the hands of their governors, are feverishly get-
ting ready for the wholesale work of destruction
under the threat of which fate requires us to lead
our life. Think of those who will be at our side
when the terrible day comes and do not forget
that we owe them a good example. And also
think of our own people, the French nation, after
a long and glorious history of which they now
begin to carry the burden heavily. Observe them
in thought and in action. See in what momen-
tary anguish they accomplish their daily labor,
seeking to respond to the problem, demanding
leaders who shall be real leaders and finding but
ostentatious automatons who exhaust in words
the resolution which should live in vigorous ac-
tion. Are we advancing in the same measure as
those who conquered us but yesterday and who
do not conceal their passionate resolution to
conquer us again to-morrow I There are many
indications in the body social which may give
cause for fear.

The Eoman church offers us its support, which



76 FEANCE FACING GERMANY

but for the French Eevolution, would have ruined
us. This would mean reaction, a king of shreds
and patches, or his apprentice dictator. For my-
self, I put my trust only in men, in Frenchmen
within whom the fire of their great race is still
burning. I call to them. Let them know them-
selves, let them join together, let them throw
themselves into action, following words that are
clear and straightforward. There is a large Be-
publican majority to acclaim them and to give
them confidence. For France the problem is of
death or life. Let us live!

June 5, 1914.



That Will Not Be

. . . What is the danger, to the strongest minds,
of an internal convulsion in comparison with the
imminent menaces from without, against which,
on account of the faults of her leaders, France
might have neglected to assure herself? We have
already known such a disaster. Shame to the
political party in which the sense of the national
safety should be so enfeebled that, for the easy
pleasure of vacillating among schemes for the
future, it would neglect, with a far too facile
conscience, to provide the guarantees necessary
for the present. Whatever it might have done
in the past, it would thus bring irreparable con-
demnation upon itself, and the nation, seriously
enough weakened already in its moral vitality to
be heedless, would perish.

This, my radical friends, is what lies concealed



FRANCE PACING GERMANY 77

under the confusion of arguments for and against
service for three years. Our country had ac-
cepted the heavy burden, without showing a
moment of weakness. The revolutionary opposi-
tion, which cannot even aid in the maintenance
of our i ' infamous bourgeois Republic' ' by so much
as voting for the budget because it might give
them the appearance of an abominable com-
promise, spurns our military organization just as
they do our civil organization — both of them, cer-
tainly, not without their defects. And in order
not to lose their own self-respect, with that of
those who profess an idealism foreign to our
humble, terrestrial condition, too many radicals
whose intentions must remain above suspicion,
have allowed themselves to be seduced by the
mirages of the miserable policy of the least effort.
And many people, as was easily to be foreseen,
have rushed to the poisoned bait which promised
them the delights of a pleasant somnolence. And
you have led us, doing this, all in good humor,
to what is perhaps the gravest crisis since the
French Revolution, for, with MacMahon and
Bazaine, it was material power only, never the
heart, that suddenly failed.

Against these words I hear already the pro-
testations of your unwavering patriotism. Your
hearts have conserved, you say, all the qualities
of strength that have made the history of France.
I know it. I have never doubted it. For if a
mere doubt were permissible we might as well
place a tombstone above our glorious past. But
since the heart is still strong, it must show itself,
instead of allowing itself to be paralyzed by sorry



78 PRANCE FACING GERMANY

notions that arise from fear of doing too much
for the defense of our country when perhaps* it
is not enough to do all that we can. We must
look straight, without fear of dizziness, at the
abyss upon which we are running, and by a rare
effort of patriotic strength gain the courage to
resume the broad highway when the path across
the fields offers so many dangers.

