Edith Wharton

French Ways and Their Meaning Edith Wharton

One hears a good deal in these days about "What America can teach France;" though it is worthnoting that the phrase recurs less often now than it did a year ago. In any case, it would seem more useful to leave the French to discover (as they are doing every day, with the frankest appreciation) what they can learn from us, while we Americans apply ourselves tofinding out what they have to teach us. It is obvious that any two intelligent races are bound to havea lot to learn from each other; and there could hardly be a better opportunity for such an exchangeof experience than now that a great cause has drawn the hearts of our countries together while aterrible emergency has broken down most of the surface barriers between us. No doubt many American soldiers now in France felt this before they left home. When a man wholeaves his job and his family at the first call to fight for an unknown people, because that people isdefending the principle of liberty in which all the great democratic nations believe, he likes to thinkthat the country he is fighting for comes up in every respect to the ideal he has formed of it. Andperhaps some of our men were a little disappointed, and even discouraged, when they first came incontact with the people whose sublime spirit they had been admiring from a distance for three years. Some of them may even, in their first moment of reaction, have said to themselves: "Well, after all, the Germans we knew at home were easier people to get on with