CHAMPION ADMIRES YET SCOFFS AT AMERICANS

In an interview, Edouard Champion, French publisher who gave four lectures at Harvard last December, gives several interesting reactions to American people and institutions in general and Harvard University in particular. The interview, which was written by Pierre Langaree, was printed in L'Action Francaise of February 3. The translation of M. Champion's impressions follows:

"Of course I gave my lectures in French for I know hardly a word of English. I have learned only one or two of the more common expressions such as: "Will you give me a kiss". Here his French interviewer interrupted M. Champion:

"Doesn't one say, "Will you kiss me"?

"You see", replied the publisher, "I don't even know how to say that correctly; but I do know how to do it; Well, to continue, I spoke French, but not in the manner of these grave gentlemen who sit down in front of a glass of water with their noses plunged in the notes which they read. I spoke a great deal, with my hands in my pockets, and after the talk I jumped off the stage into the audience to chat.

"Americans are great children; they like to be approached directly. I illustrated my lectures with slides, placing under their eyes the majority of the portraits which you see around me here, and which are all autographed. In this way, they saw that I knew the people I talked about, that they were my friends. They were the more interested, consequently, and they enjoyed themeselves.

"At Harvard, I gave four lectures. At the fourth, 1200 people listened to me, something one never sees at a lecture in France. I also spoke at girls colleges. Nothing is more full of beauty or seriousness. At Wellesley, for example, I had an audience composed of 800 girls and one man. So I began my lecture, Ladies and gentlemen!. And the youthful crowd broke out into laughter. It is necessary, on the other side of the Atlantic, to know how to mix the serious and the whimsical.

Whereupon, M. Champion, the interviewer goes on to relate, began to laugh at the thought of poor backward France, where people are less puritan but more virtuous than in free but dry America. His opinion of modern American literature as compared with French, was likewise not very high.

"Even if the Americans have a lot of money, we French," he interposed a sweeping gesture at his bookcase, "we have a lot of paper dollars. What a richness, what a flowering of genius is our epoch, and how poor is America in this respect when compared with us. She counts hardly ten talented writers, Dreiser, Stinclair Lewis, Sherwood. Anderson, Cabell, and several others, Consider out own authors: Maurras, Marsau, Morand, Maurois, Mauriase, Miomandre, Montherland, Magre, Mille, Martin du Gard... There are ten already, and I have only listed those whose names begin with M. We can be proud of being French!".