THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 AND 
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 AND 
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 TWO ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 VICTOR GIRAUD 
 
 SECRETARY OF LA REVUE DES DEUX MONDES 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 H. P. THIEME AND W. A. MCLAUGHLIN 
 
 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 
 
 PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF 
 
 THE DEPARTMENT OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES 
 
 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 
 
 1=117
 
 The Ann Arbor Press 
 Ann Arbor. Michigan
 
 D 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF THE TEACHERS 
 
 OF FRANCE 
 SCHOLARS AND PATRIOTS ALL 
 WHO DIED IN THE GREAT WAR 
 THAT MANKIND MIGHT LIVE 
 IN JUSTICE FREEDOM AND PEACE 
 WE DEDICATE THE TRANSLATION 
 OF THESE TWO ESSAYS 
 WHEREIN ARE RECORDED 
 THEIR VALOR AND THEIR SPIRIT 
 AND THE IDEALS DEVOTION TO WHICH 
 FORMED THEIR SUPREME INSPIRATION 
 
 887470
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Victor Giraud, the author of the two essays con- 
 tained in this volume, was born November 26, 1868, 
 at Macon, France, famous as the birthplace of 
 Lamartine, the kindly, friendly, human author of 
 the Meditations, the vigorous and patriotic ex- 
 ponent of liberalism, the poet-statesman of the Re- 
 public of 1848. It was at the Lycee Lamartine in 
 his native town that Victor Giraud spent his youth- 
 ful years of study preparatory to going to Paris, 
 where he later entered the famous Lycee Henri IV. 
 In the early nineties he was a pupil at the Ecole 
 Normale Superieure, that justly renowned insti- 
 tution on the Rue d'Ulm wherein the intellectual 
 elite of each generation is trained under the best of 
 masters as scholars and cultivated men, for their life 
 work as teachers and guides to the youth of the na- 
 tion in the Lycees and Universities. Here he came 
 under the happy influence of the great Brunetiere 
 "who, confronted by a type of criticism too exclu- 
 sively philological or too minute, maintained the in- 
 alienable rights which may be justly claimed by 
 ideas and intelligence." Rrunetiere was his master 
 and friend whose secret wish was that some day his 
 pupil might write "the history of his thought and 
 writings." In 1894 Victor Giraud won his title of 
 agrege des lettrcs and forthwith went to the Univer-
 
 6 PREPACK 
 
 sity of Fribourg, Switzerland, where for several 
 years he held the professorship of Modern French 
 Literature. In 1897 he took as the subject of one of 
 his courses — Taine, his works and influence. This 
 was the outgrowth of work begun six years before 
 while he was a pupil at the Ecole Normale and 
 had received the kindly consideration of Taine 
 himself. These lectures were published in 1901 as 
 an Essay on Taine and were awarded the Bordin 
 prize by the French Academy. A year after ap- 
 peared his Critical Bibliography of Taine. 
 
 Taine was not the only author whose life and 
 works and influence held the interest of the 
 young professor. In the summer of 1898 he gave 
 a course on Pascal, the notes of which were 
 published as Pascal, Vhommc, Voeuvre. et Vinflu* 
 cnce, 1898, disclosing the marked influence of 
 Brunetiere's method. The work was crowned by 
 the Academy. When he published his : Pascal : 
 Etudes d'histoire morale, 1901. the Academy award- 
 ed it the first Bordin prize. In the preface of this 
 work he writes: "For twenty years Pascal has 
 been my almost constant companion and I could 
 never express the profit, intellectual and other, 
 which I feel I have derived from this companion- 
 ship. Of all the influences that I have undergone 
 that of Pascal is certainly the one which began the 
 earliest, has been the least interrupted, and remained 
 the most profound, an influence not only undergone, 
 but sought after, desired, and loved."
 
 PREFACE 7 
 
 A third great name and influence in French liter- 
 ature owes much to the active pen and indefatigable 
 mind of M. Giraud, for his Studies on Chateaubri- 
 and, 1904, 1912, are but a foretaste and promise of a 
 work announced in preparation on the Religion of 
 Chateaubriand : origins, evolution and influence — a 
 critical study in the history of religious ideas in the 
 French literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 centuries. 
 
 The present, also, has furnished an attractive field 
 for the fruitful pursuit of his quest : the discovery, 
 exposition, and criticism of the dominant ideas of 
 the age as expressed in literature by the master 
 minds who have exerted great influence on the gen- 
 eration which is to-day in full activity. The Mast- 
 ers of Yesterday and To-day (Les Maitres d'hier 
 et d'aujourd'hui, 1912, and Les Maitres de I'heure, 
 2 vols., 191 1, 1914) were crowned by the Academy 
 and awarded the first prize of the Academy. These 
 essays treat with method, precision, and wonderful 
 acumen, the lives, works and influence of the most 
 important literary critics and novelists, poets and 
 historians of the present day or the immediate 
 past. Keenly interested in life with all its prob- 
 lems, particularly those dealing with religion and 
 morals, M. Giraud has written many essays, such 
 as those collected in Rooks and Questions of 
 the Day (Livres et Questions d'Aujonrd'hui, T906) 
 Anticliricalisme et catholicisme, 1906. Ferdinand 
 Brunetiere, 1907. He- has edited the Pensees of
 
 8 PREFACE 
 
 Pascal, and selections from his other works; Pen- 
 sees, Reflexions, Maximes from Chateaubriand's 
 works ; the Pensees of Joubert ; Pensees selected 
 from the works of Bossuet, and many other books. 
 All these works clearly indicate the variety, the 
 unity of interest and method characteristic of the 
 subject of this sketch. He stands to-day one of the 
 acknowledged masters of the art so eminently 
 French : fruitful, helpful, suggestive criticism, the 
 outcome of clear thinking, exact knowledge, com- 
 bined with clarity of expression and felicity of 
 phrase, lightness of touch and accuracy of thrust, 
 and a wide, but definite view of general ideas, de- 
 rived from an intimate, refined knowledge of the 
 relations of man, his thoughts and his actions. His 
 own view of criticism he once expressed as follows : 
 "I never had much faith in what we were wont to 
 call, in days gone by, scientific criticism and my 
 faith is growing less and less .... Real criticism 
 will always remain what it has always been, the 
 free, living testimony of one mind regarding an- 
 other, of one soul regarding another soul, homo 
 additus libris. This most certainly does not mean, 
 however, that it may not contain a large share, and 
 in increasing amount, I do not wish to say of sci- 
 ence (science), but rather of knowledge (connais- 
 sance) ; that is, precise and positive information and 
 objective, impersonal investigation." (Nouvellcs 
 Etudes sur Chateaubriand).
 
 PREFACE 9 
 
 The following two essays appeared in the oldest 
 and most important French literary organ La Revue 
 des Deux Mondes, of which M. Giraud has heen for 
 some time the secretary. The French Miracle was 
 first published in the April number, 1915, — and later 
 in book form together with other essays in 191 5 ; the 
 Civilisation Francaise, an essay on French Civilisa- 
 tion appeared in 1917 and won the Prix d'Blo- 
 quencc, awarded by the Academy — it was later pub- 
 lished separately and dedicated to the memory of 
 Pierre Maurice Masson, a Professor in the Univer- 
 sity of Fribourg, a lieutenant in the infantry, who 
 fell April 16, 1916, "in defense of the soil of Lor- 
 raine and French civilisation.'' In June, 1916, in 
 the Sorbonne a posthumous degree of Doctor of 
 Letters was conferred upon M. Masson for his re- 
 markable thesis on Tean Jacques Rousseau, the 
 proof of which he corrected in the trenches. 
 
 Tt has been a general belief held from the begin- 
 ning of the war, by those who knew France, that on 
 the outcome of the war depended the whole future of 
 French civilization and consequently of all civiliza- 
 tion. Our own President but lately, in that address 
 which stands beyond praise, expressed those ideals 
 of justice, of right and humanity upon which our 
 national life depends and upon which the exist- 
 ence of all free peoples can alone thrive. These are 
 the ideals expressed by M. Giraud in these essays 
 and in more than one passage the reader will be 
 reminded of the loftv words of our own President
 
 IO PREFACE 
 
 and the high ideals he so admirably expressed. It 
 is in the hope that this community of ideals may 
 be more clearly understood and our debt to France, 
 our moral debt especially, be more keenly appre- 
 ciated, that these essays are presented in this coun- 
 try to a wider public than that which they might 
 reach in their original form. 
 
 The translators are painfully aware that transla- 
 tions are not infrequently treacherous, traducing 
 rather than transferring the thought ; their one 
 hope, however, is that in turning these essays into 
 their mother tongue they may have done so without 
 violating her genius, and yet, may have succeeded 
 in preserving some slight traces of the charm, the 
 warmth, and the vigor of the original.
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 Lest we forget. It is the story of yesterday and 
 yet it seems the story of ages ago .... 
 
 But just when I recall to mind this story, when I 
 attempt to state precisely the principal features of 
 our moral, political and social situation immediately 
 before the outbreak of the war, between the general 
 elections in May and the thunderbolt which fell 
 upon us in August, my pen wavers and I stop to re- 
 flect. God forbid that we should revive our old dif- 
 ferences and disturb the truce that all the parties 
 have made — the "sacred union" of the present mo- 
 ment. But the memory of these lingers in the 
 minds of all and we need only allude to them. The 
 least we can say is that we were thoroughly divided 
 ten months ago. Our minds were perplexed, our 
 consciences beclouded, our passions given free rein, 
 and our evil fate did not spare us even those scand- 
 als which mark the end of a regime, like a symptom 
 full of evil omen. Pessimists called it decadence. 
 Optimists, those who, during the two preceding 
 years, had thought they saw rising the dawn of a 
 new France and had hailed the birth of a new 
 spirit, wondered whether they were not mistaken 
 or whether they should not wait for another gen- 
 eration before resuming their uncertain and timid 
 hope.
 
 12 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 Suddenly in this corrupt, troubled and stormy at- 
 mosphere, like a thunderbolt the war burst forth. 
 And immediately a new France appeared : a France 
 united, proud without bravado, calm and serious, 
 the very one we had built up in our dreams and 
 which we had almost despaired of ever seeing with 
 our mortal eyes; a France which accepted with- 
 out a murmur her fate as though for forty years 
 she had been dreading this tragic day and had 
 been preparing for it in silence. In the twinkling 
 of an eye, all the pettiness of days gone by was 
 forgotten and sunk deep in the past. To the pro- 
 found astonishment of our enemies, even of our 
 friends, and we must confess, to our own aston- 
 ishment, all our dissensions vanished. The de- 
 plorable murder of an eloquent socialist orator 
 (Jaures) did not succeed in disturbing even for a 
 moment that union which had sprung up so sud- 
 denly. The Chamber of Deputies had immediately 
 risen above itself, and in a session never-to-be-for- 
 gotten, gave an example of concord, of patriotic 
 wisdom and dignity which thrilled the hearts of all. 
 The political leaders spoke the precise, strong and 
 sober words which should be spoken, and their sim- 
 ple, terse and vigorous eloquence, worthy of the 
 fairest days of Athens, was the finest homage that 
 could be given the cause they were defending. So- 
 cialists, Conservatives, Monarchists and Republi- 
 cans, representatives of every political theory; 
 Catholics, Freethinkers, Israelites, Protestants, be- 
 lievers in every type of philosophy or religion ;
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLK 13 
 
 noble and peasant, business man and workingman, 
 all groups of society, were united, melted into one, 
 lifted up and carried away, inspired by the same im- 
 pulse. One feeling and one alone, one single 
 thought swayed the mind of every Frenchman. 
 Why did we think, even yesterday, of France as 
 divided ? There is but one France, the France that 
 lives forever, thoroughly unified and completely 
 united against the brutal aggressor. Never at any 
 period in our history was our spiritual unity so com- 
 plete, so profound, so intimate as on the morrow of 
 the day when it seemed most imperilled. 
 
 How shall we explain that astounding change, 
 that spontaneous springing up of a great common 
 and national spirit, that sudden transfiguration of 
 a whole people which we even yet behold in aston- 
 ishment and wonder? Cold reason may not suffice ; 
 but it can account for certain aspects of this 
 phenomenon. 
 
 That the conservative elements of French public 
 opinion should welcome in a manly and firm manner 
 the prospect of a European War should occasion 
 no surprise. French Conservatives have, no doubt, 
 their faults ; but no one has been able seriously to 
 challenge the sincerity and restless vigilance of their 
 patriotism ; had they been more frequently heeded 
 there can be no doubt that France in IQ14 would 
 have been better prepared for the struggle. Many 
 of them expected a war sooner or later ; some could 
 not tell whether they should hope for Avar or fear it ; 
 almost all prepared for it and also tried to prepare
 
 14 THE FRENCH MIRACEE 
 
 public opinion for it. All, in any case, thoroughly 
 convinced that a nation, according' to Renan's pro- 
 found expression is above all "une creation mili- 
 taire," and deploring the fact that France no longer 
 played the glorious role she formerly played in the 
 world, put their supreme hope and their supreme 
 thought in the army and counted upon it with every 
 hope of victory, when the hour of national awaken- 
 ing should come. Royalists, Konapartists, Nation- 
 alists, Progressists, Liberals, followers of tradition 
 of every shade of political opinion deserve no special 
 credit for immediately rallying to the colors ; they 
 deserve far greater credit for having immediately 
 put aside the slight differences or serious diverg- 
 ences which separated them one from the other, 
 and still more from those at the head of affairs, 
 and for having unhesitatingly taken their stand 
 around the representatives of a regime, the ways 
 and methods of which they rejected and against 
 which even yesterday they fought with might and 
 main. We are willing to believe that their oppon- 
 ents in similar circumstances would have given 
 proof of a like spirit of unselfishness. 
 
 For those who called themselves "rcpublicains de 
 gauche" radicals or radical-socialists the sacrifice 
 was greater. How many of these proud descend- 
 ants of the great ancestors of '93 had gradually 
 drifted to the guileless fancies of pacifism, ranted 
 against war, denounced the dangers of Nationalism 
 and Militarism, protested against our colonial ex- 
 pansion, believed in the possibility of a friendly un-
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 15 
 
 derstanding with Germany, condemned the idea of 
 revanche, and secretly in their hearts had surrender- 
 ed onr two lost provinces ! 
 
 How many had rashly cut down the military bud- 
 get, and even among those who became resigned to 
 the three year service law, how many were prepar- 
 ing as soon as the opportunity should present itself, 
 to undo what they had done? How many, finally, 
 had in a thousand and one instances, shown a lack of 
 confidence in the army or even open hostility to it, 
 both ridiculous and dangerous as if every general 
 had in him the making of a Bonaparte ! All this pre- 
 judice, all this bias, hanging like clouds over our 
 minds was swept away forever by the hurricane 
 from the East. The spirit of grace breathed upon 
 these apologists of the civil power and they awoke 
 fervent patriots ; they donned their uniforms, they 
 submitted to the hard demands of discipline ; deep in 
 their hearts was revealed once more that spirit 
 which animated the Volunteers of '92. And, indeed, 
 the sight of their political friends wrestling, in these 
 grave circumstances, with the difficulties and re- 
 sponsibilities of power, has in no wise weakened 
 their sudden conversion. But after all they are con- 
 verted and we can ask no more. 
 
