France will remain obstinately English. This is to be particularly
noticed in the case of our relations with the French, because it is one
of the outstanding peculiarities of the French that their vices are all
on the surface, and their extraordinary virtues concealed. One might
almost say that their vices are the flower of their virtues.

Thus their obscenity is the expression of their passionate love of
dragging all things into the light. The avarice of their peasants means
the independence of their peasants. What the English call their rudeness
in the streets is a phase of their social equality. The worried look of
their women is connected with the responsibility of their women; and a
certain unconscious brutality of hurry and gesture in the men is related
to their inexhaustible and extraordinary military courage. Of all
countries, therefore, France is the worst country for a superficial fool
to admire. Let a fool hate France: if the fool loves it he will soon be
a knave. He will certainly admire it, not only for the things that are
not creditable, but actually for the things that are not there. He will
admire the grace and indolence of the most industrious people in the
world. He will admire the romance and fantasy of the most determinedly
respectable and commonplace people in the world. This mistake the
Englishman will make if he admires France too hastily; but the mistake
that he makes about France will be slight compared with the mistake that
he makes about himself. An Englishman who professes really to like
French realistic novels, really to be at home in a French modern
theatre, really to experience no shock on first seeing the savage French
caricatures, is making a mistake very dangerous for his own sincerity.
He is admiring something he does not understand. He is reaping where he
has not sown, and taking up where he has not laid down; he is trying to
taste the fruit when he has never toiled over the tree. He is trying to
pluck the exquisite fruit of French cynicism, when he has never tilled