politically hostile to Britain because they see in Britain the likeliest leader of the ‘western bloc’ which it is the object of Soviet policy to prevent. The ordinary man is pro-British both personally and politically, and if asked why, he gives two reasons, one rather trivial, the other more serious and possibly containing in it the seeds of future misunderstanding.
The first reason is that the British troops have on the whole been better ambassadors for their country than the Americans. The comparison is not really a fair one, because the British are here in comparatively small numbers. The bulk of the British forces are in Belgium, and the vast majority of the soldiers who throng the streets of Paris are Americans. Most of them have come from several months in the unbearable conditions of the front line, and they have a large accumulation of pay in their pockets and only a few hours in which to spend it. But the other reason for the present friendly attitude of the French towards Britain is a flattering but somewhat exaggerated estimate of British political achievement during the war.
Frenchmen are much impressed not only by the obstinacy with which Britain continued the struggle in 1940 but by the national unity she displayed. They say with truth that in the moment of crisis Britain had no fifth column and not even any great bitterness of feeling between classes. But to a surprising extent they are inclined to mistake the surface changes of war-time Britain for an actual social revolution, accomplished by common consent. The word ‘revolution’ is used again and again in connection with Britain’s present-day development, both in conversation and in print.
Frenchmen who might be expected to take a more cynical view are to be heard saying that class privilege is no longer rampant in England, that large incomes have been taxed out of existence, and that private capitalism has in effect given way to a centralised economy. And they remark with admiration that all this has been achieved without bloodshed, almost without friction, in the middle of a struggle for existence.
To anyone who knows how little real structural change has taken place in Britain during the war, these eulogies are rather disconcerting. Curiously enough they are repeated by Frenchmen who have visited war-time Britain, and perhaps spent several years there. The mistake made, in many cases, seems to be to confuse patriotism with social enlightenment. Without a doubt the general behaviour in Britain during the war has been good. All classes have been willing to sacrifice either their lives or their comfort, rationing has been equitable and efficient, profiteering and black-marketing have never been a major problem, industrial production has soared in spite of every kind of difficulty, and women have flung themselves into the war effort to an unprecedented extent. Frenchmen compare these phenomena with the much more discouraging things that have happened in their own country, and are apt not to realise that the essential social structure of Britain has remained almost unchanged and may reassert itself when the danger has passed.
There are other current misconceptions—in particular, the failure of nearly all Frenchmen to grasp the British attitude towards Germany and the peace settlement. Few Frenchmen realise how unwilling the British people will be to maintain a permanent army of occupation in Germany, or to support any settlement that would make such an army necessary. Not many Frenchmen understand the extent to which Britain’s policy is conditioned by her close association with the U.S.A., and hardly any realise that Britain can never act internationally without considering the Dominions.
The present relations between France and Britain are good, but the possible sources of discord are many, and they could do with more illumination than they are getting at present.
France looks hopefully towards Britain as the land of true democracy, the country that has been able to recover from its past mistakes without civil disturbance, without dictatorship, and without infringing intellectual liberty. This picture is not altogether false, but it could be the cause of serious disappointment, and it would be well if more Frenchmen were able to distinguish between the real social changes that have taken place in Britain and the temporary expedients that have been forced upon a country fighting for its life.