 A conversion which should offer, it would seem, 
 more difficulties but which took place nevertheless, 
 is that of the various socialist and revolutionary 
 groups. Let us admit this : when the first rumors 
 of war began to circulate it was towards the Gener-
 
 l6 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 al Confederation of Labor that all eyes were turned 
 in the greatest apprehension. That our fear was un- 
 founded was proved by the outcome. But among 
 the workingmen the gospel according to Marx had 
 made so many converts ; we had heard so often and 
 so much about the class war, about the "Internation- 
 al," about the claims of the proletariat and about 
 the general strike. The war against war had been 
 so often declared ; Socialists and Revolutionists had 
 cried out against the bourgeois social system and 
 the prejudice that patriotism arouses. They had 
 threatened so often to prevent mobilization by viol- 
 ence, to fire upon their officers, to disorganize na- 
 tional defense. And they professed a blind belief 
 in social democracy. We may rest assured that our 
 enemy, for they have shouted it from the housetops, 
 counted on Jaures to provoke another uprising, a 
 second Commune. Like many others, this dream 
 did not come true. Our Socialists did their full 
 duty, as the German Socialists did theirs. Less 
 logical than ours, and especially less frank, in any 
 case under greater official pressure, the latter, we 
 know so to-day, carefully avoided the offer of a 
 friendly understanding between the laboring class of 
 both countries with a view to making the war im- 
 possible. That action opened the eyes of the 
 French "comrades." They realized that they had 
 been deceived, and that to persevere in their revolu- 
 tionary theories and fancies, would simply be playing 
 the game of warlike and militaristic Germany. Quite 
 convinced, moreover, that France had not wished
 
 THE FRENCH MJRACEE 1 7 
 
 the war and that she had done everything to avoid it, 
 they became convinced that to fight valiantly for 
 her, was to fight for their own ideals, was to pre- 
 pare the coming of perpetual peace and of the 
 German Republic. Reassured as to the principles 
 involved, they made ready to take up arms against 
 the common enemy with as much serenity and en- 
 thusiasm as the most ardent Nationalist. 
 
 We can now easily picture to ourselves the diverse 
 reasons which impelled the various parties which 
 are striving to mould public opinion in France to- 
 day, to rush unhesitatingly in one impetuous sweep 
 to the defense of the frontier in danger. Some took 
 up arms to defend the France of long ago, the 
 France of the Crusades, of St. Louis, of Joan of 
 Arc, France "the Eldest Daughter of the Church," 
 whose mission is far from being fulfilled. Others 
 took up arms for rationalistic and free-thinking 
 France, the land of Voltaire and Diderot. Others, 
 finally, fought for France the home of democracy 
 and equality, the France of the Revolution, the land 
 par excellence of social rights and political liberties. 
 And all, instinctively, without any abstract theor- 
 ies, set out for the defense of France. Simply be- 
 cause it was France, the sweet;, motherly land, their 
 own native land, the land of their ancestors, the 
 sacred spot of ground where their dead lie buried, 
 where they themselves were born, where they lisped 
 their first words, the land whose familiar horizons 
 charmed their first ga/e, mingled with all their joys 
 and all their griefs, and because they could no long-
 
 18 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 er live, if these fields, these woods, these cities 
 which their ancestors had founded should fall into 
 the hands of men of another race, coarse in man- 
 ners, rude in speech, heavy and befogged in mind 
 and vague in thought. And all this is true ; all these 
 explanations are correct and they must be given. 
 But, that all these causes, apparent or deep- 
 seated, which brought about French unanimity, 
 should work together, that in the twinkling of an 
 eye they should make a nation, but yesterday 
 so divided, the least disciplined and at times the 
 most anarchistic, a compact, intangible mass show- 
 ing no signs of past division ; that we should see this 
 sacred union of minds, wills and hearts established, 
 that before our eyes, as though by a sudden chem- 
 ical reaction, a sort of sudden crystallization of the 
 soul of France should come about, a thing which 
 goes bevond and confounds our rational faculties, 
 in all that I see the first French miracle. 
 
 TT. 
 
 And there are other miracles. First and foremost 
 must be placed the international and diplomatic sit- 
 uation of the conflict. Tndeed it was better than we 
 could have hoped for and such that we have had no 
 reason to regret having waited patiently forty-four 
 years for the hour of fate. When the world knows 
 in detail the diplomatic history of these forty-four 
 years it will know what forbearance, self-efface-
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 19 
 
 ment, self-possession, and stoic resignation France 
 had to possess' in order to resist the threats, the in- 
 cessant provocations of German brutality. Mention- 
 ing only such facts as are universally known, no 
 one can reproach our country with having sought 
 eagerly an opportunity for revanche. Willingly, 
 systematically so that the world might not accuse us 
 of disturbing the peace of the world to satisfy any 
 national rancour we might feel, we were ready to 
 make every concession compatible with our dignity, 
 each time there arose between Germany and our- 
 selves a question that was purely personal. If war 
 finally broke out, it is because Germany declared 
 war against us. And if we made up our minds so 
 promptly as to what we were to do, it was first of all 
 because it was a question of not allowing a small 
 heroic people to be crushed by an empire drunk with 
 ambition and devoid of any scruple. Consequently, 
 without am- seeking on our part, France appeared 
 in the eyes of all in the very attitude which could 
 most harmonize with her ancient traditions : she 
 was a victim because she was attempting to set an- 
 other free; she was attacked because she had been 
 unwilling to allow the commission of an act of in- 
 ternational injustice. 
 
 This noble attitude had its immediate reward. 
 Russia, which the Germans by their bungling policy 
 had so completely succeeded in throwing into our 
 arms, Russia, whose just cause we were espousing, 
 was going to use all her strength in the service of 
 our common interests. Italy under other circum-
 
 20 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 stances might have given us reason to fear on ac- 
 count of her obligations to the Central Powers ; but 
 our adversaries in dealing with Italy exhibited a 
 lack of frankness and tact ; consequently, she de- 
 clared herself neutral and very soon after affirmed 
 that this neutrality could be for her only a provision- 
 al attitude. There remained England which in truth 
 for the past ten years had been drawing closer to 
 us in a very cordial manner and whose general in- 
 terests were clearly identical with our own. But 
 England, pacifist by instinct, a prey to serious in- 
 ternal disorders and moreover quite open to German 
 influence, was divided against herself. The fate of 
 Servia was for her an object of very remote con- 
 cern. The hateful violation of the neutrality of 
 Belgium put an end to her hesitation. English loy- 
 alty and English interests happened to coincide and 
 England in her anger inflicted upon Germany a sur- 
 prise from which she has not yet recovered. By 
 her duplicity, by her violence, by her lack of fore- 
 sight, Germany herself completed the "encircling" 
 which she had long been dreading as the greatest of 
 misfortunes. France, on the contrary, by her loyal- 
 ty, her prudence, and the generous spirit of her 
 methods, thanks also to the skill of her diplomats, 
 was in a moral and material position perhaps unique 
 in the whole course of her history. The situation 
 which ended in the fall of Napoleon was now, a 
 hundred years later, reversed, and in favor of 
 France. While her implacable enemy was being de- 
 serted, alliances were coming to her. And by a real
 
 TIIK FRENCH MIRACLE 21 
 
 symbolical coincidence, at the very moment when 
 she was defending the freedom of the world, and, 
 we may say without boasting, the cause of Christian 
 civilization, she was at the same time fighting for 
 her own existence, for the future of her own gen- 
 ius, and for the hope of reparation, which for nearly 
 half a century she had been jealously treasuring in 
 her heart. 
 
 To maintain this role, to fulfill such a mission and 
 not be crushed thereby, to justify also so much hope 
 and deserve such confidence, material strength and 
 power of soul were necessary, of which many, even 
 among our friends, did not believe France entirely 
 capable. They knew her to be insufficiently pre- 
 pared, courageous to be sure, but nervous, quick to 
 be disillusioned, more capable of enthusiasm than 
 endurance. And they knew that the adversary was 
 formidable, admirably equipped and that for forty 
 years he had been training for this war which he 
 had let loose. They knew that he would be the 
 more violent and the more pitiless because, while 
 feeling himself threatened in his very existence, 
 anxious about the future, he had suffered disap- 
 pointments in diplomacy which had ruffled his pride 
 and shaken his security. They knew in short that 
 eager to accomplish his purpose and forced to strike, 
 at the very first, blows that would be decisive, he 
 would turn almost all his efforts against France, 
 which was to be crushed and conquered at any cost 
 within a few weeks.
 
 22 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 Let us recall to mind the telling article in the Lon- 
 don Times : "There were days and days during the 
 swift German advance when we feared that the 
 French armies were no match for the German, that 
 Germany would be conquered on the seas and from 
 her eastern frontier and that after the war France 
 would remain a power only through the support of 
 her Allies." Our friends might have been still 
 more anxious in their fear had they known as we 
 are beginning to know now all the mysterious de- 
 tails of the extraordinary preparedness of the Ger- 
 mans, all the infinite resources our enemy possessed 
 in men. in war material, in spies, particularly per- 
 haps in spies, their wonderful genius for organiza- 
 tion, their absolute lack of scruple, their faith in 
 their superiority in all things, exulting in the un- 
 failing success of their arms. In turn we now realize 
 the reasons for their unhealthy pride, their hymns 
 of triumph before the victory, their shouts like 
 Barbarians falling on the spoils ; between France 
 and them the match was not an even one. All the 
 probabilities, all the chances were that France would 
 be overwhelmed by the number of soldiers, by the 
 fire of shells lavishly spent, by the superiority of 
 arms and equipment perfected according to the very 
 last word of science. 
 
 However, without excitement, without losing self- 
 control, France completed her final preparations for 
 war. This impressive calmness, this quiet, serious 
 dignity immediately inspired confidence in the most 
 pessimistic. Those who have not seen with their
 
 TilK FRENCH MIRACI.E 23 
 
 own eyes the good order, precision and rapidity with 
 which the mobilisation was accomplished, will never 
 know how easily the French temperament complies 
 with the requirements of method. 1 imagine the 
 numberless spies of Emperor William must have 
 been very much surprised and if they succeeded in 
 getting truthful reports to their master they must 
 have admitted in such reports that things could not 
 have gone off more smoothly even in methodical 
 Germany. Personally I shall always have before my 
 eyes a double picture of the first days of war. It 
 was the second day of mobilisation, in a suburban 
 train which was carrying a number of soldiers to 
 Paris. It was a pleasure to see their determination, 
 and their high spirits. At one of the stations an 
 old general, with a pure white moustache, boarded 
 the train and had evidently just returned to duty. 
 The men outdid themselves in courtesy, offering him 
 their seats, insisting that he sit down, but he refused 
 and remained standing during the whole trip, en- 
 gaging in conversation. In that tone of cordial and 
 familiar simplicity which even a German lieutenant 
 could never assume he carried on the conversation, 
 replying to the remarks of this one and that one, 
 saying that we did not want the war, that it was 
 forced upon us and that each one must do his duty, 
 that there would be days of trial when everybody, 
 himself included, would suffer from hunger and 
 thirst and lack of sleep, but that France was well 
 worth all these sacrifices .... And as he talked, 
 expressing the thought of all, we experienced some-
 
 24 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 thing like a foretaste of that close and trustful 
 solidarity which during the war has sprung up be- 
 tween the French trooper and his chief of which 
 we have since had so many examples. When the 
 train stopped there were handshakes and good wish- 
 es exchanged ; the officer had won over all his men ; 
 to-morrow, under fire, he would be able to lead 
 them anywhere. 
 
 Meanwhile, a young man came into our compart- 
 ment who had been accompanied thus far by his 
 wife, carrying a baby in her arms ; they gave each 
 other one long embrace; the wife was wonderful in 
 her simplicity and calmness ; not a tear ; in that 
 countenance, somewhat pale, you could see that 
 strong, almost tragic determination not to give way 
 to emotion ; and I shall never forget that vigorous 
 and tender way with which she held out the baby 
 to its father for one last kiss. Ah ! those Germans 
 who thought we were a people whose end had come, 
 how mistaken they were ! 
 
 Who of us has not had impressions similar to 
 these which at the very outset filled our hearts with 
 so much hope? Here among many others is one 
 of the experiences of Emile Faguet : 
 
 "n Aug. Trains are passing by loaded with sol- 
 diers who are going back to their regiments. Too 
 many in my opinion are singing and shouting aloud. 
 But many of them are quiet and determined, very 
 simple in manner, with a look of decision in their 
 eyes. In short, they are full of confidence them- 
 selves, and inspire it in others. You feel that they
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 25 
 
 are ready for anything and afraid of nothing. Lord, 
 in their coarse linen tunics and their twilled trous- 
 ers, Lord, how handsome they are ! Their speech 
 is not confused or boastful : 'It won't be long, but 
 in any case as long as need be,' 'When each one is 
 sure of all the others, it is all right.' French good 
 sense and French courage are in each one of their 
 words. Brave fellows !" 
 
 Deceived by our moderation, our reserve, our 
 conciliatory spirit, during the last forty years, the 
 Germans imagined that we would be afraid of war. 
 Once more they were thoroughly mistaken. 
 
 They were also greatly mistaken with regard to a 
 people extremely peaceful, but very jealous of their 
 independence and who had in their past history a 
 record of heroism of which they were justly proud. 
 Not counting on certain complications, judging oth- 
 ers by herself, unaccustomed to give any weight to 
 the sentiment of honor, Germany was convinced 
 that Belgium would not dare resist her, but would 
 limit herself to making a purely formal protest. 
 But Belgium had a king worthy of her, a king in 
 whose veins moreover flowed French blood. King 
 Albert energetically declared that he would defend 
 the neutrality of his country. Germany in her sur- 
 prise and fury, checked in her mad rush onward, 
 took two weeks to break that obstacle, unforeseen 
 and for us providential. That was indeed for France 
 the beginning of her salvation. What would have 
 happened if, on the very first days of the month of 
 August, in the midst of the mobilisation of the
 
 26 the; French miracle 
 
 French troops, the barbarian horde crossing Belgium 
 unhindered, had been able to come down fullweight 
 on our northern frontier? Could we have with- 
 stood long enough that first shock so as to permit 
 our troops in the interior to concentrate and bring 
 relief? One thing is certain, namely, that the Bel- 
 gians by their wonderful resistance, worthy of all 
 praise, delayed the German offensive and succeeded 
 in stamping the "treacherous blow'' of our enemy 
 as a deed of hateful cowardice, the shame of 
 which they will never be able to wipe out ; thus they 
 gave us a new ally and at the same time a precious 
 breathing spell, and in contrast to our enemies, rais- 
 ed us in the eyes of the civilised world, to the most 
 desirable and the most beautiful moral position: as 
 the champion of the right, keeper of a plighted 
 word, incorruptible representative of eternal justice. 
 In this respect particularly, history was indeed work- 
 ins: in the best interests of France. 
 
 III. 
 
 Still the great question which filled us with an- 
 guish remained: Could France resist, without giv- 
 ing way, the terrible onslaught of these three mil- 
 lion men methodically trained, armed to the teeth 
 with the most deadly engines of war, and aroused 
 against the hereditary foe from their childhood, in 
 their loftiest feelings as well as in their lowest in- 
 stincts?' Against an adversary thus equipped, valor,
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 27 
 
 noble-mindedness, idealism, are not strong enough 
 weapons. Physical force is needed. Would France 
 have that physical strength? She did not have the 
 numbers ; her armament disclosed serious gaps ; she 
 was not prepared for the type of war which was 
 to be waged against her. Fortunately she did have 
 a wonderful gun, a high command originally some- 
 what heterogeneous, but which could easily become 
 of the very first order; finally, an army which had 
 faith — faith in the destiny of France and in the 
 infinite resources of French genius. 15ut would all 
 that be sufficient? Our friends were anxious: M. 
 Ferrero, M. Seippel, and the eloquent author of the 
 article in the London Times have since admitted it. 
 They were justly frightened on our account by the 
 size, by the brutality, by the heavy armor of the Ger- 
 man colossus. It was the fight between David and 
 Goliath over again. Who was going to win? The 
 world held its breath. Through the importance of 
 the questions involved, through the enormity of the 
 forces engaged, never did a more stupendous, more 
 terrible struggle arouse all mankind. 
 
