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FRANCE 
 HERSELF AGAIN 
 
 BY 
 
 ERNEST DIMNET 
 
 G. p. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 Ube Ikntclfterbocfter press 
 
 1914 
 
Copyright, 1914 
 
 BY 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 Ubc Vtnickerbocfccr prcM, tUw Cork 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This volume has been written in English for the Eng- 
 lish-speaking public, and with constant attention to 
 the English point of view. So many books nowadays 
 consist of articles reprinted under a title destined to 
 give them some sort of unity, that I may be forgiven 
 for pointing out that this is not the case with the 
 present work. ' Whatever its faults may be, it has been 
 conceived as a whole and aims at offering to the reader 
 a body of doctrine which will help him to understand 
 the rapid evolution of France in the past ten years, 
 and to discriminate between what is real progress, and 
 what ought to be regarded as an accidental relapse. 
 This could not be done without an analysis seeking the 
 causes of both the progress and the shortcomings in an 
 historic development of considerable duration. There 
 may be an appearance of austerity in such a method, 
 ^ut it is the only one that is repaid by clear under- 
 standing, and I feel confident that the section of the 
 public for which I have written will not blame me for 
 adopting it. 
 
 As may well be suspected, the greater part of this 
 
 * Four chapters were printed, it is true, in the Nineteenth Century 
 and After, one in the Fortnightly Review, and one in the British Review; 
 but they were intended as part of the volume I was writing. I am 
 glad of this opportunity to thank the London editors who in the past 
 ten years have frequently welcomed my contributions, more particularly 
 my highly valued friend Mr. William Wray Skilbeck. 
 
 iii 
 
iv Preface 
 
 book was written before the war began, and I was 
 uncertain at first whether I ought not to defer its 
 publication till the peace was signed. But I found on 
 reading the proofs that I did not feel incHned to make 
 a single alteration of any importance. In fact, the 
 reader will soon find out for himself that the volume 
 could not have been written without the danger of war 
 which awakened France in 1905, that the possibility 
 of a war is present in every page, and in fact that this 
 possibility and the effects it has had on French public 
 opinion is what gives the book its innermost unity. 
 The last pages, which were written while my ears were 
 still full of the booming of cannon, are not by any 
 means an epilogue, but a conclusion in the truest sense 
 of the word. 
 
 A war regarded philosophically is only important in 
 its beginning and in its end, in the way in which it is 
 accepted by a country and in its consequences. The 
 interval is the noblest repetition — and Heaven knows 
 how we live in spirit with those who day after day pro- 
 long that heroic monotony — but it is only a repetition. 
 One of the questions which this volume attempts to 
 answer, viz.. What are the effects of a revived warlike 
 spirit likely to be on the French nation? has been 
 answered by the facts in the first weeks of the war; but 
 the other great problem. What is the relation between 
 the new France and her Government? or in other 
 terms. Will the leaders of France be as worthy of her 
 after the war as the magnetism of the army has made 
 them during the hostilities? will remain, when the 
 peace is signed, exactly what it is said to be in the third 
 part of this work. It will, no doubt, be nearer a favour- 
 able solution than it was when the Radicals wanted a re- 
 duction of the military service, but it will be what it was. 
 
Preface v 
 
 The present volume therefore is offered to the public 
 as an explanation of the warlike France with which it is 
 in such deep sympathy, but above all as an explanation 
 of modem France as it has been since the beginning of 
 the twentieth century, and as it is likely to appear in 
 the coming decades. I have written it under difficulties, 
 but with the pleasure attending the expression of what 
 patient thought convinces us to be the truth, and with 
 such encouragement from my publishers, especially 
 Mr. Percy Spalding (of London) as I can never forget. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2008 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/franceherselfagaOOdimnrich 
 
CONTENTS 
 PREFACE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 This book written in English from the English point of view, 
 not a collection of reprinted articles artificially put to- 
 gether, but an attempt at a complete analysis of the forces 
 which have made contemporary France what it is — Rela- 
 tion of this analysis to the war of 19 14. . . . iii 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Difficulty but possibility of an ex professo inquiry into the psy- 
 chology of a nation and its historic elements — Main posi- 
 tion: France, since 1905, has become once more a nation 
 and is no longer a ground for experiments. ... I 
 
 PART I. THE DETERIORATION OF FRANCE 
 Section I. Under the Second Empire 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 1. This Deterioration was unexpected ..... 7 
 
 2. Danger of the Personal Ideas of Napoleon the Third . . 9 
 
 3. Even greater Danger arising from the Philosophy and Lit- 
 
 erature of the Second Empire . . . . . .11 
 
 4. Materialism .... .... 14 
 
 5. Indifference to the Moral Consequences of Theories . . 16 
 
 6. Humanitarianism. Victor Hugo. The Revolution of 1848 . 19 
 
 7. Intellectual Hegemony of Germany gladly accepted . . 22 
 
 8. Unwholesomeness of Literature. Cynicism underlying the 
 
 Formula and Spirit of Realism 25 
 
 9. Anti-Christianity. Renan and La Vie de Jesus ... 30 
 
 10. Decadence of Morals ....... 35 
 
 11. End of the Second Empire. Universal Optimism and Delu- 
 
 sions .......... 38 
 
 vii 
 
viii Contents 
 
 PAGl 
 
 12. The Future of France as prophesied by Pr^vost-Paradol as 
 
 early as 1 868 ........ 43 
 
 13. The Denouement: the War of 1870, the Commune, the 
 
 Frankfort Treaty 49 
 
 Section II. Deterioration of France under the 
 Second Republic 
 
 The spirit of disorder no longer embodied in philo- 
 sophies and poems, but represented by the ruling authorities 52 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 1. Relation of this Deterioration to the RepubUcan Institutions. 
 
 Its two periods: 1 876-1 898 and 1 898-1 905 ... 52 
 
 1876-1898 
 
 2. Imperfections and Dangers of the so-called Constitution of 
 
 1875. Hegemony of the Chamber and Effacement of the 
 Government ........ 56 
 
 3. The Chamber an Element of Division, not of Union . . 63 
 
 4. The Revanche given up by the Republican Party . . 69 
 
 5. The Deterioration of France emphasized by her Colonial 
 
 PoHcy 75 
 
 6. Imperfections of the System of AlUances. M. Hanotaux and 
 
 M. Delcass^. . . . . . . , . 78 , 
 
 7. The Deterioration of France exemplified in the Politicians 
 
 of the Third Republic: Great Talents keep away from Poli- 
 tics 83 
 
 8. Anti-Clericalism the only Continuous Policy ... 90 
 
 9. The Public Spirit: Illusions and Vulgarity .... 97 
 
 I 898-1905 
 
 10. Deterioration of France by International Socialism . .105 
 
 11. Dreyfusism: its PoHtical Aspect often neglected yet All- 
 
 important ......... 105 
 
 12. Combism : Socialist Hegemony . . . . . .113 
 
 13. Combism and the Church: Religious Persecution . .118 
 
 14. Combism and Rome: a Short-sighted Policy . . . 122 
 
 15. Combism and the Army . . . .126 
 
 16. Combism and Patriotism: M. Jaur^s and Germany: M. 
 
 Anatole France . . , . . . -133 
 
Contents 
 
 IX 
 
 17. Combism and National Culture: the Levelling Spirit in 
 
 Educational Methods . . . . . . -137 
 
 18. Blindness of Combism. The Possibility of War unsuspected 143 
 
 PART II. THE RETURN OF THE LIGHT 
 Introductory 
 
 The Tangier affair a flash of lightning. Since 1905 
 French ideas in the air and no longer internationalist 
 doctrines . . . . . . . . .151 
 
 Section L Immediate Consequences of the 
 Tangier Incident 
 
 1. Lifting up of the Veil: Consciousness of the Absurdity of 
 
 Internationalism ..... 
 
 2. Awakening of the Instincts of Self -Preservation 
 
 3. Revival of the Military Spirit 
 
 4. The Chamber Dethroned .... 
 
 5. A Craving for Strong Men 
 
 6. Transformation of Newspapers: their Outlook becomes Wider 
 
 and more Practical — Increased interest in Foreign Affairs . 
 
 7. Rapid Diffusion of a New Mentality, the outstanding char- 
 
 acteristics of which will be indicated in Section III, but the 
 origins of which are traced in the following chapters . 
 
 153 
 156 
 159 
 163 
 
 166 
 
 170 
 
 172 
 
 Section II. Intellectual Preparation of the New 
 Spirit by the Experience of the Best 
 
 This is the counterpart of the preparation for the intel- 
 lectual and moral decadence of France traced in Part I to 
 the philosophy and literature of the Second Empire . .174 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 1. Reaction against the Revolution. Influence of Taine. 
 
 Hostility to J. J. Rousseau .... 
 
 2. Reaction against Scientism. Bankruptcy of Science 
 
 3. Reaction against Materialism .... 
 
 4. Reaction against Internationalism 
 
 5. Success of Provincial Literature. Its Import and the Ideas 
 
 underlying it ..... . 
 
 175 
 184 
 186 
 187 
 
 19Q 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGB 
 
 6. Reaction against Socialism, not only from Conservative but 
 from Syndicalist Quarters. Significance of M. G. Sorel's 
 Works ......... 193 
 
 Section III. Evidences of the New Spirit 
 Division A. Instinctive Manifestations of the New Spirit 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 1. A Patriotic Attitude forced even on Internationalists . .201 
 
 2. Substitution of a European for a Party Point of View . . 205 
 
 3. Anachronism of so-called Idealist Manifestations — M. Ana- 
 
 tole France a Living Paradox . . . . .211 
 
 4. Increased Distrust of Parliamentary Action . . .213 
 
 5. Syndicalism reduced to its True Proportions . . -215 
 
 6. A Higher Moral Standard forced on the Public Spirit . .217 
 
 7. The Stage an apparent Anomaly. Explanation of the same . 220 
 
 8. The Rising Generation — its Manly Characteristics . . 244 
 
 9. The Rising Generation — it is not less French than its Pre- 
 
 decessors — Appearances to the contrary explained . . 260 
 
 10. How far the Church is Responsible for the Transformation of 
 
 France — Nature of its Activity — its Influence Analysed . 273 
 
 Division B. More Conscious Manifestations of the 
 New Spirit 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 1. Return of French Literature to its traditional Spirit — Failure 
 
 of the Romanticists — Their ethos contrasted with that of 
 Recent Writers — Taste of the latter for Clarity and Ele- 
 gance — Moral Superiority of Literary Schools averse to 
 Crude Realism ....... 298 
 
 2. The Meaning of M. Bergson's Success: it is rather the Success 
 
 of a Method and a Spirit than that of a Philosophy . .325 
 
 3. Restoration of Classical Studies; its significance . . . 330 
 
 Conclusion of Part II 
 
 The French obviously recovering from dangerous intel- 
 lectual or moral diseases — less individualistic and more 
 attentive to the public welfare — more alive to the interests 
 of their country — no longer afraid of going to war if it is 
 necessary. The question is whether this convalescence 
 will result in complete recovery or in a relapse — nations have 
 moods — the problem mostly, in the present stage of 
 development, a political problem ..... 334 
 
Contents xi 
 
 PART III. THE POLITICAL PROBLEMS AND 
 THE FUTURE 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 1. The Problem of the Two Spirits — viz. the partisan spirit of 
 
 the Radicals, and the patriotism represented by M. Poin- 
 car^ or by men of M. Millerand's type — Apparent fail- 
 ure of the latter — even their success would not mean the 
 end of the confusion — The everlasting danger is the 
 presence of a Chamber which represents its electors but 
 imperfectly and does not represent France at all . -341 
 
 2. Is a Change of Regime probable? — Many believe it with- 
 
 out sufficient grounds, yet certain facts evidently point 
 that way — Universal expectation of and longing for a 
 Rescuer — Its frequent transformation into sympathy 
 with monarchical constitution — Possibility and facility 
 of a coup d'etat, yet improbability of its being accom- 
 plished by either the Duke of Orleans, or Prince Napoleon, 
 or republican leaders — Probability of a modification or 
 even of a complete remodelling of the Constitution . . 348 
 
 3. Inevitability of the Democratic Progress — The modem 
 
 mind almost exclusively interested in the social and 
 moral rise of the democracy — New conditions — Insuffi- 
 ciency of the solution to the problem of classes pro- 
 pounded by Integral Nationalism — Probability of the 
 rise of the lower classes — Its danger, viz, humanitarianism, 
 with the consequent disappearance of patriotism . 365 
 
 4. A Moral Solution to the Political Problem — Enervating 
 
 influence of the idea of universal peace, even of the notion 
 of the instability of political conditions — Superiority of 
 the moral point of view: its frequent indissolubility 
 from political issues — We know nothing of the po- 
 litical problems of the future, but we know that at 
 the present moment humanitarianism is associated with 
 inferior tendencies, whereas patriotism calls forth our 
 best energies — It will be the same in the future when- 
 ever political problems are presented in the concrete to » 
 each individual — Necessity of Christianity in its virile 
 aspects ......... 370 
 
 PART IV. CONCLUSION 
 
 France and the War of 1914 381 
 
 The import of this volume plain: the real weakening of France 
 came less from the disaster of 1870 than from the literary 
 
xii Contents 
 
 success of enervating ideas — Realization of this fact by 
 intellectual leaders like Taine and Renan and their conver- 
 sion to order — This change likely to transform even the 
 masses, but slowly — Influence of the Tangier and Agadir 
 affairs in 1905 and 191 1: awakened patriotism restores 
 clear-sightedness and energy to all classes — The obstacle 
 to this recovery: the moral inferiority of the Radicals who 
 outweigh the influence even of President Poincar6 and 
 stand for pacificism when war is an everyday danger. — 
 This volume written in view of this situation: incerti- 
 tude and anxiety 
 
 Light thrown over the main positions of this book by the war 
 of 19 1 4 — The same week sees the triumph of political cor- 
 ruption in the acquittal of Madame Caillaux, and the 
 triumph of pure patriotism in the response to the mobili- 
 zation order — Noble characteristics of the public spirit 
 — The background of the war wholly intellectual and 
 moral — Patience and discipline of the nation. 
 
 Consequences in the near future: two possibilities considered 
 — ^Whatever the issue of the war may be, absolute neces- 
 sity of a remodelling of the Constitution of 1875 to secure 
 for France governments worthy of her new spirit — Eng- 
 land ought to realize this necessity, and the present vol- 
 ume has been written largely for this purpose. 
 
 Probability of a new era opening for France. 
 
 Index 391 
 
FRANCE HERSELF AGAIN 
 
FRANCE HERSELF AGAIN 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 The object of this book is to investigate the trans- 
 formation of the pubHc spirit which has been visible 
 in France since the beginning of the twentieth century. 
 That there has been such a change it is impossible to 
 deny or doubt, for everybody has felt it or heard of it, 
 and every well-informed person who has a chance 
 eagerly inquires concerning it. 
 
 It is true that there are changes everywhere in 
 Europe, and that disquietude and optimism rapidly 
 succeed each other in almost every nation. Modern 
 peoples are, like modern towns, in a condition of 
 perpetual mutation. Instead of the deep stillness which 
 seemed to hold the cities of old spellbound, there pre- 
 vails an everlasting activity which alarms when it 
 bodes destruction, and excites when it means recon- 
 struction. What a change in the atmosphere of Eng- 
 land since the last decade of the past century, when 
 the author of this book thought he was almost physic- 
 ally conscious of its tranquillity. Germany, which at 
 a distance gives the impression of a huge body full 
 of youthful and wonderfully directed life, is not free 
 from multiform anxieties. The visitor who goes there 
 under the impression that he will meet with nothing 
 
2 Introductory 
 
 except prosperity and the peaceful enjoyment of oppor- 
 tunities is promptly undeceived. Even Italy, optimistic 
 as her temperament makes her, and elated as she has 
 often appeared lately, has to fight against uneasiness 
 of mind as well as against tangible obstacles. 
 
 It is true also that if it is difficult to satisfy oneself 
 about the condition of one little town, nay, one family, 
 the perplexity is infinitely increased when a nation is 
 the object of inquiry. Day after day the observer is 
 placed in the presence of facts which do not tally with 
 his previous inferences, or hears people whose impres- 
 sions are at variance with his own, or unexpectedly sees 
 the whole political outlook wear an appearance which 
 disconcerts his anticipations. Sometimes he feels in- 
 clined to question the possibility of generalizing from 
 his scanty observations about a portion of the globe of 
 which his mental as well as his bodily vision can only 
 embrace a depressingly narrow horizon; and he goes 
 back to the popular notion with which every one of us 
 has started, that where millions are unknown and even 
 invisible, it is useless to speculate as if unity were a fact. 
 
 Yet, in spite of the fragmentary character of past 
 history and of the kaleidoscopic nature of history in the 
 making, experience — even the experience of a private 
 citizen with no means of information besides the news- 
 papers and his own curiosity — teaches us that com- 
 munities have an intellectual and sentimental life Hke 
 individuals, and that the phases of this life can be as- 
 certained. We find in the long run that a collection of 
 clippings from the press enables us to watch new facts 
 and their consequences without much surprise. We 
 gradually become aware that only one individual in a 
 hundred really matters as a subject of observation ; we 
 see that even the masses are in many manners within 
 
Introductory 3 
 
 our grasp; we can tell how quickly — I should say how 
 slowly — literature and philosophy will filter down to 
 them; and we see that several phenomena — war and 
 the fears of war, taxation, the ups and downs in public 
 morals — ^bear immediately upon them; we find that 
 owing to new conditions such as territorial unity, cen- 
 tralization, the diffusion of the press, the diffusion of 
 teaching through the school, and of opinion, thanks to 
 the passage of most citizens through a regiment ; owing 
 also to the wider distribution of riches and the influence 
 of politics over finance — which even the rudest mind 
 can perceive — the political intelligence of what is going 
 on in a country is no longer the privilege of a few edu- 
 cated people, and consequently national reactions are 
 more rapid. All this satisfies us that what is called the 
 life of a nation is not a mere succession of collective 
 moods, but a reciprocal reaction of facts over ideas 
 which proper attention can trace. 
 
 I intend in this volume chiefly to describe the 
 amelioration which the moral and intellectual condi- 
 tions of France have shown with startling rapidity since 
 the Tangier incident in 1905; but, as this improvement 
 cannot be separated from its environment, I shall have 
 to preface this investigation with an account of the 
 previous deterioration of the country ; and as the foreign 
 inquirer seems, very rightly, interested above all in its 
 duration, I shall conclude by pointing out how inti- 
 mately its chances are bound up with some political 
 problems. 
 
 It will appear, on the whole, that after being for 
 years — ^more than fifty years — almost exclusively a 
 groimd for experiments, France wants to be a nation 
 once more. She is like a man whom philosophy or 
 science, mere intellectual pursuits, have absorbed until 
 
4 Introductory 
 
 some great sorrow unexpectedly makes him feel that 
 he has a heart as well as a brain, and has to live as well 
 as think, or think in a way that will fit him for life. 
 We shall see this noble country, distracted and gradu- 
 ally corrupted by false ideals and low morals, suddenly 
 realizing that while she stayed idle at home, wasting 
 the precious hours in mere talk, others were scouring the 
 world and gathering power whereby her independence 
 appeared to be threatened. The subject of this book 
 is entirely human ; it is nothing else than the story of an 
 error and of the awakening from it, with all the aston- 
 ishments, hopes, and imcertainties which generally 
 attend such crises. 
 
PART I 
 THE DETERIORATION OF FRANCE 
 
 SECTION I. — UNDER THE SECOND EMPIRE 
 SECTION II. — UNDER THE THIRD REPUBLIC 
 
SECTION I 
 
 THE DETERIORATION OF FRANCE UNDER THE SECOND 
 
 EMPIRE 
 
 I. It was Unexpected 
 
 Shortly after his accession in 1852, the Emperor 
 Napoleon the Third, addressing an audience at Bor- 
 deaux, uttered these remarkable words: "France is 
 happy, Europe may live in peace." Perhaps no speech 
 could be found in the whole history of France to hold 
 so much quiet pride and consciousness of power. This 
 was no brag. The nephew of Napoleon the First had a 
 right to speak of France as a war or peace maker; the 
 man who, himself a Revolutionist once, had just re- 
 stored order by securing more power than anybody 
 had commanded since Louis XIV, was in a position to 
 appreciate the benefit to Europe of regarding France as 
 something else than a hotbed of dangerous ideas. 
 
 France had only one rival in Europe — that was 
 England. Russia was still a far-away semi-Asiatic 
 country ; Germany did not exist, it was only a word, or 
 at best an idea, and Prussia, exhausted by her military 
 expenses and still ignorant of shipping and industrial- 
 ism, was a byword for poverty; Italy, like Germany, 
 was only a hope; as to Austria, she was old and childish, 
 and beset with so many difficulties that she hardly 
 
 7 
 
8 The Deterioration of France 
 
 counted. So France and England had the whole field 
 to themselves, and as there were no clouds, the new 
 Emperor expressed only an actual fact when he spoke. 
 
 To-day the same sentence would sound like a chau- 
 vinist absurdity. Certainly it still belongs to France 
 as to any other nation to let war loose and set Europe 
 ablaze, but she has lost the privilege of imposing peace 
 at her will. The map and statistics of Europe have 
 changed in the last sixty years; Germany and Italy are 
 no longer abstractions, and Austria must blame herself 
 if she has lost her chances. France is stronger than she 
 herself imagines; her geographical position, her wealth, 
 her revived military spirit, her immense diplomatic 
 possibilities if she would only see them, the power 
 dormant in her Catholicism, the prestige of her civiliza- 
 tion and culture, are unique assets ; but she is only one 
 in the European concert, and she must trust to the 
 future, to the development of the good points in her, 
 and of the weaknesses in her rivals to regain her former 
 position. A great falling off! and one which is made 
 more painful the moment we cease to view the present 
 situation in its historic perspective to advert to the 
 sickening details of everyday politics. 
 
 What has happened? Is it merely that the world 
 has been moving, and that, with the growth of certain 
 great forces such as the attraction of languages and 
 nationalities, France has been left behind without any 
 real fault of her own? Asking the question is answering 
 it. Even people who know history superficially have a 
 feeling more comprehensive than mere data that France 
 has made havoc with her own chances ; and when they 
 are asked more definite questions about the manner 
 in which this self-destruction was brought about, a 
 vague admiration for intellectual daring and a vague 
 
Political Ideas of Napoleon III 9 
 
 dread of its consequences tell them that this country- 
 lost through the unwise love of dangerous ideas. 
 
 2. Political Ideas of Napoleon III 
 
 It is surprising that at least a medallion of Napoleon 
 the Third should not be seen on the pedestal of the 
 numberless statues erected to Cavour in almost every 
 Italian town. Napoleon was quite as devoted to the 
 cause of Italy as the great Piedmontese. He had started 
 life as a carbonaro, and the dream of his ripe years was 
 to see the Italia Una. This kind and good man, who 
 loved his country, and for several years could entertain 
 the delusion that he had brought it to a degree of 
 splendour and prosperity unknown even under his uncle, 
 was the predecessor of the shortest-sighted Republican 
 statesmen in his devotion to ideas and complete dis- 
 regard of their political consequences. It may be to his 
 credit that he gave the world a great example of 
 Idealism, but monarchs are not expected to be Idealists; 
 on the contrary, their subjects look upon them as the 
 representatives of their interests, and pray that they 
 may never lose sight of realities. Napoleon, lost in his 
 vision of a noble nation restored to existence through 
 his efforts, did not see that he was preparing a rival for 
 France if the new nation happened to be more practical 
 than idealistic and grateful. And when, in fact, Italy 
 had become a reality, he was imprudent enough to 
 connect her interests with those of Prussia, and, after 
 helping Italy into the world, he paved the way for the 
 advent of Germany. 
 
 His was a strange reign, all brilliance to the super- 
 ficial observer, full of the seeds of catastrophes in the 
 unseen reality. And it seemed as if Fortune were 
 
lo The Deterioration of France 
 
 labouring to hide the snares under incredible pieces of 
 luck and dazzling appearances. The French armies 
 would leave for the Crimea without knowing where 
 they were to land, without even a map of the shores 
 they were seeking, and on arriving they would discover 
 a beautiful bay which seemed made for their purpose. 
 They started for the struggle against Austria in North- 
 em Italy, a country full of rivers, without bothering 
 about a pontoon- train ; but the mistake was obviated 
 on the spot, and victories succeeded victories without 
 any disappointment. The bravery of officers and men 
 was unequalled, and seemed to do duty for everything 
 else. A hundred thousand men were killed in the 
 Crimean campaign, as many more in the everlasting 
 skirmishes of the Mexican War, but the country hardly 
 minded; it seemed intoxicated with daring and gallan- 
 try, and took sacrifices light-heartedly. It was the 
 same in everything; somewhat gaudy appearances de- 
 ceived in peace as in war. Three years before the 
 catastrophe of 1870, the Exhibition of 1867, the com- 
 mercial and industrial prosperity, the visits of sover- 
 eigns, the gigantic rebuilding of Paris by Haussmann, 
 impressed the country with the semblance of grandeur, 
 while all the time the future was being undermined 
 by the most unscrupulous of men of genius, Bismarck, 
 and the crisis was already within reach. The Emperor 
 saw the danger. The last years of his reign were 
 darkened by the daily growing Prussian cloud, and his 
 fears alone save him from having been a dupe rather 
 than an idealist; but this is a poor set-off against the 
 ruin of one's own country. Napoleon will remain 
 responsible for the great changes after which the 
 European map showed an expanded Italy and Germany 
 and a shrunken France. 
 
spread of Dangerous Notions 1 1 
 
 3. Spread of Dangerous Notions under the Second 
 
 Empire 
 
 Territorial losses and political degradation are as 
 bad for peoples as failure and consequent poverty 
 sometimes are for individuals. All weakening tends to 
 further weakening, and it is unfortunate for a nation 
 to know that its voice has lost influence in the councils 
 where it used to carry great weight. The inclination 
 which defeat leaves behind is towards vain agitation 
 much more than towards revenge. The decadence of 
 nations is seldom accompanied with struggles against 
 conquerors or oppressors, but nearly always with in- 
 ternal dissensions, intrigues, or mere idle philosophizing. 
 So the secondary rank to which the imprudence of 
 Napoleon III, combined with the increasing population 
 of several of her rivals, reduced France, has been, not 
 merely a political falling off. From the ethical point 
 of view, discernible in the history of nations as in that 
 of each of us, this country ran considerable risk of being 
 a loser, even if it had had no other germ of degradation 
 than its diminished power. But other germs did exist 
 which were to develop with terrible rapidity, and which 
 will at present become the chief object of our study. 
 
 It is true that France had not waited till the time of 
 Napoleon III to imbibe those dangerous ideas which 
 poison the life of a community and stay in its veins 
 long after they have ceased to be frequently expressed. 
 The ferment of incredulity which it is not difficult to see 
 in so much of the less-known seventeenth century lit- 
 erature, the theory of indefinite progress of the En- 
 cyclopaedists, the individualism of Rousseau, had been 
 sufficiently active to result in nothing less than the 
 great Revolution. Michelet, Quinet, Comte, Cousin, 
 
12 The Deterioration of France 
 
 and Jouffroy had become famous imder the reign of 
 Louis Philippe. 
 
 It is even true that, excepting the most attentive 
 observers, people must have been inchned to look upon 
 the Second Empire as a more religious period than any 
 since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Had it 
 not been for the Roman complication in the Italian 
 question which unexpectedly placed the Imperial Gov- 
 ernment in the position of an enemy of the Papacy, no 
 regime would have had so many rights to the title of 
 champion of the Church. The Emperor himself was 
 not an ardent Catholic, but the Empress was, and the 
 atmosphere of their Court was incomparably more 
 religious than that of the Court of Louis XVI; the 
 political order was based on belief, and the clergy were 
 so influential that even now anti-clericalism looks to 
 those days much more than even to the Restoration to 
 find instances of exaggerated Church interference; the 
 lycies were more or less overtly given up to unbelievers, 
 but the elementary schools were practically in the 
 hands of the bishops, and official literature was re- 
 spectful of dogma; when the sittings of Parliament 
 became public, it appeared that the immense majority 
 of the members were orthodox and a great many of 
 them earnest Catholics, and when Sainte-Beuve, in his 
 last phase, and the Prince Jerome-Napoleon attacked 
 the Church in the Senate the scandal was enormous. 
 To all intents and purposes the authorities during the 
 Second Empire did not separate either perfect civism 
 or perfect morality from the practice of Catholicism; 
 and anti-religious philosophy, literature, or criticism 
 were discouraged and, so far as possible, prevented. 
 
 It is highly probable, therefore, not only that the 
 Emperor was in no wise responsible for the deeply 
 
Spread of Dangerous Notions 13 
 
 anti-Christian intellectual conditions I shall presently 
 describe, but was even hardly aware of them. He sur- 
 vived the War of 1870 by three years, and from his 
 place of exile at Chislehurst he could follow the ad- 
 mirable work of political regeneration which Thiers and 
 the National Assembly carried on. He saw France 
 diminished through his fault, but he also saw that the 
 coimtry had never seemed more energetic, more sin- 
 cerely religious, more appreciative of the moral element 
 in its own life than it was during those first few and un- 
 fortunately very brief years. No doubt he must have 
 thought that if France had lost something of her terri- 
 tory, her brain and heart were sound, and he must have 
 died hoping that his error would soon be made good 
 owing to the rare mental conditions which his govern- 
 ment had done so much to create. 
 
 Yet it cannot be questioned that the sceptical, 
 pessimistic, nihilistic generations which we shall see 
 leading France from bad to worse during the first 
 thirty-five years of the Republic, the generations which 
 gladly gave up living to dedicate themselves to idle 
 thinking when they were educated, to low quarrelling 
 when they were not, and completely forgot that their 
 country was something else and something better than 
 the place where they talked, strutted, enjoyed them- 
 selves, or intrigued, are the offspring of the Second 
 Empire. The spirit which Bourget in his early years 
 felt in himself and deplored in others, properly analysed 
 and traced to its causes will lead everybody — as it has 
 this writer — back to philosophers, poets, novelists, or 
 dramatists who flourished under Napoleon IH, and to 
 whose noxiousness their successors added but little. 
 The chief characteristics of this spirit will be pointed 
 out in the following chapters. 
 
