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By Root 456 0

administration grew after the end of the First World War, when the German and Ottoman possessions were parcelled out. Cameroon and Togo came to France, and Rwanda and Burundi to Belgium. Syria and Lebanon were also placed under a French mandate. But almost all were granted independence in the fifteen years after the end of the Second World War. The Near Eastern Arab countries were established as independent republics as part of the immediate post-war settlement. Indo-China and North Africa, as well as Madagascar and the Comoros, had to win their freedom by force of arms; in sub-Saharan Africa, by and large they were granted it at their earnest entreaty in 1960. The tiny nations of the Pacific, the Caribbean and South America are still, in effect, part of the empire: but they are now part of the French Union: according to the constitution adopted by the referendum of 27 October 1946,

la France forme avec les peuples d’ outre-mer une Union fondée sur l’ égalité des droits et des devoirs, sans distinction de race ni de religion.

France forms with the overseas peoples a Union founded on equality of rights and duties, without distinction of race nor religion.

And all its members as ressortissants (i.e. when they come to France) are French citizens. It is noticeable that language is not included as an aspect in which the Union is free from distinction: that is because in the Union, everyone’s language is expected to be French.

In conformity with its explicit respect for clarity and reason, the French-language community seeks to order itself, and have an overall conception of itself, apparently far more than any other. So it is characteritic that it has given itself an international political, technical and cultural organisation, known as la francophonie. It is a matter of some satisfaction to the French government that the initiative for this came not from France but from a number of distinguished second-language speakers. Still, there may perhaps have been a certain political motivation: the founders were President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, President Léopold Senghor of Senegal, Charles Hélou of Lebanon, and Hamani Diori of Niger. Nevertheless, France does provide up to two-thirds of the organisation’s budget. It was founded on 20 March 1970 at Niamey in Niger, central Africa, and has held summit meetings regularly, with cabinet ministers in attendance, the ninth at Beirut in 2002. Membership is not restricted to former colonies of France; indeed, Egypt recently provided the secretary-general, Boutros Boutros Ghali: characteristically it chooses to emphasise some conceptual or moral, rather than historic, relatedness.

Its current emphasis, rather surprisingly, is on protecting and enabling cultural diversity, certainly a novelty as a francophone preoccupation, and not without a whiff of l’ esprit malin, Gallic mischief, directed at the perennial rivals, les anglo-saxons. But it is well within the tradition of incisive, and sometimes disinterested, consideration of the rights of man. Political interests will out, however, and it has been difficult for the French state, in recent years, even to protect and foster such linguistic diversity as remains within its own domains. The action of the minister of education in 2002, for example, aimed at incorporating Breton-language schools into the state system, and so funding them nationally, fell foul of an article inserted into the French constitution as late as 1992—that the language of the French Republic is French.*

The Third Rome, and all the Russias

†

But to turn away from the window on Europe is hard, that is a fact. But, that being said, Asia—this could really be our exodus in our future—again I exclaim it! And if we could accomplish the mastery of that idea, even in part, oh, what a root would then be revitalized! Asia, our Asiatic Russia,—this too is our sick root, which we need not just to refresh, but utterly to resurrect and reconstruct! A principle, a new principle, a new view on the affair, here is what is necessary!