 After the first few fortunate passes, David gave 
 way before his fearful adversary. That was the 
 battle of Charleroi. The anxiety increased through- 
 out the world. Would we be able to recover from 
 that repulse? The enemy was exultant. He found 
 in his triumph the justification for his crime. His 
 leaders had not deceived him. He was going to 
 tread upon that promised land whose riches his 
 chiefs had so often held out before him. A few
 
 28 THE FRENCH MIRACEE 
 
 days more and he would be in that Paris of which 
 he had been dreaming since childhood in his un- 
 couth way, the pillaging of which had been held out 
 before him to satisfy his hungry greed. A few- 
 days more and the Emperor would enter that superb 
 city which had always rejected his advances and the 
 humiliation and destruction of which he had sworn. 
 The sudden attack with which he so often threat- 
 ened us seemed about to succeed. 
 
 Then it was that a great leader arose up among 
 us. The Commander in Chief of the French armies 
 was scarcely known except to his immediate col- 
 leagues who appreciated at their real value his abil- 
 ity, his vigor, his rough but kindly justice, and his 
 prodigious self-control. With admirable clearness 
 he saw the situation in its true light and without 
 striking a blow he knew immediately what decision 
 had to be made, however difficult it might be. He 
 realized that the one thing which had to be saved 
 and maintained intact and free to move was the 
 army on which depended the victories to come. 
 Sacrificing all the generals who did not measure up 
 to their tasks, sacrificing a large strip of national 
 territory, he retreated. He retreated rapidly, meth- 
 odically, checking the enemy as he went along and 
 inflicting on him bloody losses, thus weakening him, 
 tiring him, wearing him out in every way, clearing 
 the way before him, forestalling his plans, making 
 good use of his savage impatience, watching for bis 
 slightest mistakes, drawing him on little by little, to
 
 Tlli: FRENCH MIRACLE 20 
 
 the ground where the light might take place under 
 conditions most favorable to our troops. On the 
 fifth of September these conditions were fulfilled. 
 The command for the offensive was given in an 
 order for the day, the manly and sober eloquence of 
 which will remain forever famous. France was to 
 be saved. 
 
 And during this time France showed that she 
 was worthy of her soldiers and her leaders. While 
 Northern and Eastern France accepted in trembl- 
 ing, but without complaint, the brutal invasion, 
 Paris, after all precautions had been taken, remained 
 admirable in her quiet dignity. Paris attended to 
 business, in a more serious way to be sure than 
 usual, but without excitement, and with that air of 
 elegant fearlessness, which is characteristic of 
 French courage. Paris was waiting. For what? 
 She did not know. She knew but one thing, namely, 
 that she would be defended to the last. She was 
 placed under a military governor, who was one of 
 those generals trained in the hard school of our 
 colonial wars, like JofFre and Lyautey, men of 
 thought and action, and who are able to prepare for 
 battles and win them, and at the same time to organ- 
 ize and govern a country. A most fortunate choice, 
 if it is true that the army of Paris contributed in 
 a most definite manner to the victory of the Marne. 
 Paris was confident because she was defended by 
 Gallieni. But she was prepared for anything, know- 
 ing as she did that the fortifications of her en- 
 trenched camp were temporarily insufficient. From
 
 30 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 day to day, from hour to hour she listened attentive- 
 ly to the boom of the cannon which was not far 
 off. One morning she learned that the German 
 danger was passing away, and that just as fifteen 
 hundred years before, the barbarian hordes for no 
 apparent reason, were turning away from the capital 
 and marching to the fatal meeting on the fields 
 around Chalons. Paris was saved. Paris under- 
 stood the mystery of her deliverance no more than 
 she had that of fifteen centuries before. I dare say 
 that this mystery is to-day more incomprehensible 
 than was that of fifteen hundred years ago. For it 
 would be impossible to compare even very superfici- 
 ally the Paris of the days of Atilla with the Paris of 
 our day. We are not certain that it was a mistake 
 on the part of the king of the Huns to have neglect- 
 ed to take and put to sack the valiant city which was 
 to play such a role in the future, and in any case if it 
 was a mistake, it was one which did not compromise 
 in any way the success of his campaign ; for it was 
 of infinitely greater importance for him to take 
 Orleans, the key to the south, and as a matter of 
 fact it was upon this city that he let loose his howl- 
 ing pack. But what was true of Atilla was not true 
 of his present successor. To take Paris and dictate 
 peace to us, before Russia could be ready; such was 
 the main goal of Emperor William, as his gener- 
 als had told us sufficiently often. That was the only 
 reason for this immense array of forces on our 
 northern frontier, for the violation of Belgian neu- 
 trality, for those forced marches of the German
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 3 1 
 
 right wing, and certainly that was well calculated. 
 Even without the lure of a government to capture, 
 a bank of France to riile, Paris still remained a 
 very desirable prey for the greed of those beyond 
 the Rhine. Certainly the taking of Paris would not 
 mean the end of France, nor the end of the war, nor 
 final victory. We would still have left armies, 
 money, allies and courage. But not to mention the 
 great moral effect this would produce on the out- 
 side world, it must be admitted that the loss of our 
 capital would have made it more difficult for us to 
 win that glorious peace to which we have a right. 
 Still it is quite true that Paris would not have given 
 up without a struggle. But Paris, aside from her 
 army, was not at that time protected as she might 
 have been and as she should have been ; this the Ger- 
 mans knew ; if they did not, of what use were their 
 armies of spies? 
 
 A swift, violent and sudden attack, a bold and 
 lucky stroke, one of those blows in which the Ger- 
 mans do not count human lives, might succeed. 
 And then the distant dream of a German Caesar 
 would be realized ; then he would have one of those 
 triumphal entries which had been denied him ; and 
 his army of pillagers and incendiaries would enjoy 
 that orgy of blood which had so often been promised 
 them. And suddenly without anyone knowing why, 
 that dream for which they had sacrificed everything, 
 vanished into thin air through their own fault. All 
 of a sudden these daring warriors lose their daring, 
 hesitate, retrace their steps and turn aside, and these
 
 32 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 conquerors, of their own volition, thrust from their 
 parched lips the enchanted cup from which they 
 were about to drink. 
 
 I fully realize that in their minds this was merely 
 postponed, not given up altogether; I know all the 
 explanations that have been given for this move- 
 ment of the German right wing, whereby General 
 Von Kluck, exposing his flank, instead of marching 
 directly on to Paris, turned towards Meaux and 
 Coulommiers. I am willing to admit that it might 
 seem imprudent to him to attempt an attack on 
 Paris without first of all disposing of General Mau- 
 noury's army and the armies of General Joffre, which 
 were after all still intact. But on the one hand, in 
 a war the success of which might be a question of 
 hours, this amounted to giving the capital time to 
 complete and organize her defense ; and on the other 
 hand, in case of a check, it meant precluding every 
 possibility of a future offensive against the great city 
 which was the object of the Emperor's ambition. 
 And T know full well that in their foolish pride the 
 Germans had no doubt about their victory. But 
 that the enemy's high command should not even 
 have considered the opposite possibility, that a gen- 
 eral staff which even when it is sure of success, 
 takes precaution against a possible reverse, should 
 have been thoughtless enough to risk on one single 
 throw of the dice the entire future of their Western 
 campaign, that it should make the strategic mistake 
 of permitting our Commander in Chief, not so much 
 to resume the offensive because the offensive had
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 33 
 
 been decided upon long before this mistake was 
 made, but to resume the offensive under the best 
 possible conditions, that is what confuses me, that 
 is what I do not understand — and they say that 
 even our own Joffre himself does not understand it. 
 Perhaps when we know the German explanation we 
 shall understand it better. 
 
 Moreover, there is no doubt that the contest to be 
 waged was not only likely to be decisive but was also 
 of a nature to inspire a certain amount of confidence 
 in an army even less presumptuous than was the 
 German army. In that astounding retreat, like one 
 of Turenne's, which our Commander in Chief impos- 
 ed upon the entire French army, and the execution of 
 which dumbfounded the experts, our troops ran the 
 risk of losing some of their most precious and incon- 
 testible qualities. Subjected to unspeakable fatigue, 
 how could they recover the fire, the dash, the "bite" 
 of which they had at the beginning given such 
 proof? On the other hand, the French soldier does 
 not like to fight and retreat at the same time ; and es- 
 pecially when he does not understand the reasons 
 for the movements ordered, as was often the case, 
 he is likely to lose his nerve and his courage. And 
 yet strangely enough nothing like this happened. 
 As if in the hands of a skillful captain our national 
 temperament had received a new stamp, our soldiers 
 preserved all their confidence and all their dash ; and 
 when on the morning of the sixth of September they 
 were told, the salvation of the country was going to 
 depend on their effort and that they "should at any
 
 34 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 cost hold the ground gained and be slain on the spot 
 rather than retreat," realizing the full meaning of 
 these heroic words, happy at last to be themselves 
 again, they turned upon the enemy with that legend- 
 ary fury for which we have so often been glorified. 
 
 But, however great their valor, it was to be feared 
 that it would dash itself and break upon a foe al- 
 together too fearful. We do not know the exact 
 respective strength of the troops engaged on both 
 sides, but we do know that we were numerically in- 
 ferior ; and it seems that frequently we were forced 
 to fight one against four or live. In the second 
 place, and even though since the battle of Charleroi, 
 thanks to the wonders of French manufactories, we 
 had had time to rill up certain gaps in equipment, 
 our armament remained inferior to that of our 
 adversary : neither in mitrailleuses, nor in heavy 
 artillery, nor in munition reserves, could we yet 
 be compared with him. Finally, he had that self- 
 confidence which comes from pride, skilfully main- 
 tained and the intoxication of first victory. More 
 than ever our friends were anxious. Looking at it 
 rationally, they were right. 
 
 How did the heroic valor of our army and the 
 superiority of our generals and of our light artillery 
 finally make our victory certain? This is easier 
 to state than to explain. Mathematically, if you 
 will allow me to say so, we ought to have been con- 
 quered. We are forced to believe that in the art of 
 war as well as in all other arts the geometrical mind 
 has to give way before finesse, calculation before in-
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 35 
 
 tuition, reason before sentiment. This army which 
 was righting against the invader in defense of the 
 native soil and the genius of France had a dif- 
 ferent ideal from that which inspired that other 
 army which was lighting for "honor," no doubt, 
 but also and especially for the physical well-being 
 of Germany — those are the very words in the Ger- 
 man order of the day. This French army did not 
 have on its conscience all those crimes against the 
 rights of humanity which will be, in the eyes of 
 history, the everlasting shame of the German army ; 
 let us pronounce the verdict : it had a higher moral 
 standard. That is why it deserved to win. That 
 is why it did win. Was it not General Nogi who 
 uttered that profound thought that in every battle 
 victory comes to him who is able to hold out a 
 quarter of an hour longer than his foe? It would 
 seem that the victors of the Marne made this their 
 motto and that they wished to furnish a striking 
 illustration of it. Just when generals like Mau- 
 noury, Foch, Dubail with their soldiers decimated, 
 exhausted, assailed on all sides by superior forces 
 might have lost courage, they nevertheless persev- 
 ered in their determination to keep up the offensive, 
 and together with their soldiers were willing to suf- 
 fer still more ; and then it was that they saw the 
 enemy disconcerted and less firm, break off the bat- 
 tle and begin a retreat, which at more than one 
 point degenerated into a rout. Let us read once 
 more the stirring order of the day which General
 
 36 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 Maunoury, on the day after the victory, addressed 
 to the army of Paris, but which applies equally well 
 to the whole French Army : 
 
 "The Sixth Army has just sustained for five whole 
 days without interruption or lull, the struggle 
 against the foe in great numbers, whose success 
 had up to that time heightened his morale. The 
 struggle was hard; the losses on the firing line, the 
 fatigue, due to loss of sleep and sometimes food, 
 have surpassed the powers of imagination ; you have 
 endured everything with valor, firmness and endur- 
 ance which cannot properly be glorified by mere 
 words." 
 
 It was truly an epic struggle, which in the opin- 
 ion of experts will remain numbered among the 
 five or six great events in our military history. We 
 do not know all the details, even the important ones. 
 At most we are able from certain essential episodes 
 to perceive the movement and rhythm of it. But 
 that is sufficient to make us realize all the bravery, 
 obstinacy and strategic skill displayed by the foe, 
 and the heroism, patient energy and military talent 
 displayed by our men. Privates and officers were 
 equally worthy of admiration. The privates have 
 been called upon in the name of their country to do 
 more than their duty ; their reply to this, went be- 
 yond the seemingly possible. As for the officers it 
 is impossible to say which we must admire most in 
 them, the initiative and dash with which they fought
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 37 
 
 the enemy directly confronting them, watching his 
 every move, on the lookout for any weakness, taking 
 advantage of it at the precise moment when they 
 could profit by it ; or the compliant spirit and strict 
 discipline with which they conformed to the in- 
 structions of the Commander in Chief, scrupulously 
 carrying out his plans, applying and developing his 
 thought, even forestalling it and submitting to it in 
 advance, in perfect harmony with him in method 
 and intent. It was a close and fruitful collaboration 
 which brought to bear on one and the same object 
 all individual energy and effort and which made the 
 victory of the Marne one of the most powerful col- 
 lective works, the success of which is conditioned by 
 the necessary utilization of many strong personal- 
 ities. In our victory, what was the part played by a 
 Gallieni, a Foch. a Castelnau, a Maunoury, a Du- 
 bail ? We do not yet know with absolute precision, 
 we simply feel that it was considerable and that if 
 one or the other of these commanders, to mention 
 only those, had not acted as he did, instead of a de- 
 cisive victory, perhaps we should have had to de- 
 plore a reverse. Never before on such a vast battle- 
 field had such powerful masses of men been led and 
 manoeuvered with such mastery by more brilliant 
 generals, more closely united and possessing such 
 thorough military science. The historians of the 
 future will probably say that the battle of the Marne 
 was one of the masterworks of French genius. 
 We rejoiced and were proud on account of this
 
 38 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 complete and incontestable victory — the revenge for 
 1870 — for which we have been waiting for forty- 
 four years — but our pride and our joy were accom- 
 panied by extreme modesty and rare selfpossession. 
 I do not believe that Paris, at last safe from inva- 
 sion, the danger of which she realized perfectly, dis- 
 played a single extra flag. Paris did not imitate 
 Berlin which after the battle of Charleroi displayed 
 flags and bunting in frantic profusion. The Prus- 
 sian spies who may still have been in Paris must 
 have found it impossible to believe their eyes. Paris, 
 nervous and throbbing Paris, was silent in her joy. 
 Questioned by the civil authorities in regard to il- 
 lumination to celebrate the victory, General Joffre 
 replied in those admirable words, worthy of a Tur- 
 enne or a Vauban : "No, our losses have been too 
 great." And Paris was of the same opinion as the 
 Commander in Chief. This race which had been so 
 often reproached by its enemies for its swagger and 
 bluster and which certainly does not dislike a little 
 display looked on with smiling serenity at this sud- 
 den and complete turn of fortune. Among the 
 events of the last ten months perhaps not the least 
 surprising has been this spontaneous transformation 
 in the national temperament. This complete ab- 
 sence of exaltation and that self-restraint main- 
 tained in both good and bad fortune.
 
