FOR AND AGAINST

Should we stick the following little note on all the envelopes of the letters that we send to the post office:

FRANCE, country of arts and taste, no longer has 25c neither taste nor artists

That's not serious!... It would seem everywhere that we are crazy if we put such stamps into circulation...

Only we put other stamps into circulation... And on these stamps, it is not, in truth, written that we lack taste... No, this cruel confession is not engraved in capital letters!... It is engraved all the same and it unfortunately jumps out at you, in the form of some stupid allegory, in the guise of some grumpy lady who is supposed to represent our Republic, in the guise of some big guy holding a branch of bay leaf or a heavy hammer...

We had the Olympic Games stamp... We must admit that it was impossible to make it heavier. On a piece of paper soaked in redcurrant jelly, a poor woman, who must weigh about a hundred kilos, is holding out her arm a imitation bronze that she seems to be presenting to the customers of the Globe bazaar. In the distance, we can see a vague mantelpiece. We don't know if it's Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Pantheon, the Moulin Rouge or the Saint-Louis hospital... It's simply insane...

And here we are told about the new stamps that are going to be issued on the occasion of the Decorative Arts Exhibition. We are shown the models that won the main prizes. And it's getting stronger and stronger...

The first prize represents a worker coming out of the hairdresser's and who, with his hair combed to perfection, examines with astonishment a vase that looks like a watermelon, or a watermelon that looks like a vase. Second prize: on the right, laurel; on the left, a torch from which a magnificent cauliflower emerges. This cauliflower is perhaps a luminous sheaf. In the center of the "bold composition", two pale faces, who really don't seem to be having fun... The third prize is at the greengrocer's. From two cornucopias escape various fruits. It would have been necessary to put a little string around the horns. That way, nothing would have fallen... As for the fourth prize, it is not only idyllic, it is naughty.... It represents a lymphatic Republic and a giant. The giant, with a cold chisel, is in the process of... sculpting a twenty franc coin, in gold... It is as I have the honor of saying. I am not making this up...

...There is, certainly, in all these astonishing compositions, material to laugh and laugh amply... We must not laugh for too long... I do not even know if it would not be appropriate, in the end, to get a little angry.

The stamp is a small, insidious and vagabond propaganda instrument, which goes everywhere, which enters everywhere, which crosses the seas and jumps over borders... It is the registered trademark of a country... It is also the symbol of the country... It is distressing and irritating, in truth, to see stuck on envelopes like the patented trademark of France, of France, the country of Watteau, of Fragonard and of Boucher, sordid and ridiculous vignettes, which a pork butcher would not want for his sausages.

Maurice PRAX.