Page:The New Europe, volume 1.pdf/235

 The New Europe

Vol. I, No. 8.

December 7, 1916

"Westernism": A French Opinion

[The following article is from the pen of an extremely competent French writer, who has devoted years to the study of modern history, and has had quite exceptional opportunities of observing the course of events since the outbreak of war.]

emphasizes more strikingly the vital importance of the Eastern problem for all the Allies than the attention which it receives in France. Not one of the great nations of the Entente would have had more excuse than France for refusing to interest itself in anything save the struggle on the Western front. For that struggle is being fought out upon its own invaded territory and for its very existence. Even in times of peace the idea of war has for the French been bound up with that of national defence. M. Clémenceau, when, in his disapproval of the Salonica Expedition, he repeated day after day: "The Germans are still at Noyon," was merely reverting to the speeches of thirty years before, when, in opposing French enterprises in Egypt and in Indo-China, he cried: "Look towards the Vosges," (Regardez du côté des Vosges). On the other hand, France's interests in the East, even if one considers the ancient relations, fortified by the ties of religion, which link her with the Lebanon, are not to be compared with those of other allied nations. For a century past she has neglected the future which seemed to open before her in that part of the Mediterranean where her language is still so widely spoken, in order to concentrate her efforts upon the Western basin, where, opposite her own coasts and at a day's journey from her ports, there opens the wide perspective of a North African Empire.

And yet it is no longer a secret that if the Entente to-day has an army in the Balkans, it is due to the initiative and insistence of France. Britain followed her, not without some hesitation, after the sacrifices and disappointments caused by the ill-starred experiment of Gallipoli. Russia did not decide to send important forces to Roumania until she saw that country dangerously menaced. Italy, though a near neighbour of the Balkan Peninsula, and not without her ambitions in Asia Minor, has not hitherto felt