 THE ERENCH MJRACLE 39 
 
 IV. 
 
 For it was indeed during those heroic days, during 
 the battle of the Marne that fortune decidedly veer- 
 ed about, that hope changed camps, never again to 
 abandon us. The moral superiority, which our 
 troops displayed in contrast to the opposing forces 
 in those bloody battles, they have not lost since ; in 
 fact, they are increasingly conscious of it. The 
 charm was broken. That formidable German army 
 which was considered invincible, because it had con- 
 quered us in 1870 and which believed itself invinc- 
 ible, and boasted of it, had just now been beaten be- 
 yond all expectations. The offensive was broken ; 
 and whatever efforts, even though at times furious, 
 the German army has since made, to resume the of- 
 fensive, whatever partial success it may have obtain- 
 ed here and there, and which could be but tem- 
 porary, whatever success it may yet obtain, it can 
 neither pierce our line, nor envelop any one of our 
 armies or force us to yield any considerable ground. 
 On the contrary it is the German army which has 
 nearly always been obliged to give way under pres- 
 sure from us and which to offer greater resistance 
 has inaugurated that system of trench warfare 
 which has lasted for more than eight months and 
 which we also have been forced to adopt. 
 
 No system of warfare seemed a priori less adapt- 
 ed to the French temperament, and no doubt be- 
 yond the Rhine they were counting on this to tire
 
 40 THE FRENCH MIRACEE 
 
 our patience and to force upon us what they call 
 "an honorable peace" but which would have brought 
 little honor to us and in any case would have been 
 singularly precarious. Let us confess : We had 
 some misgivings with regard to our soldiers in this 
 test of an entirely new type of warfare, for which 
 they apparently had been but slightly prepared. A 
 French soldier does not enjoy digging up the 
 ground, any more than he enjoys beating a retreat. 
 Bold and brilliant offensive warfare, warfare of 
 swift and skilful manoeuvres, we had up to that 
 time considered his real element. How little we 
 knew about the elasticity, the suppleness of the 
 French character, its astonishing powers of assimila- 
 tion and adaption ; in short, its plasticity ! In a 
 very short time our soldiers were able to build 
 trenches as ingenious and as comfortable as those of 
 the Germans ; peasants, as many of them were, they 
 derived a certain pleasure in handling their native 
 soil ; and, however hard their life was in the frozen 
 mud. in the rain, under fire, with that peaceful 
 stoicism, that persistent patience, that playful, mock- 
 ing, good humor which flourished in our country- 
 side, they rivalled their foes in endurance, and, fin- 
 ally, in the war of attrition the Germans had no 
 greater success than in the other. The fact that our 
 troopers regretted sometimes the old fashioned 
 French type of warfare makes their abnegation still 
 more touching and more admirable. 
 
 "Six months of mole-like warfare which lacks 
 the excitement of triumphal marches, waving
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 41 
 
 plumes, glorious battles won by fighting on the sur- 
 face of the ground, marching thrilled by music and 
 songs of victory ! Six months which are only the 
 greater and more glorious because they have torn 
 from the war all her grandeur and all her chivalry ! 
 Six months of war waged against wild boars in 
 their lairs, whom the broad daylight and the fair 
 fight, with equal arms, face to face, chest to chest, 
 seemed to fill with dread." 
 
 These were the words in which a colonel recently 
 expressed himself in a private letter. We know 
 from all the testimony coming to us from the front 
 that this mole-like warfare has been just as pro- 
 ductive as the other type of warfare in deeds of 
 heroism, in unpublished acts of courage and in sub- 
 blime self-sacrifice. Moreover, since the battle of 
 the Marne, siege warfare has been the general 
 characteristic of the struggle. We know that this 
 type of warfare has admitted of exceptions in which 
 much blood has been shed. More than once the 
 German armies have attempted to resume the of- 
 fensive on one point or another of the front. Every- 
 where and always they have found before them, 
 with a command always ready, troops often inferior 
 in number, but quite determined to allow them- 
 selves to be slain on the spot rather than retreat. 
 There is nothing more honorable to the French 
 army than the battles of Ypres and of the Yser 
 where our soldiers stopped the drive on Calais by 
 making of themselves an insurmountable barrier. 
 In this war which has brought about a revival of
 
 42 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 French heroism there is perhaps no more glorious 
 feat than the defense of Dixmude against three Ger- 
 man army corps by our six thousand marine fusil- 
 iers aided by five thousand Belgians. The race of 
 valiant heroes is not yet extinct and there is reason 
 to believe that our enemies will speak less readily 
 of the decadence of the French. 
 
 We, however, if we do not speak of decadence, 
 we may mention at least the mad presumption and 
 the lack of foresight on the part of the Germans. 
 From the material point of view they had prepared, 
 up to the minutest detail, for a war which was to be 
 a short one. Full of confidence in brute strength, 
 they had entirely neglected to prepare for a war 
 from the diplomatic side, and in spite of all the 
 warnings loyally given, it was a terrible surprise to 
 them to see England intervene in the conflict. They 
 had outrageously scorned all the power of public 
 opinion, leaving to victory the task of justifying 
 their actions, as Maximilian Harden said ; and in 
 spite of their unbridled propaganda among neutrals, 
 they saw little by little the public opinion of the en- 
 tire world turned against them. To break all op- 
 position they relied on human cowardice and sys- 
 tematically spread abroad terror ; the only feelings 
 they have succeeded in arousing, are horror, indig- 
 nation, hatred outspoken and avenging that cannot 
 be stilled. They desired to wear out the adversary's 
 determination and succeeded only in extending it 
 beyond all known limits. Having failed in their 
 brusque attack they endeavored to prolong the
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 43 
 
 struggle by resorting to underground warfare; and 
 they failed to realize that in this way they were 
 making day by day more and more formidable the 
 blockade which they had been unable to avoid, and 
 that they were giving to their enemies time to make 
 up for their lack of previous preparation, and while 
 they were wearing themselves out in a futile and 
 inglorious way, the enemy had time to pile up and 
 throw against them forces under the weight of 
 which they could not fail to perish. The miracle 
 of the French victory has as a counterpart the mar- 
 vel of German stupidity. 
 
 We, in France, as well as our allies, knew how to 
 make use of the respite, German lack of prudence 
 had granted us. We were all of us wrong to allow 
 ourselves to be surprised by a war for which our 
 enemy had spent forty-four years in preparation 
 and planning, and about which we had been thinking 
 not even forty-four months. In eight months al- 
 most all the lost time was made up. Some day we 
 shall know in detail the prodigious effort which all 
 France expended in improvising, in inventing and in 
 action in these ten months. Without underestimat- 
 ing, in the least, all she owed to her allies, we shall 
 have to confess that France was her own savior. 
 At the beginning of the war we were in more than 
 one respect much inferior to the foe; we are now 
 at least equal to him, often superior; and yet, his 
 factories and arsenals have not been idle a single 
 day in the last ten months. We are told that our 
 heavy artillery is his despair to-day, just as much
 
 44 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 as our field artillery; and if at times our munition 
 reserves have been insufficient in the past, we are 
 able now to be as prodigal with our shot and 
 shell as he was at the beginning against us — with- 
 out the fearful prospect of copper failing us some 
 day. 
 
 The foregoing facts, which are to-day familiar to 
 every sensible Frenchman, justify the lighthearted 
 endurance of which our soldiers have given ample 
 proof in the trenches and the patience which has 
 scarcely ever deserted the civilian population dur- 
 ing these ten months of war and invasion; but 
 perhaps they may not explain them entirely. Rea- 
 son and common sense are ample proof of this 
 every day. Endurance and patience which were 
 considered German virtues were not considered up 
 to this time as characteristics of the French. Must 
 we see in them entirely new qualities never before 
 displayed, sprung out of this great crisis through 
 a sort of spontaneous creation? Or are they qual- 
 ities hidden up to the present time in the obscure 
 depths of the stored-up energy of our race and 
 which had not yet had an opportunity to manifest 
 themselves? Or are the acquired qualities which 
 simply show how wonderfully easy it is for the 
 French temperament to be transformed? Whether 
 we choose one or the other of these hypotheses, one 
 thing is certain and one fact undeniable. Poorly or 
 at least insufficiently prepared for a frightful war, 
 the success of which depended almost entirely on 
 her powers of resistance, since she was to withstand
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 45 
 
 the first shock almost alone, France did stand her 
 ground ; she held out with heroic vigor, wily ten- 
 acity, and unconquerable patience on which her 
 friends and we ourselves perhaps at certain mo- 
 ments scarcely dared to count. She has shown that 
 she deserves all the admiration showered on her 
 in the past and justified all the hope placed in her 
 for the future. 
 
 It is certain also that France has just lived 
 through an incomparable period of her history. I 
 doubt that there has been any more decisive since 
 the days of Joan of Arc. In both cases the very 
 life of the country was at stake: "To be or not to 
 be," that was the question. The critical point in 
 the fifteenth century was whether France was to 
 be a vassal of England or not and in the twentieth 
 century whether she was to be a vassal of Germany. 
 The second crisis was of a nature to cause us to 
 shudder more than the first. What humiliation, what 
 a retrogression, what a downfall for a Frenchman 
 of to-day to become a German ! If this monstrous 
 nightmare had become a reality, what Frenchman 
 would have found any joy thereafter in life? France 
 so clearly felt the full seriousness of this threat 
 that she rose up to her full grandeur, filled with 
 indignation, loathing and fright. Germany thought 
 she was going to find another Poland to dismem- 
 ber ; but she had to deal with a nation united, re- 
 solute and under discipline, with leaders who were 
 obeyed. All the strength and trickery of Germany 
 were unable to break this rigid, living union of de-
 
 46 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 termined minds. Once more France stood up as 
 a moral being determined to live, worthy of life, a 
 being whose life the world needs. For forty-four 
 years France, bruised, humiliated, mutilated, fallen 
 from the rank of a first-rate power, no longer spoke 
 in the councils of Europe that proud and generous 
 language which she was wont to speak in days gone 
 by; and the world has been able to notice that the 
 standard of international morality had appreciably 
 declined, and that the great causes of idealism now 
 seldom found a champion. After forty-four years 
 the opportunity came to her to give her full true 
 measure, to take once more with her old prestige 
 the rank which an accidental defeat had made her 
 lose and to reconquer full liberty for her civilising 
 mission. France replied manfully to the call of des- 
 tiny. She accepted with serene and grave con- 
 fidence the wager Providence gave her. She has 
 already more than half won that wager. Aided by 
 her powerful and generous allies she will finally, 
 while freeing herself, liberate the universe from the 
 hateful and brutal yoke which has been weighing 
 upon it. In that world where for a half century 
 force alone has ruled she will strive, following her 
 age-long tradition, to bring nearer the reign of jus- 
 tice. She will cast away that frame of mind char- 
 acteristic of the conquered which has been the real 
 cause of her internal discord; the sacred union 
 which has been her strength against the enemy must 
 survive victory.
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE; 47 
 
 Oh, you young men, lying in the plains of the 
 Marne, of Alsace or of Flanders, you have given 
 your lives heroically for that great work of repara- 
 tion, to create a larger France, a France respected by 
 the world and in perfect unity in a purified Europe 
 where peace reigns. This spectacle which you will 
 not see we want to last in the world for ages. We 
 would not be worthy of you, if hereafter by our own 
 hand we tear ourselves asunder. We ought not to 
 have accepted your sacrifice, if we were determined 
 to make it of no avail by our obstinate persistency 
 in our old and absurd quarrels. No, your blood 
 shall not have been shed in vain. We have fully 
 realized the austere lesson which you have taught 
 us, for you died united in brotherly love. We shall 
 continue, we shall complete your work. If in spite 
 of grief, of misery and ruin we are proud to have 
 lived through the hours we have just lived through 
 it is because we are certain that France in victory 
 will be able to prolong the miracle of France. 
 
 ( 1 ) Among the many admirable letters published, I 
 cannot refrain from citing here a few lines from a letter 
 found on the body of Jean Chatanay, lieutenant in the 
 reserves, killed at Vermelles, October 15, 1914: 
 
 My Dear: 
 
 I am writing this chance letter because you can never 
 tell. If it reaches you, it will be because France will 
 have needed me to the very end. You must not weep, be- 
 cause I swear, I shall die happy, if I must give up my life 
 for her.
 
 48 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 
 
 My only worry is the hard situation in which you and the 
 children will be left. How will you be able to provide for 
 your own future and that of the children? Fortunately you 
 are able to count on your old position as teacher and on 
 full aid from my people. How glad I should be to know 
 that some provision is to be made. 
 
 I am not disturbed about the bringing up of the little 
 girls, you will bring them up as I would have done myself, 
 I hope that they will be able to make themselves independ- 
 ent, something that I intended to do if I lived. The one 
 great difficulty will be Zette, for it will be hard, if not im- 
 possible for you, to live in Paris. You will kiss the dear lit- 
 tle ones for their father. You will tell them that he has 
 gone on a long, long journey, still loving them, thinking of 
 them and protecting them from afar. I should like to have 
 Cotte at least remember me, and there will be a little baby, 
 a tiny baby, whom I shall not have seen. If it is a boy, my 
 wish is that he become a doctor; unless, however, after this 
 war France still needs officers. You will tell him when he 
 has reached the age of understanding that his father gave 
 up his life for a great ideal, that of our country, recon- 
 stituted and strong. 
 
 I think, I have said what is most important. Farewell, 
 my dear, my love, promise me (hat you won't harbor ill will 
 towards France, if she wanted me and all of me. Promise 
 me, too, that you will console father and mother, and tell 
 the little girls that their father, however far away he may 
 be, will never cease to watch over them and love them. We 
 shall meet again some day, united once more. I hope, with 
 Him who guides our lives and has given me near you and 
 through you such happiness. Poor dear one, I have not had 
 time to dwell long upon our love, which nevertheless is so 
 great and so strong. Farewell till we meet again, the great, 
 the real meeting. Be strong. Your John. 
 
 Jean Chatanay, former Normalien was Chief of the En- 
 tomological Station at Chalons-sur-Marne. He was thirty 
 years old.
 
 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 49 
 
 (2) Among all the deeds of heroism and all the epic 
 words which have been reported by our soldiers, I scarcely 
 know one more beautiful, more worthy of going down to 
 posterity, than the following: 
 
 In a captured trench, which was being reconstructed, a 
 shower of bombs suddenly 'hurst; ten men fell, the others 
 dropped back and a score of Germans invaded the trench. 
 Then, one of the wounded men got up and seizing a hand 
 full of grenades, uttered this sublime cry: "Arise ye 
 dead !" At his call three other wounded soldiers arose, 
 and with guns, grenades and bayonets they struck down 
 half of their assailants and forced the rest to flee. 
 
 The hero of this deed is Lieutenant Pericard, author of a 
 recent book: Face a Face. Souvenirs ct Impressions d'un 
 soldat de la Grande Guerre. Preface de Maurice Barres, 
 Paris, 1016. Another volume has just appeared by the 
 same author: Ceux de Verdun. Paris, 1917.
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 Plus je vis l'etranger, plus j'aimai ma patrie. — Du Beixoy. 
 
