In Europe the Fire This Time

Here’s the best piece yet on the French mess. Columnist
Minette Marrin tells about the little village near
Montpellier in which
she used to have a house.

For years we were the only foreigners and while nobody
paid us much attention, everyone was pleasant enough. By the end we
were on friendly terms with quite a few people.

I say by the end, because we left. We sold the house a few years ago
because the atmosphere of the village had gone sour. There was
something almost frightening in the air. It is strange to me that
people have been so surprised by the past few weeks of burning and
rioting in French cities, including Montpellier. It has been obvious
for at least 10 years, even to a
foreign visitor, that something was badly wrong.

What went wrong? Well, first the Marrins noticed a lot of new people, North Africans, hanging around. And they noticed how much the local people hated them. Of course, as tolerant Brits the Marrins took a high line with all this. Until their house was burgled. Until their car wheels were slashed.

Then they sold up and left.

For as long as any living American can remember the European educated elite has had a grand old time wagging their heads at the race problems in the United States.

So it is odd that it has taken the French so long to wake up to the alarming failure of their much vaunted un-Anglo-Saxon society to accommodate its Muslims.

Or maybe it is not surprising. After all, the European educated elite at no time ever thought to analyze the race problem in the United States with a view to learning lessons for their own continent. They analyzed it in the spirit of anti-Americanism, as a way of sneering at the uncouth snaggle-toothed yahoos of North America.

Now it is too late. Now a frightening storm has descended upon Europe. Now it is going to take a war to set it all straight.