Never in all history is there a more impressive or inspiring demonstration of the value of thrift as a national asset. It has reared the bulwark that will enable France to withstand whatever economic attack the war will make.
The difference between the English and French system of war financing is psychological as well as material. The average Frenchman has a great deal of the peasant in him. He is willing to give his life and his honour to the nation but he absolutely draws the line at paying taxes. This is why the French have made it a war of loans.
Go up and down the battle line in France and you get startling evidence of the French devotion to savings. More than one English officer has told me of tearful requests from French peasants for permission to go back to their steel-swept and war-torn little farms to dig up the few hundreds of francs buried in some corner of field or garden. Equally impressive is the sight of farmers--usually old men and women--working in the fields while shells shriek overhead and the artillery rumbles along dusty highways.
Thus the French war debt will be met because of the almost incredible saving power of the French people. It is at once their pride and their prosperity. When all is said and done, you discover that with nations as with individuals it is not what they make but what they save that makes them strong and enduring.
One afternoon last summer I talked in Paris with M. Alexandre Ribot, the French Minister of Finance: a stately white-bearded figure of a man who looked as if he had just stepped out of a Rembrandt etching. He sat in a richly tapestried room in the old Louvre Palace where more than one King had danced to merry tune. Now this stately apartment was the nerve centre of a marvellous and close-knit structure that represented a real financial democracy.
"How long can France stand the financial strain of war?" I asked the Minister.
"So long as the French people know how to save, and this means indefinitely."
Although the invader has crossed her threshold, France continues to save. Every wife in the Republic who is earning her livelihood while her husband is at the front (and nearly every man who can carry a gun is fighting or in training), is putting something by. It means the building up of a future financial reserve against which the nation can draw for war or peace.