 Et plus je suis Francais, plus je me sens humain. — Sueey 
 Prudhomme. 
 
 To symbolise what seems to me to be the original 
 and fundamental quality, the constant tradition of 
 French civilisation, I should not care to seek a bet- 
 ter expression than the remark of a non-commis- 
 sioned Prussian officer in the novel entitled Au Ser- 
 vice de V Allemagne : "Ah, sir, we really must admit 
 the French have more humanity than the others." 
 
 In literature to begin with. Is literature the ex- 
 pression of society? It is, in any case, because it is 
 the least systematic, the most spontaneous expres- 
 sion of the peculiar genius and instinctive tenden- 
 cies of the people. 
 
 That there is in French literature more humanity 
 than in the other modern literatures would be, I 
 think, the conclusion of even a superficial examina- 
 tion of these various literatures. Our writers are 
 not such great artists as the Italians, are less mystic- 
 al than the Russians, less poetical than the Eng- 
 lish, less philosophical than the Germans, less ro- 
 mantic than the Spaniards but how much more hu- 
 man ! It is of man they think, first of all ; it is man 
 in his different moral attitudes, in the deep-seated 
 movements of his nature, whom they strive to under-
 
 52 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 stand and describe; the questions which they treat 
 are human questions, moral or social questions. 
 What they have always in view is the practice of life 
 — individual or collective — and, finally, it is man to 
 whom they speak, the concrete, the real, the living 
 man, not the exceptional, but the average man, 
 whose language they speak and whose approval they 
 seek. To instruct, to moralise, in a word, to hu- 
 manise that is their essential purpose. We remem- 
 ber what Bossuet said of the Greek poets : "Homer 
 and so many other poets whose words are as pleas- 
 ing as they are serious, celebrate only the arts that 
 are useful to human life, breathe only the spirit of 
 the public good, fatherland, society and that wonder- 
 ful civic consciousness which we have explained." 
 This might be the very definition of French litera- 
 ture. 
 
 Let us make this general impression clearer. Let 
 us examine the two great epochs of our history, the 
 Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries which we are 
 in the habit of considering as opposed one to the 
 other and not without reason; for, in truth, just as 
 the Seventeenth Century loved order, rule and dis- 
 cipline, to the same degree the Eighteenth rebelled 
 against all authority, religious, intellectual and polit- 
 ical. But, if, after going beyond these undeniable di- 
 vergencies, we. finally, come to the bottom of the 
 matter we are bound to realise that through different 
 methods they affirm and pursue the same ideal. 
 
 The French literature of the Seventeenth Century 
 was passionately curious about the human soul ; that
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 53 
 
 is, it seems, its distinctive characteristic which ex- 
 plains not only its own peculiar merits, but also its 
 weakness and shortcomings. It has been reproach- 
 ed, for instance, with having disdained nature ; it is 
 because it constantly concerned itself with man, that 
 it neglected all that is not man. To see living, with 
 the eyes of the soul, and to present, exactly, that 
 "marvelously vain, shifting and changing creature" 
 seemed to that century a spectacle which made all 
 others grow pale ; a task compared with which all 
 others were but diversions. "It might be well," 
 said Pascal, "not to penetrate too deeply into the 
 opinion of Copernicus, but it is of the greatest im- 
 portance to our entire life to know whether the soul 
 is mortal or immortal." In like manner Racine 
 might have said: "Of what importance to us is the 
 setting in which the tragic story of Phaedra is un- 
 folded? What interests us is Phaedra's soul, how 
 she reacts against the mad passion by which she is 
 possessed and obsessed, the shifting changes of her 
 moral consciousness, and what physical landscape 
 can compare with this paysanc interieur?" All the 
 writers of the Seventeenth Century held the same 
 opinion as Racine. All of them, poets, dramatists, 
 orators, novelists, philosophers made the human 
 heart their one object of study; all tried to encom- 
 pass in their work the greatest amount of moral 
 observation possible. Hence, the wealth of psychol- 
 ogy in their work. "A living psychology," Taine's 
 celebrated definition does not apply to every sort of
 
 54 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 literature, but it does apply most aptly to the lit- 
 erature of the Seventeenth Century. 
 
 It will be noticed that our great classic writers, al- 
 though very penetrating, were not, however, disin- 
 terested psychologists. Knowledge for the mere 
 sake of knowledge, even though it were the most in- 
 teresting of realities is not their ideal. Their atti- 
 tude toward man is not at all that of the naturalist. 
 or of the scientist, who observes, jots down facts, 
 establishes laws, and, when this work is done, thinks 
 his mission accomplished. They are moralists as 
 much as they are psychologists. They are not satis- 
 fied with studying and knowing man, they propose 
 to furnish him with a rule of life; they wish him 
 to be better and happier. From their long journey 
 of exploration and study, they return without any 
 illusion regarding human nature; they believe it 
 to be profoundly wicked and perverse, a prey to 
 the lowest instincts and the most wretched passions. 
 To overcome these passions, to conquer these in- 
 stincts, to set aglow in all this wretchedness a ray 
 of idealism, of virtue and happiness, they all, or 
 nearly all, see but one remedy : the acceptance of a 
 religious rule of life, the submission of the whole 
 inner self to a highly venerable tradition which, 
 moreover, had stood the test. On this condition, 
 they believe, and on this alone, can man be happy, 
 at least, in so far as his moral destiny allows, and 
 store up for his future life, the infinite happiness to 
 which he aspires.
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 55 
 
 The writers of the Eighteenth and those of the 
 Seventeenth Century are convinced that "man de- 
 sires to be happy, and the one and only thing he 
 desires is to be happy and that it is impossible for 
 him not to wish to be so," and similarly they con- 
 sider this aspiration legitimate. But instead of be- 
 lieving with Pascal and almost all his contemporar- 
 ies that "happiness is neither outside of ourselves 
 nor within us," but that it is "in God, and outside, 
 yet within ourselves," they imagine that we would 
 be perfectly happy, if we were free from all the re- 
 straints which so many centuries of "superstition" 
 have caused to weigh upon us. Not having studied 
 man at any great length nor with any great depth, 
 they believe in his native goodness, they believe in 
 the all-powerfulness of reason to remedy the tem- 
 porary imperfections which they discover in him : 
 in a word, they believe in the progressive disappear- 
 ance of evil from the world. Illusion, perhaps, but 
 a generous illusion, at least, in its principle, since it 
 develops from an excess of confidence in human 
 nature. Having little or no faith in a future life, 
 holding themselves entirely aloof from it, in any 
 case, the writers of that day bring to bear on the 
 present life all their thought and care; they think 
 only of directing it for the greatest happiness of hu- 
 manity. Since man according to them can depend 
 only on himself to improve his destiny, let him 
 use all his efforts to make it more comfortable and 
 agreeable. Convinced that man exists only in and 
 through society and derives his value therefrom, and
 
 56 FRENCH CIVIUSATrON 
 
 that outside society there is for him no salvation, no 
 happiness — some of them became passionate apolo- 
 gists of the social institution. They celebrated with- 
 out ceasing its blessings and its very sanctity; they 
 demanded that it should be perfected ; and they 
 were prone to see in a body of good laws the sover- 
 eign good which mankind might seek. Others, 
 bolder or more imprudent, far from having this in- 
 genuous confidence in the rules and conventions of 
 society, attributed to them all the evils which fill 
 with desolation the life of man. The enemy for 
 them is society, they dream of a return to a so- 
 called state of nature ; and already they build up 
 for themselves a state of happiness which makes 
 them weep with tenderness. 
 
 Qui les fait pkurcr de tendresse. 
 
 These are, to be sure, very different tendencies, 
 very different also from those current in the preced- 
 ing century. But after all, it makes slight difference 
 whether Bossuet has a conception of a man and life 
 which bears very slight resemblance to that held 
 by Voltaire or Rousseau ; all three of them, and their 
 literary contemporaries are as though haunted by 
 the obsession of this same problem, that of happi- 
 ness. And it is this essential preoccupation which 
 gives to the literary work of these two centuries, 
 as to French literature in general, that accent of 
 humanity which foreigners themselves are pleased 
 to find there.
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 57 
 
 Let us become more definite, if possible, and take 
 a few of the great French masterpieces which have 
 attracted the attention and admiration of Europe, 
 and let us ask ourselves what more than any thing 
 else has warranted and sealed their lasting for- 
 tune. 
 
 The Chanson de Roland is our first national mast- 
 erpiece, incomplete, no doubt, somewhat crude, but 
 a masterpiece nevertheless, in which, as Gaston Paris 
 says, we find for the first time that divine expres- 
 sion, "douce France." 
 
 "Tere de France, mult estes dulz pais." 
 
 This masterpiece, during the Middle Ages, travel- 
 ed over all Europe. It was taken into Spain and 
 Germany long before the appearance of the Niebel- 
 ungen and the Romancero del Cid ; Italy, England, 
 Denmark and Iceland were acquainted with it 
 through numberless compilations or adaptations. 
 Xow. the real reason of this universal renown has 
 been given by a poet, Auguste Angellier, in a work 
 too little known : "What distinguishes the Chanson 
 de Roland from the epics of all times." he said, "is, 
 that it possesses that supreme beauty which comes 
 from having exalted misfortune and being a poem of 
 a noble defeat and a glorious death .... To be 
 sure, the poet had no lack of glorious names, of bat- 
 tles, and warriors .... I know of nothing nobler or 
 more touching than that unique spectacle of a nation 
 which, though it may cling to happy and glorious
 
 58 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 memories, is filled with enthusiasm for suffering and 
 glorifies a defeat." And that is what all other peo- 
 ples have felt more or less obscurely: they read, 
 admired, adopted our old Chanson de Geste, because 
 it offered to them the generous example of a higher 
 humanity. 
 
 Let us go down the centuries. In all our litera- 
 ture there is no work more European than the Es- 
 says of Montaigne. It is beyond doubt that outside 
 of France as well as within her borders men have 
 appreciated the incomparable grace of a style per- 
 petually new. But the work would not have had 
 such a unanimous and constant success if it had 
 not been, before all else, as Amyot said so well of 
 another book, "un cas humain represente au vif." 
 "Every man," declared Montaigne, "bears in him- 
 self the form of a man's condition." And it is to 
 describe this "form" of general humanity that he 
 analysed himself with that somewhat sly com- 
 placency which some have judged to be hateful but in 
 which most readers have found so much charm. For 
 the first time in a work written in the "vulgar" 
 tongue was seen to appear, and develop, a soul en- 
 tirely described as it actually is ; men recognized 
 themselves in it ; each one profited by this rich moral 
 experience then placed at the service of all. Men 
 admired that manner of writing "composed entirely 
 of thoughts sprung from the ordinary topics of 
 life." In short, "men were astonished and thrilled, 
 for they had expected to see an author and they
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 59 
 
 found a man." Never perhaps, was this famous 
 dictum applied more justly. 
 
 A few years pass : the classic literature comes into 
 being and develops ; the Cid, that immortal flower of 
 youth, begins the long series of great tragedies. 
 Would you ask, how the pure tradition of the 
 French genius is here expressed? Compare the 
 Spanish drama from which Corneille derived it. In 
 many respects, the Cid might be defended as an 
 "adaptation" or "transformation" of the play, very 
 beautiful, moreover, by Guillen de Castro. But 
 how free is this adaptation, how original, this trans- 
 formation ! A vast dramatic epic, variegated, pic- 
 turesque, diffuse, uneven, full of details of manners 
 and customs which surprise or shock the reader, 
 in which improbability and bad taste flourish with 
 luxuriant ingenuity ; such is the Spanish work. 
 Corneille abridges, reduces and concentrates. He 
 unifies in a strong stage action the multiplicity of in- 
 cidents and episodes. He simplifies the subject, the 
 intrigue and the style ; he brings the characters near- 
 er to us ; he analyzes them deeply. He eliminates 
 pitilessly from his model all elements which are too 
 barbarous, too local, too Spanish. He brings into 
 full light the psychological and moral interest of the 
 theme which he develops. In a word, by every 
 means in his power, he humanizes the foreign work 
 and the inner conflict which he derived from it im- 
 pressed itself not only on all literary Europe but on 
 the Spaniards themselves.
 
 60 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 "Fair as the Cid" ("Beau comme le Cid"), Cor- 
 neille's contemporaries used to say. Speaking of 
 Pascal's Fensees the following generation might 
 say with Madame de Lafayette that, "it was a 
 bad sign for those who did not enjoy that book" 
 and posterity has to a large extent ratified the 
 judgment of La Rochefoucauld's friend. Now, 
 what is in the Pensees which even today moves us 
 and touches our inmost hearts ? Strength and beauty 
 of style? Depth and boldness of thought? We are 
 certainly not indifferent to these qualities. But 
 how much more are we interested and enthused by 
 the methodical, ardent soul which we feel throb- 
 bing in these simple fragments. Here is a man — 
 one of the most powerful minds the world has ever 
 known — who has scrutinized with a sort of tragic 
 anguish the problem of fate, and who, having found 
 its solution, wishes to lead his fellowmen to the 
 blessed convictions in which he himself has found 
 the only peace for his anxiety. Fie reasons, grows 
 tender, implores, inveighs, in turn. He is not a 
 logician arguing; he is an apostle, almost a martyr 
 confessing his faith and desirous of sharing it with 
 others. "If these words please you and seem just 
 to you, know that they are spoken by a man who 
 went on his knees before and after to pray to the 
 Being Who is infinite and indivisible, to Whom he 
 submits his whole self that He may make you sub- 
 ject to Himself for your own salvation and His 
 glory." What an accent of serious and manly ten- 
 derness ! Surely, this is one of our brothers who
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 6l 
 
 suffers with us, who prays for us and who is ferv- 
 ently searching for the truth with us! "Would you 
 have me shed forever the blood of my humanity, 
 and you not give even your tears!" These wonder- 
 ful words, which Pascal attributes to God, are the 
 very words, we hear from the lips of Pascal him- 
 self on every page of the Pensees. 
 
 An entirely different phrase might serve as an 
 epitome of the work of Moliere. "Ah! Nature! 
 Nature!" cries the worthy Argan on seeing his 
 daughter smile, as soon as he spoke to her of mar- 
 riage ; almost all of Moliere is contained in that ex- 
 clamation of admiration. Those whom he ridicules 
 most gladly and with a sort of vengeful vim are 
 all those who paint, disguise, mutilate, or thwart na- 
 ture; bigots, pseudo-scientists, jealous husbands, 
 vulgar upstarts, amorous dotards, blue-stockings 
 and dandies. How much better everything would 
 move along in the world, according to him, if each 
 one instead of trying to check or correct it, simply 
 followed his instinct. The lesson might be danger- 
 ous, if, on the one hand, it were not accompanied by 
 wise advice to be moderate, and if, on the other 
 hand, we did not feel, beneath the scoffing and 
 laughter a deep pity and great love for the poor 
 creatures who are themselves the cause of their 
 wretchedness. Moliere is, indeed, a very human 
 genius. Even though he has less knowledge than 
 others, even though he has somewhat failed to un- 
 derstand the highest regions of human nature, he 
 has carefully explored, described and loved the aver-
 
 62 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 age and moderate side of human life. The some- 
 what unexpected remark which he puts into the 
 mouth of his Don Juan: ''Here! I give you that 
 for the love of humanity," is perhaps one of the 
 few rare expressions coming, not from the author, 
 but the man — one of the few expressions which 
 the great impersonal poet allowed himself to utter. 
 At first sight, nothing resembles the work of Mol- 
 iere less that l Esprit des Lois of Montesquieu. And 
 still we already find in Moliere certain tendencies 
 which are to reach broad development in the work 
 of the next century, in Montesquieu as well as 
 Voltaire. "Humanity had lost her rights: M. de 
 Montesquieu gave them back to her," was said of 
 the Esprit des Lois and these words express ac- 
 curately enough the nature of the prodigious suc- 
 cess which the book had in its time. If the essential 
 object of Montesquieu in writing the Esprit des 
 Lois was to justify by profound reasoning the in- 
 numerable laws and customs which govern the var- 
 ious communities of men, to inspire in his readers a 
 respect and religious awe for these venerable in- 
 stitutions, to spread the ideas of liberty, toleration, 
 and justice, which must make social life more com- 
 fortable and agreeable ; in a word, to bring every- 
 thing to bear on the welfare of society, then, we 
 may readily appreciate that his contemporaries were 
 infinitely grateful to him for having devoted his life 
 to straightening and drawing more closely the bonds 
 which unite mankind.
 
