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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
Of recent years American interest in France has taken a new turn, for France has become the chief Continental ally of the United States in its power arrangements to prevent Russian aggression, and a bastion in the defense of those values which are the very foundation of Western civilization. Indeed, France occupies, in spite of the events of 1940, a stronger position in the West of Europe than it held in the period between the two World Wars. Now the French have alliances in which they can put confidence and from which they can get real support if the crisis comes. And then, as Professor André Siegfried, the dean of commentators upon French affairs and upon Franco-American relations, has written in the opening paragraph of Modern France: “With the countries of Eastern Europe looking in a new direction, with a defeated Germany no longer in a dominant position economically or politically, France has of necessity become the center of the entire Continental system.” The nation has moved into a partial but temporary vacuum.
1 In addition to the volume listed at the head of this article, attention should be called to the important study by Professor McKay, Donald, The United States and France, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1951, 334 pp.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, $4.00. This volume appears in the American Foreign Policy Library, edited by Sumner Welles.
2 At least one noteworthy and refreshing exception should be registered. In Chapter 17, “Strains in the Social Structure of Modern France,” John E. Sawyer makes a plea for the use of the sociologist's concept of social organization in social history. Unfortunately, the author put so much effort into the exposition of his organizational pattern that he was unable to present much new data. He might well have taken advantage of his opportunity to have presented the extraordinarily enlightened findings of the French Institute of Public Opinion Research as published in Sondages.
3 “The Elan Vital of France: A Problem in Historical Perspective,” by John B. Wolf; “The Concept of Elan Vital: A Rationalization of Weakness,” by John Bowditch; and “The Desiccation of the Bourgeois Spirit,” by John B. Christopher.
4 An interesting study of this subject is that by Farmer, Paul, France Reconsiders Its Revolutionary Origins, New York, 1942.Google Scholar
5 “The Third Force Today,” by Charles A. Micaud; “The Christian Democrats in Modern France,” by Robert F. Byrnes; “The Decline of the Socialist Party,” by Henry W. Ehrmann; “The Strudle for Control of the French Trade-Union Movement,” by Val R. Lorwin; “Communists and Peasantry in France,” by Gordon Wright; “The Communists and the Foreign Relations of France,” by Vernon Van Dyke; and “Gaullism: Retrospect and Prospect,” by H. Stuart Hughes.
6 “French Business and the Businessman: A Social and Cultural Analysis,” by David S. Landes; “The French Experiment in Nationalization, 1944–1950,” by David H. Pinkney; “The French Investment Program and Its Relation to Resource Allocation,” by Richard Ruggles; and “The Marshall Plan and French Foreign Trade,” by Warren C. Baum.
7 Almost no attention has been given to inflation and its social or economic consequences. On these matters one may consult with profit Wolfe, Martin, The French Franc Between the Wars, 1919–1939, New York, 1951.Google Scholar
8 “The French Intellectuals: Situation and Outlook,” by Kenneth Douglas; “Science and French National Strength,” by Henry E. Guerlac; “Population and Population Trends in Modern France,” by Dudley Kirk; “The Military Defeat of 1940 in Retrospect,” by Richard D. Challener; “Contemporary Concepts of French Strategy,” by Donald J. Harvey; “Political Parties and the French Army Since Liberation,” by Edward L. Katzenbach, Jr.; and “France Among the Powers,” by Fred Latimer Hadsel.