What France Means to England

POLITICAL alliances are not, as Herr Hitler rightly remarked, concluded upon a basis of compatibility of temper; they are concluded for the purpose of assuring certain common ends. The history of Anglo-French relations during the last thirty-five years is a proof of that aphorism. Our national characters, and at moments our immediate national aims, have proved incompatible; it is because we have throughout been faced by a basic common danger that we have been obliged, in spite of many quarrels, to retain our connection.

The American people have a congenital sympathy for France. To the great mass of Americans, France