14 The Deterioration of France 
 
 4. Materialism 
 
 The theory of materialism, which, even to-day, in 
 spite of the success of Bergson, is all the philosophy 
 of so many semi-educated people, from the village 
 schoolmaster to the coimtry doctor, belongs essentially 
 to the Second Empire. It was taught in its crudity at 
 the Paris Medical School, while men of the distinction 
 of Littre and Taine gave it the coherence, elegance, 
 and even austerity of a philosophical doctrine. It was 
 a blending of Spinoza's and Haeckel's monistic me- 
 chanism with the sensationalism of Condillac (rather 
 than of John Stuart Mill), and Darwin's discovery 
 acted as a confirmatur. 
 
 Its success, with the help of some scandal, was almost 
 immediate and very rapid. Taine taught this doctrine 
 with remarkable power because the effort of his whole 
 life had been centred upon it, and he defended it with 
 fascinating eloquence' because the imconvincing and 
 possibly hypocritical spiritualism of Cousin roused his 
 irony and indignation. It promptly became the back- 
 ground of the thought — if not of the teaching — of 
 many young professors in the lyceeSy and it was very 
 fortunate when a dash of Kantian moralism gave it the 
 appearance of a faith. Littre and Taine were men 
 whom even their most indignant opponents could only 
 respect — the first saints latques canonized by a few 
 thoughtful disciples ; but a system, the legitimate trans- 
 lation of which is, in popular language, "There is neither 
 soul, nor free will, nor God, the world is nothing else 
 than matter and motion," is not conducive to sanctity. 
 
 It resulted in the Stoic pessimism of Taine himself or 
 Guyau wherever there was elevation enough to make 
 
 »Vide Les Philosophes frangais. 
 
Materialism 15 
 
 stoicism the alternative for epicurism; but even the 
 refinement of Renan did not save him from a few utter- 
 ances which to-day are regarded as vulgarity with the 
 thinnest literary halo; and among people who were 
 neither poor enough nor clean enough to escape from 
 the lowering logicalness of such premises, the conse- 
 quences were deplorable. In an admirable book which 
 I shall have an occasion to quote more fully, La France 
 Nouvelle, published in 1868, Prevost-Paradol said that 
 the last barrier between France and practical, and no 
 longer speculative, materialism was honour, and it was 
 easy to infer from his tone that he regarded it as a poor 
 defence against strong if inferior suggestions. 
 
 Naturalism was the literary offspring of Taine*s 
 philosophy. He had said himself that in a chain of 
 innumerable causes and effects there were some links 
 which, properly chosen, studied, and described, were so 
 representative as to enable us to dispense with con- 
 sideration of the rest, and this method became almost 
 immediately that of the Goncourt brothers and of 
 Zola, whose note-books are strikingly similar to those of 
 Taine. He had also said that analysis of passionate 
 conditions in man was sure to reveal the gorilla hidden 
 under superficial appearances, and in his Opinions de 
 M. Thomas Graindorge the idea had been plentifully but 
 decently illustrated. Under coarser pens the descrip- 
 tion of modern life soon became a record of turpitude 
 and ferocity. 
 
 Taine was not a saint; he was only a noble nature 
 with a devotion to work amounting to heroism, and, 
 although his erudition, coupled with his logic, some- 
 times resembles genius, he is not always intelligent. 
 He never seemed to dislike Naturalism as a literary 
 theory. His essay on Dickens, along with a himdred 
 
i6 The Deterioration of France 
 
 others, shows it somewhat ludicrously. It is ridiculous 
 to see this wizened old savant taking up the cudgels 
 against the English novelist for a kind of love which, 
 whatever it may be, is confessedly not legitimate love, 
 and for brutality of descriptions. The severe expe- 
 riences of 1870 and 1 87 1 were necessary to bring Taine 
 to the correction of some of his ideas, and when he was 
 preparing the two volumes on Intelligence he was as 
 remote as possible from letting mere contingencies 
 enter into his consideration. His philosophy was made 
 more outspoken and fearless by another trait v^hich 
 belongs to his contemporaries as well as to himself: 
 the serene indifference to the moral consequences of 
 theories. 
 
 5. Indifference to the Moral Consequences of Theories 
 
 Taine once expressed in very clear terms his attitude 
 as a thinker: 
 
 I have two selves [he said], one who eats, drinks, goes 
 about his business, does his best not to be harmful, and tries 
 to be useful. This one I leave at my threshold when I come 
 home. Whether or not, he has opinions, a moral life, a hat 
 and gloves like those of the public, belongs to the public. 
 My other self, the one whom I let philosophize, knows 
 nothing of the public. He has no idea that practical effects 
 can be deduced from the truth. . . . 
 
 "Aren't you a married man?" Reid will ask him. — 
 *'Not at all. You mean the other man, the one I left 
 outside the door.*' — "Aren't you afraid of making 
 Revolutionists of the French?" Royer-Collard asks in 
 his turn. — "What do I care? Are there any people 
 called French?" 
 
Indifference to Moral Results 17 
 
 This means that a man who wants to get at the truth 
 must think of nothing but the truth, and is sure to be 
 hindered in his search if he lets any contingency inter- 
 fere with the absolute. Taine was so sure of the unim- 
 peachableness of his position that when in 1889, twenty 
 years after the war which had changed his outlook in so 
 many points, Bourget pubHshed Le Disciple, he was 
 deeply perturbed. Bourget sets forth in his novel the 
 moral responsibility of the writer, and Taine, seeing the 
 immense success of the book, inferred that the views 
 of the rising generation were at complete variance with 
 his own, and that he had had his day. He resigned him- 
 self to what he thought was inevitable, but his funda- 
 mental belief was not shaken, and he went on with his 
 work in patient perseverance without once asking 
 himself, as Emily Bronte did about such a creation as 
 Heathcliff, whether the philosopher, who is in duty 
 bound to seek the truth without any foreign considera- 
 tions, has the right to submit to an unprepared crowd 
 all that he looks upon as the truth. 
 
 Renan's attitude was somewhat different, but it 
 resulted in the same effects. Taine said everything 
 out of sincerity, and the habit gave his expression an 
 austerity which is more impressive than winsome. 
 Renan was a metaphysician. The discovery of the 
 truth did not appear to him as something moral, some- 
 thing on which other men have a claim. It was the 
 fortunate encounter of the intelligence with light in the 
 eternal fields. Like most men converted from Christ- 
 ianity by what the apologetics of those days called, in 
 a dangerous formula, divergences between the Bible 
 and Science, Renan had been very much impressed 
 by the extension which his scientific data gave to the 
 life of the world. The earth had not received its first 
 
i8 The Deterioration of France 
 
 inhabitant some six or seven thousand years before our 
 times, and its duration was not to be limited by cal- 
 culations made from prophecies in Revelations. Pop- 
 ular belief in the milieus in which Renan had grown up 
 would have it that as soon as the Gospel had been 
 announced in every country, the end would come. The 
 reigns of a dozen popes at most separated us from the 
 Day of Doom. When this catastrophe should come, 
 neither the thoughts of men, nor the map of the world 
 would be very different from what they were at present ; 
 it was absurd to imagine a vast philosophical or es- 
 pecially theological development within such a short 
 period. 
 
 Against this idea, archaeology and philology placed 
 another more in harmony with the infinity of space 
 revealed by astronomy. Man was lost in the infinity of 
 space, but he was lost also in the boundlessness of time. 
 The world was not recent, it was amazingly old: man 
 had not been on earth for a few but for countless 
 millenniums; his career was not to be cut short in six 
 or seven generations — ^it was to go on until the sun 
 cooled or the atmosphere became deadly. Many times 
 before the end should come would the face of the earth be 
 modified, empires rise and fall, nations be exterminated, 
 civilizations and languages be replaced. What, then, 
 was the use of bringing immaterial details into the 
 consideration of the infinite? What was patriotism, 
 the instinct of one short hour in the life of the globe, to 
 the soaring of the mind after the eternal? Only rude 
 intellects could be satisfied with crawling along the sur- 
 face of this poor planet; as to Renan, he repeated that 
 nothing mattered but what appeared important as 
 seen from Sirius. 
 
 It was inevitable that the lofty philosophy of such 
 
Humanitarianism 19 
 
 notions should appear distinguished to numberless 
 minds unequal to their perfect comprehension, and no 
 less inevitable that their popular translation should be : 
 if God and free will are empty words, patriotism is even 
 more empty. 
 
 6. Humanitarianism 
 
 What Taine and Renan saw through the cold light 
 of philosophy, others of a more poetic bent had seen 
 before them in the glow of sentiment. The humanitar- 
 ian propagandism of Lamennais, Lamartine, Hugo, 
 Michelet and Quinet, and George Sand, which the 
 author of VAvenir de la Science and the author of 
 U Intelligence no doubt despised as mawkish literature, 
 was only a reading of history which the least effort 
 would transpose into metaphysics. 
 
 It seems strange at first sight that the Romanticists, 
 who had all of them begun life as Catholics and Royal- 
 ists, should have become Democrats and Humanita- 
 rians. And it is strange also that the transformation 
 should have been brought about by a patriotic feeling; 
 yet so it was. The Restoration had been welcomed 
 enthusiastically by Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Lamen- 
 nais, and Hugo because it was full of promises; but 
 when the promises were seen to remain promises, and 
 when the reigns of Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis 
 Philippe succeeded one another, without bringing any- 
 thing more than peace — several times bought at the 
 cost of national dignity — the great memories of the 
 First Empire and the Revolutionary Wars appeared in 
 glory, while the kings descended from the high throne 
 which imagination and the doctrine of Divine Right had 
 erected for them. Meanwhile Socialism fotmd ex- 
 
20 The Deterioration of France 
 
 ponents of intellectual power and moral dignity never 
 equalled since, and the notion of the people, the poor 
 blinded giant whom both his misery and his virtues 
 made sacred, became as popular as he had been in 
 Revolutionary days. Michelet was his historian, Hugo 
 his bard, and Lamennais became more and more his 
 prophet, while the brilliant Lamartine managed to be 
 his orator and statesman. 
 
 For years this love of the humble and ignorant 
 was coloured with the atmosphere of the Gospel. 
 Jesus was the Friend of all the suffering, and references 
 to His words were frequent in poem and address. It 
 was, according to the spirit of Christianity as well as 
 to that of the Revolution, that as all men were brothers, 
 all nations should be regarded as sisters. There ought 
 to be no fratricidal contests between them, no jealousy 
 about worldly possessions. One day certainly would 
 come when, through the agency of the first among them 
 that had proclaimed the Rights of Man and universal 
 Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, they would be tmited 
 in perfect goodwill and oneness of object. 
 
 The Revolution of 1848 was the triumph of this 
 Christian Humanitarianism. It seemed as if Socialism 
 had only to begin rebuilding. The clergy were all 
 Democrats and Republicans; everywhere the trees of 
 liberty, the emblem of the new order, were planted by 
 the parish priests outside their churches, and Louis 
 Blanc preached through numberless interpreters in 
 practically every pulpit. This great dream of liberty 
 allied to the Gospel had only the duration of a dream. 
 A terrified bourgeois reaction soon set in; Louis Bona- 
 parte was its agent, and, as he was openly the champion 
 of the Church, the clergy followed him. In less than 
 three years, the Socialists and Humanitarians found 
 
Humanitarianism 21 
 
 themselves deserted and alone, often exiled from France, 
 and the alliance between them and the Church was at 
 an end. Lamennais had only to go on vaticinating as he 
 had done for years; but Michelet, who had loved the 
 simple religion of the mediaeval man, turned against it, 
 and devoted the rest of his Hfe to praise of the Revolu- 
 tion and worship of Nature; while Victor Hugo gave 
 vent in Dieu, le Pape, VAne, la Fin de Satan to the 
 turgid anti-clericalism which made him appear and be 
 named the Pope of Democracy. So, through no posi- 
 tive fault of its own, Humanitarianism lost its Christian 
 appearance and one great element of order and whole- 
 someness. 
 
 There remained another: its undoubted patriotism. 
 Michelet and Hugo were convinced to the last, as 
 Joseph de Maistre had been before them, though for 
 different reasons, that France had a providential mis- 
 sion which she alone could fulfil in the world. But such 
 an idea can only be popular so long as appearances 
 support it. Let any disaster belie it, and the notion 
 which in poets can survive and even acquire a new 
 strength will strike the humble in their broken spirit 
 as a ridiculous farce. This is what happened in France. 
 When, in 1870, power and eclat seemed to pass over to 
 Germany, the bright vision of France as an apostle of 
 liberty to the world, and of Paris as the Jerusalem of the 
 Revolution, vanished. The Democrats found them- 
 selves mostly anti-Christians and Internationalists, 
 and of the creed of Humanitarianism only vague 
 formulae subsisted, upon which unscrupulous politicians 
 shamelessly lived until the advent of Syndicalism. The 
 fraternity of peoples is synonymous with horror of war, 
 and in times when the ideal is feeble and material crav- 
 ings are strong, horror of war and death can easily 
 
22 The Deterioration of France 
 
 become the cowardice which, dressed up by its superior 
 representatives into some sort of philosophy, is pre- 
 cisely what the Syndicalist Georges Sorel calls the 
 "philosophy of the belly.** Humanitarianism was, of 
 course, far from this under the Second Empire; but it 
 only waited for occasions to be transformed from a 
 dream into the unmanly timorousness which we shall 
 have to point out as a character of the Third Republic. 
 
 7. Intellecttml Hegemony of Germany 
 
 A long time before Germany actually existed on the 
 map as an empire, she existed as a civilization, and for 
 that civilization nobody had more respect than the 
 enlightened French under the Second Empire. Half a 
 century earlier Madame de Stael had initiated, with her 
 book De VAllemagne, not only a great literary move- 
 ment, but an affectionate feeling which had constantly 
 taken strength as it went. Germany was seen in a 
 poetic light as the home of legend, of song, and of 
 serene wisdom. Prussia, of course, was military, but, 
 since Frederic the Great, it was regarded as a warrior 
 in the service of philosophy, and, being a secondary 
 power, one which played no part in congresses, it 
 frightened nobody. So the notion of its guns and press- 
 gangs and everlasting drilling did not interfere with the 
 idea one formed of Germany as an ancient and peaceful 
 land with something maternal in its name. Michelet, 
 who hated England because of her treatment of Na- 
 poleon, thought and spoke fondly of Germany on every 
 occasion; Quinet, who, however, protested as early as 
 1852 against what he called Teutomania, was a dis- 
 ciple of Herder, and mirrored the German point of 
 view in many passages of his books; Taine and Renan 
 
Hegemony of Germany 23 
 
 were disciples of Hegel, and the latter owed all his 
 Biblical foundation to the Tubingen School; a great 
 many Protestants, French, and Swiss, studied in Ger- 
 many; and Strasbourg, with its Faculty of Theology 
 and its celebrated Revue, was a sort of neutral spot 
 where German thought was dressed in the French 
 language. 
 
 So Germany caused no alarm as a neighbour, and 
 was an object of great reverence as the country in the 
 whole world where ideas reigned the most exclusively, 
 and where philosophy and criticism enjoyed the great- 
 est liberty. The idea of dangers arising from too much 
 freedom of speculation did not occur to anybody. 
 Germany, with her thousands of thinkers, produced 
 patriots; she did not produce one Revolutionist. The 
 intellectual light she radiated could not but combine 
 in a most happy manner with the passion for Hberty 
 inborn in the French. 
 
 It seems almost incredible nowadays that this partial- 
 ity for Germany was shared by many people with whom 
 mere scientific considerations counted little. French 
 society, the brilliant "world" of i860, doted on the 
 German and especially the Prussian aristocracy. The 
 latter were constant visitors to Paris and Biarritz, while 
 the French year after year met them at Baden; the 
 Regent of Prussia, who was to become the first German 
 Emperor, was welcomed at Compiegne as a Wagner 
 hero, and no diplomat was more popular than Bismarck 
 at a time when diplomats were universal favourites. 
 Prussian politics were not watched, as no foreign 
 politics were the object of much attention in those days, 
 and sympathy with the diplomats did not go beyond 
 admiration for their manners and their linguistic abili- 
 ties; but everybody wished Prussia well, hoped she 
 
24 The Deterioration of France 
 
 would supplant Austria in the German confederacy, 
 felt as the Emperor that the very irregularity of her 
 geographical outlines was a pity, and probably was in- 
 clined, with M. de Persigny, to advise the Prussian 
 statesmen to keep their army in constant readiness. 
 About, who, however, was a wide-awake person, printed 
 in i860 that he longed to see a Germany of thirty-two 
 million people near our eastern frontier, and nobody 
 thought him foolish. 
 
 Meanwhile Bismarck was playing his game with an 
 intelligence which would be frightening if the lack of 
 intelligence of most of his dupes were not ridiculous, 
 the unity of the German lands was prepared by mil- 
 itary agreements between the German sovereigns, the 
 Prussian army was in as good a condition as any 
 Persigny might desire, and the war which was to 
 push France out of the first rank was only a question 
 of opportunity. 
 
 When the war did come, when that same Prussia 
 which had been supposed to be the representative of 
 warlike elegance and of metaphysical genius suddenly 
 appeared to its bewildered admirers as the incarnation 
 of brute force, the most extraordinary delusion of which 
 a nation ever was the victim was dispelled, no doubt, 
 but something remained: the frightened attraction 
 which makes Lady Anne become Gloucester's wife in 
 Richard III. The nervous attention to German 
 methods, the long imitation of them years after 
 1870, the abdication of some well-known profes- 
 sors at the Sorbonne to the ideas and even the 
 hobbies of German scholars, above all, the haunting 
 terror of another war as unexpected as the first, were 
 all bequests of a state of mind created under the Second 
 Empire. 
 
Unwholesomeness of Literature 25 
 
 8. Unwholesomeness of Literature 
 
 Literature is the vehicle of philosophy. The intel- 
 lectual tendencies we have noticed so far show a grow- 
 ing attention to ideas in themselves and a growing 
 contempt for their moral consequences, the considera- 
 tion of which is looked upon as a prejudice. We shall 
 now see the same indifference to the ethical point of 
 view in the literature of the Second Empire. None 
 could be further away from the really national and 
 essentially patriotic expression which literature appears 
 fundamentally to be. Writers of poetry or fiction are 
 inclined to be cold and rigid; their attitude towards 
 beauty is very much the same as that of Taine towards 
 truth; there is no charity, no brotherly feeling in it. 
 The anxiety to elevate one's contemporaries, so visible 
 in the great classics of all countries, is absent here. So 
 long as the craving of the artist for perfect expression 
 is satisfied, he is content. 
 
 The Parnassian school, when Sainte-Beuve founded 
 it without thinking of giving it a name, was a reaction 
 against the Romanticist bombast. The young poet 
 wanted to be simple, intimate, and penetrating, while 
 the others aimed at continuous sublimity — that was 
 all. His successors were very different. Philosophy 
 had taken a step when they began to write. The 
 optimistic hope of better things which both the exalta- 
 tion and the melancholy of the Romanticists revealed 
 had made way for the utter darkness of Evolution. 
 Science, which promised all sorts of wonderful im- 
 provements here below, could not conceal that it had 
 no promise whatever for the life to come ; in fact, there 
 was no life to come, and the wisest course was to sub- 
 mit to the prospect. So Leconte de Lisle and his 
 
26 The Deterioration of France 
 
 numerous imitators were pessimistic and often un- 
 utterably sad. What was their sole comfort, the one 
 solace of their sunless lives? The pleasure they took 
 in beautiful forms: at first the chiselled finish of the 
 Pohomes Barbares, and gradually the marble-like 
 achievements of De Heredia in Les Trophies. There 
 were no dreams, no songs, no happiness of any kind 
 there, but every word in these frigid performances was 
 final. Such a poetry can never be popular, and the 
 Parnassians were not. While the world around them 
 was prosperous, pleasure-loving, and careless, they 
 were gloomy and supercilious; the consequence was 
 that the Second Empire, though it saw the birth of a 
 great deal of verse, knew no poetry ; it was left to itself, 
 and the only literature it enjoyed was fiction or dramas 
 made to suit its tastes. 
 
 The formula Fart pour Varty which the Goncourt 
 brothers made popular, was an appropriate expression 
 for the attitude of the Parnassians as well as for their 
 own ; but it connoted something which the Parnassians 
 had not felt in the same degree as themselves, viz., the 
 sympathy with, and imitation of the ways, speech, and 
 manners of, the painters and sculptors. They had 
 been, like Theophile Gautier, pupils of painters, and 
 they had more reasons than many of their copyists to 
 retain something of their early environment. The idea 
 of the literary man in the two classical ages had had 
 nothing whatever in common with that of the superior 
 artisans who were gradually to be called artists. They 
 never mingled, never courted one another's approval, 
 and did not suspect that a day would come when their 
 ideals, critical principles, and often their technical cant 
 might become the same. Diderot was probably the 
 first literary man whom circumstances as well as in- 
 
Unwholesomeness of Literature 27 
 
 clination brought into frequent contact with painters, 
 and he bears the mark of his intercourse with them. 
 But he seems to have been alone of his kind at the 
 time. Writers were still, or aimed at being, men of 
 the world with social experience and knowledge, whose 
 only distinction was to use a pen more skilfully than 
 mere society people. 
 
 Between such men and the set in which Gautier and 
 the Goncourts played off their familiarity with the 
 world of artists there was a gulf. Devotion to art meant 
 in i860 something esoteric and difficult, a divine elec- 
 tion which gave the happy possessors of the gift a right 
 not only to speak and judge but to live differently from 
 the uninteresting crowd of Philistines outside. The 
 evils of such a conception were numerous and various. 
 It falsified the language of literature by substituting 
 for it another which in nine cases out of ten applies to 
 style or thought only superficially. It created the 
 fallacy that the possession of a slang indicates a keen 
 instinct or definite ideas. It exaggerated the confidence 
 of artists and technicians, and while it unfortunately 
 intimidated a few outsiders, it no less unfortunately 
 planted in many others a desire to look like those 
 brilliant Bohemians. A great deal of the insincerity 
 nowadays rampant among literary or would-be literary 
 people owes its origin to childish ambitions bom in those 
 days. And this was a lesser evil ; the superstition of the 
 superiority of art — that is to say, the superiority of 
 Doing or Appearing over Being — enticed countless 
 people who might have been useful citizens away from 
 the peaceful tenor of their careers and made mere 
 pretenders of them. 
 
 Pretence and imitation are the faults of the few 
 people who are born with ambitions but with insufficient 
 
28 The Deterioration of France 
 
 gifts, and one may imagine that they did not spread to 
 the mass of the pubhc. It may be so, and it may also be 
 that pretence and insincerity are more contagious than 
 one is apt to suppose. But the chief characteristic of 
 the literature of the Second Empire was one which did 
 not appeal to the few but to the many, and in a subtle 
 unavowed manner which is the most effective of all. 
 What is, in fact, the essence of that great literary 
 doctrine, Realism, which the talent of Flaubert, forced 
 upon all the writers of his day? It has been defined in 
 numberless formulae, some of which have been made 
 to look as distinguished as the noblest definitions of 
 Idealism. But, in fact, it is a strong resolve on the 
 part of the artist to treat as an artistic matter all that is 
 part of man and life. People often quote that charming 
 and to-day quaint definition of a romance by some 
 Goethean heroine: "A book with characters one would 
 be glad to resemble." It was at the bottom of most 
 literary conceptions, but the idea was suddenly re- 
 versed. A writer could not set about describing all, 
 without an impulse to dwell on what had been so far 
 concealed, so that realistic novels were from the first — 
 from the appearance of Madame Bovary — the descrip- 
 tion of sentiments and actions which, so far, had been 
 the very opposite of such as moved to imitation. 
 
 The effects of this kind of literature are best under- 
 stood to-day, less on account of historical investiga- 
 tions into them than from a comparison with the moral 
 atmosphere produced at the present day by a totally 
 different style. I shall, in the course of this book, have 
 to mention a return of some young writers to the high 
 plane of psychology worthy of the name, the descrip- 
 tion of noble soul struggles. We feel, on opening these 
 books, that underlying the narrative is a conception 
 
Unwholesomeness of Literature 29 
 
 of life which compels us at once to take sides with the 
 good against the evil. The very rhythm of the sen- 
 tences informs us that easy-going indulgence is not in 
 keeping with the mood we are expected to enter, and 
 our pleasure is constantly mixed with something more 
 austere than pleasure, and yet persuasive. 
 
 Exactly the reverse must have been the impression 
 produced on the first readers of Flaubert and the 
 Goncourts : realism places you on a low plane. Nobody 
 is expected to be especially attentive to his manners in 
 an inferior society, and when the realistic novel does 
 not introduce us to undesirable company, it at least 
 makes us familiar with that part of ourselves of which 
 we are the least proud. If we take pleasure in it, this 
 pleasure will be a sort of confession, the admission that 
 whatever may be the weaknesses or uglinesses of our 
 nature, we think them quite as capable of being made 
 interesting as our nobler sides. With a Flaubert the 
 idea, of course, can be entirely artistic and consequently 
 defensible; but how many readers have enough of the 
 artist in them to counterbalance a despicable sort of 
 indulgence? Certain it is at any rate that what the 
 Second Empire called its sincerity prepared, if it did 
 not give rise at once to, the cynicism of the Third 
 Republic, and that kind of sincerity was begotten of 
 the outspoken realistic novel. 
 
 On the whole, the indifference to moral consequences 
 of the philosophers, the heartlessness of the Parnassians, 
 the contempt for the poor inartistic man familiar to the 
 school of the Goncourts, and the indifference to the 
 matter of art of the Realists, were the same feeling in 
 various guises; they all showed a serene certainty that 
 the intelligence of man can take its pleasure in itself 
 irrespective of any effects upon life. Such resolute 
 
30 The Deterioration of France 
 
 intellectualism means a narrowing of the human out- 
 look, though it may appear to be highly philosophical, 
 and it also means the acceptation of a restricted in- 
 fluence. It is not surprising, therefore, that while the 
 French as individuals sacrificed the will to the intellect 
 and activity to contemplation, France as a nation was 
 preparing her own decadence and the rise of her 
 enemies. 
 
 9. Anti-Christianity 
 
 The literary and philosophical tendencies which I 
 have just reviewed went far to create a contempt for 
 humble, workaday activity, and an exaggerated esteem 
 for life in an ivory tower, as the phrase used to go, but 
 they were negative rather than positively scandalous, 
 and often made their way unsuspected. Meanwhile, 
 the orderly appearance of affairs, remained the same; 
 the Government supported religion and morals in all 
 their manifestations, Catholicism was practically a 
 State doctrine, and public education — excepting in the 
 lycSeSy where the spirit invariably killed the letter — was 
 based upon it. 
 
 It was the doom of the Second Empire that its 
 appearances constantly belied its realities. While the 
 Emperor showed evident reverence for CathoHcism, 
 and the Empress — a Spaniard by birth — was an ardent 
 believer, while the Senate and Chamber and all the 
 public bodies consisted largely of practising Catholics, 
 while the religious processions in Paris and in all the 
 chief towns were solemn functions attended by the 
 army and at which most officials were anxious to be 
 seen, Christianity had terrible enemies whose every 
 effort was directed against it. 
 
Anti-Christianity 31 
 
 The present Radicals, who are generally the sons 
 of the Free Thinkers of those days, will have it that the 
 fight with Catholicism ought to be called anti-clerical- 
 ism and not anti-Christianity. If the bishops, they say, 
 had not been as influential in civic affairs as the pre- 
 fects, if the parish priests had not controlled the village 
 mayor and the village schoolmaster, they would have 
 been let alone, and there would have been no religious 
 persecution in France. 
 
 This is partly true. The paradox which gave too 
 much power to the clergy in a country not passionately 
 religious was certain to result in rebellion. But the 
 anti-clerical pretence was only a help for a deep anti- 
 Christian feeling which would have been active in any 
 case, and was then violent, and by no means scientific. 
 Nothing is more striking than the survival in cne 
 country, or even in one milieu ^ of mental conditions long 
 vanished in another country or in different surround- 
 ings. The religious views of the French in the latter 
 part of the nineteenth century ought in no case to be 
 compared with those prevalent in Germany at the same 
 period, and which we shall presently see Renan try to 
 make popular. The speculative freedom which had 
 reigned in the Protestant universities for more than a 
 hundred years, when Renan became acquainted with it, 
 had shocked but few people, and it had gradually sub- 
 sided into the serenity which let pass unchallenged even 
 the wildest theological hypotheses. 
 
 The situation was very different in France. Here 
 there was little question of the higher criticism or of 
 scientific investigations into the origins of religious 
 feeling; Voltairianism might be on the eve of its wane, 
 but it was still supreme, and only its tone had under- 
 gone a change. There were still the witty unbelievers 
 
32 The Deterioration of France 
 
 who dressed up Lucretius or Celsus in epigrammatic 
 modern French, the numberless journalists or lycee 
 professors who took their cue from Paul-Louis Courier, 
 Stendhal, Merimee, About, or their imitators, but 
 oftener this eighteenth-century levity had been dis- 
 placed by the violence bequeathed to the new genera- 
 tions by the Revolutionists. Michelet and Quinet were 
 historians and intelligent, but they were violent; Pa- 
 trice Larroque, who compiled a laborious Encyclopaedia 
 of well-worn objections against Christianity, was vio- 
 lent; so were the writers on the staff of Le Steele, and 
 so were the editors of the many reimpressions of Le 
 Testament du Cure Meslier, a breviary of unbelief which 
 Voltaire had pruned of its worst provincialisms but had 
 left full of its gall. 
 
 Beside this turbid stream of opposition coming from 
 anywhere and swollen anyhow, the dispassionate dis. 
 cussion of men like Jouffroy or Comte had but little 
 influence. It was far beyond the reach not only of the 
 people but of the bourgeois, and yet, unknown as it 
 remained in its real import, it acteid on imaginations 
 and helped the belief that the best intellects were rid 
 of religious dogmas. 
 
 It seems strange to us after fifty years that Sainte- 
 Beuve, the smooth writer, the man of universal sym- 
 pathies, the apparently reverent historian of Port 
 Royal, should have been a rabid and occasionally a 
 coarse anti-clerical, but so he appeared in several of his 
 political addresses and in his conversation. He was as 
 much two men in this respect as Anatole France, who is 
 a living contradiction. Taine often shows violence in 
 the early portions of his correspondence, when medita- 
 tion had not blunted the edge of his Ecole Normale 
 spirit. But what is more incredible than all the rest is 
 
Anti-Christianity 33 
 
 that Renan, the very name of whom is synonymous 
 with tolerance and abhorrence of partisanship, was 
 bitter and impatient in his first articles, and appealed 
 to the public of the decade beginning in i860 in a 
 manner which history alone can make anything but 
 inconceivable to us. 
 
