FRANCE TODAY
Epstein, Leon D.
France Today As France Goes, by David Schoen-brun. Harper. 341 pp. $5. Reviewed by Leon D. Epstein FOR ANYONE who has not read another recent analysis of France's troubles, this book provides an...
...He is sympathetic but not infatuated with France...
...Otherwise the reader might suspect that Schoenbrun had once been a physician...
...In addition to the expected domestic political material and a long section on colonial and foreign policies, As France Goes also contains useful, if necessarily abbreviated, discussions of historical background, economic development, and the French way of life generally...
...For the minority already immersed in the growing body of literature on "what's wrong with France," Schoenbrun may offer less that is new even though the perceptiveness of his judgments remains to commend the book...
...With the author's judgments, it is hard to find fault...
...The author's intimate acquaintance with French politics is based mainly on a decade's experience as the Paris correspondent of CBS...
...Earlier Mr...
...The volume is cast in the form of an elaborate case-history, and its language is liberally studded with medical metaphors...
...The book is based on the sound principle that France remains important to us even in her reduced circumstances, and that the nation's vices ought to be understood and not simply deplored...
...It is good that the dust-jacket makes this last identification...
...For example, Schoenbrun's diagnosis is that "France is still suffering from an excess of Red cells on the Left but that the danger of a hemorrhage is no longer acute...
...His specific charge is that individual academic competition among children is encouraged at the expense of education for citizenship...
...In fairness, however, it must be said that this kind of writing does not seriously interfere with an otherwise straightforward presentation, and that happily Schoenbrun himself seems to tire of surgical terms in the last half of the book...
...A most suggestive special point is Schoenbrun's criticism of the French educational system...
...Furthermore, Schoebrun is careful to stress the overriding fact that "France is the only major power on the continent of Europe that has remained loyal to its democratic traditions in this century of totalitarianism...
...Among French institutions, he believes that it is the educational system that is "most responsible for the lack of community spirit that divides the French people and weakens their government...
...Schoenbrun had pursued the obviously helpful specialization of Romance languages, which he taught in New York City schools...
...Reviewed by Leon D. Epstein FOR ANYONE who has not read another recent analysis of France's troubles, this book provides an informed and well-balanced general account...
...In this perspective, the recurrent cabinet crises appear less than catastrophic even if serious enough as evidence of the underlying political difficulties that Schoenbrun describes...
Vol. 21 • June 1957 • No. 6
