FOX-HUNTING FRANCHISE TAX
thought of them as people of marked levity. When I met
them I found that they had just as solid characters as
English and American public men, although with the
attractiveness which to my mind makes the able and
cultivated Frenchman really unique. (To Sir George
Otto Trevelyan, October 1, 1911.) Mem. Ed. XXIV,
271; Bishop II, 232.
FRANCE AND THE WORLD WAR. The French
feel with passionate conviction that this is the last stand
of France, and that if she does not now succeed and is
again trampled under foot, her people will lose for all
time their place in the forefront of that great modern
civilization of which the debt to France is literally
incalculable. It would be impossible too highly to
admire the way in which the men and women of France
have borne themselves in this nerve-shattering time of
awful struggle and awful suspense. They have risen
level to the hour’s needs, whereas in 1870 they failed so
to rise. The high valor of the French soldiers has been
matched by the poise, the self-restraint, the dignity, and
the resolution with which the French people and the
French Government have behaved. (New York Times,
October II, 1914.) Mem. Ed. XX, 55; Nat. Ed. XVIII,
without saying that the man who takes to hunting, not
because it is a manly sport, but because it is done
abroad, is a foolish snob; but, after all, he stands about
on the same intellectual level with the man who refuses
to take it up because it happens to be liked on the other
side of the water.
To say the sport is un-American seems
particularly absurd to such of us as happen to be in part
of Southern blood, and whose fore-fathers, in Virginia,
Georgia, or the Carolinas, have for six generations
followed the fox with horse and hound. Century, July
1886, pp. 341-342.
____________. Fox-hunting is a first-class sport; but
one of the most absurd things in real life is to note the
bated breath with which certain excellent fox-hunters,
otherwise of quite healthy minds, speak of this
admirable but not over-important pastime. They tend to
make it almost as much of a fetish as, in the last
century, the French and German nobles made the chase
of the stag, when they carried hunting and game-
preserving to a point which was ruinous to the national
life. Fox-hunting is very good as a pastime, but it is
about as poor a business as can be followed by any man
of intelligence. . . . Of course, in reality the chief
serious use of fox-hunting is to encourage manliness
and vigor, and to keep men hardy, so that at need they
can show themselves fit to take part in work or strife for
their native land. When a man so far confuses ends and
means as to think that fox-hunting, . . . or whatever else
the sport may be, is to be itself taken as the end, instead
of as the mere means of preparation to do work that
counts when the time arises, when the occasion calls—
why, that man had better abandon sport altogether. (St.
Nicholas, May 1900.) Mem. Ed. XV, 470-471; Nat. Ed.
XIII, 403.
FRANCE-DEBT TO. In this great war France has
suffered more and has achieved more than any other
power. To her, more than to any other power, the final
victory will be due. Civilization has in the past for
immemorial centuries owed an incalculable debt to
France; but for no single feat or achievement of the past
does civilization owe as much to France as to what her
sons and daughters have done in the world war now
being waged by the free peoples against the powers of
the Pit. (To Henry Bordeaux, June 27, 1918.) Mem. Ed.
XXIV, 525; Bishop II, 449.
FRANCE-STATESMEN OF. It shows my own
complacent Anglo-Saxon ignorance that I had hitherto
rather looked down upon French public men, and have
47.
____________. France has shown a heroism and a
loftiness of soul worthy of Joan of Arc herself. She was
better prepared than either of her allies, perhaps
because the danger to her was more imminent and more
terrible, and therefore more readily understood; and
since the first month of the war she has done everything
that it was in human power to do. The unity, the quiet
resolution, the spirit of self-sacrifice among her
people—soldiers and civilians, men and women—are
of a noble type. The soul of France, at this moment,
seems purified of all dross; it burns like the clear flame
of fire on a sacred tripod. Frenchmen are not only a
gallant but a generous race. (1916.) Mem. Ed. XX, 257;
Nat. Ed. XVIII, 221.
FRANCE. See also ALGECIRAS CONFERENCE;
DREYFUS, ALFRED; FRENCH REVOLUTION; JUSSERAND,
J. J.; WORLD WAR.
FRANCHISE. See NEGRO SUFFRAGE; SUFFRAGE;
VOTING; WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
FRANCHISE TAX. After I was elected governor I had
my attention directed to the franchise tax matter, looked
into the subject, and came to the conclusion that it was
a matter of plain decency and honesty that these
companies
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