 What is the Vie de Jesus to our contemporaries? 
 The first book which made it possible for them to be 
 free from the central belief of the Church, without 
 making them narrowly sectarian or irreligious, it was 
 the first appearance in this country of incredulousness 
 without harshness, of science without pugnaciousness. 
 It seenied as if Voltaire, before being reincarnated in 
 Renan, had been converted by Chateaubriand, and 
 had then been vouchsafed more intelligence of Christ- 
 ianity than either Voltaire or Chateaubriand had ever 
 possessed. The Vie de Jesus appears as a sort of com- 
 promise which put an end both to a naive sort of faith 
 and to a crude sort of criticism. The book has long 
 ceased to be discussed; it is superannuated in almost 
 every part, and yet people do not conclude, as they 
 would have done fifty years ago, that Renan was an 
 amateur who borrowed from the Germans and dis- 
 guised his incompetence under a veil of literature. 
 The limits, but also the extent, of Renan's erudition 
 are well known, and a famous ecclesiastical historian 
 who is a good judge of learning, Monseigneur Duchesne, 
 was not afraid to say that his chief book could not have 
 been written without Les Origines du Christianisme, 
 The reproach which is now attached to Renan is not 
 one of inadequateness ; it is rather moral. Renan 
 gradually became too much of a dilettante to appear as 
 a likely appreciator of religion. Even his reverent atti- 
 tude is criticized. It has been said of Chateaubriand 
 
34 The Deterioration of France 
 
 that he was the loving grave-digger of Catholicism; 
 Renan leaves the impression of a grave-digger who had 
 been a party to the murder of the man he was burying, 
 and, for all his decency, felt rather guilty. 
 
 Completely different was the background in 1863. 
 To the crowd which began to assault the Catholic 
 Church in France, religion had been presented as a 
 dupery, and dogma as an opposition to science. Renan 
 was one of the few brave men who did not fear, in spite 
 of the Government, to say what they had to say about 
 religion, its origins, and what was called its deforma- 
 tions. He was not a philosopher made popular by being 
 also an artist — he was a soldier, and the atmosphere 
 about him was the atmosphere of a fight. What the 
 public saw in the publication of the Vie de Jesus was an 
 act of defiance. The historian had just been appointed 
 to a chair at the College de France. He spoke in his 
 inaugural lecture of Jesus as an "incomparable man.'* 
 These words brought about a storm of protests, and 
 eventually the Professor's dismissal, but they also 
 were regarded as the challenge of Free Thought to the 
 Church and taken up as a password. As a consequence 
 the Vie de Jesus, which is only the development of these 
 two words, was misapprehended by thousands of its 
 so-called admirers and applauded as a blasphemy, 
 instead of being, as it is to-day, held unpleasantly 
 cautious and crafty. 
 
 Renan must have suffered from being pressed into 
 the service of overheated politicians, and being praised 
 by people who would repeat Jaclard's speech: Be 
 atheists first, and then you can be revolutionists. Two 
 years after the publication of the Vie de Jesus narrow 
 anti-Catholicism appeared in the foundation of the 
 Solidaires, who thought it a remarkable bravado to 
 
Decadence of Morals 35 
 
 insist on being buried without a priest, and of the Ligue 
 de r Enseignementj the first step towards atheistic teach- 
 ing in the elementary schools. This was the beginning 
 of the fight against the Church which was to fill most of 
 the history of the Third RepubUc. In this fight Renan 
 took no further active part, and superficial observers 
 were tempted to look upon him as rather a friend than 
 a foe of religion, but the Vie de Jesus gradually began 
 to be read in the spirit of its author, and this spirit 
 proved to be even more destructive than bare-faced 
 opposition. The brilliant butterflies in Parisian society 
 were only too inclined to adopt a view of religion which 
 turned respect merely into a sort of elegance, and this 
 first initiation intd Renanism prepared them for its 
 developments. When the French are uncertain about 
 their religious views they are too often uncertain about 
 all the rest, and Renan in his latter phases taught them 
 nothing but uncertainty. So whether irreligion meant 
 violence and revolution, or scepticism and tolerance, it 
 was calculated to divide and weaken. In fact, division 
 and enervation soon made their appearance, and the 
 catastrophe of 1870 was not enough to bring back union 
 and energy. The Third Republic only developed the 
 germs planted imder the Empire. 
 
 10. Decadence of Morals 
 
 The combination of the appearance of dangerous 
 theories with the disappearance of the most powerful 
 moral break — that is to say, belief — is sure to result in 
 a moral falling off. This was not evident from the 
 first under the Second Empire, because the authorities 
 remained loyal to principles and there was no display 
 of licentiousness. Compared to what we have seen in 
 
36 The Deterioration of France 
 
 the past twenty years, the so-called immorality of the 
 Empire strikes us as severe restraint. The stage in 
 the days of Labiche, Halevy, and Meilhac was innocent, 
 and would appear tame to-day in the most puritanic 
 countries; society, in spite of its wild craving after 
 pleasure, tolerated no indecency; the nude at the 
 Salons was rare and artistic, and, in spite of this, fre- 
 quently blamed. There were still a great many families 
 in which austere traditions were kept up; the feverish 
 excitement, the endemic dissipation of 1865, left them 
 as untouched as the ideas of the Encyclopaedists left 
 imtouched the homes of our great-great-grandfathers. 
 In a word, the appearances were universally good. 
 
 Unfortunately appearances make a poor defence 
 against deep-rooted realities, especially when the public 
 institutions do not help in counteracting them. Philo- 
 sophy was weakening, poetry had no elevating virtue in 
 it, fiction was the vindication of lawlessness; it was 
 impossible that morals should remain high very long. 
 But there were other elements of corruption in the 
 economic conditions. It was Guizot who had said: 
 *'Make money, enrich yourselves"; but the advice was 
 too vague in the days of Louis Philippe, and the lower 
 classes still remember this reign as a time of penury. 
 The industrial prosperity of France dates from Na- 
 poleon III. Of course the machines and the facility of 
 imports were responsible for it, — no sovereign can have 
 any more influence on these conditions than on the 
 weather — but Napoleon's turn of mind was favourable 
 to a great commercial development. His humanitarian 
 views made for peace and for peaceful transactions ; the 
 very wars to which his philosophy — much more than 
 a military propensity — compelled him, show that his 
 tendency was to seek the greatness of France in some- 
 
Decadence of Morals 37 
 
 thing different from mere territorial expansion, in the 
 diffusion of influence through ideas and improved ma- 
 terial conditions ; the resolute orderliness of his govern- 
 ment during its first eight or ten years, along with a 
 love of the humble which appeared in excellent social 
 laws, made industrial unrest almost impossible. All 
 these conditions enabled the French to make the most 
 of their has de laine, just at the moment when a small 
 capital found unique opportunities. 
 
 It may be that at the time of Colbert, or in the early 
 days of Huguenot prosperity, the changes brought 
 about by a sudden influx of wealth would have been 
 made less intoxicating, thanks to the prevalent severity 
 of manners; but the Second Empire was a time of 
 childish levity, and the example of imrestrained enjoy- 
 ment of money came from the very highest ranks of 
 society. The Court thought of nothing except amuse- 
 ment and display, and the numberless nouveaux riches 
 whom finance or industry pushed every day to the fore- 
 front had all the naive vanity of their class. The con- 
 sequence was an irritating display of luxury on all sides, 
 and a universal emulation in acquiring the means of 
 shining, with the inevitable unscrupulousness arising 
 under such circumstances. Money became the sole 
 object in the ever-increasing forgetfulness of the happi- 
 ness which can be obtained upon a modicum of money ; 
 the country was deserted for the towns, especially 
 Paris, which, in its new and occasionally vulgar de- 
 velopment, was a symbol and an appeal; and the scourge 
 invariably attending the development of a nation in 
 the direction of material ease — depopulation — made its 
 appearance. 
 
 Yet the Second Empire cannot be described as an 
 epoch of widely-spread corruption. Immorality still 
 
38 The Deterioration of France 
 
 revolted, and several famous judicial cases prove it. 
 It was rather a period of bubbling insouciance, with a 
 light-hearted acceptance of an inferior moral standard 
 which seemed inevitable for the time being, and which 
 people were as remote from advocating as from re- 
 nouncing. The cynicism of conscious deterioration — the 
 almost inseparable companion of Malthusianism — was 
 to come later. But all the germs of this degradation had 
 been sown broadcast long before 1870, and hundreds 
 of moralists had pointed out their dissemination. 
 
 1 1 . The End of the Empire 
 
 The Second Empire has left the memory of a happy, 
 brilliant epoch. If the chances of the Bonaparte 
 dynasty have appeared at various periods, and even at 
 present appear, greater than those of the Orleans family, 
 it is not, as people will often imagine, owing to the 
 afterglow of the first Napoleon, but to the popularity 
 of his nephew. The working classes had never been 
 treated as kindly as they were under the legislation 
 which bore the name of the Prince Imperial and made 
 it beloved, and the unheard-of commercial expansion 
 of those days made their lives incomparably happier 
 than at any other period in the nineteenth century; 
 after more than forty years, they have not forgotten it. 
 As to the bourgeoisie and aristocracy, they had number- 
 less opportunities for a life of luxury, which speculation 
 or trade made it easy to keep up, and on which the 
 brilliant Court at the Tuileries threw its eclat. The 
 survivors of this age speak of it as one of those happy 
 times during which men feel almost physically the 
 enjoyment of living. All the men seemed witty, and 
 all the women seemed beautiful. Literature counted a 
 
The End of the Empire 39 
 
 few great names, the fame of which ennobled all the 
 rest, but its characteristics were not greatness and 
 elevation, which would have hardly been in keeping 
 with the mood of the readers; abundance, facility, 
 graceful ease, and cleverness with a dash of cynicism, 
 of which people had not had time to grow tired, were 
 what was craved and plentifully supplied. Everything 
 was smooth and easy. 
 
 Such an epoch is hardly one during which reflection 
 and wisdom are likely to flourish. The fact is that, 
 especially between 1855 and 1867, the French lived as 
 much on illusions as on pleasure. Everybody seemed 
 bent upon deceiving himself. The Emperor had his 
 own dreams of a Europe that would consist of racially 
 united portions, so happy in their union as not to wish 
 for anything else. The Ministers were apt to catch a 
 reflection from their master's beautiful ideology; when 
 M. de Persigny advised the Prussian Minister of War 
 always to keep his army ready, he thought he was speak- 
 ing only in the general interest of Europe. Ofiicers de- 
 luded themselves about the army, as the Emperor did 
 about the relation of France to her rivals; they were 
 innocent of modem improvements, innocent of dangers, 
 and only thought of bravery. Our soldiers had been 
 successful in the Crimea, successful in Italy, and even — 
 in spite of the final result — in Mexico ; why should they 
 not be successful again? Were not Prussian officers to 
 be seen year after year following the French manoeuvres 
 at Chalons? If they did not feel that they had to learn, 
 they would not take the trouble to go to school to 
 others. 
 
 So there was no ideal in the France of Napoleon III, 
 but there was a great deal of ideology and a great deal 
 of self-satisfaction. The only movement that had 
 
40 The Deterioration of France 
 
 something idealistic about it was the Republican move- 
 ment. Its promoters were either men who had seen 
 1848, and never forgotten the divine enthusiasm which 
 possessed the whole French nation until Bonaparte 
 came and crushed it, or younger men who believed 
 in Progress as implicitly as their elders believed in 
 Fraternity. These enthusiasts had faith, but it was 
 the faith which is as likely to mislead as to guide; there 
 was no light in it — only the gleams which look so 
 fascinating when they are reflected from all nascent 
 ideologies. What was needed in the last years of the 
 Empire was a clear eye to see that the danger of France 
 did not come from lack of liberty but from the rapid 
 growth of Prussia; the remedy was not mere warm- 
 heartedness, but will-power, strength, and method. 
 It will always remain as a blemish on the Republican 
 group of 1867 that they opposed the effort made by the 
 declining Empire to improve its army, though three 
 years later they were to clamour more loudly than 
 anybody else : Guerre d outrance! 
 
 While this blind optimism or as blind longing for 
 something new prevailed among the masses, the highly 
 educated were as far from the enlightening contact of 
 reality; they did not live in clouds — far from it — but 
 they lived in the stars, and the results were the same. 
 The French politician and the French officer would not 
 see that Germany was the enemy, but to Renan and 
 Taine and their numerous followers, Germany was the 
 friend. What did they care about artillery and com- 
 missariat? Their business was with thoughts, with the 
 interpretation of the past, and the anticipation of the 
 future, and in all this Germany was their teacher, and 
 they proclaimed themselves grateful disciples. It was 
 evident to them from their knowledge of history that 
 
The End of the Empire 41 
 
 only ideas have any chance of survival in the succession 
 of facts. So they thought that speculation was as 
 patriotic as action and immeasurably superior, and as 
 — very different in this from their German models — 
 they believed that patriotism as a mere sentiment is 
 rather in the way of philosophy, they laid the founda- 
 tions of anti-patriotism, imagining all the time that they 
 were only building a temple to Truth. 
 
 This admixture of light-hearted or even dare-devil 
 optimism among the unthinking, and of ideology among 
 their leaders, with the touch of dangerous enthusiasm 
 added by the Republicans which is characteristic of the 
 Second Empire, recalls almost invincibly the latter part 
 of the eighteenth century. There was the same levity, 
 the same enjoyment of life and pleasure, the same 
 elegant materialism, in the brilliant butterflies at 
 Versailles, side by side with the reckless speculation 
 of the Encyclopaedists and the reforming audacity 
 of Rousseau's followers. There was also the same 
 indifference to matter-of-fact considerations, which, 
 however, were in the long run to appear of more 
 importance than high-flown philosophies. We shall 
 see that, as the ideology of the Encydopcedia and the 
 Contrat Social persisted long after the Revolution which 
 they brought about, the ideology of Renan survived 
 its exponent's disillusionment, and its effects went on 
 long after competent judges had found it wanting. 
 The spirit of the Third Republic we shall find to 
 have been a strange blending of scepticism about vital 
 verities and ineradicable belief in mere words which is 
 only a development of the spirit of the Second Empire. 
 But this development took place unknown to its very 
 champions, and if we want to form an idea of the 
 atmosphere of France towards 1867, we must think of a 
 
42 The Deterioration of France 
 
 warm summer evening at the end of a day of pleasure 
 in some not very refined Parisian quarter or seaside 
 resort, with snatches from the bold conversation of gay 
 philosophers attracted by the fun and yet despising it. 
 The threats of a storm brewing above the horizon only 
 a very few people perceived. 
 
 Yet there were such clear-sighted observers, and 
 their paucity did not make their anxiety lighter to bear. 
 Strange to say, the Emperor, who had been so imper- 
 vious to signs about which a man in his position ought 
 not to have been mistaken, felt misgivings before his 
 entourage had any. He realized that his imprudence 
 could not but be punished by at least a severe trial in 
 which he might yet be victorious, but which might 
 also result in his ruin, that of his dynasty, and eventu- 
 ally that of France itself. The gentleness of his sway 
 during the past years of his reign, the wistfulness with 
 which he would listen to any advice, were signs that 
 his mind was troubled, and that he tried to divide 
 responsibilities too heavy for one man. While his sub- 
 jects were revelling in carelessness, he was slowly 
 wasted by care and disease, and this partly redeems 
 the folly of his previous policy. 
 
 Among the true patriots who had no illusions about 
 the seriousness of the position to which not only 
 political errors but the corruption of thought and 
 morals had reduced France, there was one for whom 
 the writer of this book feels the most sincere admira- 
 tion, and concerning whom even comparative oblivion 
 seems exceptionally unjust. Certainly, if Prevost-Para- 
 dol' had been fortimate enough to live in a time when 
 
 * He was a journalist, but of exceptional culture, having been the 
 schoolmate of Taine at the Ecole Normale, and revealing his rare 
 gifts almost from ,the first. Shortly before the War of 1870, he was 
 
Paradol on France^s Future 43 
 
 his book had been a record of greatness rather than an 
 anticipation of disaster, he would be looked upon as 
 one of the masters of the language and one of the most 
 astonishing readers of the future that ever held a pen. 
 His book, La France Nouvelle, to which pride and 
 patriotism alone prevented him from giving another 
 more depressing title, was published in 1868, and in the 
 precision of its conjectures leaves far behind all similar 
 works of historic philosophy. Compared to it, the Con- 
 siderations sur la France of Joseph de Maistre appears 
 rhetorical, fanciful, and often wide of the mark. As a 
 literary work it has a full right to be called a master- 
 piece. No modem writing recalls so forcibly the 
 earnestness and, at the same time, the perfection of the 
 best ancients. Paradol wrote this book — it is not say- 
 ing too much — with the blood of his heart, and yet with 
 an intellectual self-control resulting in unfailing lu- 
 cidity ; his pages are those of a Stoic, but there is more 
 than emotion hidden under this apparent coolness — 
 there is a mortal wound, and the quiet beauty of La 
 France Nouvelle is that of a dying speech. An extract 
 from the concluding chapter will show how clearly the 
 French of 1868 might have read in it their portrait and 
 their doom. 
 
 12. ParadoVs Conjectures on the Future of France 
 
 After examining the moral condition of France, and 
 concluding that religion and the sense of duty no longer 
 had any influence on its national life, but honour still 
 subsisted in it as an element, undoubtedly weaker, of 
 
 appointed French Minister at Washington. Both he and his son 
 committed suicide on hearing of the French disasters. Paradol was 
 only forty years old, and his son was not twenty. 
 
44 The Deterioration of France 
 
 energy, Paradol went on to inquire into the political 
 circumstances of the country. 
 
 France, he said, is now drawing near the severest 
 trial through which she ever had to pass. The dis- 
 membering of Denmark, suffered by her in spite of the 
 protests of England, and her countenancing Prussia 
 against Austria, are facts which it is useless post 
 eventum to discuss, but with which it is necessary to 
 count. Another fact which is to be taken for granted, 
 without going into its moral significance, is the effort 
 of Prussia towards the unity of Germany. What, then, 
 is the situation created for France by these facts? 
 Will the progress of Prussia in Germany go on un- 
 hampered, or will France attempt to stop it by a 
 military intervention? 
 
 Let us examine both alternatives, and, first of all, 
 the hypothesis of a war between France and Prussia, 
 whatever its outcome may be. 
 
 Shall we defeat Prussia? It is a remarkable sign 
 of the times that this question should be asked at all. 
 The problem used to be: Can France resist the whole 
 of Europe in a coalition? To-day, it appears that a 
 contest between France and Prussia would be a danger- 
 ous testing of our power. However, we may suppose 
 that victory will remain with us. What should we do 
 with it? Shall we abide by the principle of nationalities 
 which has been the guiding idea of the policy of the 
 Emperor, or shall we imitate Prussia in her treatment 
 of Posen and Schleswig, by annexing Belgium and 
 creating an independent kingdom on the Rhine? Either 
 alternative offers considerable difficulties, for we shall 
 be obliged to make war for nothing or to leave Prussia 
 irritated and resentful. 
 
 But victory may not be faithful to us, and we have at 
 
Paradol on France's Future 45 
 
 present to view the possibility of a defeat. Supposing, 
 then, that Prussia, alone or with the support of Russia, 
 gets the better of us, who does not see that the greatness 
 of France would be a thing of the past? France, of 
 course, would not be swept clean away. The jealousy 
 of all against her being once satisfied, the jealousy of 
 the conquerors against one another, or that of the 
 neutral powers against the conquerors, would incline 
 them to let us subsist, helpless and disgraced, amidst 
 our ruins. It is even possible that Alsace and Lorraine 
 might not be taken away from us, but what was sure 
 to be hopelessly taken away from us would be the power 
 to oppose such a step the day oiu* rival thought it 
 advisable, and this day could hardly be long put off. 
 Meanwhile the unity of Germany, helped by the pres- 
 tige of the Prussian victory, would be achieved at once ; 
 Austria would become another Turkey ; and the Oriental 
 question would promptly be settled without any 
 reference to us. 
 
 We now have to examine the other hypothesis, that 
 of Peace — that is to say, the possibility of a non- 
 interference of France in the presence of a continuous 
 aggrandizement of Prussia. It is the less probable of the 
 two. Not because the Prussian Government is likely 
 to declare war or the French Government to wish it; 
 there is little doubt but the chiefs of both States are 
 honestly in favour of peace. But, whatever men may 
 wish, things are such that they must bring on a war; 
 it is impossible that Prussia, in spite of her prudence, 
 should not take fresh steps towards the absorption of 
 Germany, and no less impossible that the French 
 Government should witness such a move without 
 interfering. 
 
 This fatal dilemma forces itself upon our minds even 
 
46 The Deterioration of France 
 
 apart from the unexpected incidents which may at any 
 moment render peace precarious. The more one thinks 
 about it, the more evident it appears that neither 
 philosophy, nor humanity, nor the firm resolve of 
 governments can stave off a contest between expanding 
 Prussia and France shut in between her old frontiers. 
 As long as this shock does not take place, everybody 
 feels that uncertainty must subsist, and that the claims 
 of the rising nation to greatness, as well as those of the 
 older power to influence, cannot be settled. In any 
 case, France, if she succeeds, will pay with the blood 
 of her children; if she fails, with her position and 
 possibly her existence, for the mistake she made the 
 day when the dismembering of Denmark began and 
 was suffered to go on. 
 
 Yet it is not absolutely impossible that peace may be 
 preserved, but the consequences of inaction will be the 
 same for France as those of a defeat. Whether the 
 imity of Germany is accomplished before France in- 
 different or before France humiliated, the result will be 
 the irrevocable decay of French greatness. Fifty-one 
 millions of Germans will be imited under one flag, 
 whereas France will count only thirty-six millions, and 
 as the military forces of Germany are concentrated, 
 disciplined, and provided with all the resources of 
 modem science, in the new system of war, consisting 
 in suddenly laimching enormous masses of men one 
 against the other, the struggle will inevitably be 
 disproportionate. 
 
 Some people go on repeating: Why should we picture 
 the future in such dark colours, why should not the new 
 Germany ttim out to be a peaceable community, ex- 
 clusively attentive to commerce, industry, and litera- 
 ture? Why should we not hope that the unification of 
 
Paradol on France^s Future 47 
 
 Germany will be the first step towards a broader fra- 
 ternity of nations? This question can only be answered 
 by another: Why should we, for the first time in the 
 history of the world, see a great power stop in its growth 
 from a mere sense of justice, respect the weak in their 
 decadence, and forego without being compelled to it 
 every desire of domination? This would be a miracle. 
 You may be right, the same people insist, and it is 
 probable that Germany will become one nation, that 
 Austria will be dissolved, Holland annexed, and that 
 all the great questions pending in the East will be 
 settled without us, but, at all events, France will not he 
 invaded. Who has not heard this naive statement put 
 forward as the last and strongest argument of those who 
 will not take alarm at the new condition of Europe? 
 But it is touching rather than reasonable. It is more 
 than doubtful that we need only renounce every par- 
 ticipation in the affairs of Eturope to be let alone within 
 our frontiers, and it is against reason that our eastern 
 provinces will be left us out of mere kindness just when 
 we are no longer in a position to defend them. However, 
 let us take it for granted that, in the time-honoured 
 phrase, France will not he invaded. Is it necessary for a 
 country to be invaded to vanish from the political stage, 
 and become dependent upon the pleasure of others ? Has 
 Portugal been invaded? Did we feel constrained to 
 invade it a few years ago when we had a difficulty with 
 the Portuguese Government about some trader? A 
 French man-of-war simply put into the mouth of the 
 Tagus, cut off the moorings of the ship we thought 
 unduly detained, and steamed away with her under the 
 very noses of the Portuguese guns. Are we prepared to 
 take the same treatment from the new arbitrators of 
 Europe, and to tolerate a repetition of the same scene 
 
48 The Deterioration of France 
 
 in the mouth of the Seine? Let us confess the bitter 
 truth : There is no golden mean for a nation once glorious 
 between keeping up its former prestige or altogether 
 losing it. There is indeed a moment of transition, but 
 how very brief ! In fact, there is no point at which such a 
 fall can be suspended. One has either to resist, or roll 
 down to the bottom of degradation. Let us, then, 
 accept the alternative which our past forces upon us; 
 on one hand remain, at the cost of immense sacrifices, 
 what our history and the intelligent perseverance of our 
 ancestors made us, or, on the other, hoping for the best 
 and supposing that we shall be suffered undiminished 
 to survive our historic existence, stay quiet in our 
 modest possessions, with both mind and heart weakened 
 by our resignation and on a level with our new fortunes, 
 but still harping on our former glories and wearying 
 Europe with the names of Louis XIV and Napoleon, 
 much as the names of Philip the Second and Charles the 
 Fifth, frequently invoked on the other side of the 
 Pyrenees, reach indeed our ears, but leave us indifferent. 
 
 Paradol concluded with suggesting the only remedy 
 he thought possible: Cease to look upon Algeria as a 
 mere settlement, colonize it with Frenchmen, not for- 
 eigners; therefore take measures to stop depopulation, 
 and in time create on either side of the Mediterranean 
 an empire of eighty or a hundred million Frenchmen 
 which no European influence could hold in check. 
 
 Whatever his hope of the adoption of this remedy 
 might be, Paradol certainly saw the real situation with 
 astonishing lucidity; the statement that the French 
 were weakened by a double source of influence — an anti- 
 Christian philosophy on one hand, and, on the other, a 
 growing indifference to the position of France as a 
 European factor — summed up the deterioration of 
 
The Denouement 49 
 
 France as clearly as if the writer had actually read 
 her future history. 
 
 13. The Denouement 
 
 Two years after the publication of La France Nou- 
 velle, the catastrophe came at last. Thoughtlessness or 
 unwise thinking met its reward. The War of 1870 was 
 not the first great modem war; the Revolutionary 
 period had seen several times before whole nations 
 represented by their youngest or bravest being hurled 
 against one another, but it was the first scientific war, 
 with more regard to science than to the old code of 
 chivalry, and the fiashlike rapidity which is a condition 
 of success in modem wars. Bismarck, von Moltke, and 
 von Roon had watched their opportunity with untiring 
 patience, and had not lost a minute in the preparation 
 of their attack. They were helped by the incredible 
 folly of the French diplomacy at first, and of the French 
 military authorities afterwards. The result of genius 
 and perseverance being pitted against levity and im- 
 prudence was fully what ought to have been expected; 
 the War of 1870 can only be adequately described by 
 the French word which has almost become its synonym; 
 it was a debacle, with at first the astonishment, then the 
 misgivings, and gradually the distrust, the discourage- 
 ment, and the panic which are its moral consequences. 
 Meanwhile the most terrible winter was raging, and 
 in Paris famine was added to all the other horrors. 
 Then came the suspense and anxiety of Thiers's pil- 
 grimage to all the monarchs of Europe in quest of sym- 
 pathy and assistance, and the everlasting Vce victis 
 which to-day seems the proper answer to people whose 
 imprudence was alone to blame, and a never-to-be- 
 4 
 
50 The Deterioration of France 
 
 forgotten lesson for the future; then the wrench of the 
 Frankfort treaty, and the parting with Alsace-Lorraine, 
 a torture which those who feel it even at present can 
 alone reaHze in its exquisiteness, and shortly afterwards 
 the gigantic f ait-divers of the Commune, with its fires 
 and massacres, and a touch of comic vulgarity over 
 it all which makes it more repellent. Meanwhile the 
 great historic result towards which the genius of Bis- 
 marck and the blindness of the Imperial Government 
 had tended became a fact. Germany, after being for 
 centuries the poetic name of the Mother of Nations, 
 suddenly took on a distinct significance. Where there 
 had been a jumble of conflicting interests, rehgions, and 
 manners, with no other bond than the language, ap- 
 peared a formidable politic reality which was to change 
 the European conditions for a length of time which 
 cannot yet be calculated. Where there had been pleasant 
 associations attached, appeared, in strong contrast with 
 French culture and English civilization, a brutal power 
 which the commonest bully disguised as a soldier alone 
 represents adequately. Germany has given herself up 
 to Prussia, and whatever she may have gained by the 
 bargain she has lost in foregoing her old charm and 
 in opening for herself a future over which black clouds 
 already hang. 
 
 But these losses of Germany can only appear as 
 losses to fine sensibilities or to exceptionally clear- 
 sighted historians, whereas the loss of France was a 
 fact which no self-delusion — only cowardice — could 
 lessen. In 1871, less than thirty years after Louis 
 Philippe — " bourgeois ** King as he was — could say that 
 no cannon was shot in Europe without his permission, 
 less than twenty years after Napoleon had said with- 
 out any bombast that his subjects being happy Europe 
 
The Denouement 51 
 
 might be at peace, France had fallen, in power, in- 
 fluence, poptdation, and moral energy, behind a rival 
 whose greatness her own monarch had helped and 
 practically made. 
 
SECTION II 
 
 DETERIORATION OF FRANCE UNDER THE THIRD 
 REPUBLIC 
 
 The object of this section is to show how the moral and 
 political decadence of France which had begun under 
 the Empire — thanks to the audacity of a few thinkers 
 and writers and to the blindness of the public powers — 
 was continued under the Third Republic. But while in 
 the preceding regime the authorities had been to blame 
 only for their incapacity and had uniformly tended 
 towards order, the position was reversed under the 
 Third Republic: the spirit of disorder ceased to be 
 embodied in philosophies and poems ; it was represented, 
 expanded, and — with a few transient lulls — made worse 
 by the authorities themselves, which more than once 
 seem to have been actually possessed by a destructive 
 genius. 
 
 I. Is the Deterioration to he put down to the 
 Republican Institutions? 
 
 The coexistence of this accelerated falling off in moral 
 standard and political influence with the republican 
 institutions has induced many critics, some of them of 
 excellent judgment, to say that here was another in- 
 stance of the ** institutions corrupting citizens," and 
 
 52 
 
Is It from Republicanism ? 53 
 
 that the Republic as a regime was responsible for the 
 decadence chronologically coinciding with it. These 
 critics, foremost of whom is M. Maurras, with his school, 
 insist that the Republican regime is synonymous with 
 instability, and often with demagogism — that is to say, 
 the worst form of disorder — ^and that no good can come 
 out of it. They point out that the democracies of 
 antiquity were only prosperous so long as they were 
 oligarchies — avowedly or in disguise — and were all of 
 them ruined by the germ of unrule they invariably 
 developed. The deplorable state of France under the 
 Third Republic, they urge, is only one more illustration 
 of a law which history has never yet belied. 
 
