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Show I BRISBANE THIS WEEK Descend Among Bicycles Many Strikes and Worries Two Flags That Clash Two National Hymns This column, like others to follow, fol-low, written in Europe, traveling fe-ut hr auto- mobile, will represent rep-resent an effort to see things clearly, and describe de-scribe them simply, sim-ply, according to he old formula. You descend from the ship at Havre into a world on wheels, bicycle wheels, a change from the world on automobile automo-bile wheels left on the other side Arthur Brisbane of Atlantic. Hero working men and women,' thousands of them, ride to and from work, ten to thirty abreast, depending on the width of the street. They have the right of way, properly, prop-erly, in a democracy. So it used to be in America, when automobiles were new, small boys shouted "Get a horse," and New York state law compelled the automobile driver to stop his car and engine, while a farm wagon passed, if the farmer raised his hand, or even lead the farm team past his machine if the farmer requested re-quested it Here the car stops, while bicycles circulate around it u u :j c;.ilrlv vnil stOD. UI1 UUIU fitUCOi juim.vi later, meeting flocks of sheep, on roads across the salt marshes of the Vendee. France is a land of bicycles, of many political parties, and, at the moment, a land of strikes. Like all other European countries, it is a land of permanent war scares. America looks upon war as a distant, dis-tant, improbable possibility, and when it comes spends billions on airships that do not fly, ships that never go to sea, and similar evidences evi-dences of patriotic dollar-a-year efficiency. ef-ficiency. Europe's nations live in a state of fear, as an American family might live if it knew that, at any moment, well-equipped gangsters from next door might enter, en-ter, "shoot up" the household and set fire to the house. American travelers leaving the boat by railroad, descending in Paris at the Saint Lazare station, were surprised to find crowds fighting fight-ing each other, not waiting for Germany, crowds made up entirely of Frenchmen of different political opinions. Some wore ribbons with the red, white and blue colors of the French flag; others, more numerous, wore the plain color red. One side sang the "Marseillaise," national hymn of France since the revolution. Others wearing small red flags sang the "Internationale," official song of the Communists the world over, from Moscow to Harlem. Crowds grew bigger, the Frenchmen French-men sang the two hymns at each other, more and more violently, with excellent voices, not one out of tune, all knowing the words of their respective hymns. The "Mar-sellaise" "Mar-sellaise" says, "Let us go, children chil-dren of the fatherland, the day of glory has arrived"; the other says, "Arise ye prisoners of starvation; arise, ye wretched of the earth." It was a scene never to be described, de-scribed, now that Dooley is dead, and Artemus Ward. Nobody bothered both-ered the descending foreigners from across the water. A lew Frenchmen hit other Frenchmen, not hard, then agents of the Surete, whom we should call policemen, po-licemen, gradually dispersed the crowds, that met and sang at each other again the next day. They live in the suburbs and work in Paris, or vice versa, and, meeting in the railroad station, it enrages them to encounter those that sing the wrong hymn and wear the wrong colors. Those singers have chests like drums, complexions that reveal countless billions of red corpuscles and voices that could be heard, almost, al-most, from Los Angeles to Santa Monica. One of them broke off at the sad word "starvation" and said to your narrator, who had politely congratulated congrat-ulated him on his vigor: 'Tenez, tatez mon bras, et j'ai soixante sept ans" meaning, "Here, feel my muscle, and I am sixty-seven years old." The muscle rose in a biceps like a small melon. The duty of a visiting foreigner is to observe, describe and not comment; but this writer, had he accepted the invitation to speak at the American club in Paris recently, recent-ly, would have suggested that the French, whose only earthly possession pos-session is France, should be careful care-ful not to tear that property apart, especially with Germany ready to gather up the pieces. This crosses the water by mail. Is not new, and not news, when you see it. Only heaven knows what might happen in a week. King Features Syndicate, Inc. WNU Service. I |