For the Republican party, which is ours, is it
an acceptable alternative to keep tossing back and
forth between the revolutionists and the reaction-
aries, without even having the courage to choose ?
Is it really impossible to remain ourselves except
by compromises of principle, now to the right,
and now to the left, according to the fortune of
the moment? France is at stake, the life of
France in the pride of her liberty; the noble
heritages of national virtues handed down by our
fathers to be transmitted to our children, the
treasure of thought and achievement which is in-
ferior to none of the greatest that humanity
boasts — all that we love, all that inspires us, all
that we live for, is at stake, and you are deliberat-
ing. . . . Alas, you are doing worse! For you
had deliberated, and you had concluded that
France would not be untrue to herself. And hav-
ing done this, when all the peoples, thrilled with
the memory of the great deeds done by your
fathers, are beginning again to lift their eyes
toward the children of the French Revolution,
conquered once but still fired with the high in-
spiration of their race, you would disown your-
selves, and your fathers and children with you;
you would not even be of those who fall in the



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 79

path of reason, but of those who shamefully give
up for a cowardly need of repose.

Until I have seen that, I shall proclaim that it
will not be.

June 8, 1914.

Concerns of Fkance

. . . Peoples, like individuals, have their curve
of evolution concerning which, in the uncertainty
of time, we can only advance hypotheses. What
we can prove is that there are, for racial groups,
certain periods of irresistible enthusiasm, others
of weakening. Athens and Borne show us that
the most noble, the greatest, do not escape the
inflexible law of action and reaction against which
our pride battles in vain. They left upon man
marks that are ineffaceable. But they are dead.

We have fallen once. We have stood erect
again. Germany, long slumbering like her Bar-
barossa under the legendary mountain above
which ravens circled, awakened in the clash of
arms and, at first astonished herself, rediscovered
herself more brutally domineering, more scien-
tifically overbearing, than ever before. And a
great burst of ambition has come to her. The
work of ancient Borne shows her the task which
she deems worthy of herself. With Varus anni-
hilated, Arminius aspires to no less than that
conquest of the world which tempted those whom
he has just overwhelmed.

However, this is no longer an enterprise of
barbarian warfare in which numbers and weight
of steel count for all. For civilization has come,
and the implacable way of every hour has as-



80 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

sumed forms which antiquity had no way of
knowing. Science without conscience is the two-
edged ax whose symbolical cult came to us from
the East. It clears the plains and valleys to make
great meeting-places for men and, as soon as men
approach, it turns the other edge to decimate
them. So comes a development without known
limit, of the work of life and death, when from
all those discoveries so justly celebrated as the
triumph of man over hostile nature, man himself
derives marvels of murdering power to arrest the
course of the work on which he founds his pride.
Whether the law is fatal or not, the German
people accept it without weakening. No amount
of science, or of patient, rigid discipline, or of
determination, or of activity, is too much for
them. Deutschland uber Alles. They do not by
any means conceal their designs. In olden times
the development of the intellect implied, it was
thought, the necessity of reducing to a second
place the care for the muscular man. The soldier
was the doryphorus of Polyclitus; the scholar,
the emaciated Erasmus of Basle in which Hol-
bein has concentrated all the thought that a face
can contain. Now, the full life of soul and body
is requisite for an effort of total humanity such
as history has never seen. Of intellect and
sinews, the maximum development for action is
necessary. And whoever feels himself capable of
furnishing everything from his own resources, in
peace or in war, to the great work, is the master
of the planet given to his dominating activities.
Every day it is the hymn of conquest that the
German press intones, and the children in the



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 81

schools, the young men in the universities, their
aged professors, and the pretty young girls who
come to Paris to preach to me, to me personally,
the virtue and the beauty of German war, send
a chorus to the army that is quivering in excite-
ment in its ramparts of steel.

What forces will be necessary to sustain the
battle?

... In the measure in which our country is
being depopulated, the German invader, during
peace, prepares his path toward the other. Cer-
tain victory, thinks the conqueror, without the
disquieting vision of the Slavic swarm bursting
over Germany. But what could be expected? Is
it not necessary, seeing the menace, that France
and Russia oppose total aggression with the total
resistance they can offer in material force and
moral power together? France has her enthusi-
asms, her passing bursts of ardor, her passions
followed by renouncements. If she stands firm
in her determination to purge herself and to
recreate herself worthy to continue her noble his-
tory, there is no offensive from beyond the Rhine
against which she is not assured of holding her
ground. If not . . .