 This academic discussion is not new, of course; the 
 merits and demerits of constitutions will always pro- 
 vide men with an exciting topic, while the other great 
 law, of the inevitable decay of all human foundations, 
 will always provide their philosophy with melancholy 
 food. The monarchical system looks well on De Bonald's 
 pages, and the Republican ideal is captivating in the 
 volumes of De Tocqueville — this is a matter of course. 
 Realities vary with times. For the present state of the 
 world, all that can be said is that Democracy works 
 very tolerably in the New Continent, while monarchies 
 show a decided superiority in the old one. The systems 
 based on authority certainly help the public spirit, but 
 when the public spirit is weak, even monarchies are 
 precarious. This might be repeated ad nauseam in a 
 thousand formulae. 
 
 We should be very careful to distinguish between the 
 French Republic in the first four years of its existence 
 and the long troubled period that followed. Under 
 Thiers, and as long as the Assemblee Nationale was not 
 dissolved, things were very different from what they 
 
54 The Deterioration of France 
 
 became afterwards, and decidedly more satisfactory. 
 The will of the nation was all strained towards the 
 noblest objects; viz., the liberation of the territory still 
 occupied by the Germans, the improvement of the 
 financial situation in spite of the enormous war in- 
 demnity demanded by Bismarck, and, above all, the 
 reformation of the army. Unity of feeling concerning 
 such vital points is, of course, a unique asset in the life 
 of a nation ; but there was something else that made for 
 concentration of effort, and consequently success. The 
 constitution under which France has lived and lost since 
 1875 did not exist — ^it was not even thought of. The 
 idea universal in the Assembly, and widely spread in the 
 country, was that the Republic was only a transitory re- 
 gime — practically a truce between the Monarchists who 
 were the large majority — and that, as soon as the most 
 urgent needs of France had been seen to, an arrangement 
 would be made between the Legitimists, Orleanists, and 
 Imperialists, and the King would come back. 
 
 Thus France lived in expectation of a regime of 
 authority. This is not saying enough; compared with 
 the constitution I shall presently describe, the govern- 
 ment of Thiers was a regime of authority. The powers 
 of Thiers differed entirely from those of the presidents 
 who came after him, especially those who were elected 
 after 1898, when the Republic had lost whatever energy 
 it had originally possessed. He was much more a 
 Premier than a President, governed as personally as a 
 President of the United States, and appeared as a 
 responsible authority. Everybody must see at once 
 liow different this position was from that of M. Poin- 
 care, and it takes the stupidity or the bad faith of the 
 low politician to gainsay that it was not more favour- 
 able to the welfare of the country. 
 
Is It from Republicanism ? 55 
 
 The results, it is well known, were remarkable. In 
 less than three years, the Germans had been paid off, 
 the Exchequer of France appeared decidedly prosper- 
 ous, and the army had been strengthened. The nation 
 was on the high road to speedy recovery, and her neigh- 
 bours wondered and admired ; Bismarck was doubtful and 
 uneasy in his mind ; altogether the moral effects of the 
 disaster, recent though it was, were fast disappearing. 
 
 Unfortunately the Assemblee Nationale was divided, 
 and in a short time sacrificed Thiers to its divisions; 
 MacMahon, who succeeded him, did not enjoy the 
 same authority; besides, the Assembly had to adjourn 
 itself; as its members made up their minds to do so 
 before settling the difficulties which were in the way of a 
 Restoration, they were compelled to consolidate the 
 makeshift arrangement which they had thought would 
 be sufficient for a while, and they reluctantly passed' 
 the laws, the ensemble of which is generally called the 
 Republican Constitution. These laws were made by a 
 jealous Assembly, on its guard against the President, 
 inevitably inclined to limit his power lest he should use 
 it against the Restoration, and, on the contrary, anxious 
 to confer as much authority as possible on the Parlia- 
 ment which was to come after it. On the whole, these 
 Monarchists framed a constitution which is not only 
 democratic but demagogic in its principles. 
 
 This was a dangerous mistake. The majority in the 
 Assemblee Nationale took it for granted that their opin- 
 ions, if not their representatives, would be the same in 
 the Chamber of Deputies which was to be elected. It 
 never occurred to them that things might turn out 
 differently, and that the couches nouvelleSy the new 
 strata, the existence of which Gambetta proclaimed in 
 a famous address, might give rise to a Parliament as 
 
56 The Deterioration of France 
 
 new in its spirit as these were in their formation. They 
 did not suspect that these homines novi might have 
 grown up in the hotbeds of Taine's and Renan's philo- 
 sophies, and be full of undigested notions even worse 
 than those of the eighteenth century ; that, consequently 
 to give them a chance of securing power was to run a 
 risk of delivering France up to ideology, and sooner or 
 later to demagogism. 
 
 Yet this was what happened. The Chamber which 
 the first general election (in 1876) returned was not the 
 successor but the, resolute enemy of the Assemblee 
 Nationale. Instea'd of the Due de Broglie, its great 
 leader, was Gambetta, and the effects of such a change 
 were not long in being felt. While the five years which 
 came after the war had seen a continuous reviving of 
 the national energy, the years that immediately fol- 
 lowed the election of the first Republican Chamber saw 
 a turn for the worse about which clear-sighted observers 
 had no uncertainty. 
 
 We can therefore leave the years 1 871-1875 out of 
 our investigation into the deterioration of France, and 
 date its second period from 1876. This was not the 
 worst either. In 1898 the rise of the Socialists inaugu- 
 rated an era of unheard-of recklessness, which might be 
 going on at the present moment, if the national danger 
 in 1905 had not sobered most Frenchmen capable of 
 reflection or at least of patriotism. 
 
 I 876-1 898 
 
 2. Imperfections and Dangers of the so-called Constitu- 
 tion of 1875 
 
 Drawn up as I have just said they were, the constitu- 
 tional laws were calculated to weaken the legitimate 
 
Imperfections and Dangers 57 
 
 authorities and to seat power where it has no business 
 to be. This perversion was seen very early by all men 
 versed in constitutional legislation, but it took time to 
 bring it home to differently trained intellects. To-day, 
 forty years* experience has left no doubt even in the 
 crudest minds that the Constitution of 1875 is largely 
 responsible for the state of disorder in which France has 
 lived since its slow and unwilling preparation and by no 
 means enthusiastic promulgation. Where authority is 
 not, disorder is sure to appear*, and the constitutional 
 laws are sneakingly antagonistic to every authority. 
 \ The President of the Republic, of course, has no 
 power; he is only the official representative .of the, 
 country, but the word official is ona which in France at 
 least, has gradually taken on a meaning excluding real 
 authority. In the United States of America, a President 
 is directly elected by the nation, and enjoys the full 
 delegation of the nation's power during the four years 
 of his office. He knows it well, and if anything strikes 
 even the casual observer, it is the sense that an Ameri- 
 can President has of his responsibility, and the dignity 
 this feeling lends to his actions and decisions. In 
 France, the President is elected by the Chamber and 
 Senate meeting in Congress, and this alone carries 
 considerable significance. The country realizes that 
 the relation between the President and itself is not 
 immediate, that it has nothing to say to it, and con- 
 sequently that it may as well take no interest in it. 
 This, in fact, is what happens. The Presidential elec- 
 tion to which France seemed the most attentive was 
 undoubtedly that of M. Poincare in 19 13, and yet a 
 fortnight before it took place the name of M. Poincar6 
 had hardly been mentioned in connection with it. The 
 two preceding elections had been met by an indifference 
 
58 The Deterioration of France 
 
 that might be construed as almost insulting; that of 
 Felix Faure was a surprise; only a handful of politicians 
 had supposed it was possible. So the election of a 
 President is what the French call a purely political — 
 that is to say, almost the reverse of a national — affair. 
 
 On the contrary, the relation between the President 
 and the Parliament electing him is very close. The 
 President invariably belongs to either ^the Senate or 
 Chamber, so is intimately acquainted, and often mixed 
 up with, lobby intrigues. Having been a member of 
 the Assemblies for years, it is inevitable that he should 
 share their point of view, habits, and ethos generally. 
 The result is that he feels himself not the country's, btit 
 their delegate, and not by any means their head. It 
 is remarkable that, although the Constitution empowers^ 
 him to communicate with both Houses through: mes- 
 sages, he never uses the privilege ; his situation compels 
 him to act in a semi-private manner, and in a crisis it 
 is never he, but the Prime Minister, who is the centre 
 of attention. 
 
 The President can declare war, but it is after con- 
 sulting Parliament ; he signs the treaties, but they have 
 to be countersigned by the Foreign Minister, who is 
 their real author; he can dissolve the Chamber, but it is 
 not without the permission of the Senate; he chooses the 
 Ministers, it is true, and this apparently is an element 
 of efficiency, but his choice in reality is not free — it was 
 well seen in Jime, 1914, when M. Ribot fell; the Minis- 
 ters are chosen in the Chamber or Senate, and the 
 atmosphere of the Chamber and Senate at the time of 
 the fall of a Cabinet makes it clear to everybody what 
 the new Government must be. 
 
 An a posteriori argument shows more conclusively 
 than anything else that the authority of the President 
 
\. 
 
 Imperfections and Dangers 59 
 
 does not count beside that of the Chamber; only twice, 
 in more than forty years, were Presidents openly in 
 conflict with Parliament; those Presidents were Thiers 
 and MacMahon — the only two whom their past as well 
 as their character inclined to defend their privileges or 
 policy. Both were promptly defeated by their powerful 
 enemy, and compelled^ not only to give in but to resign 
 as well. 
 
 If the Ministers were appointed for seven years, like 
 the President, they would appear much more important 
 persons than the latter. They have a will, and, to a 
 certain extent, the means of carrying it out. They 
 introduce bills; they even sign decrees which, in the 
 absence of a law, have the same compulsory power. 
 When Parliament happens to^trust them for any length 
 of time^ or to wink at what they do, they may leave a 
 certain trace behind them. Men like M. Hanotaux and 
 M. Delcasse, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, like M. 
 Millerand and unfortunately General Andre before him 
 at the War Office, belong a great deal more to history 
 than M. Sadi Camot, M. Loubet, or, above all, M. 
 Falli^res. But these are exceptions. One could hardly 
 count a dozen such among the four hundred and odd 
 Ministers who held office since 1875. The French 
 Cabinets are dependent upon and imder the constant 
 supervision of the Chamber, and, when the danger of 
 the nation makes responsibihties less desirable, it is 
 only for a short time that Parliament leaves the burden 
 it refuses to carry to the men who have a right to take 
 it on themselves. The consequence is that Cabinets are 
 short-lived; that the effects of their policy seldom ap- 
 pearing clearly before they have given up office, or even 
 before they have been turned out by Parliament, they 
 can never be made to accoimt for their actions; that 
 
6o The Deterioration of France 
 
 the line followed by a Government is seldom adopted 
 by the Government which comes after it, and that, 
 as M. Clemenceau once said, with his usual bluntness in 
 the Chamber, the French Republic is governed inco- 
 herently. Add that the rule has almost invariably been 
 that the more difficult parts, those of the Ministers of 
 Foreign Affairs, War, Finance, and the Navy, are 
 hardly ever entrusted to technicians, and that, in the 
 words of M. Faguet, the lack of proper capacity is 
 generally associated with the dread of responsibilities. 
 Illustrations could be numberless. The history of the 
 Ministry of Navy alone would appear as a long tale of 
 expensive and dangerous inconsistency. 
 
 Neither the President nor the Cabihet having au- 
 thority, it appears evident that the real power in France 
 rests with the Parliament. And let not the reader be 
 deceived by preconceived ideas suggested by American 
 or English associations; it is not the Speaker of the. 
 Chamber who is invested with any special authority. 
 He is more active than the President of the Republic 
 and far more respected than the Prime Minister, no 
 doubt, and being appointed for a year he enjoys a sort 
 of stability, but his power does not exceed the limits of 
 the Parliamentary regulations; beyond the application 
 of these disciplinarian rules he can do nothing. So the 
 real possessor of authority is the Chamber itself — much 
 more than the Senate, whose essential duty is only to 
 ratify or modify the bills sent up from the other House. 
 
 Under the Second Empire, when, after years of 
 obscurity, the Chamber oi Deputies emerged once more 
 into the light, one arrangement was kept up which 
 limited the initiative of the Chamber in a very wise 
 manner. The Bills submitted to the debates were not 
 introduced by individual members; they were proposed 
 
Imperfections and Dangers 6i 
 
 and prepared outside the Assembly by the Council of 
 State, a body of eighty men with exceptional legal or 
 political training, who even now enjoy a consideration 
 similar to that of the Supreme Court in Washington. 
 The quiet work of these experts saved a great deal of 
 wavering and idle speechifying in the Chamber. This 
 excellent system was ignored in the constitutional laws, 
 and not only any ephemeral minister, but any ignorant 
 or even anarchical deputy, can introduce a bill, de- 
 scribe it with lengthy complacence ; and compel the 
 Chamber to give it attention. The number of these 
 private attempts at legislating is so great that the four 
 years of the existence of a Chamber are never enough to 
 attend to them, and to the usual discussion of the bud- 
 get as well. Many a Bill is looked into, placed on the 
 order of the day, and sometimes debated for months, 
 which eventually cannot be definitely passed or thrown 
 out because a new Chamber is returned before the 
 deputies have had time to make up their minds about it. 
 This accounts for no fewer than eight Income Tax Bills 
 having been not merely laid on the table but amended 
 and perfected by months and even years of sometimes 
 excellent work, without any one of them ever taking 
 any effect till 19 14. 
 
 So the Chamber legislates at will about the most 
 difficult questions ; nothing has been more frequent in its . 
 history than seeing this Assembly — mostly consisting 
 of lawyers — amending a knotty bill on some naval 
 technicality, defended by a Minister of Navy who was 
 not a naval man, but another lawyer or a physician. 
 Here again incapacity is the rule, and also once more 
 irresponsibility, for a Chamber consisting of six hundred 
 members is at first sight eminently anonymous, but it is 
 so even more than it seems; the anonymous 'deputy, who 
 
62 The Deterioration of France 
 
 gives his vote about a question of which he knew no- 
 thing before debates often more confusing than enligh- 
 tening, is not his own master; other anonymous people, 
 somewhere in his far-away constituency, have also their 
 opinion on the bill at issue — an opinion largely founded 
 on what they conceive to be the effect of that bill on 
 their own private interests — ^and they vote qtiite as 
 effectually as their effaced representative. 
 
 The Chamber which possesses all the legislating 
 power has long arrogated to itself, and still is inclined to 
 secure for itself whenever there is a chance of doing so 
 without incurring immediate responsibilities, the execu- 
 tive power as well. This, of course, belongs nominally 
 to the President and his ministers; but the President 
 never was known to do more than countersign the laws, 
 and as to the ministers, they have under them, it is true, 
 the officials who are responsible for the daily matter-of- 
 fact details of the enactment of a law, but, thanks to the 
 right of interpellation, they are amenable to any ques- 
 tion which the most obscure member is pleased to ask 
 them. They all know it, and act accordingly. M. 
 Combes, who was remarkable for a frankness not to be 
 mistaken for courage, avowedly professed himself the 
 agent of the Chamber. The Cabinet, during the three 
 years he heldoffice, was purely a name, the heads of 
 the Parliamentary groups meeting regularly the Prime 
 Minister and informing him in advance of the pleasure 
 o^ their adherents, did duty for the ministers; it was the 
 only period during which the constitutional laws were 
 applied not in the hypocrisy of their letter but in the 
 sincerity of their spirit. Then the Chamber was ab- 
 solutely the supreme ruler that the members of the 
 Assemblee Nationale wanted it to be. 
 
 The results of a preposterous combination placing 
 
An Element of Division 63 
 
 the power where there is no responsibility will appear in 
 the following chapters; we shall see that the intestine 
 divisions of the politicians, their forgetfulness of 1870, 
 their seeking a diversion in a colonial policy, and accept- 
 ance of a sometimes humiliating system of alliances in 
 consequence, their own moral deterioration and narrow- 
 minded persecutions of Catholics they affect to regard 
 as enemies, are the natural product of an absurdity 
 disguised as a constitution. All the questions which 
 puzzled foreigners ask so often about French politics, 
 about their corruption, about the continuation of an 
 action out of which no good effects ever seem to arise, 
 and the only positive result of which is religious intoler- 
 ance, are easily solved by the consideration of the 
 uncontrolled power of the Chamber. The French Cham- 
 ber can only be compared to an absolute monarch, but 
 whereas an absolute monarch may rouse and gradually 
 centre upon himself hatred enough for his overthrow, the 
 Chamber being apparently an image of the country and 
 in reality an unseizable Proteus, the deputies can only 
 be reformed by themselves, that is to say, by the slow 
 influx into them of the best public spirit. Now French 
 Assemblies have been known so to feel the influence of 
 the country as to sacrifice themselves, but that was at 
 exceptional epochs of rare enthusiasm, say 1790, and 
 coups d'etat have been of infinitely more frequent 
 occurrence. 
 
 3. The Chamber an Element of Division^ not of Union 
 
 I said above that until 1875, when the Assemblee 
 Nationale dissolved itself, a patriotic spirit of reparation 
 had kept the members of this Assembly united enough 
 for the accomplishment of their chief object, viz., the 
 
64 The Deterioration of France 
 
 healing of the wounds of 1870. Things were very differ- 
 ent in the first Chamber elected under the constitutional 
 laws. The deputies sent to Versailles in 1871 had been 
 chosen by the country still under the impression of the 
 double tragedy of the war and the Commune ; they were 
 decidedly conservative, and were expected to work in a 
 spirit totally different from that of Gambetta and his 
 group. Five years later a great change had taken place. 
 France had recovered from her shock, and instead of 
 the bewilderment of defeat she felt the exhilaration of 
 convalescence. She was tired of the hesitations and 
 divisions of the Assemblee Nationale concerning a 
 Restoration which at present did not appear as a 
 necessity. She was no longer afraid of Gambetta, and 
 began to be as convinced as Bismarck that his name no 
 longer meant guerre d outrance. So in 1876 she returned 
 a Chamber which was in majority Republican. The 
 Monarchists belonging to the preceding Assembly saw 
 with amazement that the constitution they had devised 
 as a shield for themselves became at once a weapon for 
 the Republicans. These Republicans were as different 
 from themselves as could be imagined. They no longer 
 had before them an immediate and very noble object 
 to attract their energies; they were much more men 
 possessed of a spirit and feeling its presence powerfully 
 but not distinctly. And what was this spirit? Emi- 
 nently the humanitarian, philosophical, and anti-Chris- 
 tian tendency which I pointed out as the spirit of the 
 Second Empire. Most of these men had been young 
 barristers, journalists, or medical students in Paris when 
 Taine, Renan, Baudelaire, Flaubert, etc., were the 
 oracles of cultivated youth, and they now reappeared 
 full of that dangerous culture. Henceforward they, 
 the new leaders, would govern France by the light 
 
An Element of Division 65 
 
 of ideas which the Second Empire had tolerated as 
 academic but would have abhorred if they had been 
 propounded as a political beacon. And these new- 
 comers might well affect the materialism of Taine, the 
 cosmopolitanism and dilettantism of Renan, but they 
 could not be philosophers or dilettanti like Taine or 
 Renan. Their vocation being politics they were re- 
 flections of these distinguished men as professional 
 politicians can be, that is to say, in a coarse manner. 
 Their chief satisfaction was evidently to be able to 
 combat the clergy — their political enemies — in the 
 name of science and philosophy. During the first five 
 years of the existence of the Republican regime they 
 had had serious reasons to fear lest the Republic should 
 only be a monarchy without a monarch, and while the 
 Assemblee Nationale was divided between its patriotic 
 effort and its incurable divisions, they had fought 
 throughout the country for their share of power and 
 their portion of booty. 
 
 Such men, excited by years of frustrated expectation, 
 by the recent contest, and by the heat of victory, were, 
 in the full force of the term, politicians as opposed to 
 statesmen, that is to say, men who would inevitably 
 confuse the interest of their party and their own selfish 
 ambitions with the interest of their country. In this 
 mood and with this background, finding a constitution 
 which made the Chamber the supreme master, it was 
 impossible that they should look beyond the limits of 
 party politics. In fact, from their first success in 1876 
 till the great shock of the Tangier incident in 1905, the 
 history of France as written by her deputies is merely 
 the history of the Chamber, nay, of the majority in the 
 successive chambers. With no authority to control 
 them the deputies could only follow the guidance of 
 
66 The Deterioration of France 
 
 their collective passions or appetites, and they did 
 it. 
 
 It is unfortunate that the first Republican manifes- 
 tations looked very much like persecution, and almost 
 from the first like religious persecution. It was very 
 natural that the Republican party should take pre- 
 cautions against a possible return of their opponents; 
 it was even comprehensible that the recent conquerors 
 should be on their guard against the alliance of the 
 throne and the altar, but Ferry went farther than even 
 Gambetta probably wanted, and made a whole category 
 of citizens outlaws at once. Vive la Repuhligue! meant 
 so clearly : Down with the Monarchists ! down with the 
 Moderates! down with the Catholics! that even now, 
 worn out as forty years have made this cry, it has still 
 the hostile sound which it took then. It is a watchword 
 more than a national phrase, and the Radicals of to-day 
 are as ready to claim a right of proprietorship in it as 
 the Opportunists of 1877. Peace, unity, reconciliation 
 they look upon as personal enemies, and they have 
 done so for two generations. 
 
 Beside the satisfaction of their hatreds they would 
 also have that of their appetites. Gambetta himself 
 said to his friend Madame Adam that it was only just 
 if after leading his soldiers to battle he should let them 
 have the booty. This meant an everlasting fight for 
 public employments, for well-paid sinecures, for privi- 
 leges of all sorts, and a stern denial of their due to those 
 outside the party. The history of the Third Republic 
 can envy that of previous regimes no sort of corruption. 
 The numberless changes of government occurring 
 without any very marked change in the Republican 
 personnel show clearly that interests have had more to 
 do with them than principles or opinions. Whenever 
 
An Element of Division 67 
 
 we read the list of a new Cabinet we hear people un- 
 aware of political realities wonder at seeing all the 
 shades in the Republican majority so well represented 
 in it, but this is not owing to the penetration and pru- 
 dence of the newly-made Premier, it is the result of 
 very matter-of-fact negotiations between the groups, 
 and the list of names can easily be converted into a 
 column of figures. 
 
 Clever as a lot of men seeking their own profit in 
 everything may be, if they happen to be legislators 
 instead of forming some disreputable corporation, they 
 have to legislate. Now legislating is a somewhat dan- 
 gerous business. As long as you can legislate against 
 your enemies, and are sure of a public that will approve 
 of your energetic action, it is very well. But a Parlia- 
 ment cannot endlessly devise laws against some opin- 
 ions or some categories of citizens. A time comes when 
 positive action has to be taken, either because the 
 majority has promised it, or because the minority 
 threatens agitation if measures likely to be popular 
 are not adopted, or merely because a whole country 
 cannot admit the fiction — so dear to the French depu- 
 ties — that a Parliament does enough so long as it 
 governs. Being thus constrained to pass and enact 
 laws, they are in danger of creating discontent among 
 their friends and sometimes — wherever taxation is in- 
 volved — of being prejudicial to themselves, their family, 
 or their clientele. 
 
 This necessity has been the motive of a great deal of 
 vain talk in the Chamber, and of the production of a 
 certain number of laws. Some of these have been mere 
 sham; for instance, all the Income Tax Bills I mentioned 
 in a previous chapter, the frequent suppression on the 
 eve of general elections of the sub-prefects, and the no 
 
68 The Deterioration of France 
 
 less frequent passing of bills destined to put heavy 
 taxation on luxuries — and consequently likely to please 
 the majority of electors — but nullified by the surrepti- 
 tious introduction of numberless clauses of exemption. 
 
 Many other laws have been passionately discussed 
 and carefully considered, tried, and afterwards re- 
 pealed when they were found not to act satisfactorily. 
 But all this wisdom was expended mostly upon mea- 
 sures concerning the Chamber itself. This assembly 
 never shows so much practical good sense, it is never so 
 ready alternately to stand upon principles and then 
 resort to combinations, as when its own existence is at 
 stake. These admirably-balanced laws have concerned 
 mostly the suffrage, and it is wonderful that the coun- 
 try should not have been early aware that the interest 
 which the Chamber evinced in electioneering matters 
 was not interest in the electors but interest in the 
 elected. 
 
 Finally, the Chamber has often passed laws which 
 were to give pleasure to the coimtry at large; for in- 
 stance, the many military laws, all intended to make 
 the burden of the military service lighter at least to the 
 multitude, and the labour laws, the laws on public 
 assistance, the nationalization of railways, etc. — these 
 measures were uniformly called truly democratic before 
 being enacted, but the moment their effects were seen 
 they had to be given their true name, which is demagog- 
 ism, and either had to be repealed or to be obviated by 
 other laws ad infinitum. 
 
 Such are the drawbacks of an assembly professedly 
 destined to legislate, but through a fundamental error 
 empowered to govern. Nobody will gainsay the state- 
 ment that since 1876, and even during the existence of 
 the Assemblee Nationale, the deputies have sought 
 
The Revanche Given Up 69 
 
 primarily their own advantage, and only thought of the 
 country's welfare in connection with it. Of a policy 
 based on the state, progress, and moves of the surround- 
 ing countries, and really entitled to the name of a 
 national policy, it is too clear that they have been 
 ignorant. No unguided assembly ever is conscious of 
 that supremely important side of politics unless the 
 existence of the nation be at stake, and the common 
 danger sweep away individual selfishness; even then 
 it is not for a very long period; assemblies without the 
 ^counterweight of a strong authority above them are a 
 destined prey for dissensions and for the petty politics 
 inseparable from dissensions. 
 
 4. The Revanche given up 
 
 The Republic was founded by Gambetta less than 
 two months after the beginning of the War of 1870 in 
 an admirable impulse of patriotic courage. Gambetta 's 
 motto was guerre d entrance, and the programme of the 
 new Government was to fight desperately and never 
 let go one stone of our fortresses or one inch of our 
 territory. It will be to the everlasting honour of 
 Gambetta that the battles on the Loire were fought to 
 redeem his word, and that France though defeated was 
 not disgraced. After the conclusion of the peace Gam- 
 betta adopted another watchword which sounded as 
 noble: "Unceasingly think of the Revanche, but never 
 speak of it." This speech again was dictated by im- 
 alloyed patriotism. It was evident that the all-ruling 
 necessity for France was to get back what was her own, 
 restore by so doing her impaired prestige in Europe, 
 and, from the mere sentimental point of view, heal a 
 wound which could not cease to bleed so long as Stras- 
 
^o The Deterioration of France 
 
 bourg, and above all Metz, were in the hands of the 
 
 enemy. 
 
 Gambetta's courage was so unquestionable, the sin- 
 cerity of his resolve was so little open to doubt, that 
 for many months Bismarck had no other thought than 
 to keep him out of office. Gambetta at the head of the 
 French Government in the then state of Europe, he said, 
 would be like a drummer in a sick man's room. 
 
 However, the election of 1871 returned a Conserva- 
 tive majority, and Gambetta was almost as isolated 
 in the Assemblee Nationale as he had been in the last 
 Imperial Chamber. Henceforward he had to fight once 
 more for his party, and its progress in the country, to 
 make up for lack of influence in the Assembly. Time 
 passed, and when, in 1876, the general election made 
 the Republican leader practically the arbitrator of 
 French politics, he appeared very different from what 
 he had been supposed to be. "Always think of the 
 Revanche, but never speak of it," was changed into, 
 "Speak of it all the time, whether you think of it or 
 not." In fact, from the moment when his influence in 
 the Chamber became irresistible until his death in 1882, 
 he never ceased to speak of Alsace-Lorraine in eloquent 
 though tumultuous addresses, but he never initiated 
 any action likely to bring about the return of the lost 
 provinces. As to his friends, they did not seem to mind. 
 In a short time Grevy succeeded MacMahon in the 
 Presidency, and was it not Grevy who, only a few 
 months after the end of the war, had coolly said to the 
 Alsatian patriot Scheurer-Kestner, that repining was 
 useless, and France must give up Alsace-Lorraine 
 without any hope for the future? 
 
 The key to this apparent contradiction is not difficult 
 to find. It is a principle which nobody nowadays seems 
 
The Revanche Given Up 71 
 
 ready to question, that a Monarchy is better adapted 
 than a Democracy for the execution of far-reaching 
 political plans with a view to territorial expansion. 
 Such plans require unity of purpose, secrecy, and, above 
 all, duration and perseverance. Of all these require- 
 ments democracies are destitute. Even if they were 
 less idealistic in their essence, less inclined to talk — ■ 
 sometimes think — about the progress of mankind 
 rather than the progress of the country they occupy, 
 they would still find great difficulty in carrying out 
 •positive political designs. The assemblies representing 
 them are too large, too unstable, too frequently in con- 
 tact with the multitude, and too narrowly dependent 
 upon it. Now the multitude, excepting in rare political 
 circumstances when unity of feeling happens to create 
 unity of purpose, is not only ignorant, but near-sighted; 
 it is incapable of understanding reasoning based upon 
 history, and of taking other than immediate interests 
 into consideration; it is too unintelligent to be discri- 
 minatingly selfish. Above all, it is timorous. The one 
 praise which even the individuals in the lower classes 
 professedly the most attached to the past will gen- 
 erously bestow on the republican regime is, at any rate 
 the Republic has one good point, it does not go to war. 
 It is not surprising, therefore, that the first truly 
 Republican assembly should have held decidedly paci- 
 fist principles, and be satisfied with hearing its most 
 eloquent orator go about repeating that immanent 
 justice could not but reclaim the lost provinces from 
 their captivity. The Monarchists had said everywhere 
 during the canvassing previous to the election of 1876 
 that the success of the Republicans would mean an 
 immediate danger of war, but it was only a ruse, and 
 everybody knew it. 
 
72 The Deterioration of France 
 
 The Republican party seem also to have realized, 
 almost from the first, the cogency of a very simple 
 though possibly imaginary reasoning. A war, they 
 thought, must result in a triumph or a defeat. If 
 France is victorious, she will fall in love at once with 
 the general to whom she owes her victory ; if she is once 
 more conquered, she will take such a dislike to the 
 regime, which she will regard as the cause of her mis- 
 fortune, that its continuation will be impossible. 
 
