Arts and Manners

That Surfeit of Corruption

This year’s dramatic export from France to the United States is apparently an attempt at getting even with Dulles—and foreign trade has not been so cruelly employed since the Opium War. True, there is nothing the French can do if we order their army, just like that, to kiss the French Empire goodbye. But they can hit us hard—revanche pour Port Said!—when, after the day’s work of treachery is done, we want to relax at a typical French bedroom farce. The bedroom is there all right, and the farce may be typically French, but while the innocent American merely expects to be morally offended, he gets, unawares, his philosophical backbone fractured. As I said, easily the most ruthless corruption of natives, by clever tradespeople, since the Opium War.

WS

About the Author

William S. Schlamm

Featured Tags

That Surfeit of Corruption

This year’s dramatic export from France to the United States is apparently an attempt at getting even with Dulles—and foreign trade has not been so cruelly employed since the Opium War. True, there is nothing the French can do if we order their army, just like that, to kiss the French Empire goodbye. But they can hit us hard—revanche pour Port Said!—when, after the day’s work of treachery is done, we want to relax at a typical French bedroom farce. The bedroom is there all right, and the farce may be typically French, but while the innocent American merely expects to be morally offended, he gets, unawares, his philosophical backbone fractured. As I said, easily the most ruthless corruption of natives, by clever tradespeople, since the Opium War.