Satisfaction with a happy mean implies the power to choose, the courage
to renounce.
The French had chosen: they chose France. They had to renounce; and they
renounced Adventure.
Staying in France was not likely to make any man inordinately rich in
his life-time; forsaking France to acquire sudden wealth was
unthinkable. The Frenchman did not desire inordinate wealth for himself,
but he wanted, and was bound to have, material security for his
children. Therefore the price to be paid for staying at home, and
keeping one's children with one (an absolute necessity to the
passionately tender French parent), was perpetual, sleepless, relentless
thrift. The money necessary to security had to be accumulated slowly
and painfully, so the Frenchman learned to be industrious, and to train
his children to industry; and that money had to be kept fast hold of,
since any profitable investment meant Risk.
Risk and Adventure were the two dreaded enemies that might, at a stroke,
deprive one of the bliss of living in France, or of the modicum of
well-being necessary to live there in comfort, as the unluxurious French
understand it. Against Risk and Adventure, therefore, it is the French
parent's duty to warn and protect his children. Brought up in this
atmosphere of timidity and distrust of the unknown, generation after
generation of young Frenchmen became saturated with the same fears; and
those among them who tried to break through the strong network of
tradition, and venture their inheritance or their lives in quest of new
things, were restrained by the fierce conservatism of the women and the
insinuating tyranny of French family life.
It is useless to deny that, to Anglo-Saxon eyes, the niggardliness of
the French is their most incomprehensible trait. The reluctance to give,
the general lack of spontaneous and impulsive generosity, even in times
of such tragic appeal as the war has created, have too often astonished
and pained those who most admire the French character to be passed over
in any frank attempt to understand it.
During the most cataclysmic moments of the war, when it seemed that a
few days or weeks might bring the world crashing down in ruins, and
sweep away all that made life tolerable and material ease a thing worth
considering--even then (though one could of course cite individual cases
of the noblest generosity), the sense of the imprudence of uncalculated
generosity still prevailed, and in France money never poured forth for
the relief of suffering as it did in England.
The same clinging to tradition and fear of risk which make prudence
almost a vice in the French are not applied only to money-saving. The
French too often economise manners as they do francs. The discovery is
disillusionising until one goes back to its cause, and learns to
understand that, in a society based on caution, and built about an old
and ineradicable bureaucracy, obsequiousness on the one side is sure to
breed discourtesy on the other.
No one knows more than the French about good manners: manners are
codified in France, and there is the possibility of an insult in the
least deviation from established procedure, such as using the wrong turn
in signing a note, as, for example, putting "Agréez, Monsieur" where
"Veuillez agréer, Monsieur" is in order, or substituting "sentiments
distingués" for "haute considération." Unfortunately, in the process,
the forms of courtesy have turned into the sharp-edged metallic counters
of a game, instead of being a spontaneous emission of human kindliness.
The French are kind in the sense of not being cruel, but they are not
kindly, in the sense of diffused benevolence which the word implies to
Anglo-Saxons. They are passionate and yet calculating, and simple
uncalculated kindliness--the vague effusion of good-will toward unknown
fellow-beings--does not enter into a plan of life which is as settled,
ruled off and barricaded as their carefully-measured and bounded acres.
It savours too much of Adventure, and might lead one into the outer
darknesses of Risk.
If one makes such a criticism to a French friend, in any candid
discussion of race-differences, the answer is always: "Of course you
Anglo-Saxons are more generous, because you are so much richer."
But this explanation, though doubtless sincere, is not exact. We are
more generous not because we are richer, but because we are so much less
afraid of being poor; and if we are less afraid of being poor it is due
to the fact that our ancestors found it much easier to make money, not
only because they were more willing to take risks, but because more
opportunities came in their way.
Once these arguments are balanced, it becomes easier to allow for French
caution, and to overlook it in favour of those other qualities which
their way of life has enabled the French to develop.