 This argument is based on wrong premises. The 
 memory of Napoleon the First haunts everlastingly the 
 nervous Republicans who dread the possibility of having 
 to love another dictator, and prevents them from seeing 
 to what extent conditions are changed. Modern 
 generals have nothing in common with the young hero 
 who came back from Italy with the fascination of youth 
 as well as that of glory about him. They are elderly 
 men and technicians. When the campaign is over they 
 are generally exhausted by it, and not likely to cherish 
 a Caesar's ambitions. It was Von Moltke who led the 
 Germans to victory in 1870, and yet if they had been 
 inclined to choose another master than the King of 
 Prussia, it would have been Bismarck and not the 
 soldier. Few generals will ever be more popular than 
 Boulanger and Marchand who however did not really 
 imperil the Republic. But these historical facts have 
 no weight with easily perturbed minds, and the average 
 Republican is endlessly influenced by his double con- 
 sciousness of the fact that France loves peace, but 
 adores soldiers. 
 
 One other cause, and possibly the most important 
 cause, of the gradual abandonment of the Revanche is 
 to be found in the personal psychology of Gambetta. 
 That Gambetta was a patriot cannot be doubted, that 
 
The Revanche Given Up 73 
 
 his moral quality was not equal to his impulses is also a 
 fact, and that he had the characteristic notion of the 
 Third Republic — viz., govern not only with but for 
 one's party — is another certainty. He unquestionably 
 was sincere in his passionate grief at the loss of Alsace- 
 Lorraine, and there is no reason to suspect that he was 
 anything but sincere every time he spoke of their re- 
 covery in the twelve years that followed 1870. But he 
 was an epicure with an unconquerable propensity 
 towards idleness and pleasure; he was partly Italian, 
 arid had the Italian's complexity of soul and the Ital- 
 ian's gift for relieving his emotions by oratory. Five 
 years' political agitation between 1870 and 1875 ^^^ ^^^ 
 alter the nature of his sentiments towards Alsace- 
 Lorraine, but it opened up new channels for his activity. 
 His and his friends' success at the general election of 
 1876 was a political success, and he found himself deep 
 in politics, and the head of a mere party five years after 
 being the undisputed representative of all the best 
 French feeling. Perhaps he was tired of fighting, and 
 wanted to reap the benefit of his victory; perhaps his 
 party was too much for him — ^he despised its covetous- 
 ness, and yet condoned and even defended it ; add that 
 he was a prey to women, and spent the violence of his 
 temperament in sentimental affairs. It has been con- 
 tended also that he was duped by Bismarck, who ap- 
 proached him through a disreputable man — Henckel 
 von Donnersmarck — and an even more disreputable 
 woman — La Paiva. Certainly he did not reject the 
 temptation as much as he ought to have done.' Per- 
 haps he imagined that there was enough Machiavellism 
 in him to make a gull even of Bismarck. Perhaps his 
 
 ^ This question of the relations of Gambetta with Bismarck I have 
 tried to elucidate in an article in the Qimrterly Review, October, 191 1. 
 
74 The Deterioration of France 
 
 conceit was flattered and his energy weakened by the 
 idea that he was negotiating man to man with the 
 greatest diplomatist of the age. Perhaps his old points 
 of view gradually changed, and in his desire of enjoying 
 his own success he became persuaded that Alsace- 
 Lorraine would best be got back by peace, and that a 
 commercial treaty, some exchange he thought possible 
 in the future, would do what a war might fail in bringing 
 about. 
 
 Whatever the causes may have been, it is certain that 
 the redemption of the Eastern" provinces, which had 
 been the ideal of the Republic at its birth, was gradu- 
 ally dropped by the Republicans, so that it became 
 practically their characteristic act. To revert openly 
 and frequently to the question of Alsace-Lorraine, to 
 give the annexed population renewed assurances that 
 they were not forsaken, and that there were still many 
 patriots on the look-out for an opportunity to redeem 
 them, has been for more than thirty years a sure sign 
 that one is in opposition, behind Deroulede and Barres, 
 far away from the orthodox Republican schools. On 
 the contrary, the milk-and-water theory that the pro- 
 gress of idealism through democracies will some day 
 force Germany to leave it to the annexed provinces to 
 choose on which side of the Rhine their government 
 ought to be, comfortably settled in most Republican 
 minds, and was occasionally displayed in public without 
 any protest from the responsible leaders. 
 
 In that way the landmark towards which the efforts 
 of France ought to have tended continuously after 1870, 
 the beacon which was to have thrown its light upon the 
 foreign politics of the French Governments and made 
 them attentive to every move of the chief European 
 nations, became obscured, and other infinitely less 
 
France^s Colonial Policy 75 
 
 noble guidances were substituted for it. A policy of 
 what was called Recollection was recommended, and 
 the quieting speech, point d'affaires, was the shibboleth. 
 The result was that the French imagined that their love 
 of peace was a condition productive of peace, and that, 
 fancying they had nothing to fear from outsiders as 
 long as they disclaimed warlike intentions, they lived 
 among themselves as if they had been alone in the uni- 
 verse and spent their native pugnacity at home. 
 
 5. The Deterioration of France Emphasized by her 
 Colonial Policy 
 
 It is dangerous to speak of the colonial policy of 
 France inaugurated by Ferry in 1881, and still at the 
 present moment absorbing a great deal of her activity. 
 To admire or blame it without careful discrimination 
 is an injustice or a piece of levity. 
 
 It is remarkable that the Colonial expansion of 
 France, though advocated by a patriot, was encouraged 
 by Bismarck. The Prussian statesman saw in it a 
 diversion from the thoughts of Revanche, and hoped 
 that the African ambitions of France would alienate 
 Italy from her. But it is also a fact that the Protective 
 legislation prevalent in Europe towards 1880, and the 
 unexpected presence of German and American goods 
 on markets where they had never been seen before, 
 made it imperative for French commerce to seek new 
 openings. The finance of France was rapidly recuperat- 
 ing, the bas de laine was full, and, unless one wanted 
 its millions and billions to be absorbed more and more 
 by foreign and even hostile enterprise, it was urgent 
 that channels should be found for them. Had not 
 Prevost-Paradol suggested in a less matter-of-fact spirit 
 
76 The Deterioration of France 
 
 that France should settle in Algeria and colonize it by 
 other than vicarious methods? Surely he would have 
 approved of plans for an Imperial development, 
 and in themselves such plans were nothing but 
 wise. 
 
 It is evidently an injustice therefore to say that the 
 Republicans only went to Tunis, the Tonkin, and Mada- 
 gascar, later on to the Soudan, Congo, and Morocco, to 
 avoid going back to Strasbourg, and to find in those new 
 settlements enough lucrative positions to satisfy the 
 greed of their party. Nothing prevented French diplo- 
 macy from going round to Alsace by Indo-China. On 
 the contrary, the French, with the encouragement of 
 success on far-away shores, the revelation of military 
 and administrative capacities in men who had otherwise 
 languished in idleness, would probably have felt bolder 
 as they became stronger, and in due time a chance 
 would have offered for them to wash out of their history 
 the stain Which cannot stay there. But all this ought 
 to have been done with the everlasting purpose of re- 
 establishing the European equilibrium altered at Ver- 
 sailles and Frankfort, and such an ambition required 
 conditions which in fact we find have been lacking. It 
 presupposed enough moralizing of the country to bring 
 about repopulation instead of increasing the rate of 
 depopulation, and this could only be done by a careful 
 school and religious legislation along with encouraging 
 economic measures. It also presupposed the anticipa- 
 tion of conflicts on far-away shores as well as in Europe, 
 instead of the apathetic certainty that colonizing was 
 the surest method to avoid frictions. Nothing could be 
 accomplished without a diplomacy, an army, and, to 
 begin with, a navy of the first rank; and, in order to use 
 these instruments properly, a great deal of the deter- 
 
France's Colonial Policy 77 
 
 mination, unity, and self-sacrifice which caused the 
 success of the Japanese in 1905 was necessary. Such a 
 combination, the critics of the Republic insist, is im- 
 possible in a Democracy, but is almost easy under a 
 Monarch. Have we not seen the German Emperor 
 create in a few years a navy second only to one in the 
 world? Is it not a fact, on the contrary, that the power- 
 ful navy of the United States may be rendered useless 
 by a President whose ideology should hamper the more 
 virile impulses of commerce? 
 
 Whatever may be the rights and wrongs of Demo- 
 cracy in other countries, it is certain that the Republi- 
 can Parliaments, unsupported by the public spirit and 
 poorly guided by merely nominal Governments, were 
 unequal to the task set for them. Exclusively attentive 
 to their divisions — to what Jules Ferry contemptuously 
 called their pot au feu — they let well-meaning but iux 
 competent Ministers send the French Navy to rack and 
 ruin. So while they accepted a Colonial policy leading 
 evidently to a Colonial Empire, they suffered the only 
 instrument likely to make a Colonial Empire of any. 
 use, to be broken in their own hands. 
 
 Besides, it was childish to imagine that a policy of 
 recollection and non-interference could be maintained 
 while a Colonial policy was being carried on. The 
 danger of war became immediate the moment the ambi- 
 tions of France were openly declared; and as France 
 could not run the risk of a war alone against any of her 
 more powerful neighbours, she was compelled to seek 
 or accept alliances. Now, entering upon any system of 
 alliances amounted to giving up the attitude of non- 
 interference adopted since the establishment of the 
 Republic, and being ready to follow a Hne entirely at 
 variance with the democratic principles. 
 
78 The Deterioration of France 
 
 6. Imperfections of the System of A lliances 
 
 Alliances may be the results of international sym- 
 pathies, but when they are nothing e'se they are 
 dangerous. Certainly the sympathies of Napoleon the 
 Third for Italy, which were of an eminently sentimental 
 order, were of little use to France. Agreements ought 
 to be concluded with great precautions and watched 
 with even greater attention. The moment they create 
 a condition of confiding apathy in a nation, they are 
 not only a sign but even an element of decadence. Now 
 it is difficult for democracies to derive from an alliance 
 the advantages which it is in its nature to procure, and 
 for the French Republic, as the constitutional laws of 
 1875 make it, it is almost impossible. The representa- 
 tive body being the image of the multitude can hardly 
 face the possibility of a war with sufficient determina- 
 tion, and, on the other hand, the Foreign Minister, 
 being under the perpetual supervision of the representa- 
 tives, cannot act with proper secrecy unless he does so 
 by unconstitutional methods. This is not all; the 
 Foreign Minister is as apt to be displaced and replaced 
 as his less important colleagues, and the danger of a 
 lack of continuity is constant. 
 
 All these difficulties were only too plentifully illus- 
 trated by the diplomatic history of France imtil quite 
 recent years. Its two chief moments are characterized 
 by the names of M. Hanotaux and M. Delcasse, who 
 followed different methods, but came to alarmingly 
 similar results. 
 
 It is an unfortunate fact connected with the 
 tenure of office by M. Hanotaux, that the official 
 promulgation of the alliance with Russia practically 
 coincided with the most unpleasant pacifist demon- 
 
Imperfections of Alliances 79 
 
 stration that France had to witness after the Third 
 Republic. The alliance dates from June 10, 1895, and 
 just a week later, on June i8th, the French fleet was 
 represented at the inauguration of the Kiel canal, 
 largely built with the money paid over by France 
 to Germany after 1870. M. Hanotaux was a disciple 
 and an admirer of Gambetta, and it would seem as if 
 the action of the younger man proved that his prede- 
 cessor actually wanted a reconciliation with Prussia, 
 although he did not wish for an agreement with Russia. 
 At any rate, people generally construed an official step 
 of such solemnity in the light of a recognition of the 
 Frankfort Treaty and a final abandonment of Alsace- 
 Lorraine. This was hard indeed, but nothing is ever 
 really final in poHtical history. What one century 
 does another will undo, and no Frenchman — not even 
 among the Socialists — doubts that some day, in spite 
 of all the pacifist theories or diplomatic blank lies, 
 Alsace-Lorraine will come back to its former possessors. 
 So, one could take refuge against the present reality in 
 hopes for the future, and especially in the hope of 
 promptly seeing the Colonial Empire of France founded 
 and prosperous. 
 
 Viewed otherwise than sentimentally, the plan con- 
 ceived by M. Hanotaux could not be denied greatness. 
 It was a bold and effective design to draw a line 
 of French influence across the whole width of Africa, 
 and the idea served by such a man as Marchand will be 
 remembered in history as of epic daring. But M. 
 Hanotaux, who had had to keep from French opinion 
 that the Russian alliance involved some sort of veiled 
 entente with Germany, had also had to keep from it — 
 and consequently keep from the Chamber — that Mar- 
 chand's march was not a mere explorer's expedition, 
 
8o The Deterioration of France 
 
 but had a military and diplomatic character as well. 
 When the Fashoda incident became known, there was 
 a universal surprise and some nervousness, but the fear 
 of a war lasted only a few days. How could M. Hano- 
 taux defend his point of view when his colleague of 
 the navy had no vessels to support his arguments? 
 The consequence of the first effort of France to get 
 out of her isolation, therefore, was to show to the 
 world that she could still conceive the designs of a 
 nation of the first rank, but, owing to the subservience 
 of her governments to opinion, she had only the 
 strength of a nation of the second rank to carry them out. 
 
 Exactly similar was the experience of M. Hanotaux's 
 successor, M. Delcasse. 
 
 Of course it was a new departure. M. Delcass6 
 had none of the intellectual admiration of M. Hanotaux 
 for the culture of Germany, and his patriotism had its 
 roots deeper in popular ground. He had no notion of 
 the possibiHty of intimidating or coaxing Germany in 
 the far-away future into giving back or exchanging 
 Alsace-Lorraine against some settlement overseas. 
 His secret hope was to insulate Germany from the rest 
 of Europe by a chain of apparently peaceful agree- 
 ments, and when the time came to make her feel 
 that, strong as she thought herself, she could not resist 
 the justice of France's claims supported by a tremend- 
 ous coalition. Here again, there is the beauty of a 
 patriotic and coherent conception. Perhaps its author 
 forgot that the parties to the agreements he signed 
 were more attentive to their own ambitions than to the 
 prospects he himself cherished, but the very simplicity 
 of such an idea was a force in itself, and its gradual 
 accomplishment created in Europe an atmosphere of 
 respect for France which was another element of success. 
 
Imperfections of Alliances 8i 
 
 It is therefore no unforgivable vice in M. Delcasse's 
 plan that it contradicted flatly that of M. Hanotaux, 
 for the diplomacy of every country offers similar pieces 
 of discontinuity. But the error of M. Delcasse, like 
 that of M. Hanotaux, was to prepare war without 
 preparing for war or without giving due notice to the 
 responsible persons that they had to prepare for war. 
 We shall see by and by that the seven years of M. 
 Delcasse's office (i 898-1 905) coincided with the Drey- 
 fusist agitation and with the Government of M. Combes 
 and of the Radicals of the narrowest observation — 
 that is to say, the period in French history during 
 which mere words were treated the most respectfully, 
 and views were sufficient food for the minds of politi- 
 cians. War appeared as a barbarous impossibility, 
 and the chief preoccupation of the Ministers of War 
 and Marine was to civilize the army and navy, turn 
 ships and barracks into institutions for the civic per- 
 fecting of young Frenchmen, and, in short, prepare the 
 world for universal peace. The policy of M. Delcasse 
 was presented all the time as the surest guarantee of 
 peace, and he alone knew that its inevitable issue must 
 be the professedly impossible conflagration. The un- 
 bounded surprise which took place in 1905 was the 
 result, and although it will always be regarded as the 
 most fortunate awakening for France, it was accom- 
 panied with such a humiliation of the Foreign Minister 
 as all good Frenchmen, whether his friends or his foes, 
 felt with him. His own disappointment was more 
 than bitter. One of his friends concluded that France 
 was doomed, and wrote a book the title of which alone 
 was an avowal of despair. ' All that ought to have 
 been concluded was that no foreign policy is possible 
 
 ^La France qui Meurt, by A. Ebray, 1910. 
 6 
 
82 The Deterioration of France 
 
 to a country whose constitution vests authority in an 
 Assembly and not in Government, and makes it impera- 
 tive for the Foreign Minister either to be a nonentity 
 or to conceal his action from the politicians who some 
 day will be his judges and the arbitrators of his fate. 
 To conclude, the policy of alliances, as it was carried 
 on during the greatest portion of the existence of the 
 Third Republic, practically until the military revival 
 of the country, was in contradiction with the nature 
 of the French Democracy, and yet had all the appear- 
 ances of being perfectly at one with it. It secretly 
 meant war, but superficially it was — and loudly pro- 
 fessed to be — the safeguard of peace. Who could attack 
 France when the millions of the Russian army or the 
 powerful fleets of England were ready for her defence? 
 The real reading of the situation ought, of course, to 
 have been : We are involved in the interests and conse- 
 quently the vicissitudes of other nations, therefore we 
 must be day and night on the look-out and prepared 
 against every surprise. But this attitude, and politi- 
 cians know it, would promptly bring about a state of 
 affairs practically nullifying the constitution which 
 makes them supreme. Instinctively and unconsci- 
 ously a country feeling the vicinity of danger will not 
 leave its security to the pleasure of a divided and 
 irresponsible collectivity — it is sure to seek better 
 watchmen and braver defenders. So the selfishness 
 and levity of Parliament, as well as the impossible 
 position of French Foreign Ministers, combine to keep 
 the truth from the nation. And what is the result? 
 That the alliances, instead of acting as a tonic, act 
 as an opiate, turning the public feeling and the public 
 mind from all-important realities, weakening their sense 
 of responsibility, and centring the national pride upon 
 
Politicians of Third Republic 83 
 
 that morbid joy of having been great once by power and 
 of being great yet by culture and art, which is a well- 
 known sign of the decadence of nations. 
 
 7. The Deterioration of France Exemplified in the 
 Politicians of the Third Republic 
 
 Compared with their opponents in the Imperial 
 Assemblies, the handful of Republicans — Gambetta, 
 Jules Simon, Jules Favre — were the glorious minority. 
 They had talent and courage, and they represented the 
 future— the beautiful future which the popular mind 
 pictured to itself under such glowing colours. Nobody 
 doubted that an Assembly of such men would be far 
 superior morally to any Parliament elected through 
 official influence under the Second Empire. 
 
 During the war the same men stood for heroism — 
 mad heroism it is true, but none the less sublime. The 
 violence of their resolution scared the demoralized 
 country, and the dread it inspired caused the success of 
 the Monarchists in the election of 1871. When, in 
 1876, and especially in 1878, they became the majority, 
 and their influence could hardly be challenged, things 
 changed. There were two great ideas to defend: 
 the necessity of the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine and 
 liberty of conscience. Both seemed essentially Republi- 
 can ideas; religious freedom and the integrity of the 
 territory being dogmas with the democratic theorist. 
 But the moral falling off of Gambetta which I men- 
 tioned above was only one case in a thousand, and the 
 politicians who succeeded one another in the Repub- 
 lican Parliaments felt at once that liberty of conscience 
 was a political danger and that the vindication of the 
 patriotic claims on the Eastern provinces would cause a 
 
84 The Deterioration of France 
 
 timorousness in the minds of the electors by which they 
 could only be losers. In consequence they gave up 
 these two noble causes to the opposition. 
 
 What was left to them to give an appearance of 
 superiority to their side? They have repeated it so 
 often that we ought to know. They plumed themselves 
 everlastingly on giving France three great blessings — 
 viz., civic freedom, international peace, and schools for 
 the poor. But are these essentially Republican con- 
 quests? By no means; they exist in Belgium, in Italy, 
 in Scandinavia, even largely in Germany, to say nothing 
 of course of England. Besides, it must be confessed 
 that civic freedom represented by the suffrage is more 
 the shadow than the thing, that peace at the cost of 
 dignity is a perpetual danger of war, because — as the 
 German proverb says — "him who makes himself a sheep 
 the wolf will eat," and as to schools it is a melancholy 
 fact that after forty years about six in a hundred 
 French soldiers are illiterate, and the schools, instead 
 of being instruments of civilization, have been turned 
 into weapons of unbelief. From the first, the true 
 Republicans in the French Parliaments have been not 
 the champions of peace, but the panegyrists of ease; 
 and this opened a gulf between what they were sup- 
 posed to be and what they really were, between their 
 ancestors of 1792 — bred on antiquity and rising quickly 
 though tumultuously to the sublime — and themselves, 
 even between the generous utopianism of their 
 predecessors of 1848 and their own coddling 
 wisdom. 
 
 Not that the Republican bourgeois who sit in the 
 Chamber are cowards. M. de Mun, who has no special 
 reason for flattering them, has admirably narrated' a 
 
 * Le GauloiSj September 21, 1905. 
 
Politicians of Third Republic 85 
 
 memorable sitting of the Chamber in which one could 
 see what they are capable of at a pinch, when the 
 French spirit in them is roused. 
 
 It was in February 1887, when M. Ren6 Goblet was 
 Premier and Boulanger Minister of War. The Schnoebel^ 
 incident had recently taken place, and the language of 
 Bismarck was becoming day after day more irritating. In 
 the meantime the national factories were at work on the 
 Lebel gun. In the afternoon of the 8th the Premier un- 
 expectedly demanded a supplementary fund for the speedy 
 completion of the work. Everybody realized immediately 
 that the situation must be serious; the sitting was sus- 
 pended, and the deputies, of whatever political opinion, 
 pressed round the Prime Minister. Yes, M. Goblet said, 
 the situation was serious. The deputies were called back 
 into the House. lii a moment all the seats were full. The 
 public tribunes were overcrowded, and the diplomats* 
 special tribune was full of ambassadors; the deep silence 
 oppressed everybody and the universal emotion was visible. 
 The Speaker, M. Floquet, stood up, holding in his hands, 
 which slightly trembled, the bill under consideration. His 
 voice sounded through the room as he read the first chapter. 
 When it was over, the Speaker put the usual question: 
 Has anybody anything to say? but the silence remained 
 unbroken. Then he spoke the other usual sentence: Let 
 those who wish to support the motion raise their hands. 
 Immediately five hundred arms were thrown up at once, 
 and I can remember Bishop Freppel, who sat next me, 
 making the same gesture with a rapidity recalling the 
 soldier's promptitude and with the fire of Revanche in 
 his eyes. Chapter after chapter was thus passed through, 
 the banal gesture at the end of each one being repeated as a 
 sacred rite. It seemed as i: the soul of France had taken 
 possession of these hundreds of men. The people in the 
 tribunes were breathless with emotion, the ambassadors 
 looked on serious and surprised. The moment the last 
 
86 The Deterioration of France 
 
 division was over, the House became once more empty in 
 a twinkling. 
 
 If a French Assembly even of inferior political quality 
 should ever become incapable of an act of courage like 
 this, France would not be France any more, and I should 
 not be writing this book. But courage of the exalted 
 order is not in daily demand in a Parliament, and the 
 inferiority of the politicians of the Third Republic has 
 had more occasions than their fortitude to attract 
 attention. This inferiority is caused, partly, as I have 
 said above, by the excessive dependence of the repre- 
 sentative upon his constituents and the consequent 
 habit of seeing their interests and considering their 
 wishes before the interests and wishes of the country; 
 also by the lack of political guidance for which the 
 Constitution is responsible. But even with a better 
 mode of election and a better Constitution, the politi- 
 cians of the Third Republic would have suffered from 
 an original fault which nothing can compensate — that 
 is, the notion that politics is a trade like any other, 
 with its risks, its difficulties, its expenses, and con- 
 sequently the blemishes attached to all modem pro- 
 fessions. The politician is of very much the same 
 kind as the financier with whom he is in daily inter- 
 course; his moral standard is limited by professional 
 necessities. 
 
 In his constituency the deputy who labels himself 
 truly Republican and denies the ticket to men outside 
 his party is seldom esteemed. He need not, like a mem- 
 ber of the English Parliament, see his constituents very 
 frequently — in fact he is often satisfied, when he has the 
 Prefect on his side, with visiting them every four years, 
 just before the election, or possibly at some celebration 
 
Politicians of Third Republic 87 
 
 — ^but he is in frequent relation with half a dozen men 
 from each parish who are not by any means the pick of 
 the population. When people outside this charmed 
 circle happen to speak of it, it is seldom without a wink 
 or a shrug. In short, the deputy is not respected, and 
 when the Prefect comes round for the conseil de revision 
 of the recruits, or some important magistrate is sent 
 down by the Cour d'Appely the effect produced by their 
 presence is very different. The deputies of the Second 
 Empire, "creatures of the power'* as they were, made 
 an incomparably better impression. Certainly they 
 were delighted to be on good terms with the Emperor's 
 Government, and it was somewhat to be regretted that 
 the ''white poster" — the sign of official recommenda- 
 tion — made their election almost compulsory, but they 
 were gentlemen^ who did not care for the material 
 advantages which might accrue to them from being at 
 the Palais-Bourbon, and if they made interest in Paris 
 for some local improvement it was not out of base 
 motives. No French Assembly, since the clamorous 
 Sans-culottes, has been in its general appearance so near 
 vulgarity as the Chambers of Deputies elected after 
 1875. The demagogism of 1848 was elegant in com- 
 parison; its utopianism was pure, and the presence of 
 Lamartine, Louis Blanc, and even Armand Marrast 
 lent it gentlemanliness. One understands the feeling of 
 Mrs. Craven — she was born La Ferronnays — who, when 
 she occasionally came back to her native country after 
 1878, used to say that France in her new state appeared 
 to her as a lady of noble rank who had married her 
 footman. 
 
 It is useless to recall in great detail facts proving that 
 
 ' Half the members of the Chamber and nearly two thirds in the 
 Senate were titled men, and there were very few professional politicians. 
 
88 The Deterioration of France 
 
 the professional politician is not scrupulous; the scandal 
 connected with the name of Wilson — the son-in-law of 
 President Grevy — the Panama affair, the financial opera- 
 tions known as the Tirard and Rouvier conversions, are 
 classic instances which are enough to warrant every 
 suspicion when one hears of minor or less public offences ; 
 I shall have an occasion to say later that the crafty 
 manner — rather than the fact itself — in which the 
 deputies voted for themselves a handsome old-age 
 pension — a, most mysterious transaction — and raised 
 their salary by two thirds, greatly diminished even the 
 poor consideration they had enjoyed so far. 
 
 If the Third Republic has produced but few men of 
 great civic virtue, it has not produced many who were 
 remarkable either for their eloquence or their political 
 capacities. A comparison of the Republican orators 
 since Gambetta, with those of the Restoration and of 
 the reign ot Louis Philippe, would be crushingly in 
 favour of the latter ; it is a sign of the times that Jaures 
 should have acquired the reputation he enjoys, mostly, 
 it is true, among those who never heard him. There 
 was a great deal more of the cymbal than of the clarion 
 in him. 
 
 Statesmanship is even more scarce than eloquence. 
 In these days, when international politics are so im- 
 portant that they should be a constant subject of 
 meditation for true patriots, we do find a few deputies 
 who can hold forth plausibly enough about these in- 
 tricate questions — there are even those who have built 
 for themselves a sort of system, and stick to it without 
 too much inconsistency; but where is the voice which 
 at intervals ought to remind the French of their national 
 duty with enough knowledge of the situation of Europe 
 and enough authority to silence mere babblers and 
 
Politicians of Third Republic 89 
 
 make the country feel united in one great patriotic im- 
 pulse? Where is the French Cavour? — certainly neither 
 M. de Freycinet, nor M. Hanotaux, nor even M. Del- 
 casse can hope to have statues erected to their memory. 
 
 A general tinge of banality has been attached to 
 all that the Republic has produced until quite recent 
 years. The roll of its Premiers, when one reads it over 
 from the first days, sounds like a list of incarnations 
 of mediocrity. Even the Presidents are painful to 
 remember. Certainly the first, Thiers, was a great 
 Frenchman, and the last, M. Poincare, once gave hopes 
 of being one ; but all the rest, excepting MacMahon, who 
 had a brilliant past and was the soul of honesty, were 
 ordinary men, chosen for their very lack of individual- 
 ity. Placed beside the American Presidents, they cut a 
 sorry figure, and yet the United States does not devote 
 its best men to politics. It is melancholy to reflect that 
 if the celebrities of the army, or of the bar, or of lit- 
 erature, and even of journalism were compared with 
 those of the successive Republican Parliaments, the 
 comparison would be more than disadvantageous for 
 politicians. 
 
 This is, as often happens, both the result and the 
 continuing cause of an absurd paradox. It would seem 
 that the Chamber, being the chief and practically the 
 only governing influence in France, the best men in the 
 country ought to convene there. But it being pre- 
 posterous nonsense that a legislating Assembly should 
 have power to the exclusion of the real Government, 
 the best men either will not seek this Assembly, or are 
 eliminated from it, or become deteriorated in it. At 
 all events the history of France in the last forty years 
 has been that of the deterioration of deputies as much 
 as that of deterioration by deputies, and the lack of any. 
 
90 The Deterioration of France 
 
 real merit in the rulers of the country has been a 
 powerful element of demoralization. 
 
 8. Anti-Clericalism the only Continuous Policy 
 
 The first great battle that the Republic fought was 
 against MacMahon and the Monarchists, and it was 
 promptly won; after the election of 1878 there was little 
 question in the country of any strong anti-constitutional 
 opposition; the Monarchists were as divided as ever, 
 and when the deat;h of the Comte de Chambord perforce 
 united them, there was still the division between the 
 Orleanists and Imperialists. The second battle was 
 against what was called Clericalism — that is to say, the 
 interference of the clergy in the politics of the country; 
 The clergy, it is true, had been Republican in 1848, and 
 the difficulties which the Emperor had had with the 
 Pope owing to the Italian question had not contributed 
 to make the bishops and their priests Imperialists. So 
 the tendency of the clergy would have been towards a 
 Republic if the word had had the same meaning that it 
 had when Lamartine used it. But with different people 
 the word had taken another signification, and the old 
 alUance of the Throne and the Altar was revived. 
 
 It was natural therefore that the Republicans, 
 whether unbelievers or the reverse, should look askance 
 at any possibiHty of the clergy inspiring the politics 
 of their flocks, and there were reasons for fearing lest 
 they should, for the clergy, though not Imperialists, 
 had been favoured by the Empire, and their political 
 influence had in many places been considerable. The 
 famous speech of Gambetta, "Clericalism is the tru6 
 enemy," ought therefore to be replaced in its environ- 
 ment, and only a political meaning put upon it. Gam- 
 
Anti-Clericalism the Only Policy 91 
 
 betta was no believer, but he was no antagonist to 
 Christianity either, and it is ignorance of history alone 
 that will quote his oft-repeated words in the same 
 breath as Voltaire's no less famous ecrasons Vinfdme, 
 His true meaning appeared clearly in another watch- 
 word: "Anti-clericalism is good at hom6, but it would 
 not do to export it." Gambetta fully realized that 
 French influence overseas was indistinguishable from 
 Catholic propagandism, and would have been more 
 than satisfied if he had seen the clergy keep away 
 from politics as they did under Leo XIII. 
 
