A NEW INVASION OF FRANCE

BY STÉPHANE LAUZANNE

Editor in Chief of Le Matin

It has very often-and very pertinently-been pointed out that the greatest danger threatening France is not one that is most talked of. It is neither war nor bankruptcy. France does not fear a new war, since, for the moment, the French army is strong enough to repel whosoever may attack her territory. France does not fear bankruptcy, for she is determined to work as courageously as she has fought. The greatest danger that threatens France lies in the future: it is Depopulation.

In 1700 there were only three Great Powers in EuropeFrance, with a population of 20,000,000; Austria, with a population of 13,000,000, and England, with a population of 9,000,000. Prussia, at that time, had a population of only 2,000,000. Thus France alone, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, possessed forty per cent. of the total population of the great European nations. In 1789 France was still in the lead, with a population of 26,000,000, while Austria had 18,000,000, England 12,000,000 and Prussia 5,000,000. Even Russia, at that time still steeped in dark mystery, had a population of only 25,000,000. A hundred years later, in 1880, the situation showed a lamentable change for France. Russia had a population of 84,000,000, Germany 45,000,000, Austria 39,000,000, France 37,000,000 and Italy 28,000,000. France, until then the first, now ranked fourth in population, with only thirteen per cent. of the total population of the great European Powers.

The terrible curse of depopulation which has descended upon France has, during forty years, taken an even firmer grip upon the country's throat. In 1914 it found an ally in another more immediately terrible curse, the war. In 1921, despite the fact that the three Departments that comprised Alsace-Lorraine had

been recovered, France had a population of but 39,000,000. Russia, despite the ravages of Bolshevism, has a population of more than 100,000,000; Great Britain 47,000,000, and Italy 40,000,000. France now ranks fifth in population, as compared with the other Great Powers of Europe. She has, in fact, dropped to seventh place, if one counts two other great nations that have risen to world power, the United States, with a population of 110,000,000, and Japan, with 58,000,000. France, therefore, possesses but 9 per cent. of the total population of all the Great Powers. The year that has just passed does not permit of any optimism, nor show the slightest pause in this course of self-destruction. On the contrary, it seems to have quickened. Official statistics issued by the Minister of the Interior show that in 1924 the proportion of births to marriages was 166 to 100. If this continues, the present population of 39,000,000 will have dropped to 35,000,000 in 1940; about 31,000,000 in 1950, and 25,000,000 in 1965. By the year 2000 France will have ceased to exist.

Such being the situation—and it is a tragic one-how is it that the French people face it with such calm and indifference? A nation which declines numerically also declines physically and morally: how is it that the French nation does not shudder before the moral and physical decline which threatens her?

The explanation may be the following one. A new fact has occurred since the war, and that fact has helped France out of her present difficulties. It is immigration-a steady, regular, wonderful immigration. According According to the official statistics, there were more than 60,000 Italian immigrants last year (1923), more than 100,000 Czecho-Slovaks, and above all there were more than 400,000 Poles-exactly 412,435. The last figure, which is astounding, will be exceeded this year. And it is anticipated that in 1924 about 500,000 Polish workmen will have crossed the French border and settled down in the Northern Departments. We find ourselves here in the presence of an extraordinary invasion which has no precedent in history. It is worth while to study it in detail and to examine what the marvelous consequences of it may be.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting the Polish Minister to France. He looked half proud, half surprised.

"Don't you know," he said to me jokingly, "that Poland is settling down in France?"

"What do you mean?"

"I have just come back from the North, from the Pas-deCalais, and have visited three of your mining districts there, which are almost exclusively populated by my compatriots. Go and see for yourself."

I went and saw the scene myself. On a rainy September morning, I got down at the station of Bruay-les-Mines. Bruayles-Mines, remember that name! If you look on a French map, you will see that it is a little mining city not very far from the famous Lens basin. But the map is wrong. Bruay-les-Mines is now no more a little French mining city: it is the capital of the Poland of Northern France. As soon as I had left the station I thought I was dreaming. In front of me I saw a country merrygo-round turning to the sound of music, to which fair-haired children were galloping, seated on wooden horses, and those fair-haired little ones were calling out, laughing, to one another in a language I could not understand. They all had Christian names unknown in France: Yanka, Wanda, Bolek. The shops bore sign-boards with names I could not read: tailor, baker, grocer, butcher, everything was in Polish. If Chemin de fer had not been written upon the station in French, I might have thought that while I was asleep I had made a long journey and crossed far-off frontiers.