But it is not permissible that she spare any-
thing of herself. Not anything. And in all this
sickening uproar about service for three years,
what can we do about it if we do not understand
that our army itself is but one part of the total
dedication of ourselves, demanded by a long pro-
cession of ancestors who made the France of
history and who call to us to conduct her onward?

June 16, 1914.



82 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

Triumph or Perish

:•• . . The immense effort of the masses of
people in every country for the acquirement of
knowledge is the most remarkable characteristic
of our time. It does not seem to me to be doubt-
ful that the conditions of life among each people
will be profoundly altered by it, internally and
externally. If books could make men, schools
would be enough to insure that "revolution,"
but the teachings of experience must also be
added; that is to say, time is necessary. I am
by no means one of those who run the risk of
tracing — even somewhat vaguely — the main lines
of our felicity to come. My role for the moment
is simply to advise our ideologues that the great
struggles of history, of which the prophets of
The Hague are announcing the impending end,
may yet bring about fearsome accidents in the
democratic evolution of Europe. Let them kindly
think of the catastrophes with which the amiable
German press is pleased to threaten us day by
day, relying on a formidable military organiza-
tion from which it hopes for something altogether
different from developments of justice and liberty.

No one can say what will be the outcome of
these menaces. But it would be contrary to the
simplest prudence to take no note of them, and
to allow ourselves to dream of an abrupt return,
without obvious cause, to sentiments of humani-
tarian fraternity. It needs but the smallest dose
of common sense to understand that the more and
more rapid growth of armaments can lead to
nothing else than the employment of those en-



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 83

gines of destruction which are not accumulated
and perfected day by day for the purpose of a
love-feast of the kind that took place at Berne
in the silence of deliberate equivocation.

Simultaneous disarmament? Who in the world
of the ruling classes could approach the proposal,
if it were made, even with apparent gravity?
Maintenance of the status quo? England, in the
naval realm, attempted an exchange of views
with Germany on this subject. The two parties
came away from the conversation more defiant
than ever. What then? Disarmament of a single
power? Whoever should risk this play, in obedi-
ence to a fool's suggestion, would receive at most
the satisfaction of bowing in servitude without
even having tried to save his independence. I
do not believe that this can tempt us.

Then what else can we do but prepare in every
way to defend ourselves? The evidence is so
strong on this point that Frenchmen find them-
selves inevitably brought, miracle! to unanim-
ity. In revenge, the free fancy of each one has
quickly succeeded in recovering its rights, when
it came to the question of ways and means. The
athlete who wants to win the prize does not scant
any effort. This is a prize, too, a prize of all
worth, the independence, the honor of a people,
without which the life of the individual, as that
of the nation, cannot be otherwise than shame-
fully base. Why should a nation that desires to
live seek first of all to spare the utmost possible
of her resources, when the stake in the combat
is no less than her own life? Counselors are not
lacking to turn her aside from the trouble of a



84 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

too great effort, and our ears are filled with sug-
gestions favoring the policy of the smallest
sacrifice of self, supported by the fallacious argu-
ments which have led the peoples fatigued with
a too fine history to supreme repose in the shroud
of memories.

The history of Athens is inferior to none.
What a sudden breaking up after the great
splendor of Pericles, who contributed so power-
fully, by his own hand, to prepare the irrepar-
able decline! Philip, Alexander arrived. People
refused to give themselves to the appeals of
Demosthenes, whom the poison of Calauria
awaited. England has anglicized immense con-
tinents, with the sea itself which surrounds them.
What will it profit her, if in the face of military
force which may bring her to her knees to-morrow
she is able only to lull herself with the eternal
sophisms of the man who puts the softness of
repose above the trouble of exertion?