 Were the men in Gambetta's immediate entourage 
 in the same state of mind? Unfortunately not. Ranc, 
 Brlsson, Clemenceau, Paul Bert, even Ferry, even a 
 highly-cultivkted man like Challemel-Lacour, were 
 opposed to clerical influence, not merely for political 
 but for philosophical reasons as well. They were full of 
 the spirit of the Empire, but they had all of them been 
 educated by men who had preserved the Voltairian 
 tradition of 1840, and their admiration for Renan was, 
 as I said above, admiration for the personal enemy of 
 Christ, and not at all for the elegant dilettante we now 
 take him to have been. So the effort made to keep the 
 political influence of the Church within bounds soon 
 became transformed into antagonism against the 
 Church herself. Less than two years after the im- 
 doubted triumph of the Republican party, the Jesuits 
 had been turned out of their schools and made outlaws. 
 It cannot be questioned either that the law permitting 
 divorce was passed, less from social or sentimental 
 considerations, as in America, for instance, than be- 
 cause its promulgation would be construed by the 
 popula-r mind as a startling defeat of the Church. At 
 the same time an agitation was begun against the 
 
92 The Deterioration of France 
 
 influence of the Pope in a country not his own, through 
 a clergy only national in appearance, and the arguments 
 which were to bring about the separation of Church and 
 State began to be circulated by the Radical press. 
 
 Yet this was only a beginning. It soon appeared that 
 a great anti-clerical influence, which about 1880 ac- 
 quired a power it had never possessed before, wanted 
 more decisive steps. It has taken years to convince 
 people who fear to be victims to exaggeration, especially 
 in England, that the influence of the French Freemasons 
 had any effect upon the politics of their country, and 
 that it was of a decidedly anti-Christian nature. To-day 
 one meets with less incredulity. Official documents 
 have proved to evidence that Freemasons are and have 
 throughout the history of the Third Republic been 
 numerous in the Chamber and Senate, that they in- 
 variably vote solid, and that if any of them presume 
 to dissent from the rest they are excommunicated, as 
 M. Millerand was in 1904 ; it is also evident from matter- 
 of-fact comparisons of the resolutions passed in the 
 yearly Masonic Conventions with contemporary Par- 
 liamentary proceedings that the legislation of France 
 has often been prepared in the Lodges. The essentially 
 anti-religious character of the Masonic influence appears 
 no less clearly from the perusal of Masonic official 
 publications, and above all of the most recent Masonic 
 Ritual. Until 1876 the name of the Grand Architect 
 appeared in the French edition of that book as it did 
 in the versions printed in other languages. After that 
 date this name disappeared from the Ritual, and the fact 
 was so obviously meant as an open declaration of athe- 
 ism that the English and Scottish Lodges shortly after 
 gave injunctions to their members to keep away from 
 the French Lodges when they came to the Continent. 
 
Anti-Clericalism the Only Policy 93 
 
 In this spirit, then, and with this exceptional Power, 
 has Masonic influence been exercised in France until 
 scandalous revelations concerned with the espionage of 
 officers by Freemasons made it less effective, or at all 
 events less brazen.. 
 
 The chief effort of the Freemasons and their friends 
 was turned at first against the teaching of religion in 
 schools. Napoleon the First and Napoleon the Third 
 had entrusted a great many State-supported schools 
 to the Christian Brothers and to various orders of 
 women. These schools were not uniformly effective; 
 as a rule, the Christian Brothers were excellent teachers, 
 the nuns less so. Yet the improvement among them 
 was constant, and when a law was passed making the 
 usual degree as imperative for them as for the other 
 teachers, there was no reason why they should be 
 inferior to anybody else. But the objection against 
 them was not based on lack of professional efficiency 
 but on the spirit which their costume seemed to repre- 
 sent. A bill was passed in 1880 secularizing, as it was 
 called, all the Government schools, and determining 
 what the teaching of religion in them ought to be. 
 Ferry, the principal initiator of this measure, was not an 
 atheist; in fact his religious views did not differ very 
 much from those of Jules Simon, and the other disciples 
 of Cousin. The mention of God, the soul, and morals 
 was not forbidden in the schools, the children were to be 
 taught their ethical duties, but all this was carefully 
 regulated. The teaching of the master, though in 
 ninety-nine cases in a hundred destined exclusively for 
 Catholic children, must exclude all that could give 
 offence to other denominations, or even to mere Theists 
 opposed to any revealed creed. This was called the 
 Neutrality of the school. 
 
94 The Deterioration of France 
 
 It was evident that in a country overwhelmingly 
 Catholic in numbers this legislation would inevitably 
 bear the appearance of what it was indeed secretly 
 meant to be, and that it would promptly become in its 
 spirit a legal warfare against Catholic beliefs. Every- 
 thing depended upon the school teacher, and it promptly 
 turned out that the school teacher who kept furthest 
 away from the interpretation of the Church in his 
 presentment of Theism was regarded by his supe- 
 riors as nearest the ideal of neutrality, and rewarded 
 accordingly. 
 
 But the passage of Catholicism to Theism in French- 
 men not exceptionally well educated, and in the years 
 immediately following the success of Taine as a de- 
 molisher of Cousin and of the very Theism recom- 
 mended by Ferry, could not result very frequently in 
 the creation of a state of mind similar to Rousseau's or 
 of a sincere — if extremely sober — Swiss piety. Such an 
 attitude is almost impossible in Latin countries in which 
 rationalistic belief only exists as the refinement of a 
 highly educated elite, nor would it have been greatly 
 favoured by the enemies of the Grand Architect; so 
 in many places, mere Theism soon became the religion 
 of Science, with the identification of God with the 
 category of Ideal, Progress, and Evolution, and above 
 all, the most perfimctory manner of teaching the official 
 chapter dedicated to Spiritualism. A few facts have 
 shown how Ferry's Theism was understood both by the 
 teaching body and by politicians. The time-honoured 
 example in Lhomond's Latin Grammar, Deus est Sanc- 
 tuSy was dismissed from improved editions as dangerous 
 for neutrality. One school edition of La Fontaine re- 
 placed "Petit poisson deviendra grand si Dieu lui prete 
 vie" by ''Si Ton lui pr6te vie." M. Fouillee, the well- 
 
Anti-Clericalism the Only Policy 95 
 
 known philosopher, had the very unphilosophic weak- 
 ness to alter a passage in his wife's popular Tour de 
 France par Deux Enfants, so as to leave out a visit 
 of the two young travellers to Notre Dame de Paris. 
 Finally M. Combes, at the time of his greatest popu- 
 larity as an anti-Catholic Premier, was hooted down 
 by his majority for saying that he was a SpirituaHst, 
 and had to come a few days later and make amends 
 for his imprudence by explaining his statement in a 
 manner which explained it away. 
 
 This historical scene belongs, it is true, to the Drey- 
 fusist period of the Third Republic, to which I shall 
 only advert by and by, but it throws its light on the 
 preceding years, and leaves no doubt that when the 
 Republican majority passed the Ferry Bill in 1880, it 
 regarded it only as a first step towards more radical 
 suppressions. 
 
 The campaign against religious teaching is only one 
 phase of the endless war waged against the Church by 
 the Third Republic; and if I wished to give even in 
 outline a more complete sketch of its history, I should 
 have to review the Parliamentary history of France 
 almost month by month — any random reference to the 
 Journal Officiel will prove this — but the effort of the 
 Republicans in the first bloom of their success to de- 
 christianize France through the schools shows not only 
 the spirit of their leaders, but also their policy. This 
 has consisted, and still consists at the present day, in 
 proposing the philosophical campaign against religion 
 in all its forms — even the vaguest — as a continuation 
 of the great contest of the years 1871-1878 against the 
 Monarchist clergy. 
 
 Such a policy has had a double advantage. It has 
 often blinded uncritical people to the really anti- 
 
96 The Deterioration of France 
 
 Christian character of measures presented as the legiti- 
 mate resistance of the lay against the religious society 
 — the measures against the religious orders have had 
 universally this character — and when, at various epochs, 
 the Republican unity has seemed to be threatened, 
 it has helped to bring together the disjoined parts of 
 the majority. The "black spectre" pointed out now by 
 Combes, now by Bourgeois, had often frightened 
 deputies or electors into their duty, which is to support 
 the Government. This attitude is sometimes sincere — 
 and then it is rather stupid — sometimes put on, and 
 then it borders on hypocrisy, but even in the most 
 resolutely Protestant countries the terror of Rome 
 could not be more powerful in its immediate effects. 
 The confusion of anti-clericalism with anti-Catholicism 
 or anti-Christianity has been so easy to produce, and is 
 so ineradicable, that even now, after forty-four years, 
 after the effort made by Leo XIII to win the Catholics 
 to Republican loyalty, after the success of such a truly 
 Republican movement as the SilloUj the word Repub- 
 lican in the mouths of Radicals means nothing else 
 than a man more or less opposed to the Church. *'The 
 whole religious question lies between us as a gulf, " said 
 a Prime Minister to M. Cochin. Who was this Prime 
 Minister? M. Poincare himself, moderate though he be. 
 And when did he say this? In 19 12, seven years after 
 the fall of Combes and the apparent cessation of the 
 most abject compression of religious liberty. There 
 are reasons to suspect that this statement was only a 
 political stratagem, but it does not make it less amazing 
 that tlie stratagem should have any effect. 
 
 The chief work of the Third Republic therefore has 
 been the destruction of the influence of the Church in 
 France, not only as a society but as the vehicle of an 
 
The Public Spirit 97 
 
 ethical doctrine, and the corresponding establishment 
 — by poHticians construing Renan like village school- 
 masters — of a secular society based on unbelief. This, 
 of course, was dangerous, because the effects of unbelief 
 on societies have never been known to be less pernicious 
 than those of fanaticism; but it was dangerous from 
 another point of view. It created in a country which 
 had the incredible luck not to be divided by various 
 religious creeds a state of division as bitter as may have 
 existed in Germany or England in the worst post- 
 reformation times. As usual this fever of controversy 
 and persecution had for its immediate consequence 
 the blinding of those whom it possessed to any other 
 object. For the questions: What are the Germans 
 doing in Asia? What are the Italians planning in the 
 Holy Land.f^ was substituted the haunting problem: 
 How can the Republic get rid of the Chufch, of her 
 creed, and of her influence? 
 
 Needless to say how this one-sided attention helped 
 the deterioration of the country. Anti- Christianity, 
 limited as it was under the Empire to a few Parisian 
 circles, would only have lasted as long as the belief 
 in Science ; poured into broad popular currents, it poi- 
 soned the reserves of national life. No greater folly 
 could well be conceived than that of a Government 
 not only witnessing but proctuing this state of dis- 
 sociation, and proclaiming itself highly patriotic at the 
 same time. 
 
 9. The Public Spirit, Illusions and Vulgarity 
 
 If religion were still a great factor in the life of 
 France, or if it were practised by the majority instead 
 of by a decidedly small minority, the unification of the 
 
98 The Deterioration of France 
 
 Republicans through an anti-religious policy would have 
 been impossible. As it was, the French Catholics, too 
 few or too weak, and hampered besides by the Con- 
 cordat, which gradually became an unbreakable bond, 
 did not show fight, and, instead of a religious war, 
 France only saw a religious persecution. This persecu- 
 tion might have been violent. It hardly ever was. 
 Those who carried it on realized that when the clergy 
 had been so harassed that nobody could believe in its 
 occult power, its chief raison d'etre would be at an end, 
 and they proceeded cautiously and methodically. In 
 this way nobody ever complained very loudly; it was 
 only during the Combes Government that Europe be- 
 came aware of a dangerous example of legal robbery, 
 so that which might have been a source of indignation, 
 and consequently of energy, was only the slow weaken- 
 ing of a great moral influence. 
 
 On the whole, while an anarchical form of De- 
 mocracy was diminishing the chances of France on 
 all sides, the public spirit was optimistic, or at any 
 rate apathetic, and people lived on illusions and 
 short-sighted selfishness. 
 
 The politicians set the example of perfect satisfaction. 
 They pretended every now and then to have great 
 fears of a reaction which would bring back a Monarchy 
 or a Dictatorship with all their abuses and the tyranny 
 of the Church to boot, but only once — during the few 
 months in which the Boulangist agitation was at its 
 height — ^were they really sincere. They lived in the 
 vain amusements of their party politics, and in the 
 enjoyment of unhoped-for power; remote as they were 
 from any ambition to influence European politics, they 
 cherished the comforting illusion that peace never 
 brings on war, and that France might dwindle while 
 
The Public Spirit 99 
 
 others grew, but they at all events would not be 
 affected by the diminution. 
 
 Their electors were as blind. Everybody who is 
 attentive to the variations of public opinion must 
 know how difficult it is to resist them, how unavailing 
 mere logic is when it has to withstand the quiet cer- 
 tainties of the millions, and how inclined the philosopher 
 himself is to doubt his own conclusions in the presence 
 of a sceptical public spirit. Now, logic and even mere 
 investigation were seldom brought to bear upon the 
 anomalous situation which the preponderance of pro- 
 fessional politicians had created and kept up in France. 
 The Constitution was known to be a paradox, but it 
 might be amended. Something was sure to happen; a 
 man could not but arise ; the Republic was so young, it 
 would be absurd to despond over it before giving it a 
 fair trial. Besides it was evidently useless to struggle 
 against it. The Revolution was one great fact which 
 outweighed many logical principles; it was also a fact 
 that its main notions were in the air everywhere, and 
 that no human power could resist them. There were 
 signs of an imminent change even in Turkey, and in 
 Russia. Republics were bound to succeed Monarchies 
 in Europe as in America, and was it not better for a 
 country to have forestalled the inevitable transforma- 
 tions? The French Republic was in the hands of the 
 Freemasons, no doubt, and this was productive of 
 woes, but the Freemasons could not go on for ever, and 
 was it not remarkable that their everlastingly-repeated 
 motto. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, was after all an 
 epitome of the gospel? Some day, surely, these words 
 would be something better than empty sounds, and 
 an era of idealism and prosperity should begin. 
 
 It is so true that this confidence in an unforeseen 
 
loo The Deterioration of France 
 
 development was universal that in 1890, twelve years 
 after the first indications of the Republican ill-will 
 against Catholicism — when Leo XIII advised the 
 French clergy to adhere unreservedly to the Republic 
 and to preach loyalty to their flocks — the enthusiasm 
 was almost universal; all the younger men had long 
 anticipated the Pope's advice and welcomed it as a 
 liberation from trammels. 
 
 This generous hope in the future was not founded 
 exclusively on dreams and clouds. Facts would fre- 
 quently give croakers the lie. The colonial policy was 
 more a success than a failure; Ferry and his disciples 
 were succeeded by Meline — a converted Communist — 
 and by Hanotaux; the Russian alliance was an event 
 which could not be exaggerated; trade was said to be 
 flat, but statistics proved that it was not so ; as to fears 
 of war, for ever circulated, for ever belied by events, 
 they were bugbears which grew to be the more dis- 
 believed as they were more talked about. 
 
 On the whole, there ran deep in France an under- 
 current of the enthusiasm which had fancied the Re- 
 public so fair while the Empire was old and tottering, 
 and, this enthusiasm preventing any attempt at a 
 reasoned criticism of the Constitution and anticipation 
 of its inevitable shortcomings, delusions and optimism 
 prevailed. Such a state of public opinion is apt to be 
 translated into florid political speeches or into occa- 
 sional popular demonstrations, and of these there was 
 great plenty. But speeches and demonstrations corre- 
 spond only to paroxysms, and between such outbursts 
 the philosophy of the man in the street is dominant. 
 But that of the newspaper-reader, with enough leisure 
 to know what he thinks and enough of the hereditary 
 French outspokenness not to be afraid of the expression 
 
The Public Spirit loi 
 
 of his thoughts, is active. This latent philosophy of the 
 Third Republic was by no means of the high or noble 
 order. 
 
 Lurking more or less deeply under the surface is 
 the belief of great and small in Progress; the certainty 
 that Science, that is to say Light, must produce civiliza- 
 tion and prosperity; this is the basis of the universal 
 optimism. But beside this, there is the moral pessimism 
 distinguishable in all the literary forms of the nine- 
 teenth century, and above all in the Naturalism which 
 is characteristically the literature of this age. Ideas are 
 great and noble, but men are low, selfish, and fre- 
 quently hypocritical. Politicians above all are coarse 
 charlatans, and it takes the stupidity of the mob to be 
 taken in by their claptrap. Rich people are selfish, and 
 tyrannical to cruelty; but the poor would be as bad 
 if they were rich. Everybody is selfish. The only 
 philosophical statement that is never challenged is the 
 utiHtarian postulate: Whatever we do is done out of 
 self-interest, and virtue properly analysed is the most 
 refined form of selfishness. This, added to the current 
 notions about the non-existence of free-will, leaves 
 everybody satisfied with his own mediocrity and 
 secretly elated at discovering in himself the vague 
 generosity bound with the formulas bequeathed by the 
 Revolution. "We are pretty low, but we might be 
 much worse," probably would express the universal 
 feeling. In this way pessimism is once more corrected 
 into a sort of optimism. 
 
 Political scepticism is as widely spread as its philo- 
 sophical counterpart. Even literary people are ex- 
 tremely ignorant of history, and build their judgments 
 upon psychological analyses which they generalize 
 freely. The idea is that abuses have always existed, 
 
102 The Deterioration of France 
 
 and exist or will soon exist everywhere. The true 
 philosophy is to make up one's mind that things will 
 not mend in our lifetime, and that the inevitable im- 
 provement which the Deus ex machinay Progress, will 
 some day bring about will be so slow that its witnesses 
 can hardly perceive it, and consequently they will not 
 be better off than we are. When comparisons between 
 neighbouring countries and France are suggested, a 
 doubtful shrug is all that is vouchsafed in answer; who 
 can verify those statements? besides, what does it 
 matter? all civilized countries are in the same boat; if 
 some are in a clearer or happier condition than the 
 others, they will either be soon corrupted down to the 
 common level or, on the contrary, their superiority must 
 in time act as a ferment to the benefit of the others. 
 
 The only possibility that is really dreaded is a war, 
 but that possibility luckily is but a product of ancestral 
 imaginations; in fact war is an impossibility. Govern- 
 ments realize that conditions are changed, that what 
 used to be gained in past times by territorial expansion 
 is now gained by greater facilities for commerce; it is 
 proved scientifically that a successful war is as dis- 
 astrous as a defeat ; besides, governments are not alone 
 the arbitrators of peace nowadays; even the humblest 
 peasant has his say, and the international press — in 
 close connexion with the international finance — ^is his 
 organ as well as his defender. No, wars are impossibili- 
 ties; alliances are lightning conductors conceived in a 
 manner entirely new and civilized; the only thing is to 
 live and let live, and not be disturbed by bugbears. 
 
 This last formula leads directly to the peaceful and 
 often smiling, but at core cowardly indulgence which is 
 characteristic of the Third Republic. There being no 
 obvious patriotic ideal, and the government impressing 
 
The Public Spirit 103 
 
 individuals with a marked idea that legislation is made 
 for them and not for society, there cannot be any such 
 patriotism as is to be seen in Germany, Italy, the 
 United States, and especially Japan. Each one thinks 
 of himself and says it with perfect frankness. Money 
 is despised instead of being cherished, as it was in past 
 ages, for purposes worth the while, but it is imiversally 
 sought as the only means of making life enjoyable. 
 For the same reason the ancient views concerning the 
 family are not only discarded but ridiculed, and 
 Malthusianism is preached unblushingly with the con- 
 stant connivance of the Government. 
 
 Selfishness is never cheerful, and this period is no 
 exception; there is a sort of dreary gaiety in life and 
 literature and on the stage — the admixture of pessim- 
 ism, of excitement often artificially created, of frankness 
 constantly exaggerated to cynicism, and of unman- 
 liness complacently displayed which modem slang calls 
 veulerie. Read the works of Gyp, of Lavedan, of Don- 
 nay, and of their numberless imitators; you will see 
 the same enervation made pitiful by its very conscious- 
 ness ; all these people have not much brains, apparently 
 little heart, often the coarse manners which Jewish 
 materialism diffuses with money, but they know their 
 degradation, they analyse it, and they would suffer 
 from it if their emotions were not so completely blunted. 
 
 All the vices which people had without quite realiz- 
 ing them under the Empire these degenerates have with 
 full consciousness. There is an abyss between them 
 and the characters of Augier, for instance, who only 
 seem as if they were trying to be roues. 
 
 It would be superfluous to say that all these dreamers, 
 money-makers, or pleasure-seekers are incapable of the 
 intellectual attitude which, from the patriotic stand- 
 
104 The Deterioration of France 
 
 point, alone matters; they never look beyond their 
 immediate circle of needs or passions, and the relation 
 of France to the rest of Europe is as indifferent to them 
 as if their home were really Sirius. 
 
 To conclude: in 1898, almost thirty years after the 
 war, France appears much more remote from the 
 possibility of La Revanche than in 1875. Her rivals, 
 especially Germany and Italy, have progressed while 
 she remained stationary at home, and only expanded 
 overseas where — owing to the lack of a navy — her 
 power is almost nominal. Her real masters are irre- 
 sponsible assemblies chosen without any respect to her 
 vital interests as a nation, and the divisions and 
 contradictions of these assemblies are glaringly visible. 
 She has no settled policy in Europe, and her alliance 
 with Russia bears in consequence the appearance more 
 of a protection than of an alliance for definite purposes. 
 Of the lack of a responsible authority, and of the gradual 
 settling of the country into the position of a nation of 
 second order, or what one begins to call a puissance 
 d'appui, the public is only vaguely aware and cares 
 little. They console themselves with a philosophy 
 based on the inevitableness of universal decline, and 
 above all with the new facilities for making money ; the 
 feeling which the foreigner who observed France the 
 most carefully during that period ^ met with everywhere 
 is expressed in the stereotyped phrase: I take no in- 
 terest in politics. In fact, politics seem to be left 
 entirely to themselves ; that is to say, a certain number 
 of ideas called Republican are exploited by a few 
 hundred professionals who, unable to criticize them, 
 but finding it easy to handle them against less un- 
 scrupulous rivals, lose their heads over them, as specu- 
 
 » Mr. Bodley in his admirable work, France. 
 
Dreyfusism 105 
 
 lators do in a boom. It is to this kind of intoxication 
 that the period ending in 1898 leads us, and during the 
 following seven years, which we shall presently review, a 
 sort of destructive folly possesses politicians ; they wildly 
 go to work, and what they do is nothing short of a sack- 
 age of France in the name of reason and justice. 
 
 1898-1905 
 
 10. Deterioration of France by International Socialism 
 
 It is remarkable that this period does not coincide 
 entirely with what it is agreed to call "bad govern- 
 ments." In 1898, the Fashoda incident and the return 
 of a new Chamber compelled M. Meline to give up 
 office, but M. Dupuy, who succeeded him, with M. de 
 Freycinet as Foreign Minister, held the same principles. 
 Moreover, to all intents and purposes, the same spirit 
 of moderation which M. SpuUer had termed V esprit 
 nouveau prevailed in the Cabinet. Yet it is impossible 
 not to date the great disorganization of France from 
 1898, and this shows how inefficient even good men can 
 be under a Constitution like that of 1875. A spirit 
 spread over France which first of all nullified the good 
 intentions of M. Dupuy and later of M. Waldeck- 
 Rousseau, and in four years' time this destructive spirit 
 produced M. Combes. It is needless to remind the 
 reader that the period of violence which will be known 
 in history as Combism was prepared by the apparent 
 idealism of the Dreyfusist agitation. 
 
 II. Dreyfusism 
 
 For many years it was impossible to speak of the 
 Dreyfus affair, no matter how historically, without giv- 
 
io6 The Deterioration of France 
 
 ing offence; one had to be warmly favourable to Drey- 
 fus or run the risk of being regarded as meanly opposed 
 to him, and under such circumstances any attempt at 
 a matter-of-fact presentment of the events and their 
 concatenation was out of the question. To-day, the 
 lesson of history has gradually become known, even to 
 people living out of France, and one may safely say, 
 what I just hinted at, and what is as clear as daylight, 
 ;^Viz., that Combism came out of Dreyfusism as the 
 steam out of heat. 
 
 The chief facts of the case are in every memory. 
 In 1895, Captain Dreyfus was condemned to perpetual 
 imprisonment on the charge of delivering important 
 military documents to a foreign power, and there were 
 no protests against the verdict; a number of French 
 officers about whose honour there could be no doubt 
 had expressed their conviction that Dreyfus was guilty, 
 and few voices were heard in his defence. The con- 
 demnation was welcomed with loud applause by the 
 many Frenchmen who had sided with the famous 
 journalist, Edouard Drumont, in his long campaign 
 against the Jews. To Drumont the Jew was ob- 
 jectionable, not because of his religion, but on account 
 of his race and of the characteristics which belong to it. 
 The Jews were not French, and never could be French. 
 They lived in France, as everywhere else, as if they 
 were encamped, getting as much as they could out of the 
 country but always ready to emigrate to another if they 
 thought it advantageous. So it was absurd to speak 
 without noticing the impropriety of "Jewish officers in 
 the French army"; one might as well have spoken of 
 "German officers in the French army." All the mis- 
 take came from regarding the Jew as merely a person 
 of another religion. It was clear that the treason of 
 
Dreyfusism 107 
 
 Dreyfus — demonstrated as it seemed to be in 1895 — 
 was an irrefutable proof of the soundness of Drumont*s 
 theory, and the satisfaction of his supporters or admirers 
 was perfect jubilation. 
 
 The irritation of other people was no less. The 
 Jjews naturally felt the weight of a sentence which 
 seemed to fall heavily upon them, but for other reasons 
 many Frenchmen disliked it as much as they did. 
 The army in 1895 was as popular as ever it had been 
 since the days of Napoleon the First, and the debates 
 of the Coiu't-Martial, with a revelation of the danger to 
 which the military preparation of France had been 
 exposed, had only made it the more popular. Yet, 
 as I said, there were dissenters. The jealousy which the 
 politicians of the Third Republic felt from the first 
 against the army, its dashing brilliance, its order, its 
 disciplined intelligence, and above all the everlasting 
 possibility of some exceptionally popular officer throw- 
 ing civilian rivals into the shade, existed also to some 
 extent among the bourgeoisie. Young men belonging 
 to those classes, and compelled to serve like everybody 
 else, resented having to obey .peasant petty officers. 
 Many whom the dry intellectual spirit of the times had 
 impregnated from their infancy, and who affected to 
 admit no superiority except that of the brain, spoke 
 of their military service as a sort of martyrdom during 
 which culture had to submit to brute force, and intelli- 
 gence was degraded to mean employments. These 
 people had seen with displeasure popular favour greet 
 the General Staff on many occasions dtuing the first 
 proceedings of the Affair. When, in 1897, rumours 
 began to be circulated that everything had not been 
 perfectly regular in the judgment of 1895, it is not to 
 be wondered at if these rumours were welcomed with 
 
io8 The Deterioration of France 
 
 intense interest. And when, in August, 1898, an officer, 
 who was an anti-Semite too, revealed that one of the 
 chief documents which had helped in inclining the 
 opinion of the Court-Martial against Dreyfus had been 
 forged by Lieutenant-Colonel Henry, there r/as such an 
 outburst as those who witnessed it can never forget. 
 In a moment the whole outlook changed; Dreyfus 
 appeared as a martyr, and the General Staff, including 
 three Ministers of War who had been unanimous in 
 their conviction that the officer was guilty, seemed to be 
 nothing else than the accomplices of a forger. In a 
 few weeks the case ceased to be a local affair to become 
 the most exciting judiciary drama of modern times. 
 In every part of Europe, Dreyfus found friends not 
 only among his co-religionists who, even in poor 
 Russian villages, subscribed towards his justification, 
 but among all those who imagined with increasing in- 
 dignation that justice had been denied an innocent man. 
 Few were the men famous in literature or science who 
 did not express their feelings in public utterances. 
 
 Often one could detect in these declarations the 
 lurking suspicion that Dreyfus had been condemned in 
 a Catholic country because he was not a Catholic, and 
 so the ill-treated officer became doubly a martyr. 
 Often also it was evident that people who from some 
 racial antagonism hated France were glad of this 
 chance to vent their ill-will. At any rate the state 
 of opinion was such that the campaign in favour of 
 Dreyfus seemed more like a crusade, but a crusade of 
 which indignation and hatred more than love and 
 reverence were the chief elements. 
 
 The last months of 1898 and most of 1899 were filled 
 by this overwhelming agitation, and it mattered little 
 that M. Dupuy or anybody else was at the head of 
 
Dreyfusism 109 
 
 affairs. Common parlance alludes to the previous years 
 as the Meline Government, but the twelvemonth preced- 
 ing July, 1899, is never spoken of as the Dupuy Govern- 
 ment; it is simply called "the time of the Affair." 
 
 In July, 1899, M. Dupuy fell, and it became evident 
 that the Cabinet which succeeded his would be chosen 
 exclusively to supervise the revision of Dreyfus's case. 
 M. Poincar6, the future President of the Republic, 
 failed in forming a Cabinet, owing to M. Leon Bour- 
 geois's aversion to responsibilities, and the mission 
 was finally entrusted to M. Waldeck- Rousseau. This 
 gentleman was a barrister of high fame and standing, 
 with an eminently judicial head, and a self-control 
 which in the Chamber as well as at the Law Courts 
 secured him respect and influence. Politically, he had 
 always been considered a Moderate, and even a touch 
 of anti-clericalism did not make him lose this label. 
 It appeared probable from the moment his name was 
 mentioned that he would devote his cool energies and 
 his professional capacities to an entirely judicial ter- 
 mination of the case over which the whole world hung 
 breathless. 
 
 However, it is not easy to be a politician and to be 
 purely judicial, even if one seems predestined for the 
 task. There was universal surprise when M. Waldeck- 
 Rousseau took into the Cabinet M. Millerand, who at 
 the time was a very .different man from what he is 
 to-day, and embodied, even more than M. Jaur^s, the 
 most uncompromising Socialism. But M. Millerand 
 was very like M. Waldeck-Rousseau in many ways, 
 clear-headed, business-like, persevering, and above the 
 suspicion of dishonesty. Probably the new Prime 
 Minister thought rather of his collaborator's abilities 
 than of the political tendency he represented, and did 
 
no The Deterioration of France 
 
 not suspect that the Socialists would be raised by the 
 elevation of their leader to a position they had never 
 occupied before. He was right about M. Millerand, 
 whose tenure of office made him grow to be the unique 
 statesman we have known him since, but, as I shall 
 presently show, he made a mistake about the conse- 
 quences of choosing a Minister from among a group 
 which, until then, had been regarded as gratuitously 
 violent and possessed of no positive influence. 
 
