Picture Supplement

The august and dingy walls of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris guarded last week France's latest peace offering. In the Galerie Mazarine there hung 1,400 portraits of famed contemporary Frenchmen, ready for distribution among 14 leading U. S. universities "to strengthen the ties of friendship and understanding between France and the United States."

At an afternoon ceremony M. Pierre Marraud, French Minister of Public Instruction, formally presented the pictures to U. S. Charge d'Affaires Norman Armour, who thanked him gracefully. Later the audience strolled about the hall to look at the pictures. They were curious to see the 1,400 most famous living Frenchmen. Beneath each portrait was a message from the subject to the U. S.

Academician Rene Bazin had written: ''Do not judge a country by the first citizen you happen to meet nor the first newspaper you happen to read. Study its history."

Onetime Minister of Justice Louis Barthou's inscription was: "It is spirit which prepares for peace--it is hearts which make it."

Playwright Francis de Croisset, a familiar figure in the U. S.-haunted Ritz bar, tried an epigram: "For women an idea always has a face."

Fourteen U. S. universities must now find space to hang 100 pictures apiece. The French donors frankly admit a shrewd purpose behind the gift. They are alarmed by growing competition with German universities. Since the War thousands of U. S. students seeking a continental education have gone to the Sorbonne. Lately, the German universities have been recovering prestige and U. S. tuition fees. Soon, unless the French portraits help prevent it, young U. S. scientists and philosophers will flock to Heidelberg, Gottingen, Leipzig, Berlin, as numerously as they did when Wilhelm was Der Kaiser and attending the Sorbonne was considered not the greatest of intellectual gestures.