The Prefet is on the friendliest of
terms with the Catholic population, rich and poor; and they, on their
side, think and speak warmly of a man who is clearly doing his patriotic
best for all alike.
Our first day's journeyings were to show us something of the qualities
of this Catholic world of Lorraine. A charming and distinguished
Frenchwoman who accompanied us counted, no doubt, for much in the warmth
of the kindness shown us. And yet I like to believe--indeed I am
sure--that there was more than this in it. There was the thrilling sense
of a friendship between our two nations, a friendship new and
far-reaching, cemented by the war, but looking beyond it, which seemed
to me to make the background of it all. Long as I have loved and admired
the French, I have often--like many others of their English friends and
admirers--felt and fretted against the kind of barrier that seemed to
exist between their intimate life and ours. It was as though, at bottom,
and in the end, something cold and critical in the French temperament,
combined with ignorance and prejudice on our own part, prevented a real
contact between the two nationalities.
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