 In September, 1899, Dreyfus was tried again by a 
 Court-Martial at Rennes, once more declared guilty 
 of treason by five votes against two, but this time it 
 was with extenuating circumstances, and almost im- 
 mediately M. Waldeck-Rousseau issued a decree par- 
 doning him. Dreyfus accepted his pardon and the 
 Affair seemed practically closed, but Dreyfusism did not 
 disappear with the pretext which had given rise to it. 
 There remained a group of personal friends of Dreyfus 
 who went on with the legal agitation until they had 
 him rehabilitated, not by a Court-Martial but by the 
 Court of Cassation, and somewhat irregularly. Above 
 all, the many people who had seen in the Affair a peg 
 on which to hang their own animosities were more 
 flushed than sobered by the step taken by M. Waldeck- 
 Rousseau, and after the fight they insisted on revenge. 
 The chief enemy had been the General Staff, and, in 
 fact, the army with all the manifestations of the military 
 spirit. But many of the Staff officers were supposed to 
 be practising Catholics and likely to be influenced by 
 the Jesuits ; the hypocrisy or prejudices of some French- 
 men, helped by the ignorance of millions of foreigners 
 of the real state of France, had presented the Dreyfus 
 Affair as a case of religious persecution, and the Church 
 was denounced as bitterly as the army. 
 
Dreyfusism iii 
 
 While the trial at Rennes was going on, there was a 
 riot in Paris — the first that had been seen since the 
 Commune — and the leaders had as their chief object 
 the destruction of a church, which, in fact, was pillaged. 
 Besides, it has been a constant tradition with the Third 
 Republic to create unanimity against the Church among 
 politicians whenever divisions on other subjects became 
 alarming, and this was a rare occasion for reconciling 
 the Radicals with the rising Socialist party. M. Wal- 
 deck-Rousseau soon announced his intention to take 
 measures against the moines ligueurs et marchands, 
 meaning the Jesuits and the Assumptionists who at the 
 time edited the Croix newspaper and had been resolute 
 anti-Dreyfusists. 
 
 M. Waldeck-Rousseau, in an address which he de- 
 livered later on at Toulouse, spoke his mind openly 
 on the subject of the religious orders. Evidently his 
 own opinion was not only that some religious orders ^ 
 were unduly mixed up in politics, and that the education ' 
 given in the Jesuits' schools divided the French youth 
 into two antagonistic portions, but also that religious 
 vows in themselves were unnatural and in contradiction 
 with the modem notion of human liberty. But he was 
 too much of a legalist to make such a doctrine the basis 
 of a new legislation, and whatever may have been the 
 influence upon him of the anti-religious atmosphere or of 
 his own well-known wrongs, the law with which he 
 wanted to hit at the influence of the Jesuits and the 
 Assumptionists did not wear the appearance of an 
 exception. At the beginning of the twentieth century, 
 while all the other countries, including so-called be- 
 nighted monarchies, had long legislated on the right 
 of association, the French Republic had no Association 
 Law, and its absence was one of the standing grievances 
 
112 The Deterioration of France 
 
 of the Socialists. M. Waldeck-Rousseau therefore 
 placed a bill for the regularization of associations on 
 the table of the Chamber. This bill made it compul- 
 sory for every association not already approved by 
 previous laws or decrees to state its object, give in the 
 names of its members, and demand a special authoriza- 
 tion. A great many religious orders like the Sulpitians, 
 the Christian Brothers, the Sisters of Charity, etc., 
 had long been approved, and, consequently need not 
 apply for authorization, but hundreds of other orders 
 merely existed on tolerance, and would be compelled by 
 the new law to put in a declaration, and demand an 
 authorization, which, of course. Parliament would grant 
 only with the greatest caution. Among the number 
 were the Jesuits and Assumptionists, whose doom was 
 inevitable, whether they applied for an authorization 
 sure to be refused, or preferred the simpler course of 
 dispersing of their own accord. 
 
 The Association Bill only became law in 1901. Many 
 religious communities — like the Benedictines now at 
 Quarr Abbey, in the Isle of Wight — thought it more 
 dignified to leave the country before its enactment, and 
 it soon appeared that this had been wisdom too; the 
 rest submitted to the law, sent in the names of their 
 members and the inventory of their property, and 
 demanded authorization. But as they did so, the anti- 
 religious feeling in the Chamber, in the press, and 
 often in the country, became worse instead of decreas- 
 ing. M. Waldeck-Rousseau appeared more and more 
 as the only Moderate in his Cabinet, and the whole 
 atmosphere seemed charged with threats. It was ob- 
 vious that the hatred which had been roused by the 
 Affair would not be satisfied until revenge had been 
 wreaked; and while the Prime Minister did his best to 
 
Combism 113 
 
 adjust things according to his judicial spirit, it seemed 
 impossible that his entourage should use the new law as 
 a law and not as a weapon. 
 
 12. Combism 
 
 The general election of 1902 returned a stronger 
 Socialist group than there had been in the outgoing 
 Chamber. M. Waldeck- Rousseau probably felt that 
 his supporters might soon become his masters, and he 
 would not take the risk. He went out before the new 
 Chamber met, and advised President Loubet to apply- 
 to M. Combes for the formation of a new Cabinet. 
 
 M. Combes, though he never was in orders, had 
 worn the clerical habit for several years before taking 
 up medicine, and gradually politics, in the department 
 of Charente. Politics had introduced him to Free- 
 masonry, and when the sometime abbe got himself 
 elected a deputy, he was as anti-clerical as could be 
 desired. He soon specialized in educational legislation, 
 preparing at least two bills of a decidedly Erastian 
 character, and not afraid of the drastic appearance he 
 gave to their application. Nobody said anything 
 against his integrity, and he was supposed to^be well 
 informed. But whether he had not more shrewdness 
 than intelligence, and more obstinacy than real will- 
 power, was a problem which people generally solved 
 against him. It would be astonishing that such a man 
 should have been chosen by the wise Waldeck-Rous- 
 seau, if it were not an historical law of the Third Re- 
 public that its leaders are led. 
 
 As I said above, the Socialist party was stronger in 
 the Chamber of 1902 than in the previous one, and its 
 leader was at present Jean Jaures. The passage of M. 
 
114 The Deterioration of France 
 
 Millerand through office had done what it invariably 
 does for every well-balanced mind: it had given him a 
 sense of realities. From a Socialist with the usual 
 systematic views, and a ringleader with the proper 
 amount of recklessness, he had become the decided 
 Reformist he has been since as Minister of Labour, and 
 the patriot he showed himself as Minister of War. At 
 any rate, he was regarded in 1902 — when people still 
 believed that Socialist deputies were formidable dare- 
 devils ready for the universal overthrow or chambarde- 
 ment — as too much of a bourgeois to represent the party ; 
 fiind Jaur^s — who, on the contrary, was a converted 
 bourgeois — ^had taken his place. 
 
 M. Combes chose to place the centre of his majority 
 as near as possible to the Extreme Left, and immedi- 
 ately Jaur^s with his eloquence, his warm-heartedness, 
 the admixture of vagueness and audacity of his con- 
 ceptions, above all, with the tactical dexterity which 
 his turgidness would not seem to indicate, became the 
 real leader of the Cabinet. Nobody exemplified to 
 greater perfection the true Dreyfusist spirit as distin- 
 guished from personal devotion to Dreyfus. He had 
 been a professor, and a professor of philosophy — at a 
 time when philosophy was either the crudest mechan- 
 ism or the most unreal Idealism — and his tendency was 
 towards the latter in its vaguest form. He was typically 
 what the cant of the day called an "intellectual" — that 
 is to say, a man bred in the purely speculative tradition 
 of the early Taine and the early Renan, and completely 
 ignorant of other realities than the hagglings and bar- 
 gainings of parliamentary groups or electoral com- 
 mittees. A sort of prophet withal, but a prophet in 
 words, not in true visions; his rich, organ-like voice, 
 the volume of his periods, the belief in his words which 
 
Combism 115 
 
 such men frequently have because of the real though 
 dim conviction existing in their subconsciousness, lent 
 a certain efficiency to the words Progress^ Ideal, Fra- 
 ternity , endlessly repeated in his speeches. But there 
 was no divine insight in him, and his power depended 
 on his voice. Thus equipped, he went on preaching the 
 abolition of classes, of hatreds, of frontiers of all kinds; 
 he prophesied the reign of justice and the end of war, 
 of gold, of superstition. The Dreyfus Affair, with the 
 outburst of generosity it had created, leading the 
 French to sacrifice everything dearest to them to one 
 man for the sake of justice, seemed to him the beginning 
 of the new era, and as, for the first time, he had behind 
 him forty or fifty deputies, it seemed as if all his pre- 
 dictions were half fulfilled already. This was the man 
 to whose vote the new Prime Minister was not afraid 
 to attach his destinies. 
 
 For if the word Combism connotes a spirit and the 
 manifestations of that spirit which the following chap- 
 ters will recapitulate, it also represents a political sys- 
 tem which had never been tested before, and which 
 lasted during three years. No Prime Minister ever 
 realized so perfectly as M. Combes that he was nothing 
 but an intermediary between the pleasure of the Cham- 
 ber and the administration of affairs, or acted as con- 
 sistently with that belief. Every day the Cabinet 
 would meet as usual at the Elysee, and the routine of 
 government seemed to be the same as ever; but every 
 day also a consultation of a much more practical 
 character was held at the Chamber or in the Premier's 
 office. There M. Combes met the chiefs or whips of the 
 various groups, not, of course, in the whole Chamber, 
 but in the majority; submitted to them the order of 
 the day, took their opinion, made sure by a very simple 
 
ii6 The Deterioration of France 
 
 calculation of the number of votes that each opinion 
 represented, and decided upon ministerial action ac- 
 cordingly. This substitution of a few influential depu- 
 ties for the Cabinet nullified, of course, the power of the 
 President, that of the Senate, the responsibility of the 
 Ministers, and the will of that portion of the country 
 which the minority platonically represents ; all this was 
 in the true Jacobin tradition, but it was also in the 
 spirit of the constitution logically interpreted, and 
 protests were few and feeble. 
 
 It was natural that in these daily conventions M. 
 Jaures should be the principal orator. One sign to his 
 group would have been enough to bring about the 
 downfall of the Cabinet, and the Socialist leader occu- 
 pied the privileged situation of the man who all the time 
 sacrifices his real wishes to those of the less daring men 
 he condescends to support. In fact, the three years of 
 M. Combes's office were also the three years of M. 
 Jaures's hegemony. Until 1905, the policy of the 
 Cabinet was exactly that which would have been 
 adopted had the Socialist leader been the actual 
 Premier, and popular feeling was not deceived by 
 appearances. The singing at official ceremonies of 
 the Internationale instead of the Marseillaise, in the 
 presence of the undisturbed Prime Minister, was 
 the clear manifestation of the true state of affairs. But 
 the reader ought not to infer that Socialist legislation 
 was continuously passed during that period. In 1902, 
 the Socialists, being for the first time in unquestioned 
 ascendancy, appeared formidable both from their loud 
 doctrine and their number. But since then, we have 
 realized that a Socialist deputy is a bourgeois even if he 
 was a workman a few weeks before ; we have also heard 
 M. Jaures repeatedly promise what he called "a vast 
 
Combism 117 
 
 legislative text," embodying his doctrine for practical 
 purposes, and we have seen him everlastingly evade 
 the fulfilment of his promise; for years he conducted 
 the work of the Chamber without even producing an 
 Income Tax Law. We are not, therefore, very much 
 surprised to find, on looking back to the history of 
 Combism, that it was much more a systematic destruc- 
 tion than a rebuilding of society. In fact, the next 
 chapters will be exclusively filled with what the Cham- 
 ber did against this or that ; and I should be very much 
 at a loss to state any improvement or even any positive 
 step due to its initiative. 
 
 In what spirit all this destruction was carried on 
 is not clear to everybody. If you read the reminis- 
 cences of men like M. Peguy or M. Daniel Halevy, or 
 if you listen to less-known witnesses of the Dreyfusist 
 drama, you will often be led to conclude that a con- 
 siderable amount of genuine Idealism and true human 
 kindness was wasted during those eventful years. But 
 if you go back to the newspapers of the period, dip into 
 the Parliamentary proceedings in the Officiel, or con- 
 sult your own impression of the atmosphere created by 
 M. Combes's brutality, ill-breeding, recklessness are the 
 words which come naturally to your lips. The chief 
 motive of the action of the politicians seems to have 
 been the delight of going to work violently without any 
 danger to themselves, and the Idealism appears only to 
 have been the cherished illusion of a few individuals, 
 cleverly used by Jaures to cover the vulgarity of the 
 rest. Yet thousands of excellent Frenchmen who had 
 been convinced Dreyfusists remained in the Dreyfusist 
 state of mind long after Dreyfusism had passed into 
 Combism, and looked on the policy of revenge without 
 being able to make up their minds that they connived 
 
ii8 The Deterioration of France 
 
 at an anti-patriotic work. Even at the present day 
 the bewilderment in which they found themselves 
 leaves them doubtful and hesitating where men with a 
 larger share of the national temperament will not 
 waver a moment. 
 
 13. Comhism and the Church 
 
 The quarrel of the Dreyfusists was apparently with 
 the army, but it was also with the Church, which had 
 abetted the officers, and M. Combes's anti-clerical feel- 
 ings, along with the opportunity which the Association 
 Law offered, were sure to keep his attention at first 
 on the religious orders. We know with certitude what 
 M. Waldeck-Rousseau's intentions had been with re- 
 gard to them. He had no sympathy with the Jesuits, 
 and he felt an especial dislike against the Assumption- 
 ists, whom he had once described as "trading, plotting 
 monks." About these his mind was evidently made 
 up. There was also a clause in the Association Law 
 which its author must have known to be irreconcilable 
 with the continuance of the more important orders. 
 The Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, etc., are, 
 like the Jesuits, responsible only to the Pope, and 
 highly value their exemption from episcopal jurisdic- 
 tion. Now, M. Waldeck-Rousseau wanted all orders 
 to be in future under the bishops who should answer to 
 the Government for their action. This condition, of 
 course, made authorization an impossibility for those 
 who would not or could not renounce their privilege. 
 In spite of this unfortunate circumstance, it seemed that 
 the Act was bringing the orders, which the Concordat 
 of 1802 had ignored, under the protection which the 
 same Concordat bestowed on the bishops and secular 
 
Combism and the Church 119 
 
 clergy. In fact, M. Waldeck-Rousseau had been able 
 to say without fear of contradiction, that he was giving 
 the monks and nuns their saving charter. For there 
 was little doubt that the congregations that appHed for 
 authorization would easily get it, and they were by no 
 means degrading themselves by submitting to a mea- 
 sure which, with one exceptional clause, was only the 
 common law of the land. It must be confessed that the 
 exception to which I am alluding, was not in keeping 
 with the rest of M. Waldeck-Rousseau's liberal dis- 
 positions. Whereas authorization would be granted to 
 an individual order only by an Act of Parliament and 
 after a debate in the Chamber or Senate, the same could 
 always be revoked by a decree from the Council of 
 Ministers; so, it took the consent of the country — as 
 represented by Parliament — to give legal existence to a 
 religious association, but an arbitrary act of the Gov- 
 ernment was enough to withdraw it. This certainly 
 was not democratic, but it could be interpreted as a 
 barrier against clericalism, and not an obstacle in the 
 way of the religious life of the country. On the whole, 
 when M. Waldeck-Rousseau retired, the views of Gov- 
 ernment in connection with Catholicism might be con- 
 strued as hardly different from those which prevailed 
 in the days when the sovereign could be on his guard 
 against episcopal interference, without disbelieving a 
 word of the bishops' teaching. 
 
 All this assumed a completely different appearance 
 the moment M. Combes took office, and the Association 
 Law, instead of a charter, became a weapon which the 
 new Prime Minister handled sometimes brutally, some- 
 times with astuteness, changing freely besides its 
 interpretation and even its letter. The law said that 
 each demand for authorization was to be separately 
 
I20 The Deterioration of France 
 
 examined by the Chamber or Senate. M. Combes de- 
 cided that all the applications should be thrown into 
 three sections, and not examined separately, but ac- 
 cepted or rejected in a lump. This showed the evident 
 intention to make short work of the orders, and the 
 issue did not belie the forecast. It will remain in the 
 history of France as a monstrous injustice that a law 
 should have been used as a decoy, even if it had not 
 been devised as one. All the applications were rejected, 
 the confiscation of the property of religious orders was 
 pronounced, and the lamentable sight of the dispersion 
 of poor monks and nuns who had always lived in com- 
 munities began to sicken all except politicians. The 
 religious who had some hope of being able to reform 
 themselves abroad left France for England, Belgium, 
 Spain, Italy, or America. The rest were compelled to 
 stay singly where they were, in great risk of the calami- 
 ties which M. Rene Bazin describes in VIsolee. 
 
 There was a universal feeling of compassion among 
 those who could do nothing to remedy this state of 
 affairs, but M. Combes found numberless apologists 
 in Parliament and in the press. Those who observed 
 the public spirit at that time were shocked to find how 
 easily the average man gets reconciled to injustice the 
 moment it is done and the ghost of a reason can be 
 found for it. The reason in this case was an ideology in 
 the truest spirit of the Revolution. Man, it was argued, 
 is entitled to as much freedom as will not be hurtful to 
 his neighbour, but it does not follow — as would at first 
 sight appear — that monasticism should be tolerated on 
 the pleas that a man may be a monk if he chooses to 
 become one. The other side of the argument is that 
 ndbody ought to be suffered to renounce his own per- 
 sonality by taking the vows of obedience, poverty, and 
 
Combism and the Church 121 
 
 celibacy. As a conclusion, it appeared that M. Combes 
 had, after all, been a champion of liberty and a redeemer 
 of slaves, even if he acted rather too energetically. 
 
 There was another corollary which was even more 
 logical. If the religious vows were so immoral that 
 their immorality warranted the refusal of authorization 
 to the orders which applied for it, that must be a 
 sufficient reason for the withdrawal of authorization 
 from those which already possessed it. The principle — 
 strictly a jurist's principle — of the Act of 1901, was 
 against this further step, but the Premier might plead 
 that the Act contained a clause empowering the Cabi- 
 net to withdraw authorization whenever they thought 
 it advisable ; and besides, another bill could easily be 
 introduced to amend the Act. In fact, in March, 1904, 
 a bill was read, depriving the teaching orders — already 
 authorized — of their legal existence. It was passed in 
 July of the same year, and immediately the process of 
 expulsion and confiscation was resumed. 
 
 The whole proceeding reminded one forcibly of the 
 terrible anecdote of the Toulon massacres in 1793. 
 The royalist prisoners had been arranged in a compact 
 square on the parade ground, and the commissaires 
 ordered artillery to be fired at them until nobody was 
 left standing. Then the commissaires walked up to the 
 awful spot, and fearing lest some of the prisoners should 
 pretend death and meditate flight, they called out loud : 
 **Let those who are not dead get up, the Republic 
 pardons them." Here and there a few men rose from 
 the heap, and were promptly cut down again. 
 
 Placing a whole category of citizens outside the law 
 for so-called philosophical reasons, expulsions, confisca- 
 tions, are of a poor moral effect in a country. The 
 immediate consequence of the religious persecution was 
 
122 The Deterioration of France 
 
 to sharpen the appetites of the Socialists in and out of 
 Parliament, and to persuade them that the nationaliza- 
 tion of the larger enterprises — the railways, mines, etc. 
 — could be accomplished without danger. But there 
 was another. The monastic orders were the chief instru- 
 ment of French influence abroad, especially in the East, 
 and the damage to this influence soon became per- 
 ceptible, and in a few years appeared irreparable. The 
 Government had not been logical enough to apply to 
 the communities at Constantinople or Beyrout the 
 treatment they dealt to the sister convents in Paris, 
 but it was inevitable that the suppression of the 
 novitiates at home should promptly reduce the numbers 
 of the religious abroad. Due warning was given on 
 this point to the Chamber by M. de Mun, M. Denys 
 Cochin, and other specialists on the Eastern questions; 
 it was clearly pointed out that the gradual stepping in 
 of the excommunicate King of Italy with his monks 
 and nuns, which we have seen of late years, was a 
 certainty ; but the majority of M. Combes had already 
 taken the habit of answering such arguments with the 
 superb disdain of ignorance and stupidity by the crush- 
 ing remark that foreign considerations ought not to be 
 suffered in the home politics of France. It is the classic 
 speech of the madman, who sets his house on fire, to the 
 neighbours who send for the fire brigade. 
 
 14. Combism and Rome 
 
 The clause in the Association Law which substituted 
 the Bishops for the Pope as answerable for the doings of 
 the monastic orders amounted to a solemn declaration 
 of mistrust against Rome, and the logic of Combism was 
 sure to evolve a legislation from it. It had long beep 
 
Combism and Rome 123 
 
 the habit of the Radicals, with M. Clemenceau as their 
 mouthpiece, to speak of the Pope as a foreign sovereign 
 with a permanent army of his own in France, and of 
 the Concordat as a fooHsh agreement which devoted 
 forty million francs every year to the maintenance of a 
 hostile clergy. Such an absurdity ought to be done 
 away with without delay; the French Embassy to the 
 Vatican must be suppressed, the clergy left to its own 
 devices, and the practice of the Catholic religion reduced 
 to an individual concern. Many who held this thesis 
 were merely indifferent to religion, and the apparent 
 logic of Disestablishment, combined with the usual 
 French ignorance of European consequences, seduced 
 them. Many others, however, among whom no doubt 
 M. Clemenceau, Jaures, and generally the Freemasons, 
 hoped and often professed their hope that, the support 
 of the State once removed, the mouldy fabric of the 
 Church would crumble to pieces, and science would be 
 rid of the vain appearance which still stood between 
 it and the popular consciousness. A few intelligent 
 politicians would answer the champions of destruc- 
 tion by pointing out that the suppression of the Con- 
 cordat meant the loss for France of the long-valued 
 protectorate of the Catholic Missions. A few jurists 
 had an even more positive objection. The Concordat, 
 they said, was a contract; when it was signed in 1802, 
 the Government of France, which at the time did not 
 profess to be exceptionally religious, was as anxious to 
 see it in operation as the Pope, and consequently this 
 contract could not be dissolved without a mutual con- 
 sent; as to the forty millions yearly paid to the clergy, 
 they were by no means a salary, they were a special 
 fund consolidated at the time of the Concordat to 
 prevent the clergy from suing the possessors of their 
 
124 The Deterioration of France 
 
 property, and the true name of this fund was, it should 
 not be forgotten, the Church Indemnity. Finally, there 
 was the objection of the Galileans — still more numerous 
 than might have been supposed — who asked: What 
 purpose will be gained by making the clergy entirely 
 Roman instead of being national? If you are afraid 
 of the Pope's influence in the present arrangement, 
 how much more ought you not to dread it under a 
 regime which would leave it unrestrained ; of course, you 
 can counteract this influence by forcible measures, 
 but your action will inevitably wear the appearance of 
 a persecution, and persecution is invariably ephemeral 
 because it is repellent; after a time you will find the 
 Church embittered against you and less hampered in 
 her action than she ever was under the Concordat; do 
 not give up the reality for a hope ; keep your hold upon 
 her by preserving the right to appoint her bishops. 
 
 All this common wisdom was wasted on people 
 whom the intoxication of destruction was gaining 
 more and more. Pretexts were sought to warrant 
 the recall of the ambassador to the Vatican. A poor 
 one was found in 1904 in a correspondence which the 
 Pope had directly — ^instead of through the Ministry of 
 Cults — with two bishops whose private life gave offence 
 to their flocks. M. Delcasse wrote a short letter to the 
 Secretary of State of Pope Pius X, stating that as the 
 Vatican chose to correspond direct with the bishops, 
 no French representative was necessary in Rome. 
 Almost immediately the Concordat was denounced 
 and a special bill — the Cultural Association Bill — was 
 introduced to take its place. The whole of this bill 
 was inspired by the childish desire to legislate about the 
 clergy without even naming the Pope or the Bishops, 
 and by replacing them by associations of lay people who 
 
Combism and Rome 125 
 
 would be a sort of protecting barrier between the State, 
 and the unapproachable clergy. This Bill, passed in 
 the summer of 1905, was to be enforced a year after, 
 but after a year the Pope would not let the French 
 clergy recognize a constitution which ignored their 
 bishops, and the Separation Law remained hanging in 
 the air without anyone to apply it to. Immediately 
 the bishops were turned out of their palaces and the 
 priests out of their rectories — which I must say they 
 would, only have kept a few years longer had the law 
 been acted upon. The Church property was con- 
 fiscated and made over to the municipal councils ; even 
 the foundations for the dead, held so sacred by the 
 people, were given a secular destination. As to the 
 churches, the Government, not daring to take them 
 away entirely from their occupants, made them over to 
 the parishes on condition that they should not be used 
 for secular purposes. 
 
 The whole thing was conducted roughly and brutally 
 whenever it appeared safe. The Government was not 
 ashamed to have the archives of the Nuncio — left in 
 Paris after his departure — seized by the police, and the 
 correspondence of the Secretary of State since the 
 Separation was published in. the newspapers. 
 
 The scandal of such a method was bad enough, 
 but the effects of the Separation were not visible at 
 once. It took a few years to see how the process of 
 confiscation had scared people, how deep the appropri- 
 ation of Church property had made the divisions 
 between believers and unbelievers in rural parishes, 
 how the sight of the parish priest turned out of his little 
 house, of the bishop dispossessed of a palace which was 
 frequently part of the cathedral, had created mistrust 
 against the politicians, and anxiety among the faithful. 
 
126 The Deterioration of France 
 
 It took even longer for many of the deputies who had 
 supported the Separation Bill from indifference to 
 religion to see that the resolution to govern a CathoHc 
 country in complete ignorance of the Pope — ^while 
 Protestant monarchs frequently felt the need of a repre- 
 sentative in Rome — was suicidal. In time, however, 
 it appeared that Italy, Germany, and Spain were seiz- 
 ing every opportunity to substitute their protectorate 
 for that of France in Asia Minor and Northern Africa ; 
 and the moment the Morocco, campaign began in earn- 
 est it was a grievous annoyance for the French officers 
 to see that, owing to the obstinacy of the Government, 
 the priests who followed the army and took advantage 
 of its advance were not French but Spanish. 
 
 The politicians who had brought about this state of 
 affairs never seemed to regret their blindness imtil 
 quite recent times. Most of them thought only of 
 making the most of the weakened condition of the 
 Church to do away with the Christian belief. The 
 government of M. Combes was the heyday of the 
 Universites Populaires in which night after night pro- 
 fessors thought they did a great service to their country 
 by proving scientifically to suburban audiences that 
 God does not exist. 
 
 15. Comhism and the Army 
 
 The grudge which the government of M. Combes had 
 against the Church they had even in a bitterer degree 
 against the Army. There had always been a lurking 
 antagonism between the Third Republic and the 
 military element. The true founders of the Republic, 
 the friends of Gambetta, looked askance at those hund- 
 reds of thousands who said nothing, whose political 
 
Combism and the Army 127 
 
 sympathies were unknown or were only too easy to 
 divine, who preferred the superiority of silence, obedi- 
 ence, and self-denial, while politicians were nothing 
 but talk, self-assertion, and bare-faced interest. Year 
 after year two hundred thousand young men, electors 
 of to-morrow, were absorbed into that powerful body 
 and taught to think nothing of words and be prepared 
 for deeds. Professional Democrats living in everlasting 
 terror of "the Man, " the possible Napoleon who would 
 make , short work of their edifice of abstractions, felt 
 that he must be there and might any day reappear. 
 The priest, the magistrate, and the scholar were the 
 representatives in various forms of the same ideal built 
 upon order and making for the restoration of order. 
 That this tendency was essential to the greatness of 
 France, and that the action of France beyond her fron- 
 tiers intimately depended on it, was nothing to men 
 with whom party interests alone counted. 
 
 It is not surprising therefore that the Dreyfus Affair, 
 with the scandal of the Henry forgery, filled them with 
 unbelievable joy, and that the verdict given at Rennes 
 after the second judgment of the Court-Martial — which 
 they thought must inevitably result in something like a 
 solemn recantation — once more infuriated them. The 
 combination of this spite with the more subtle spirit 
 spread by Jaur^s resulted in a campaign which even 
 outlived Combism — ^for it lasted until 1910 — and had 
 for its obvious object not only to humble and even 
 humiliate the army before the civic element, but 
 entirely to change its temperament and lower its ideal 
 through what was called progressive democratization. 
 
 It is painful to relate that the work of retaliation was 
 begtm by General de Gallifet, a true soldier, and in 
 many ways a true aristocrat, whom M. Waldeck- 
 
128 The Deterioration of France 
 
 Rousseau had selected to liquidate the Dreyfus Affair. 
 Gallifet did away with the Superior Council of War, 
 an admirable organism created by M. de Freycinet — 
 who was not a soldier — for the examination of the most 
 vital military questions and the promotion of the 
 likeliest officers. From that date, the decision on the 
 most momentous issues was left entirely to the Minister 
 of War, who might be a civilian and would seldom be 
 very long in office. 
 
 Yet the successor of Gallifet at the end of 1899 was 
 not a civilian, and he remained in office until 1904, but 
 it was unfortunately to the detriment of the army. 
 General Andre had had a brilliant career, which the 
 envied direction of the Ecole Poly technique had crowned, 
 but it was the career of a functionary not of a soldier. 
 General Andre had never been in the colonies, the only 
 place where he might have learned what men like 
 Duchesne or Gallieni knew so well; he was a theorist 
 with a marked tendency to be a politician, and when he 
 took office, it was well known that unfortunate habits 
 of intemperance weakened what good points he might 
 have. The present writer was a witness of a painful 
 scene in the Chamber between him and M. Lasies, an 
 ex-officer, in which he appeared as unmilitary as on 
 the day when another deputy, Syveton, hit him in dis- 
 gust and contempt before the whole Assembly. As it is, 
 nobody can say more for him than that he spent a great 
 deal of labour over the realization of the military ideas 
 of the one man who provided ideas for all the members 
 of the Combes Cabinet, M. Jaures. 
 