It is a well-known story that when you visit a Russian or a Polish village and you want some information, your only course is to go and ask the pope or the priest of the village. I remembered this, and immediately called on Monsignor Helenowski, who, with the full consent of the French authorities, is the chief shepherd of this large herd of immigrants.

"There are," he told me, "42,000 Poles in a district of four miles around Bruay. In the Pas-de-Calais and in the North there are already, for the movement continues, about 600,000. . ." "Where do they come from?”

"Mostly from Westphalia. They are people who have been

made Germans definitely by the Treaty of Versailles, and that in a country on which the imposition of the respect of the minorities has been forgotten."

"But could they not enter Poland?"

"Poland, unfortunately, has too many laborers, whereas foreign immigration has become an unquestionable necessity in the French mines. Would it have been possible to find better qualified immigrants than these populations, rendered fiercely anti-German by a century of bondage and bullying? Note that as soon as these people arrive in France they lose their German nationality and are naturalized in block by Poland. It is, therefore, hundreds of thousands of citizens which France takes away from Germany, citizens who possess each an average of five to six children."

"Are they good people?"

"They are all hard workers, well organized and educated. You will have a chance of seeing them nearer. It is Sunday, and to-day there are everywhere theatrical performances, conferences and friendly meetings."

I follow the bishop, in the rain, along the streets. Everywhere there are Polish sign-boards, everywhere Polish posters. Above the very few shops kept by French people I notice the inscription: "Polish is spoken here. ("On parle ici le

polonais.")

We come to a large hall in the middle of a performance given by amateur workmen who are playing a popular piece. Men with stern faces are applauding with their rough hands. In the balcony, five hundred children, packed against each other as in a subway car, are shouting with joy and laughing at the funny repartees.

The president of the local labor association, a big miner, rises and with dignity and courtesy invites me to be seated at the table of honor, placed against the stage. The curtain was just rising on the interlude. Twelve little girls, in the picturesque costumes of the Cracovian peasants, execute a dance in a pretty ensemble, and sing a popular folk song in chorus. Then the tallest comes forward and recites a piece of poetry.

"This little girl," explains the miner to me, "is what we call a

'Westalka'. She was born at Bochum, her father and mother are from Herne. She has never been in Poland, and yet note how well she speaks our tongue."

"I do not doubt," I say, “that her daughters, when she will have any, will speak and sing as she does.

"Yes, yes," replies the workman somewhat affected, “that is what is needed. But it is a rather difficult and tender point to explain. You see, for us, our mother tongue, our national traditions, are our strength, our religion, our honesty.

France, who is so generous, must forgive us for this sentiment, or rather she must be brought to understand it. We are in France, and we shall probably remain here all our life; we all ardently desire to learn French, but we do not wish to forget our mother tongue at any price."

The curtain falls on the final act. Next door, in a kind of vast shed, an attentive public is listening to a lecturer, a man decorated with the military medal of the army of General Haller, who, in simple and vibrating words, is relating the fearful sacrifices of France during the war, and then, without any transition, he speaks of the beauties of the French cities and villages which he has visited. Loud cheers respond, bursting from all sides.

"And now," says the old soldier brightly, "citizens, let us make the best of our Sunday and amuse ourselves."

In the twinkling of an eye, chairs and benches are placed along the walls and an orchestra of accordions and clarions starts a joyous mazurka.

"In your country you do not dance the tango and the foxtrot yet?" I said to the president-miner, who had escorted me. "No," he replied laughing, "you see that even in the matter of dancing we do not apply our programme, but we must and you will have to help us to do so."

"We should like to have schools, where we could learn French and at the same time not forget Polish. Then we would be able to serve and love our two countries: our former one, Poland, and our present one, France."

I left Bruay-les-Mines in the afternoon and went to Arras,