As for us, dismembered but yesterday, who
painfully behold a long line of German frontier
well within the territory of the France of history,
it is literally impossible for us to close our eyes
and contemplate, like Great Britain, the chances
of a splendid geographical isolation against the
doors of which the tide of German domination
might come to beat. No, the illusion of this dream
is not permitted to us. We are still held by too
many bonds io the heart of the old Europe for
us to be able to disregard our interests in her,
or for her to be able, even in the future which
she fears, to detach herself from us.

Not a day which does not bring us the news



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 85

of some achievement in the number or the qual-
ity of the engines of murder. Every day a
new effort comes to complete the effort of the
day before, directed toward a better execution of
aggressive plans of which no mystery is any
longer made. In view of all this we cannot any
longer discuss the necessity of defending our-
selves. The sole anxiety in this regard, among
too many people, is that we might do more than
was necessary. I profess that my fear is not that
we may see ourselves too well defended — espe-
cially when I reflect that, as we are firmly re-
solved never to attack, our adversary will have
the very great advantage of choosing the hour
and the place of the offensive.

When I consider all the difficulties that we
meet in trying to impress upon so many parlia-
mentary brains the idea of an immediate estab-
lishment of forces sufficient to preserve us from
the mortal catastrophe that might result from a
surprise, I begin to wonder in what measure the
institutions of democracy favor or thwart the
disposition to military resistance which is im-
posed on every country by the primordial law
of self-preservation. The democratic progress of
Germany, whatever the aged Bebel may have
said to M. Jaures about it, is still far enough
behind ours. But without pausing for a criticism
of German Csesarism, it is enough to show that
all the vital forces of the Empire are advancing,
in a formidable coordination of regulated activi-
ties, toward an end of domination — pacific if the
world resigns itself in submission, violent if it
manifests resistance to the will of Germania as



86 FEANCE FACING GERMANY

inscribed in the book of fate. Emperor and im-
perial oligarchy are marching arm in arm, and
leading the populace which, in this respect, seizes
every opportunity to manifest its enthusiastic
approval. Of what good are the fine phrases of
the Vorwaerts when the social democracy permits
representatives — if it does not oblige them — to
vote the war-tax at a time when our socialists
refuse their voices for the budget?

June 25, 1914.

At Theemopylab

. . . There is no tax-payer who does not wel-
come a diminution of his rates. Taxes of blood
and taxes of money weigh upon us in the most
cruel manner in all our active pursuits. At the
moment when we are summoned to find without
delay six hundred millions in new taxes (we
should need eight hundred millions with Mo-
rocco) why is no one proposing that the state
content itself with four hundred or two hundred
millions and pay the difference by good mort-
gages on moonshine! Because the case is too
clear. We must have good money and nothing
else. Louis made out of gilt cardboard will not
pass. So we are very much vexed. There is
much recrimination, without willingness to ac-
knowledge that if electors and representatives
had been more watchful much wastefulness might
have been avoided. There is lusty wrangling
over the problem of discovering by what theory
and practise of taxation we shall raise the tax,
but, when all is done, we get ready to pay it,



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 87

and that is all that is necessary. What big or
little veins will be opened by the fiscal lancet
we do not yet know. What is sure is that certain
elements of life will be drawn off from us. We
shall not run away from the operation.

In the sphere of military service it is again life
that is demanded of us, in a manner not less pal-
pable, since we must pay with our flesh and
muscle, the force of which, turned aside from
private activity, is alienated to the profit of the
public service. Though we cannot honestly quar-
rel over the sums of money written in the ac-
count-books, any doctrine of slighter effort may
freely find a hearing as soon as the question is
only to compute the product of an enterprise of
military education. Here the mind can indulge
itself at its pleasure. What more proper for
discussion than the correct amount of training
necessary? Magical virtue of words! Verbalism
is a courser who can smile at the wings of Pegasus.
With words one builds empires. With words
might also destroy them. Can one ask of men
not to let themselves be deceived by seductions
with which they are themselves thus tempted?
The country will be just as well defended — better
even, the promise costs nothing — and at a smaller
sacrifice! And who would resist the temptation
to try, when insidious arguments, offered to the
uncritical faculties of the masses, illumine in their
minds the hope of acquiring quite as much force,
or even more, by paying less? Nothing is dearer
than the cheap things, certain people profess. The
saying might find its application here.