 FRENCH. CIVILISATION 63 
 
 Almost a century later. A new world is forming. 
 A new poetry has come to life, which found its pur- 
 est and most sincere expression in the work of 
 Lamartine. What the poetry of Lamartine meant to 
 his contemporaries has never perhaps been better 
 expressed than by a critic well-nigh forgotten today, 
 who was never able to recall without emotion that 
 day when, still a young school boy, having by chance 
 bought the little volume of the Meditations he found 
 therein "all the feelings of his soul, and all the pas- 
 sions of his heart, all the happiness of earth and 
 the delights of heaven, all the hopes of the present 
 and all the anxieties of the future." And this 
 opinion of Jules Janin is not confined to the French 
 and foreign readers of 1820, for, between 1905 and 
 19 1 4, in nine years, then, a single Paris publisher 
 sold more than forty-two thousand copies of the 
 Meditations alone. We are forced to believe that 
 for nearly a century men have not ceased to see and 
 love in these verses of Lamartine the modern man 
 in his entirety, of whom the poet, while singing of 
 himself, traced for us the ideal, yet, natural, living 
 image. 
 
 May we not say as much of the novels of George 
 Sand, of all our writers the one, who in flowing eleg- 
 ance of style, in generosity of thought, and perhaps 
 even in moral temperament reminds us most of 
 Lamartine? She wrote more than one hundred 
 novels inspired by widely divergent themes, which 
 have enchanted, beguiled, and consoled many gen- 
 erations of readers. Is it N quite certain, as is some-
 
 64 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 times said, that they are no longer read in our day? 
 We should not be surprised at finding some weak- 
 parts in a work so vast. But as long as there are 
 men who dream and love, they will still read these 
 books, I was tempted to say poems, wherein are ex- 
 pressed with almost childlike fidelity the dreams, 
 often contradictory, the sentimental aspirations, the 
 intellectual and social restlessness of a restless hu- 
 manity. 
 
 Mise au centre de tout comme un echo sonore. 
 
 (In the center of all like a full sounding echo), 
 the soul of George Sand was the mysterious seven 
 stringed lyre of which she spoke in one of her 
 books and from which only the pupil of Master Al- 
 bertus could draw magnificent harmony. 
 
 "All that is of general interest and all that inter- 
 ests the mind of man," said Sainte-Beuve, "belongs 
 rightfully to literature/' and is not this the very 
 definition or guiding principle of his criticism? The 
 author of Port F\n\al and the Lundis was infinitely 
 curious about all the forms and all the shades of dif- 
 ference within the human soul, and from Pascal to 
 Ninon de Lenclos, including Jomini, he has, you 
 may say, filled up all the space. That passionate 
 and ever alert curiosity for moral realities which 
 makes his work something really unique in all liter- 
 ature, while so many other critics have gone down in 
 indifference and oblivion, is the very quality which 
 gives him his ever living interest. Sainte-Beuve 
 has given us a prodigious gallery of biographical
 
 FRICNCII CIVILISATION 65 
 
 and moral portraits, more numerous, more varied, 
 more searching than those of the collection compos- 
 ing the Parallel Lives. His own individual work 
 was, likewise, to collect "examples of human life 
 minutely dissected,"' and perhaps some day he may 
 be called the French Plutarch. 
 
 Thus, in the most diverse types of literature, the 
 loftiest masterpieces of French literature are pre- 
 cisely those which have appealed by their human 
 qualities to the tender and grateful admiration of 
 their contemporaries and of posterity. Humanity in 
 every meaning of the word is indeed the character- 
 istic of a literature which ten centuries of uninter- 
 rupted productivity have not exhausted. French lit- 
 erature is human because it studies man ; it is human 
 because it incessantly provokes and places in the 
 foreground the most important questions which in- 
 terest man : his happiness, his conduct, his destiny ; 
 and it is human because it is nourished, as it were, 
 "on the milk of human kindness." Homo sum . . . 
 It might be preferable not to recall the verse of 
 Terence so often quoted, which has become com- 
 monplace through constant repetition. But, how 
 are we to avoid it, if it forms, so to speak, the motto 
 of the French writer? 
 
 And there, once more, is the explanation of the 
 most constant characteristics, the most varied quali- 
 ties of our language : clearness, simplicity, and hon- 
 esty. Differing from the Englishman, or the Ger- 
 man or even the Italian who so often write simply to 
 satisfy themselves, to prolong their own inner dream
 
 66 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 of beauty or truth, the Frenchman writes only for 
 others. He believes that he has something to say, 
 something to say to other men. Above all, he must 
 be understood. The effort which is imposed upon 
 every mind wishing to communicate with another 
 mind, the Frenchman takes almost entirely upon 
 himself. He strives to reduce to the minimum the 
 reader's task. Instead of accepting his own thought 
 in its natural unorganized state as it springs from 
 the depths of his conscience, he subjects it to long re- 
 flection and concentration, refining it in such a way 
 as to retain only the most incontestable and most 
 impersonal elements. He eliminates with jealous 
 care all that which, being too particular, too individ- 
 ual, might possibly be too obscure and appear un- 
 intelligible. Instead of clothing this residuum of 
 thought in the first words which come to his mind 
 he presents it to the public only after having delib- 
 erately chosen from all the verbal forms which he 
 has evoked and compared one after the other, not 
 only the elegant, but the shortest, simplest, clearest, 
 the most direct, the most persuasive, the one which 
 will enter directly into the mind of his reader. 
 Boileau boasted of having taught Racine how to 
 write easy verses with infinite care. That art is par 
 excellence the art of the French writer. That per- 
 petual consideration for his public, that scrupulous 
 deference to his reader, that constant need of mak- 
 ing his task easier, that touching desire to teach and 
 not weary, to entertain and not becloud, to moralize 
 but not to cross him, to be a discreet, kindly friend
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 67 
 
 to him, without showing any haughtiness, this sort of 
 spiritual charity widely and generously practiced: 
 all this has created in our language a tradition to 
 which they are but few who are not faithful. It 
 is to this tradition that we owe the wide diffusion of 
 our language as well as of our spirit. Other peo- 
 ples speak less trippingly than formerly of "the un- 
 iversality of the French tongue/' but they continue 
 to see in it — as quite recently the German author 
 of J'accuse — the ideal language of diplomacy and in- 
 ternational relations, and when a few years ago a 
 Russian claimed for the French language the honor 
 of being "the auxiliary language of the European 
 group of the civilised world," was not this equival- 
 ent to recognizing in it the very language of civilised 
 humanity ? 
 
 ,IL 
 
 However fruitful and brilliant a literature may be, 
 it is not the only, nor even the most important, 
 factor in a civilisation ; religion and philosophy are 
 other factors more powerful and more intimate ; 
 and even though the genius of a race expresses itself 
 perhaps less clearly in these more impersonal forms 
 of national activity, it reveals itself nevertheless to 
 the attention of the careful observer. 
 
 To appreciate fully what constitutes the peculiar 
 originality of French philosophy, one has but to 
 think of the philosophy of a neighboring people, only 
 recently, still very arrogant, whose baneful deeds
 
 68 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 we are beginning to suspect. One could not con- 
 ceive of a more striking contrast, and first of all, 
 with respect to the language. Whereas, in Ger- 
 many, the philosophers — with the exception of 
 Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who were brought up 
 on our literature — manufacture a language barbar- 
 ous, pedantic, all abristle with new words and enig- 
 matic expressions, our French philosophers consider 
 it a glory and a duty to speak and write the com- 
 mon language of all, to make their appeal not to 
 scholastic pedants but to the average cultivated man. 
 They are for the most part good, indeed excellent, 
 at tunes, even great writers. If Renouvier and es- 
 pecially Auguste Comte write, let us confess, rather 
 poorly, if Descartes is not the master of the language 
 which we have at times hailed him as being, Male- 
 branche is certainly a very remarkable writer and 
 though we may be unwilling to place among the 
 pure philosophers Voltaire and Rousseau, Lamen- 
 nais, Taine or Renan, can we find in any language a 
 greater writer than Pascal? "Good common sense," 
 said Descartes, — and with these words Le Discours 
 de la Metlwde liegins, "is that one thing in this 
 world which is most evenly distributed." This belief 
 all our philosophers have shared with Descartes. 
 They do not divide the world into two parts : name- 
 ly, philosophers and others — that is, the numberless 
 mob of poor creatures who do not "think." In their 
 opinion, ever}' human being is capable of reflection, 
 of "thought," consequently, of receiving and judg- 
 ing the truth. And it is to the universal judgment
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 69 
 
 of cultivated minds that they submit the results of 
 their speculations upon the ensemble and essence of 
 things. 
 
 Hence, whereas in other countries philosophy re- 
 mains the private domain of certain specialists, 
 even "professionals," with us. although we are 
 not without our pure philosophers, philosophy 
 is more a part of life, and penetrates all the 
 domains of intellectual activity. It penetrates 
 literature. Not a few of our writers, had they so 
 wished, might have been specialists in pure philos- 
 ophy ; there is even one of them, Taine, who was 
 a litterateur and a great writer only in spite of 
 himself. More than one counts among his literary 
 achievements, works of philosophy ; for instance, 
 Renan, Lamennais, Voltaire and Bossuet. From the 
 works of all or nearly all of them, without mention- 
 ing purely philosophical ideas which they have sown 
 therein, we may deduce without being arbitrary a 
 "philosophy," a general view of the universe and of 
 man, of life and of destiny, which is very coherent 
 and at times very explicit. Without any desire cer- 
 tainly to transform Corneille, Racine, or Moliere 
 into profound metaphysicians, we should be wrong 
 to see in these three poets only simple rhymesters 
 and phrase-makers; they have "thought" just as 
 vigorously as many others who "make a trade" of 
 philosophy. Racine's psychology is exactly that 
 which is found in the Pensees of Pascal, just as Cor- 
 neille's psychology resembles in every feature that
 
 70 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 found in Descartes' Traite des Passions. And not 
 only Gassendi but perhaps Spinoza even would re- 
 cognize himself in the words of Moliere. "Man," 
 wrote Spinoza, "is not in nature as a state within 
 a state, but, as a part in a whole." and if Moliere 
 did not say this, did he not at least suggest it ? 
 
 Philosophy with us penetrates science just as 
 deeply. Not only is it a part of the tradition in 
 France, much more than elsewhere, that philosoph- 
 ers by profession must have a thorough and wide 
 training in science, but, besides, our greatest phil- 
 osophers have been more than simple men of sci- 
 ence, they have been great scientists, as for instance, 
 Descartes, Pascal, Auguste Comte, Cournot, Claude 
 Bernard, Henri Poincare. French philosophy and 
 science have both profited equally from this mutual 
 interpenetration. On the one hand, our philosoph- 
 ers instead of building in the clouds, have pre- 
 served, even in metaphysics, the excellent habits of 
 mind which are engendered and maintained by the 
 discipline of science for they have clung to reality, 
 Method and precision were not virtues foreign to 
 them ; when they speculated on nature and on sci- 
 ence, they started from positive concrete notions 
 which they knew by more than mere hearsay. On 
 the other hand, our scientists, on leaving their lab- 
 oratories and mingling with the world of general 
 ideas, learned to think and to judge their science; 
 they were able to give it its proper place in the 
 general scheme of things and of human knowledge;
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 7 1 
 
 they knew its exact bearing, and at the same time 
 they touched its limits. They saw clearly that sci- 
 ence was not all of man, and, that in man even, and 
 outside of man, many realities were beyond its 
 grasp. In short, they firmly repudiated near sci- 
 ence ( scientisme) , that gross doctrine held by half- 
 scientists or half-philosophers which has come to 
 us from Germany and which consists in making 
 positive science the only type of knowledge and the 
 only rule of action. Our philosophers have main- 
 tained the rational cult of science, and this is well ; 
 they have avoided making of it a religion or a 
 superstition, and this is better still. By freeing sci- 
 ence from this servile superstition, they have done 
 the human mind a service, the effects of which we 
 are only beginning to realize. 
 
 The tradition of French philosophy has still an- 
 other characteristic. It loaths rigid abstract sys- 
 tems, "palaces of ideas,'' which enchant under other 
 skies the dialectic imagination. Not, of course, that 
 we are incapable of that. Descartes, that "hero of 
 modern thought,'' as Hegel called him, is as con- 
 structive a genius as Kant ; and Malebranche has no 
 reason to envy Spinoza, nor Auguste Comte, 
 Hegel. Rut in the French systems we find less of 
 the arbitrary and a keener and more constant desire 
 to keep close to reality and to take it as a model ; 
 moreover, the systems of our philosophers are not 
 vast prisons in which they shut themselves up, for- 
 bidding themselves even to leave or look outside. 
 Even though they may not contradict themselves,
 
 72 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 they do sometimes at least try other paths, some- 
 what divergent, they follow points of view, they at- 
 tempt modes of thought of which the general atti- 
 tude of their minds gave no indication. Take Des- 
 cartes, for example, he is considered, and with rea- 
 son, the father of modern rationalism and is be- 
 lieved to have brought about the triumph of a me- 
 chanistic conception of the world which long sur- 
 vived him; and all that is quite true. But 
 there is in Descartes more than one page that has a 
 different ring; and the more recent philosophies of 
 liberty, voluntary effort, intuition which are ordinar- 
 ily traced back, and very justly, to Pascal, may find 
 their origin also in the author of the Discours de la 
 Method e. And the case of Descartes is not the only 
 one in our literature. 
 
