In no other country has the newspaperman the rights and privileges that he has here. He is as important for the preservation of our liberties and our security as any legislator, judge, or executive. One can almost formulate a law that one can judge the quality of a democracy and its expectancy of life by its press. By that standard France was doomed to fall. France under the Republic had the most venal newspapers on earth. As the American press is honest, so was the French press dishonest. The French government was a faithful reflection of its press, one might say almost a creation of its press. Some good Frenchmen even go so far as to lay the major responsibility for the fall of France on their newspapers whose editorial opinions for the most part were as plainly for sale as the vegetables in the market. The reasons for their venality go back to the period at the end of the nineteenth century when all the states of Europe were floating government loans in Paris, the banking center of the continent. The French peasant, who kept his gold in his _bas de laine_, his woolen stocking, was the chief investor, and the French newspapers were the chief salesmen. Profits from the flotation were so enormous that the governments concerned could afford to pay very large bribes to the French newspapers to recommend their bonds. The French peasants at that time believed their newspapers, bought the bonds, and the corrupt newspapers grew rich and content. This easy money made it unnecessary for them to go out and get advertising, and from that day to this French newspapers have lacked the economic foundation that American newspapers have. After the war, the bribes from financial quarters largely disappeared and the French newspapers, without advertising, and with the habit of venality, became more unscrupulous, because hungrier than ever. French newspapermen, worse paid than ever, were reduced to selling their services cheaper than ever before, and the corruption became almost universal. One famous French correspondent was fired by his famous newspaper because he had taken a bribe from a foreign government--and had failed to split it with the managing editor. Hardly a newspaper in Paris would refuse a subsidy from a foreign government, but all this giving and taking of bribes became trivial when Hitler came to power in 1933. From then on the French press was inundated with German money, and from then on could be dated the certainty that France would fall. I want above all things to emphasize that there were a few honest, capable, patriotic, and incorruptible French journalists. It is sufficient commentary on the Vichy government that most of them had to flee when the Germans came. Q. _Is there any hope for the French? Do you think they can come back?_