Nevertheless the human mind does not find re-



88 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

pose in one-sided reasoning. How many men
whose patriotism is above suspicion allow them-
selves to be carried away by the mirage of a lesser
effort! Nature has made us so. But reflection
does its work. We reflect that it is not solely a
question of giving each Frenchman a certain
amount of military training in preparation for
action at an indeterminate time. It is also nec-
essary that this military establishment, which
requires a considerable gathering of men into a
single organization, shall be able to enter into
action at a given moment, for whatever event.
That could not be avoided, since, in the period of
civilization to which we have advanced, nations
may be required, at a signal, to throw themselves
like thunderbolts upon one another.

That is what must be understood, and it is not
really so difficult as one might believe, since one
need only open his eyes to discover that the as-
sassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary,
at Serajevo, is occasioning concentrations of
troops on the frontiers of Serbia as well as mani-
festations of violence even in Vienna itself, while
angry threats against the Serbian people are mak-
ing themselves heard in the press as well as in
the notes from the government of the Dual Mon-
archy. Have we not seen the German press
employ all its ardor to fan the fire in the too
evident design of exciting Teutonic opinion
against Russia, whose newspapers have found
themselves obliged to reply in energetic protests?
Is it not a fact that all Europe has taken pains
to prepare, among the Albanian tribes, a per-
petual center of incendiarism which will flame



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 89

out according to the order of the moment! Who
will preserve ns from the dangers of a spark?

July 6, 1914.

Hansi !

And now Hansi is condemned to a year in prison
for not having given lines sufficiently esthetic to
the German police represented in his charming
album, My Village, in which the insufficiently
Teutonic exploits of Alsatian youth seem to re-
veal, it is said, certain sympathies with France
beneath the weight of which the " unshakable
Empire" of the Kaiser might stagger. Poor
Germany, I should have thought it slander to
suppose that a witty stroke of a pencil was
enough to derange your reason.

What! The largest army in the world, and the
best trained, an accumulation of riches which
repays a marvelous labor, a development of
thought which has held and still holds one of the
highest places in European civilization — mother
of the great movement which is in a way to ap-
propriate the planet for the needs of humanity
— the mastery of force in peace and war, with
England threatened on the sea and the continent
ready to succumb under the crushing weight of
armaments, with the peoples of the earth, tradi-
tionally turning their eyes toward the center of
power, wondering every morning what fate will
be reserved to them in the cataclysm of Europe
which is in monstrous preparation, since a cyclone
may be launched from Berlin capable, possibly of
changing the fate of the world for centuries to



90 FRANCE PACING GERMANY

come: how can one believe that all this remains
at the mercy of a humorist making sketches?

If I were a German, the spectacle would set
me thinking. But the law of compensation which
reigns throughout the universe has not ordained
that the fine qualities which command action
should be always supplemented by meditation.
A deep revenge for spirits capable of observation.
The men and the peoples who get infatuated with
action to the point of vertigo come too soon to
believe, since they can rule in brutality, that they
are capable also of determining thought.

Rome, who was in her time the conquering
model, had enough self-control sometimes to im-
pose a curb upon herself when no one was resist-
ing her. Greece was abominably ravaged by her.
Never again will be seen, probably, a more com-
plete triumph of barbarous intelligence over
superior forms of civilization which had lost the
force of life. Not only the masterpieces of art,
torn from pedestals to which a splendid history
had consecrated them, took the road, at the risk
of mutilation, toward Roman villas, but the land
of Phidias covered itself with base productions of
decadence for the delectation of the conquerors.
The lucky wreck of one of the vessels of Sulla
on the coast of Cytherea gave us the finished
masterpiece of one of the great Corinthian artists
in bronze. Go and see in the museum of Athens
what pitiful pieces the pillagers, ignorant of their
crime, were fearlessly content to place with it.