 The fact is that most of our philosophers, just as 
 they are unwilling to leave the solid ground of scien- 
 tific observation, are equally unwilling to leave the 
 solid ground of moral reality. Whatever may be 
 their instinctive preference for adventure in meta- 
 physics, they are at times able to restrain it so as 
 to devote themselves to more modest investigation in 
 psychology or moral philosophy. "What is thought 
 on the planet Sirius," as Renan said, though it 
 may not be absolutely indifferent to them, is, how- 
 ever, not their sole preoccupation. It is really in 
 man that they are especially interested and they 
 are attracted above all by human problems. The hu- 
 man soul is for them an enigma more disturbing 
 and useful to solve than all the enigmas of the uni-
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 73 
 
 verse. And to this they always return. Now, by 
 studying unceasingly this shifting and fleeting reality 
 they have formed of truth an idea more flexible, 
 less rigid, in a word, more living, than the idea, the 
 rough outline of which has been formed in other 
 lands by pure logicians. The theories of our philos- 
 ophers remain open for later observation and re- 
 search. They do not presume to enclose the abso- 
 lute therein. They leave to others the task of recti- 
 fying, of completing, of enriching their personal 
 conceptions ; and philosophy thus understood and 
 practiced has something of the free motion and 
 wave-like continuity of life. Since they all have the 
 feeling that the human soul is something of in- 
 finite complexity and variety, the idea would never 
 occur to them to proclaim any one national type 
 of humanity as superior to all others and propose 
 that it be universally admired and obeyed. On the 
 contrary it is the coexistence of multiple forms of 
 mind, each having its inalienable right to existence 
 that they perceive to be the essential condition of all 
 progress. French philosophy has always believed 
 in freedom and never could it be resigned to make 
 an apology of despotism ; that is one of its most 
 constant characteristics ; neither Hobbes nor Hegel 
 was a Frenchman, nor Nietzche. Nothing is more 
 foreign to the whole French spirit than the barbar- 
 ous and immoral conception of the ''superman." To 
 be a man ; to be a man as completely, as deeply, as 
 possible; not to emphasize, not to over-emphasize 
 human nature and, furthermore, not to degrade it;
 
 74 I'RIvNCH CIVIUSATION 
 
 to respect it in one's self and in others ; to accept its 
 limitations, develop its powers and reconcile its con- 
 trasts : such is the ideal which, from all time, French 
 philosophy has made its own and spread through- 
 out the world. Others are more filled with mad 
 pride — ; but is there any other that is more wise 
 and more generous? 
 
 It would be simplifying things too much to define 
 religion as the philosophy of the humble folk. But 
 it is certain that the humble have no other, and made 
 as it is for the humble as well as for the expert, 
 religion translates in a more spontaneous and more 
 complete manner than pure philosophy the aspira- 
 tions of an entire people. This law so strongly es- 
 tablished by Fustel de Coulanges is verified in our 
 own history. Through many vicissitudes Catholic- 
 ism has remained our national religion. And we are 
 forced to believe that between Catholicism and the 
 French genius, there was a sort of "pre-established 
 harmony." because, from the moment when Roman 
 Gaul became entirely Christian, she has shown her- 
 self to be wonderfully faithful to the Church. When 
 the Barbarians who invaded the land, Burgundians 
 or Visigoths, were inclined to Arianism, she was 
 able to escape this heresy. More than that, it is 
 around the Catholic idea that national unity was 
 constituted, so to speak. If Clovis had become an 
 Arian, would he have been so easily accepted as 
 king of France? In any case, by accepting Cathol- 
 icism he indicated that he had a sure premonition of 
 our national destiny ; and after him, Charles Martel
 
 RRENCH CIVILISATION 75 
 
 and Charlemagne would not have succeeded in 
 founding a new dynasty, if they had not been above 
 all the champions of Catholicity. The role of the 
 Church as a civilising and moral influence was no- 
 where more visible or more universally recognized 
 than in France during the Middle Ages; and France 
 during the Middle Ages rendered in her turn such 
 admirable service to Catholicism that she won, we 
 know, the title "Eldest Daughter of the Church," 
 and her kings, that of "most Christian kings." 
 The France of the Crusades, the France of the 
 Gothic cathedrals, the France of St. Louis was for 
 long centuries the great Catholic power. In the Six- 
 teenth Century when a formidable religious revolu- 
 tion was overturning Europe, it was to the tradi- 
 tional interpretation of Christianity that the land of 
 Calvin finally rallied and it is this interpretation that 
 she imposed on the new line of kings. Finally, in 
 our own day when "religions based on authority," 
 are so fiercely attacked, good judges opine that no- 
 where, at least, in the realm of ideas and of the in- 
 ner life, is Catholicism as living and as active as it 
 is among us. It is the France of today which fur- 
 nishes the Church with the greatest number of her 
 missionaries, two-thirds of the total number ; and 
 this simple fact tells more than all abstract consider- 
 ations. 
 
 But France is not the only Catholic nation ; Spain 
 and Italy, for instance, might also claim the title. 
 French Catholicism, however, does not resemble 
 Italian or Spanish Catholicism. It is to be sure the
 
 76 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 same system of dogmas or beliefs, but each great 
 people puts its imprint on them and develops one 
 aspect rather than another, according to the disposi- 
 tions of its particular genius. Spain has been es- 
 pecially attracted by the mystical side of Catholic- 
 ism, the Italians by the artistic and poetic. France 
 sees in religion something else and something more 
 than a beautiful poem which men take for truth 
 {''un beau pocme tenu pour vrai,") as Taine said, 
 or a means of exalting, purifying, rendering sub- 
 lime the individual soul. Not that France fails to 
 recognize the legitimacy of this two-fold point of 
 view, for, she is the land of Pascal and of Chateau- 
 briand. But, in general, she prefers the point of 
 view held by Bossuet, which is nevertheless some- 
 what different. In the eyes of the author of the 
 Variations, Catholicism is above all a social bond 
 {lien social). Not only does it unite men of one 
 generation, one to the other, by regulating their 
 mutual relations, prescribing one and the same ideal, 
 and that unity which comes from one and the same 
 belief, but it also links the present with the past and 
 the future, through dogma of the Communion of 
 Saints ; and thus, this grouping together of the living 
 and the dead which we call our country (patrie) in- 
 stead of being a simple verbal expression becomes 
 the most living of realities. And there is more to 
 be said on this point. Catholicism thus conceived 
 does not allow itself to be shut up within national 
 boundaries ; its dream is the brotherhood of man ; it 
 works for the union of souls through the unification
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 77 
 
 of beliefs ; beyond racial differences, it wishes to 
 build the City of God, which is to bring together all 
 human consciences and of which "Christendom," 
 during the Middle Ages was but a very imperfect 
 model. Even though this conception of Catholicism 
 which has its support in the most authentic ortho- 
 doxy, is not peculiar to the French, it is in France, 
 however, that it met with the greatest favor and 
 that it has been not only adopted but practiced 
 most consistently. The Frenchman is the least in- 
 dividualistic of men, he is a born apostle ; he loves 
 to think in communion with other men, to propagate 
 his ideas, to preach, to convert. Catholicism en- 
 couraged and utilized these deep instincts of the 
 race. A religion the excellency of which did not be- 
 tray itself in the perfecting of social life, would 
 soon be considered in France as a false religion. 
 
 And this is so truly the case, that French irre- 
 ligion, in its struggle against Catholicism, has never 
 developed any other objection nor found any other 
 way to express it. With what did Voltaire and the 
 Encyclopedists reproach the religion of Pascal and 
 Bossuet? With being contrary to human nature, to 
 general civilisation, to the ''progress of enlight- 
 enment," to the very laws of society. They reproach- 
 ed, in so many words, good Christians with being 
 poor citizens. ''How," said Montesquieu, "restrain 
 by law a man who believes that he is certain that the 
 greatest punishment that the courts can inflict upon 
 him will last but for a moment and open for him 
 happiness." Rebellious to all asceticism, not realiz-
 
 78 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 ing that the tendencies of human nature are not all 
 equally good, and that it is good moral and social 
 hygiene to restrain and suppress some of them in 
 order to permit others to develop more freely, poor 
 psychologists and mediocre historians, "our philos- 
 ophers," dodged the evidence: they were unwilling 
 to recognize the innumerable services which Catho- 
 licism had rendered to civilisation in Europe, of 
 which it is one of the essential factors ; they denied 
 its social value and moralizing action. But it is 
 curious to note that it is in the very name of "hu- 
 manity" — a humanity which Catholicism had taught 
 them to love — that they fought against Catholicism ; 
 resembling in this, as La Bruyere might have said, 
 "those sturdy children who have been carefully nur- 
 tured and, then, turning on their nurse, beat her," 
 ("ces enfants drus et forts d'un bon lait qui battent 
 leur nourrice"). 
 
 The truth of history, we know, is quite different 
 and Chateaubriand in his Genie du Chris tianisme 
 had no great difficulty in reestablishing it against 
 the last Encyclopedists. Certainly, Christianity has 
 not transformed or renewed entirely human nature 
 and only too frequently has religion itself served as 
 a pretext for an outburst of passion, in which there 
 was absolutely nothing Christian. But, if we invest- 
 igate carefully in its origin all the progress of a 
 social or moral nature of which we are justly proud, 
 how much of it must we not attribute to Christian 
 influence? If we were able by one stroke of the pen 
 to strike out what Taine called "the contribution of
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 79 
 
 Christianity in our modern society/' we should be 
 dismayed at the sight which the world and history 
 would offer to our gaze: "a den of thieves or a 
 brothel," to quote Taine once more. That is what 
 has almost always been clearly felt in France. "La 
 plus-value humaine," to quote the rather odd but 
 expressive words of Alexandre Dumas his — that is 
 what French Catholicism has always had in view. 
 It is more taken with action than with contempla- 
 tion, and with social action more than with individ- 
 ual perfection ; or rather individual perfection in 
 place of being confined to itself and absorbed in 
 itself, always resolves itself with us into social ac- 
 tion. Subtle theological discussions, minute research 
 in exegesis, over-refinement of complicated devotion 
 are scarcely our specialty. A rugged, good common 
 sense which goes straight to the point, a simple faith 
 not without its shades of difference but without any 
 superfluities, a very keen appreciation of moral real- 
 ities, a great enthusiasm for the apostolate, and a 
 real need of communicating one's belief, and above 
 all, perhaps, a desire for brotherhood and a sort of 
 passion for charity : these it would seem are the 
 principal characteristics of French Catholicism from 
 St. Martin to St. Louis and from Bossuet to La- 
 cordaire. 
 
 And these also are the features which characterize 
 in religious history French holiness. For there is 
 a French holiness, just as there is an Italian and a 
 Spanish holiness. Although the saints belong to 
 the Church Universal, they belong also to their
 
 80 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 country of origin, the peculiar genius and deep 
 thought of which they express in their own manner. 
 Our French saints do not resemble those of other 
 nations ; they have in common, as it were, a family 
 resemblance which is their distinguishing mark. 
 However ardent and pure their inner life may be, it 
 does not turn them away from practical action ; on 
 the contrary it closely unites them in full harmony 
 of soul with that humanity which they love and 
 whose salvation, even temporal, they passionately 
 desire. St. Bernard was, as it were, the representa- 
 tive of the Papacy in his day. St. Louis was the 
 best, most generously active, most just and most 
 scrupulously devoted, and most human of all kings. 
 The more we study the history of Joan of Arc, the 
 more we are impressed by her luminous good sense, 
 by what I should like to call her bold realism. It is 
 by quite different virtues and by other dominant 
 traits that St. Theresa, the great Spanish saint and 
 "the poor man" of Assisi, the great Italian saint 
 appeal to our admiration. We shall not hesitate 
 to give them our admiration, but we shall reserve a 
 large share of it also for him who through his 
 shrewd and firm reasoning, his prodigious activity, 
 his passionate love for the humble, his inexhaustible 
 charity deserves to be greeted as our great French 
 saint — Saint Vincent de Paul.
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 8l 
 
 III. 
 
 The genius of a race is reflected in its religion as 
 well as in its philosophy and literature, but it im- 
 presses itself upon the world and is justified only by 
 the grandeur and continuity of its historical role. 
 Were it not for Marathon and Salamis, Greek civil- 
 isation would not be for us all that it is today and 
 Homer. Aristotle, and the Parthenon would not 
 have in our eyes all their meaning and all their 
 worth. 
 
 Very early and as though she felt called to a high 
 destiny, France became conscious of the fact that 
 she was a moral person, and she strove to realize her 
 national unity. Her first king, Clovis, knew intu- 
 itively what this great country might become over 
 which he was called upon to rule ; he had a very 
 clear conception of its geographical limits, made 
 every effort to control and amalgamate under his 
 authority the different peoples who had successively 
 established themselves there and to defend it against 
 the new invasions; finally, he made Paris his cap- 
 ital. At his death there was a real France. But the 
 France of Clovis was quickly dismembered and it 
 required long centuries and long trials to reestab- 
 lish it. That was particularly the patient and per- 
 sistent task of the third race of our kings. Through 
 many vicissitudes, relying, moreover, on public senti- 
 ment, they were obliged to reconquer France from 
 innumerable petty French kings and powerful 
 neighbors who were always eagerly on the watch
 
 82 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 for our weaknesses and kept their eyes ever fasten- 
 ed on the rich booty which they found on our soil. 
 And the result of their bravery, of their policy and 
 of their perseverance was such that at the end of the 
 Middle Ages, "La douce France"' had become a 
 political reality — the first of the states of Modern 
 Europe whose unity is an accomplished fact. A 
 unity, still imperfect, no doubt, since at the present 
 time, the dream of our ancient Monarchy, is not 
 realized, for we have not yet attained our natural 
 boundaries, although this dream may be realized to- 
 morrow. It is, nevertheless, a unity solid and en- 
 during which may indeed increase but whose found- 
 ations are already firmly laid. 
 
 To establish this unity for such a long time pre- 
 carious and always threatened, many wars were ne- 
 cessary, long and sometimes endless wars. France 
 instinctively, no doubt, since she was the daughter 
 of Gaul, but from necessity, also, has been a great 
 military nation. She has known and practiced all 
 kinds of warfare; wars of defense and wars of 
 conquest, wars for the balance of power, wars of 
 expansion, wars for hegemony and wars of propa- 
 ganda. But it is to be noticed that almost all the 
 wars that France has provoked or sustained were 
 really defensive wars, or if you prefer, wars for 
 national unity. The Italian wars, the constantly re- 
 curring wars against the House of Austria, the ma- 
 jority even of the wars of Louis XIV had no other 
 object in view, for it was a question, first of all, 
 of completing or consolidating our unity, of driving
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 83 
 
 far from our frontiers an enemy too powerful and 
 ambitious, of forestalling his proud plans, and of re- 
 ducing him to inactivity or powerlessness. It is not 
 even certain that preoccupations of this kind were 
 not in the mind of Napoleon and that he always and 
 everywhere allowed himself to be drawn on by the 
 mere spirit of conquest and domination ; in any case, 
 his armies had the conviction, often illusory, that 
 they were righting against the "tyrants'' and strug- 
 gling for the liberty of the world. Moreover, as a 
 matter of fact, was not the result of the revolution- 
 ary and imperial wars the awakening of the various 
 national consciences and the encouragement of their 
 aspirations? And did not Napoleon himself begin 
 the unification of Germany? 
 
