it--always, of course, with perfect correctness and fluency--to express
French ideas and French wits, in a way as nearly French as the foreign
language will permit. The result is extraordinarily stimulating to our
English wits. The slight differences both in accent and in phrase keep
the ear attentive and alive. New shades emerge; old _cliches_ are broken
up. M. Chevrillon has much less accent, and his talk is more flowingly
and convincingly English; for which, no doubt, a boyhood partly spent in
England accounts. While for vivacity and ease there is little or nothing
to choose.

But to these two distinguished and accomplished men England and America
owe a real debt of gratitude. They have not by any means always approved
of _our_ national behavior. M. Jusserand during his official career in
Egypt was, I believe, a very candid critic of British administration and
British methods, and in the days of our early acquaintance with him I
can remember many an amusing and caustic sally of his at the expense of
our politicians and our foreign policy.

[Illustration: JEAN JULES JUSSERAND]

M. Chevrillon took the Boer side in the South African war, and took it
with passion. All the same, the friendship of both the diplomat and the
man of letters for this country, based upon their knowledge of her, and
warmly returned to them by many English friends, has been a real factor
in the growth of that broad-based sympathy which we now call the
Entente. M. Chevrillon's knowledge of us is really uncanny. He knows
more than we know ourselves. And his last book about us--_L'Angleterre
et la Guerre_--is not only photographically close to the facts, but full
of a spiritual sympathy which is very moving to an English reader. Men
of such high gifts are not easily multiplied in any country. But,