FRANCE: Artistic Imperialism

Roundly though Paris papers have recently flayed the French Ambassador to Washington, M. Paul Claudel, for buying a Packard, for boasting of its prowess, for being generally an apologist for Les Americains, last week he was at it again.

“Europeans ask me how it happens that Americans torture their Negroes,” said he to Paris reporters. “But in all my time there I have never witnessed any of these tortures. . . .

“Americans are not slaves of their machines ! . . . Man can never become the slave of a machine. . . . Some people are further developed from the technical point of view than others, that is all. . . .

“Finally, we hear of ‘Artistic Imperialism’; we hear that America draws to herself all of Europe’s great artists. But is that the fault of the Americans? An artist is a man, a man like another man, and it is not surprising that he would rather sing, paint or play the piano for $1,000 a day in the United States than for $1,000 a month in Europe.”