 Thus, even when France practiced with some de- 
 gree of intemperance "sacred selfishness," she had 
 difficulty in continuing in that direction. We must 
 insist on that, for it is an essential characteristic of 
 her history. The majority of the wars which she 
 undertook in order to consummate or defend her na- 
 tional unity had at the same time as their object to 
 guarantee and to consolidate the balance of power 
 in Europe. The traditional policy of France has 
 ever been, not to permit any one power to acquire 
 the hegemony of Europe, and thus to bring be- 
 neath its despotic yoke other weaker states, to desire 
 independence for others as she desires it for her- 
 self, to establish between the respective forces and 
 ambitions of the diverse peoples a stable equilibrium, 
 to check them one by the other, to assure to them all
 
 84 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 the free development of their own genius, to oppose 
 any encroachment, any usurpation, and all this not 
 only for love of peace but also for love of justice. 
 This policy was certainly to her advantage but she 
 was not the only one to benefit by it, and, in the 
 main, rare are the victories of France which have 
 not been to some degree victories in the interest of 
 Europe. Let us suppose that Philip Augustus had 
 not been victorious at Bouvines, the future of 
 Europe would have been as profoundly modified as 
 the future of France herself. If Joan of Arc had 
 not been successful in her mission, France would 
 have become English and, once more, the cause of 
 the freedom of Europe would have been singularly 
 compromised. Tf France struggled so much against 
 the House of Spain and the House of Austria, it 
 was no doubt because such a powerful empire con- 
 stituted for her a constant danger ; but, the danger 
 was scarcely less great for the other nations of Eu- 
 rope ; and the treaty of Westphalia, while it con- 
 firmed the victory of -French diplomacy and arms 
 was for nearly two hundred years the safeguard of 
 the rights of European states. France was not sat- 
 isfied with assuring to other peoples the right to ex- 
 istence; with her blood and treasure she helped sev- 
 eral nationalities in their efforts to establish them- 
 selves. The unification of Italy is her work; and 
 even though it may be said that the cession of Savoy 
 and the comte of Nice was liberal pay for our per- 
 sonal sacrifices, what material profit did we gain 
 from our intervention in the American war of Tn-
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 85 
 
 dependence and the war of Greek Independence? 
 Generally very careful to conciliate her national in- 
 terests with the general interests, European or hu- 
 man (this is certainly the ideal of the great French 
 wars), France more than any other nation is capahle 
 of abandoning all self-interest, of consecrating her- 
 self to the interests of others, and as soon as the 
 great ideals of justice and humanity are at stake, 
 no one has ever appealed in vain to her generosity. 
 We should be much mistaken, were we to admit 
 on the assertion of some theorists and certain 
 foreigners that our colonial expeditions are a stain 
 on the usual idealism of our foreign policy. First 
 of all, we forget that the colonial wars are rather 
 far from being wars of mere conquest. Whenever 
 they are not brought about by anxiety for the na- 
 tional security, as, for instance, the wars in Algeria 
 and Tunis, they have been brought about by serious 
 economic and political reasons. A great power, 
 which the distribution of world territory would 
 leave unmoved, and which would refrain from par- 
 ticipating in it, would soon see itself outdistanced by 
 its rivals, and its prestige and material prosperity 
 would promptly decrease ; it would remain station- 
 ary, while others would develop and grow ; it would 
 thereby consent to a shifting of the balance of power 
 of which one day or another it might become the 
 victim. Colonial wars are often wars of national 
 interest. On the other hand, they are not necessar- 
 ily unjust or immoral wars; they become so, only 
 the moment they have as their object the enslave-
 
 86 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 ment of peoples of equal culture. Now, this is not 
 our case. Without having the slightest desire to 
 divide men into inferior and superior races, we may 
 rightly believe that the tribes in the Congo or in 
 Madagascar have remained for the present at least 
 in an inferior stage of civilisation. It would be a 
 strange paradox to give the same weight to their 
 notion of what native land means as to that of the 
 natives of Alsace-Lorraine. Besides, it is not a 
 question of reducing them to slavery, but of taking 
 them under our guardianship, of watching carefully 
 over their real interests, of teaching them the value 
 of a regular social life ; in short, it is a question of 
 raising them little by little to our own plane. We 
 repay them generously in moral and social help for 
 the wealth which we take from their soil. In a 
 word, we civilise them, we make them more human, 
 we attach them gradually to a sort of life which we 
 consider superior ; we do not exploit them. At least, 
 it is always in this manner that we, in France, 
 have understood colonization ; and we feel that this 
 conception is sufficiently altruistic to justify the ex- 
 peditions and wars which we have undertaken to 
 realize it. It is enough for the moment to cast a 
 glance on our work in Algeria, in Tunis and in 
 Morocco, to demonstrate that the reality of the 
 facts, in the matter of colonial activity, corresponds 
 very exactly to that ideal which we have constantlv 
 held. 
 
 France more than any other modern nation, per- 
 haps, has the right to glory in this ideal which con-
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 87 
 
 sists in not separating her canse from that of civil- 
 isation itself; has she not caused it to triumph, by 
 aid of arms, on more than one field of battle? She 
 was not yet France when already on the fields about 
 Chalons she stopped, as did Athens in days of yore 
 at Marathon, the most formidable horde that could 
 have threatened our western civilisation. Had At- 
 tila won, modern Europe would not alone have been 
 submerged and annihilated by the brutally destruc- 
 tive invasion ; but also all the sentiments, traditions 
 and ideas which Greece and Rome had bequeathed 
 us. Two centuries later, Christian civilisation is 
 again in peril through the triumphant invasions of 
 the Saracen and France again on the field of Poit- 
 iers saved the world from the yoke of Islam. And 
 finally, when a few months ago, under the onrush of 
 the new Barbarians, all that forms the adornment, 
 moral refinement and pride of our souls today was 
 threatened with eternal destruction, France once 
 more on the historic plains of the Marne broke the 
 drive of the German hordes and forced them to re- 
 treat. An English writer said eloquently and con- 
 cisely: *'It is the lofty and hard fate of that country 
 to be the guardian nation" — the guardian of this 
 treasure of humanity, of wisdom, and of experience 
 and morality which we call civilisation. 
 
 That is why France, more than any other na- 
 tion, loves to battle for ideas. The Crusades, those 
 heroic deeds of Christian idealism, are not an ex- 
 clusively French work ; but, it was in France that 
 they had their origin ; it was a French monk, it was
 
 88 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 a French Pope who preached the first Crusade; it 
 was a French king who led the last two and they 
 were Frenchmen who participated most generously 
 in them. The Frenchman never fights so well as 
 when he feels that his cause surpasses him and that 
 his material interest is not alone at stake. To be 
 sure, he loves his own country and in order to de- 
 fend his native soil he consents to the heaviest and 
 most bloody sacrifices; but he is happy at the 
 thought that these sacrifices are of profit to others 
 than himself and his countrymen. When these sac- 
 rifices are demanded of him not only for his country 
 but for the triumph of one of those great and gen- 
 erous ideas, humanity, religion, justice, civilisation, 
 liberty, which raise man above himself and merge 
 with his ephemeral self something of the eternal 
 laws, then he offers his life with that sort of mystic 
 ardor which makes him so terrible on the fields of 
 battle. The really French wars, in truth, are more 
 or less Crusades, and this is manifest at the present 
 moment. The Wars of the Revolution were wars 
 of national defense and at the same time wars to 
 spread revolutionary doctrine. The Volunteers of 
 1792 believed with touching sincerity that they 
 were the missionaries of liberty in the world. Did 
 not the Legislative Assembly declare that France 
 "was not undertaking the war for conquest," and 
 later on, after Jemmapes what did the Convention 
 say? "The National Convention declares in the 
 name of the French nation that it will bring aid and 
 brotherhood to all the peoples who wish to recover
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 89 
 
 their liberty." They speak of liberty instead of 
 speaking of the "tomb of Christ" — the spirit, how- 
 ever, has not changed at all. 
 
 There is, therefore, no history less narrowly na- 
 tional than the history of France. That is true even 
 of the history of her internal development. France 
 radiates her influence outside of her boundaries 
 through her spirit and example, even when she ap- 
 pears to be absorbed solely in herself. First among 
 the nations of feudal Europe she conceived the re- 
 gime of a strongly centralized monarchy ; and this 
 regime, no sooner inaugurated among us became im- 
 mediately the ideal model towards which all other 
 great states turned. We in France have never sought 
 to imitate Spain, Russia, or Germany. But during 
 the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, there is 
 not a single German princeling who did not attempt 
 to copy Louis XIV. England, which was to be our 
 inspiration so frequently in later years, fell, as all 
 Europe of that time did, under the influence of the 
 Great King. She forgot, if not her language, at 
 least, her literature, and Corneille and Racine were 
 more admired in London than Shakespeare. When 
 in the next century, we began to break away from a 
 regime the benefits of which we had exhausted, this 
 same regime was still flourishing at Berlin and St. 
 Petersburg: Frederick II and Peter the Great were 
 disciples of Louis XIV. 
 
 In France, we are accustomed to consider the 
 Revolution of 1789 as one of the great events of 
 history, of an importance equal to that of the Re-
 
 90 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 formation. But already, at a very early date that 
 same opinion prevailed in foreign lands and neither 
 Kant nor Burke nor Goethe nor Joseph de Maistre, 
 as we know, were under any illusion as to its signifi- 
 cance. Now, the fact that a revolution purely 
 French, and one which at the beginning had as its 
 sole purpose to remedy the abuses of the old regime 
 and to give a constitution to the country, should 
 have produced this reaction, first of all, in the mind 
 and, later, in the institutions of modern Europe — 
 that is, truly, something unique in the history of the 
 world. Other nations have had revolutions ; such as 
 England, America, and Russia. These revolutions 
 remained national revolutions, thoroughly local, con- 
 sequently ; and their general importance was scarce- 
 ly greater than that of our Fronde. The French 
 Revolution was nothing like this. From the begin- 
 ning, it passed beyond the frontiers of the land of 
 its origin. It was not only the Frenchman of the 
 Eighteenth Century whom it wished to free, it was 
 all mankind ; and it was less than two months after 
 the fall of the Bastille that the Constituant Assembly 
 voted the famous declaration of the Rights of Man 
 and of the Citizen, August 27, 17^9. An historian, 
 Edgar Quinet, would have us see in this manifesto, 
 "the gospel of a new era," and that may be an ex- 
 aggeration ; because, after all, it was useless for the 
 National Assembly to place itself "in the presence 
 and under the auspices of the Supreme Being," for 
 there is nothing less religious than the Declaration 
 and if it is a gospel, it is a purely political gospel.
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 9 1 
 
 On the other hand, however, it cannot be denied that 
 these few pages changed the political and social 
 mentality of Europe, at least, in those countries in 
 Europe into which the French armies penetrated. 
 Nor can it be denied that the Revolution in the 
 course of its development progressed in the manner 
 of a real religion. Absolutist Europe still half 
 feudal, realized clearly the peril with which it was 
 threatened by the French Revolution. And when all 
 Europe rose up against the land of the Declaration 
 of the Rights of Man, it was no doubt because she 
 hoped and expected to share the spoils ; but, it was 
 also principally because she had determined to crush 
 the subversive nation, guilty of having invented and 
 propagated a pernicious and anarchistic doctrine. 
 More even than wars of self-interest the wars of the 
 Revolution were wars of principles and this is what 
 gave them particularly, in so far as they concerned 
 the French, their undeniable grandeur. 
 
 But the French Revolution continued and pro- 
 gressed. Our two Revolutions of 1830 and 184S, 
 also, had an echo throughout Europe and they pro- 
 voked nearly everywhere revolutionary movements 
 and brought about the birth of liberal constitutions. 
 This undoubtedly means that the Declaration of the 
 Rights was not a mere accident in our national his- 
 tory and all nations in order to be free and realize 
 their deepest aspirations were awaiting the word 
 from France which meant freedom for them. Gcsta 
 Dei per Francos! There was a time when we 
 scarcely dared recall these old familiar words which
 
 92 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 sometimes, we must admit, had too easily flattered 
 our pride. Still, we must fully recognize that these 
 words are not absolutely illusory, that France in the 
 history of the world has been the source of great 
 things and that those who think she was created to 
 try on herself the experiments from which the other 
 nations could profit, are perhaps not entirely wrong. 
 The other nations ! Yes, they have envied us, 
 fought us and railed at us, they have not always 
 done us justice; they have not always realized what 
 we had done for them ; but they have never hated 
 us, and more than once they have strongly felt 
 "what France meant to the world." When towards 
 the end of August, 1914, the German army was ad- 
 vancing by forced marches on Paris, when, for an 
 instant, one might have been justified in believing 
 in the success of the Pan-German plan, and in the. 
 dismemberment if not in the total disappearance of 
 France, there was in all countries allied or neutral an 
 outburst of anguish and awful fright. When, as in 
 a flash of lightning, the world saw all the work of 
 French civilization in the past, it realized the salut- 
 ary and unique influence of that civilisation, and it 
 was with a sort of terrible awe that it faced the dis- 
 tant future with the thought that France could give 
 no aid. It seemed that humanity was about to lose 
 that luminous and beneficent genius which for so 
 many centuries had served it as its guide. A volume 
 might be made up from the touching evidences of 
 friendship which our misfortune evoked and which 
 our victory soon changed into a warm outburst of
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 93 
 
 delight. In Spain and in Italy, in Switzerland and 
 in Holland, in England and in Russia, everywhere 
 confident joy and hope revived followed the 
 gloomy anxiety of those tragic days. We may say 
 without boasting: the world, holding its breath, wit- 
 nessed an event which was decisive in the history of 
 the world, for it saw, understood, and realized per- 
 haps, unknown to itself how dear and how neces- 
 sary France was. Just as a friend whose smiling 
 and discreet love appears to us at its value, only 
 when wc are threatened with losing him, so France 
 about to succumb seemed more beautiful and more 
 worthy than ever of the admiration and affection of 
 all. It was a Swiss, Paul Seippel, who wrote at that 
 moment: "We were saying one to the other — if 
 France is crushed this time what is to become of 
 her? What is to be clone with that nation which has 
 ] (laved such a magnificent role in the history of the 
 world and to which we French speaking Swiss owe 
 the best of our thought What place will be left to 
 her on the face of the globe? What role can she 
 still play ? Who in the world will be able to counter- 
 balance her conquerors?" And he might have add- 
 ed : "Who will be from now on our great teacher 
 of humanity?" 
 
 For it is always to this ideal that we must return. 
 when we desire to penetrate into the very heart of 
 French civilisation. Tt is the mark of the originality 
 of France and it is her mission also to see all things 
 under the aspect of humanity — sub specie huinau.it- 
 alis. Hence, also, that power of sympathy which
 
 94 FRENCH CIVILISATION 
 
 flows from her literature, her philosophy, her re- 
 ligion and from her entire history. France has at 
 times carried the love of humanity to a point where 
 it became dangerous to herself and more than once 
 in the course of her existence she has been the vic- 
 tim and dupe of her own humanitarian tendencies. 
 A glorious weakness is that which consists in not 
 knowing hatred, in not distrusting mankind, in for- 
 getting too quickly the hard lessons of experience, 
 obstinate jealousy and unscrupulous ambition. 
 France has never been able to believe that force 
 alone, the force of pride and brute strength, could 
 be the last word in the affairs of this world. She 
 has never admitted that science could have for its 
 ultimate purpose to multiply the means of destruc- 
 tion and oppression, and it was one of her old writ- 
 ers, Rabelais, who pronounced these memorable 
 words: "Science without conscience is the ruin of 
 the soul." She has not been able to conceive that an 
 ethnic group, a particular type of mind, should have 
 the right to suppress others : instead of a rigid and 
 mechanical uniformity of thought and life, the ideal 
 to which she aspires, is that of the free play, 
 spontaneous development, and the living harmony 
 of the varying geniuses of the nations of the world. 
 A world in which flourished the systematic and un- 
 reasoning abuse of brute force, pedantic formalism, 
 bureaucratic haughtiness, fatuous and so-called sci- 
 entific ugliness and a taste for the "Kolossal" would 
 seem to her the most hateful of hells. What others 
 call Kultur she calls by its true name, Barbarism.
 
 FRENCH CIVILISATION 95 
 
 In contrast to this barbarism, the more barbarous be- 
 cause scientific, French civilisation stands out clear- 
 ly, trait for trait, in constant opposition. France 
 means liberty, lovable grace, a sense of proportion, 
 courtesy, discretion, refinement, — France means in- 
 dulgence, pity, charity, — in a word, France means 
 humanity. If she should disappear from among the 
 nations of the world, human life would lose some 
 part of its nobility and beauty.
 
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