ST. ED~UNp HALL MAGAZINE
17
STUDENT LIFE IN PARIS. EFORE I went to study ·at the Sorbonne I had thie idea that . French students were the hardest workers! in the world . . It may be that they are so, but thos:e I met certainly were not. Perhaps I have no right to judge of French industry since most of my acquaintances were not French. Although I spent six months in Paris I only came to know about four real Parisians : the French students contrive to keep to themselves. I met students of almost every other nationality. At the .S orbonne there is no dis'tin.ctipn of race or nation. Americans: and Negroes, Russians and Jews, sometimes Germans, are on an equal footing with Frenchmen. Even the professors are cosmopolitan. Strowski, a Pole, is attached to the Faculty of Letters; Schneider·, a naturalised Aus:tria:n, lectures on Art. The· University cour.Sies are all-inclusive; they range from Chinese! Literature to the latest ' ology.' The Governments of some of the smaller Eur'o pean States, such as Roumania, Portugal and Greece, have endowed chairs for the Sltudy of their respective literature and history. Numerous public lectures are given on general subjects. Eminent men of fo~·eign countries are periodically invited to come and discourse on their· favourite topics. While I was there Lord Robert Cecil gave a lecture on the League of Nations. In February, . Monsieur N. Jor·ga, of the Uni'versity of Bucharest, gave · a course of _lectures on Roumanian Art; in March an American professor was lecturing on Whistler and Sargent. Frenchmen make excellent lecturers. All those I heard were entertaining, ·and some of them were brilliant; though they were usually most entertaining when they were1 mos.t irrelevant. Moreover, they appeared to enjoy themselves as much as any of their listeners. M. Charles Guignebert used to chuckle in his b:eard all the tiine, but especially wHen he was talking about the habits of mediaeval monks. All professors have beards· of the flowing, patriarchal type. They all wear black · clothes, and' usually carry blacki satchels! rather like music-cases. In this respect they resemble the students, who cannot be distinguished from the professors except by the absence of the beard. Women Situdents affect glasses and a learned air, but are much more sociable than those in Oxford, perhap·s because tlley are trea,ted as equals. The ·life of Parisian students is: about as dull as their conversation. There is practically no social life. There are indeed
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