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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



extreme ends of France are four small groups 

 whose mother-tongue is another language— the 

 200,000 Flemings near the Straits of Dover ; the 

 200,000 Basques in the far southwest ; the 250,- 

 000 Catalans in the eastern Pyrenees; and 

 1,000,000 Bretons in Brittany — all equally pa- 

 triotic children of France. 



The Bretons are Celts. Their rugged pen- 

 insula was formerly called Armorica. The in- 

 flux of Britons from Greater Britain, escap- 

 ing from the Angles and Saxons, more than 

 doubled the inhabitants and bestowed the pres- 

 ent name. The area of the peninsula is less 

 than 10,000 square miles ; yet in no other re- 

 gion of equal size upon the globe are speakers 

 of a Celtic language in the majority, and here 

 they are constantly decreasing. 



Some recent ethnologists, basing their con- 

 clusion on skulls found in the country, question 

 whether the Bretons are Celts at all. Until 

 more convincing arguments to the contrary are 

 presented, one is justified in reckoning the 

 Bretons as worthy members of the Celtic race. 

 They are simple and untutored, conservative, 

 religious, fearless, independent, and picturesque. 



The Langue d'Oui and Langue d'Oc, noted 

 upon the map, do not signify merely local 

 mediaeval differences in the manner of saying 

 yes in French. Both are legacies — one from 

 the Merovingian Frankish kingdom, which 

 reached no farther south than the Loire, and 

 the other from the Visi-Gothic kingdom, which 

 spanned the Pyrenees along the eastern coast 

 of Spain, and, above all, from Provence, the 

 Roman Provincia. The two coincide with the 

 physical and temperamental distinctions which 

 characterize northern and southern France. 



To the ethnic composition of the latter not 

 only Celts, Latins, and Teutons have contrib- 

 uted, but prehistoric Ligurians, Phoenician and 

 Greek colonists, and Moors and Saracens from 

 Spain. The dialect hence developed, flowing, 

 exuberant, tempestuous, became the fit instru- 

 ment of the troubadour and of early romance. 



But that other dialect, which began in a 

 little island of the Seine, where once all of 

 Paris was included, was becoming the real 

 French. Were all histories of France de- 

 stroyed, the whole story would survive in the 

 successive phases of the Langue d'Oui. In 

 1519 Francis I decreed that Parisian French, 

 already the popular speech, should be the offi- 

 cial language of the land. Exact, concise, 

 capable of every shade of polite inflection, it 

 speedily took its place as the organ of di- 

 plomacy and of international relations. 



It has been said that "the French language 

 made the French nation." More truly, each 

 made the other, and they struggled to maturity 

 side by side. The language is the Frenchman 

 put into speech — clear, sociable, attractive, sym- 

 pathetic. So, four hundred years ago, the most 

 cosmopolitan of travelers, Marco Polo, desiring 

 in his Genoese prison to secure the attention 

 of the world, decided that French was the fit 

 language in which to write the story of his 

 wanderings. 



Mention anywhere the French today. One 



will not think of their literature or science, un- 

 surpassed, or of their immense achievements in 

 every field of thought and industry — of Pas- 

 teur, Lavoisier, Cuvier, Bichat, Voltaire, Rous- 

 seau, Rosa Bonheur, Moliere, Racine, Cor- 

 neille, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Ampere. Instead, 

 a picture will rise before the mind, pitifully 

 inadequate and incomplete, of the men and 

 women of France during these last intermi- 

 nable years. A glory rests upon them, tran- 

 scending all the glory of their past. 



A great poet, not a Frenchman, once wrote : 

 "France is the soldier of God." For more than 

 fourteen centuries she has seemed to act, to 

 fight, to conquer for the world. On her soil, 

 and very largely by her sons, were fought the 

 decisive battles of Chalons (451), which broke 

 the power of the Huns; of Tours (732), which 

 overwhelmed the Moslems; of Valmy (1792), 

 which began "a new era in the world's his- 

 torv" ; and of the Marne (1914 and 1918), 

 which crushed a foe more relentless and more 

 friehtful than Moslem or Hun. 



Humanity is debtor to the French until the 

 end of time. 



The basques 



The Basques are an interesting people who 

 live on both sides of the central Pyrenees in 

 France and Spain and on the southeast shore 

 of the Bay of Biscay. They number not far 

 from 700,000, of whom more than 100,000 have 

 emigrated to America, mostly to Argentina and 

 Chile, and, unfortunately, few to the United 

 States. 



They name themselves Eskualdanak, posses- 

 sors of the Eskuara, their native tongue. This 

 language, utterly apart from the other lan- 

 guages of Europe, is a puzzle to philologists. 

 Some think its grammar suggests the Magyar 

 and Finnic. Others consider it a modern form 

 of the otherwise extinct Iberian. They use the 

 Latin alphabet and can speak either French or 

 Spanish. Their origin is lost in obscurity. 



Devoted children of the Roman Church, they, 

 nevertheless, allow their clergy no influence in 

 political or municipal affairs. Priests and law- 

 yers, as supposedly inclined to despotism, are 

 not eligible to their junta. Conservative, 

 proud, and self-respecting, they are tenacious 

 of their rights and deferential to women. 



The common saying, "Every Basque a noble," 

 is justified by the character of the people. Of 

 splendid physique, they are tireless workmen, 

 expert seamen, brave and capable soldiers. 

 From Bilbao, their industrial center, we derive 

 bilbo, Old English for sword. Bayonne, an- 

 other Basque city, gives us the bayonet. 



Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Order, 

 and Saint Francis Xavier, the illustrious mis- 

 sionary, were Basques. The latter, however, 

 with bluish gray eyes, fair hair and beard, 

 hardly five feet tall, did not in physical appear- 

 ance resemble his darker, stalwart countrymen. 

 Marshal Foch, Generalissimo of the Allied 

 forces, is a more typical Basque. 