 The division between two men — the Generalissime 
 or General-in-chief, and the Chef d'Etat-Major or Staff 
 Commandant — of the supreme power in case of a war 
 was the idea of General Andr6, and it was undoubtedly 
 
Combism and the Army 129 
 
 the idea of a man who mistrusted generals and wanted 
 to subordinate their authority to that of the Govern- 
 ment. The same mistrust, in the purest Dreyfusist 
 spirit, appeared even more visibly in the repeated 
 attempts at doing away with the Courts-Martial or 
 introducing into them enough non-military judges to 
 modify completely their character. But these mea- 
 sures, the evident outcome of the Dreyfus Affair, were 
 nothing compared to the slow and methodical progress 
 of what was called the democratization of the army. 
 
 No general could have shared more completely in 
 the Socialists* belief that war — ^after thirty years of 
 peace and the abandonment by the immense majority of 
 the French of every idea of revenge against Germany — 
 was an impossibiHty, and as there was in him a great 
 deal of the humanitarian's zeal, he turned it towards 
 a new conception of the military service. Not being a 
 preparation for war, it must be a preparation for some- 
 thing else, and the regiments became a kind of school, 
 while the officers were expected to teach their men all 
 the arts of peace. Lectures were given to them fre- 
 quently, some of which — on bee, pigeon-raising, or 
 rabbit-breeding, tor instance — ^would have often been 
 much better if they had been the work of experienced 
 privates instead of the random effort of their chiefs to be 
 useful according to the new formula. 
 
 The regiments, instead of being frequently trans- 
 ferred, as had been the tradition in the old army, were 
 kept in the same towns, and the recruits never were 
 sent away from their native districts. 
 
 The service, which in the first years of the Republic 
 still lasted five years, had been gradually reduced first 
 to four and then to three years. Many officers de- 
 clared that a new reduction was impossible, because it 
 9 
 
I30 The Deterioration of France 
 
 would make the training of cavalry men impossible, 
 and above all because the numbers of the French 
 Army would become ridiculous compared with those of 
 the enormous military masses of Germany. But this 
 under the rule of M. Jaur^s was no argument, since 
 perfect amity prevailed between the Socialists in the 
 Reichstag and those in the Chamber, and they would 
 not allow of a barbarous breach of such a union. Fi- 
 nally the service was curtailed to two years, and the 
 reduction was welcomed even more jubilantly by politi- 
 cians than by the young men who were benefited by it. 
 Meanwhile the effort begun by General Andre to 
 bring down the officers to a truly democratic level was 
 carried on methodically. In 1907, a decree was pub- 
 lished reforming the old order of precedence at official 
 ceremonies, and pushing back the commandant of an 
 army corps (of which there are only twenty) far behind 
 a prefect (of whom there are nearly a hundred). The 
 right of punishing for offences in the service was con- 
 siderably restricted; the officers' mess-tables were 
 suppressed so that officers would be compelled to mix 
 more freely with the civilians in garrison towns; the 
 old regulations making it imperative that an officer 
 should not marry into a family unable to settle a certain 
 sum on the wife were abolished, and as the pay re- 
 mained ridiculously insufficient, the social background 
 of many army men became inferior in consequence. 
 All these restrictions tended to hamper or belittle the 
 army. Something worse remained to be done, which 
 was to lower its spirit. The methods to which M. 
 Combes and General Andre resorted will long be remem- 
 bered as excesses of which even an Oriental autocracy 
 would be ashamed, and they elicited from M. Miller- 
 and the famous speech in which he branded the Combes 
 
Combism and the Army 131 
 
 government as a regime abject. M. Combes was not 
 qualmish about methods. He seems to have been the 
 inventor of the delegues canto naux — unofficial repre- 
 sentatives of the prefects in every chef -lieu de canton y 
 who not only could veto the decisions of municipal 
 councils and mayors by reporting them at headquarters, 
 but made themselves useful as discreet informants, i.e., 
 in plain language, spies. 
 
 This institution was extended by General Andre 
 to the army. Scandalous debates in the Chamber, 
 coming after the revelations of a clerk, showed to 
 the bewildered public that the Minister of War had 
 entrusted to the Freemasons the police of the army. 
 The Lodge in each garrison town was watching the 
 officers, taking note of who went to church, and who did 
 not, who went there with his wife — which was venial— 
 or went there with a prayer-book — which was unfor- 
 givable ; who paid his court to M. le Prefet and Madame 
 la Prefete, and who kept aloof in evident disrespect 
 to the Republic. One military bootmaker in a regi- 
 ment was an accomplished spy, and for many months 
 practically browbeat all his chiefs. In a few cases, 
 officers who were Freemasons demeaned themselves 
 lower than outside observers by sheer tale-bearing. 
 In a short time there was in the army — which gives up 
 the franchise so as not to seem in any way political — 
 an abominable distinction between so-called republican 
 and non-republican officers, and a feeling of mistrust 
 prevailed where comradeship had been for so many 
 years the rule. 
 
 The consequence was that the officers who remained 
 true to the ideal which had attracted so many of them 
 into the army after 1870 felt numberless frictions, 
 while the noble trade of soldiering became with many 
 
132 The Deterioration of France 
 
 others a mere metier. And this metier being underpaid, 
 it was natural that they should cast about for remedies 
 and pecuniary improvements. There were no other 
 means at hand than those used by everybody else, viz., 
 agitation and association. We- saw the appearance of a 
 new military paper, Armee et Democratie, which might 
 have been the organ of a syndicate, and in fact its 
 creation was promptly followed by an agitation with 
 a view to the creation of military unions similar to 
 the trades unions. 
 
 So, at a moment when the conclusions drawn by 
 experts from the Manchurian War all pointed to 
 the superiority of character over mere knowledge and 
 of a true spirit of discipline and self-denial, Combism 
 demoralized the army, made officers dissatisfied with 
 their lot, and spread the selfishness of materialism 
 through the milieu in which sacrifice had traditionally 
 been at home. 
 
 The Navy was as badly treated as the Army. Suffice 
 it to recall that its chief was the journalist Pelletan, a 
 man whose name is synonymous with reckless levity, 
 and who appeared during the too long tenure of his 
 office as the worthy compeer of General Andre. He 
 had been famous for starting and organizing strikes, 
 and it was under his government that the Arsenal 
 workers, semi-military as they were, developed the 
 unruliness for which they became celebrated. M. 
 Pelletan had also ideas of his own concerning the 
 composition of the fleet ; their chief result was the pass- 
 age of the naval power of France from the second 
 rank to the fourth. He did not believe more than 
 Andre in the possibility of a war, and the navy maga- 
 zines were as empty as those of the army. In 191 3, the 
 deputy Andre Lefevre, once a Socialist but a true 
 
Combism and Patriotism 133 
 
 patriot, proyed to the Chamber that at the end 
 of 1905 there was only ammunition enough for each 
 French gun to shoot seven hundred times. One of the 
 few frontier towns supposed to defend the Ardennes 
 gap — the little town of Avesnes which the present 
 writer happens to know well — was so destitute of stores 
 of all kinds that it took four months and a half of 
 strenuous efforts to replenish its magazines. 
 
 The Army during the nightmare of those years was 
 not looked upon as the defender of France that all 
 the national energies ought to strengthen, but as the 
 antagonist of civic society, a champion of belated pre- 
 judices, and the enemy of justice, and it was treated 
 accordingly. 
 
 16. Combism and Patriotism 
 
 The old patriotic notion which identified the coimtry 
 not only with its traditions but with its territorial ^ 
 limits; the pleasure which the student of the history of- 
 France used to take in her gradual expansion in the 
 course of ages ; the accent in which true patriots would, 
 like Louis XIV, utter her name, as if it were that of a 
 sacred spiritual being — all this had been many times 
 ridiculed as limited and almost barbarous. Voltaire in 
 the string of questions which he entitled Les Pourguoi 
 asked two or three questions which sound like anti- 
 patriotism long before the anti-patriots, and the early 
 Socialists of course placed themselves above such 
 hampering notions. I have explained in a previous 
 chapter how the philosophy of Taine and Renan in the 
 first part of their lives implied a standpoint irreconcil- 
 able with patriotism. But the cynical expression of 
 disdain for the attachment to one's country was not to 
 
134 The Deterioration of France 
 
 be heard until the last years of the nineteenth century 
 when it became a sort of elegance. In 1 891, in the ear- 
 liest issues of the Mercure de France y the loyalty to 
 Alsace-Lorraine was derided or inveighed against. 
 Jules Renard wrote that in a short time the war of 
 1870 would be considered of less importance than the 
 appearance of the Cid, or even of a fable of La Fontaine. 
 
 M. Herold said: ^'If one were sincere, the confession 
 would be general that the treaty of Frankfort is as 
 remote as that of Utrecht." The well-known M. 
 Remy de Gourmont was more direct, and said that the 
 farce of the two sister provinces kneeling at the frontier- 
 post had lasted long enough to be unbearable. M. 
 Bazalgette said coldly that every cultivated man ought 
 to view calmly the idea of seeing his own country 
 absorbed by another. 
 
 Such utterances were, it is true, sporadic, and might 
 frequently be construed as literary exaggerations which 
 it was imcritical to take literally. But a speech which 
 had also been printed by the Mercure de France must 
 be regarded as formulating a deep and widely spread 
 feeling, for it was admirably in keeping with the haughty 
 intellectualism which ran high at the end of the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 I only recognize the value of intelligence [it said] ; it knows 
 no frontiers, and I would fain sacrifice the lives of a hundred 
 French fools to that of one intelligent man from anywhere. 
 The vaunted integrity of the national soil is no concern of 
 mine ; the little nook where I meditate is enough for me, and 
 the territory around it may well be conquered, it will leave 
 my thought exactly what it was. 
 
 In 1904, all this had gradually become familiar. The 
 Sorbonne was entirely devoted to the scientific methods 
 
Combism and Patriotism 135 
 
 of Germany, and the reaction produced by this whole- 
 sale adoption of literary principles not native was 
 certainly weakening for patriotism. It seems almost 
 incredible that a professor at the Ecole Normale Supe- 
 rieure — a Jew, it is true — M. Frederic Rauh, should 
 have conducted a scientific investigation with his pupils 
 into the question: "Was patriotism a rational feeling, 
 and did it bear the test of psychological analysis?'* 
 This inquiry resulted in an almost universal negative. 
 The expression of patriotism was rejected as mere ver- 
 balism, and the sentiment itself was declared to be a 
 superstition, or at best an artistic or literary fallacy. 
 "Patriots," M. Rauh said, "do not count; they are 
 purely sentimental. Their doctrine is in flat contra- 
 diction with mine, and I would much rather defend 
 internationalism." Yet, the professor saw that this 
 conclusion was practically untenable, and introducing a 
 distinction into it he declared that to stave off major 
 evils a man might obey the military law, no matter 
 how unjust. Besides, a country like France being the 
 apostle of Internationalism, one could reasonably wish 
 and work for its continuation lest the doctrine of Inter- 
 nationalism itself should suffer from its absorption 
 into less philosophical empires. 
 
 There were no protests at the time, not even from 
 the students, hundreds of whom must have heard of this 
 doctrine while week after week it was publicly dis- 
 cussed. The Sorbonne of those days was a hotbed of 
 the most uncompromising Dreyfusism. Professors like 
 M. Seignobos, M. Langlois, M. Andler, and above all 
 M. Monod were so Germanized in their thoughts and 
 teaching that it was difficult for their hearers to get at 
 what might be left of sentiment under their scientific 
 principles, and Germany acted once more as the magnet 
 
136 The Deterioration of France 
 
 it had been towards the middle of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 It is needless to say that the Combes government 
 took special pleasure in showing itself above aged 
 prejudices. The presence in the Cabinet of M. Del- 
 casse, whom all Europe, except France, knew to be 
 planning the isolation of Germany, would occasionally 
 elicit criticism from the very sensitive German press, 
 but M. Delcasse was nothing to M. Jaures, and the 
 latter gave complete satisfaction to the enemies of his 
 country. Whenever there was the least cause of 
 friction between the two governments he was seen in 
 the tribune, explaining warmly that the fault was 
 entirely with the French Foreign Office. He spoke in 
 German at German congresses, constantly referred to 
 the point of view of the German "comrades," and 
 certainly was more popular on the other side of the 
 Rhine than even Bebel, who was only appreciated by 
 his party. I said before that on several occasions the 
 Internationale was sung at official ceremonies instead of 
 the Marseillaise, and the Prime Minister did not protest 
 against the presence of the Socialist red flag. 
 
 The favour of the Ministers of Education went 
 to the teaching recommended by M. Jaures and his 
 friends. It was scientific; that is to say, atheistic 
 under cover of the other epithet ; and rational, that 
 is to say, frankly anti-patriotic. The history of France 
 until 1789 was ignored. French children under the 
 pretence that they ought not to have their memories 
 crowded with bloody battles, useless dates, and dry 
 treaties, knew nothing of the epic of their country. 
 But they were carefully informed of all the details in the 
 history of the Revolution and its consequences, that 
 would make them realize how nations are less antagon- 
 
Combism and National Culture 137 
 
 istic to one another than classes. Jeanne d'Arc was left 
 out as a barbarous woirier, but the Communists were 
 extolled. 
 
 Nothing can show so much both the hold which 
 internationalist doctrines had taken of distinguished 
 intellects and their popularity than the success which, 
 as late as 1907 — two years after the fall of Combes — 
 welcomed the famous book of M. Anatole France, 
 Vile des Pingouins. This was a caricature of the 
 history of France conceived in the coarsest materialistic 
 point of view of the Socialists, but drawn in the vein 
 now of Rabelais and now of Voltaire, and deceiving the 
 unguarded reader about its essential vulgarity by its 
 cleverness. That a writer of M. France's distinction 
 should have taken such a subject and handled it as if 
 he had dealt with the Papimanes, showed to what 
 extent the certitude of peace, the cosmic point of view, 
 and the disdain of sentimental superstitions had trans- 
 formed the country not only of Jeanne d'Arc but of the 
 Revolutionary volunteers of 1792, and even of Michelet, 
 humanitarian as he was. 
 
 17. Combism and National Culture 
 
 The catastrophe of 1870, and the diminished political 
 influence which followed it, had left untouched the 
 spiritual Empire of France, i.e., the radiating intelli- 
 gence for which she had been famous since the days of 
 Brunetto Latini. It belonged to the destructive spirit 
 of M. Combes's government to bring even that into 
 jeopardy. 
 
 It is true that the classical culture on which French 
 literature was built in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and 
 eighteenth centuries had been weakened long before the 
 
138 The Deterioration of France 
 
 advent of M. Combes and his Socialists, but it had been 
 through imprudent zeal, not through enmity. Latin, 
 and especially Greek, had gradually seemed austere to 
 modem generations rendered anaemic by the newspaper 
 and the novel, and an attempt had been made to teach 
 them through pleasant easy methods. It was not 
 necessary, the reformers argued, to take all the trouble 
 necessary for learning how to speak or even write the 
 classical languages; it was enough if one could read their 
 best monuments. Consequently composition in Greek 
 prose and verse, and translations into the same language 
 were discarded, and in a decade or two the very estim- 
 able school of French Hellenists which had risen be- 
 tween the restoration of Greek studies — towards 18 10 — 
 and 1850 was left where it was, and mostly employed in 
 preparing a vast collection of cribs which the next 
 generation was to use in default of personal knowledge. 
 Latin was not treated in the same manner; verses and 
 compositions were kept up until about 1880, but the 
 same results followed. French professors in those days 
 were seldom travelled men, and seldom knew anything 
 of modern languages. So personal experience could not 
 teach them what a thorough study of the classic tongues 
 had taught their elders, viz., that no language is ever 
 mastered unless one aims at possessing it like a native. 
 The consequence was that the ancient texts were taught 
 and remembered like difficult music, which, the mo- 
 ment the boy was released from school, vanished from his 
 memory. The idea that one was learning the classical 
 languages disappeared and was replaced by that of 
 being exercised in them, a nuance which school slang 
 admirably expresses in the familiar phrases, jaire du 
 Latin, faire du Grec. On the whole few people, except 
 specialists, knew Latin well, and hardly anybody had 
 
Combism and National Culture 139 
 
 more than the poorest smattering of Greek. Gradually 
 pupils came to doubt the knowledge of their masters, 
 the conclusion that if nobody knew them it was because 
 they were impossible to master became general if sel- 
 dom positively stated, and boys, parents, and even 
 masters had an uncomfortable feeling that six or seven 
 years were wasted over things which nobody could 
 honestly say he had succeeded in learning. 
 
 So at last the reproach of uselessness and — less 
 definitely — that of being demoralizing were made 
 against what was called the traditional teaching, which 
 in fact was nothing more than the mistake of one or two 
 generations, when the great commercial and industrial 
 expansion universal in the last twenty years of the nine- 
 teenth century became noticeable in France. Immedi- 
 ately over- logical intellects and people endowed with the 
 superficial common-sense which is the modem form 
 of wisdom, declared that young Frenchmen were unpre- 
 pared for this kind of opportunity. They had no 
 scientific preparation, and they did not know modem 
 languages; all their education had to be made over 
 again, and, while they did this, luckier competitors fore- 
 stalled them everywhere. This was the time when M. 
 Demolins published La Superiorite des Anglo-Saxons, 
 and when M. Jules Lemaitre, untrue to himself, threw 
 the classical education overboard without ceremony. 
 
 It was a singular oversight to forget that the French 
 of the eighteenth century, trained exclusively in the 
 classics, had been remarkable colonizers and successful 
 merchants. It was even more inexplicable that French 
 writers should complain of lack of scientific preparation 
 in a city possessing those two unrivalled schools of 
 engineers: the Ecole Polytechnigue and the Ecole Cen- 
 trale. They did not see that if, in spite of the compara- 
 
140 The Deterioration of France 
 
 tive neglect of scientific formation in educational 
 methods, the French easily became successful mer- 
 chants and good engineers, it must be because their 
 culture — whatever it might be — at all events prepared 
 them for specialization. This all-important considera- 
 tion was overlooked, and people began to cry for a 
 more practical syllabus in schools. 
 
 However, there was no treason in this, and the rights 
 of a superior culture were carefully reserved even by the 
 most strenuous advocates of utilitarian education. It 
 was in a very different spirit that the Socialist politi- 
 cians, unexpectedly abetted by so-called intellectual 
 democrats at the Sorbonne, took in hand what they 
 naturally called the truly republican reform of 
 education. 
 
 In reality, this would-be reform was nothing else than 
 an envious insurrection of the lower tendencies of the 
 democracy against culture pure and simple. The 
 Socialists and Radicals were the representatives of 
 classes which could not aspire to the education so far 
 identified with the classics, and they contended that as 
 everybody could not be given such an education, it 
 should not be given to anyone. Through all the cam- 
 paign which they made against classical education, one 
 could follow this strange principle in all its crudeness. 
 The effort of past generations had been towards mak- 
 ing people equal by raising the lower ranks ; it was to this 
 policy that we owed men like Amyot, Rollin, or Diderot, 
 not to speak of more than one, J. J. Weiss, in recent 
 times. But the notion of mere anarchists could not 
 but be different and even contrary; order seemed more 
 difficult than levelling, and levelling in consequence 
 became the object. It is only fair to say that M. 
 Jaurds, who was a scholar, did not share these views, 
 
Combism and National Culture 141 
 
 but he was the kind of chief who follows his adherents, 
 and his influence availed little in this instance. 
 
 There was surprise at the reviving of an old argu- 
 ment, which could pass as an argument only at an 
 exceptionally stupid epoch. 
 
 The official representatives of the new education [wrote a 
 Sorbonne professor] have long maintained that Latin ought 
 to be ostracized, and that its banishment must be the work 
 of the Republic. There is between the Latin tongue and 
 the Church too intimate a bond — in fact, a sort of filial 
 relation. The Humanities viewed as they were in the old 
 school, -and old-fashioned in their very object and method, 
 are nothing else than the course of studies which the Jesuits 
 once freed from scholasticism for the use of society people. 
 In fact, modern education is only the last word of secu- 
 larisation. 
 
 This Sorbonne professor was no other than M. Ferdi- 
 nand Brunot, a grammarian and lexicographer of world- 
 wide repute, and it must have taken all the bigotry of 
 the time to blind such a man to the sordidness of the 
 thought he defended. 
 
 But the Sorbonne, with the exception of M. Faguet 
 and a few others, was beneath its traditional r61e in this 
 emergency. Most of its professors were silent, or if 
 they spoke up it was for the new fad. M. Lanson was 
 among the first who viewed the institution in which he 
 taught, not as an instrument of culture but as a place 
 for the production of positive erudition. He spoke of 
 his class as a scientific atelier, in which yoimg men 
 worked under his guidance for restdts similar to those 
 obtained at the German universities. Most of the pro- 
 fessors of history did the same, and the word seminar 
 was used by them in its German sense. A lad fresh 
 
142 The Deterioration of France 
 
 from school, and only beginning to leam how to learn, 
 would be started on researches the final outcome of 
 which was little better than a catalogue, useful no 
 doubt for more advanced scholars who might need its 
 information, but certainly not so useful for its author, 
 only the year before a mere schoolboy, with the school- 
 boy's incredible gaps and crudeness. 
 
 Little by little the new theories, the new spirit, and 
 the new hatreds passed into legislation. In 1902, the 
 old course of studies was replaced by a completely 
 different one, the chief feature of which was a quadruple 
 subdivision making Latin and Greek optional, while 
 sciences and modern languages never were, and en- 
 abling a boy to become a bachelier, even if he had never 
 been inside a lycee, and only knew the tuition given in 
 the higher schools of the elementary degree. This 
 was levelling without any shame, and the measure was 
 only well received where jealousy is a principle. Shortly 
 after a reform of the licence — the degree generall}'' taken 
 after two years at a university and qualifying its 
 possessor for teaching — ^made it possible for a young 
 man to become a professor of history or philosophy not 
 only without any knowledge of Latin or Greek, but even 
 without having ever been properly tested in French 
 composition. This was the new culture. Almost at 
 the same time the Ecole Normale Superieure was modi- 
 fied to an extent amounting to suppression. It had 
 been a famous, one may say a unique, seminary of 
 the most refined culture, but that was exactly what 
 drew upon it the animadversion of people impatient of 
 any kind of distinction. There ought to be no elite in 
 a democracy. 
 
 This was the work of Combism with regard to 
 education. All the outcry for light, all the promise 
 
The Blindness of Combism 143 
 
 of an intellectual training for the children of the demo- 
 cracy resulted in destruction and in the monotony of 
 inferiority. In two or three years the practical results 
 of this equalizing appeared, and they were deplorable; 
 young men trained after the new methods might know a 
 little more than their elders, but they were unprepared 
 in a woeful degree for learning higher things, and often 
 discouraged their chief or employers by the un- French 
 slowness of their minds in seeing the logical concatena- 
 tion of ideas. Strange to relate, the protest, which 
 had not come from Sorbonne professors, came promptly 
 enough from scientists, physicians, or engineers, and, as 
 we shall see, was more productive of effects than awk- 
 ward explanations given by professionals. 
 
 18. The Blindness of Combism 
 
 The spirit which the science, philosophy, and litera- 
 ture of the Second Empire had elaborated for a danger- 
 ous elite was let loose by the Third Republic, and ranged 
 freely through the country, while selfish and inadequate 
 parliaments engrossed by their petty interests forgot 
 that patriotism means attention to the position of one's 
 country as influenced by that of its neighbours. What 
 the Republicans did from levity until 1898, the Drey- 
 fusists and Combists did out of perverseness during 
 the seven years that followed. They pushed the 
 Revolutionary principles to their utmost consequences 
 and revelled in the destruction they witnessed. The 
 humiliation of magistrates, the persecution of officers, 
 the banishment of priests and nuns, all this acted upon 
 them as it might on the crudest village politician. It 
 satisfied their hatred, and their intelligence cared little 
 whether it had not terrible effects upon the country. 
 
144 The Deterioration of France 
 
 In 1904, M. Combes fell under the weight of universal 
 contempt. The revelations concerning the espionage 
 in the army had sickened even the least squeamish, and 
 there was general relief when, in 1904, M. Clemenceau 
 literally kicked the Premier out of office in the most dis- 
 dainful article he had ever written. But the loss of their 
 servant or valet produced little effect upon the Social- 
 ists and Radicals. They went on doing, under M. 
 Rouvier, the work they had undertaken five years 
 before. At the beginning of 1905, they were immersed 
 in the joy of preparing the final defeat of the Church by 
 the Separation Law, and they did not give a thought 
 to the state of affairs beyond the frontiers. Never 
 had the belief in the fraternity of nations been more 
 general. M. Jaures, who was only a ranter of course, 
 believed in it, but M. Leon Bourgeois, whom Europe 
 regarded for fifteen years as a man of rare intelligence, 
 believed in it too. Nobody remembered that individ- 
 uals had duties, but the duties of peoples were the sub- 
 ject of endless philosophizing with men so ignorant of 
 history as not to know that nations always see their 
 duty in their immediate interest. The realities of 
 European politics were limited with most politicians to 
 the system of agreements patiently knit by M. Delcasse, 
 and this view was perhaps a worse delusion than plain 
 humanitarianism. France wanted no war, of course, 
 they said to themselves, seeing that every year she 
 decreased her military expenditure; and no nation, 
 however imreasonably inimical, could dream of making 
 war against her with such a protecting chain of alliances 
 or amities round her frontiers. There was therefore no 
 cause for anxiety, and France had only to go on mind- 
 ing her own particular mission, which was to look after 
 the interests of mankind. 
 
The Blindness of Combism 145 
 
 Meanwhile M. Delcasse carried on his effort, patriotic 
 indeed, but in a less egotistical person, an effort likely 
 to be accompanied with tremors. While everybody 
 else was speaking of peace, while the Ministers of War 
 and of the Navy proceeded with the disarmament, M. 
 Delcasse was preparing war, and he knew it; and he 
 knew that Germany knew it. While politicians dis- 
 claimed every Imperial ambition, there was a French 
 army on the frontier of Morocco which meant nothing 
 if it was not territorial expansion, and Germany fol- 
 lowed the progress of this army with increasing jealousy. 
 
 One man, indeed, the new Premier, M. Rouvier, a 
 financier with the financier's rather near-sighted judg- 
 ment, partly realized the state of affairs. He was early 
 informed that M. Delcasse's plans could only result 
 in trouble, but he thought the situation might be made 
 less dangerous by quietly dealing with it, by giving 
 assurances to the German Ambassador and possibly to 
 the German financiers. It never occurred to him that 
 the real solution was to warn France, or at least the 
 Parliament, of their danger. He could easily have done 
 it. The year before one of the best staff officers in the 
 army. General de Negrier, had sent in his resignation 
 because, as he put it, "the Eastern frontier was sup- 
 posed to be protected, and in reality was not." It 
 belonged to the head of government to bring home 
 to the Chamber the truth which this frank declaration 
 of a true soldier held in so concise a form. The effect no 
 doubt would have been immediate. But M. Rouvier 
 would rather leave the Chamber to its enjoyment of 
 the famous Article 4 in the Separation Law, and the 
 country to its ignorances or passions. At all events the 
 crisis came like a thimderbolt. On the last day of March, 
 1905, the Kaiser unexpectedly landed at Tangier, and 
 
146 The Deterioration of France 
 
 delivered a speech in which he declared that the Sultan 
 of Morocco was in his eyes an independent sovereign, 
 and Morocco a country open to all nations without any 
 monopoly or annexation. "My visit," the monarch 
 added, "is the recognition of this independence." 
 
 The weeks that followed were the most eventful 
 in the history of the Third Republic. The Kaiser 
 emphasized the meaning of the Tangier demonstration 
 by coming to Metz for the inauguration of a monument. 
 A French mission, consisting of exceptionally distin- 
 guished officers, having been sent to Berlin on the occa- 
 sion of the Kronprinz's marriage, the welcome which was 
 given to these officers showed an obvious intention 
 of discriminating between them and their mission. 
 Threats were in the air. 
 
 It was then that the historical dispatch sent by 
 the English Foreign Office to the French Government 
 introduced into the situation a new element, the import- 
 ance of which could not be exaggerated. "The English 
 Government," this document simply said, was ready 
 to examine "the basis of an agreement likely to protect 
 the mutual interests of England and France in case they 
 should be endangered." 
 
 This telegram, through some mysterious indis- 
 cretion, was known at Berlin the day after its receipt, 
 and immediately the tone of the German papers rose 
 to anger. They openly said that France must be the 
 hostage of England; let any threatening move on the 
 part of the English fleet be made in the direction of 
 the Baltic, and a German army should immediately 
 be sent to Nancy. Some people have said that M. 
 Delcass6 was for mobilizing at once. But this was the 
 impulse of a man who, having done his best, had 
 omitted to ascertain whether his neighbours were also 
 
The Blindness of Combism 147 
 
 doing their duty. A war in the then condition of 
 France, with the magazines empty, the army demoral- 
 ized by the Dreyfusist persecution, and the country 
 divided and taken aback, was an impossible absurdity. 
 M. Delcasse was made to understand it. On June 6, 
 1905, the news of his resignation appeared in the papers, 
 and it was soon rumoured that the removal of the 
 man, who for seven years had been the representative 
 of France before Europe, was the sacrifice demanded 
 by Germany in a tone which left only one alternative. 
 
 This, then, was the result of thirty-five years of 
 a regime which had been supposed to have for its 
 constant object to wash away the memory of 1870. 
 An "unprecedented humiliation," as M. Clemenceau, 
 then Prime Minister, called it four years later in the 
 Chamber — forced upon the least attentive the dete- 
 rioration which France, slowly at first, with awful rapid- 
 ity since 1898, had undergone. Under pretence of 
 being modern, civilized, and philosophical, the leaders 
 of the country had enervated and blinded it; under 
 pretence of being for peace they had made it incapable 
 of protecting by arms the record of its historical honour. 
 
 Everybody felt that this degradation ought not to be 
 charged on France. In the minds of all observers here 
 and abroad the people responsible for it were the semi- 
 anonymous crew to which I have just referred and the 
 history of which has almost filled this book so far. 
 They, as common parlance almost invariably designates 
 them, were the criminals. And they were not so much 
 criminals as they were vulgarians with inferior morals 
 and an inferior intelligence. The mistake of the good 
 men who pieced together the Constitutional laws of 
 1875 had made their deplorable rule possible. It was 
 inevitable that an Assembly of unguided democrats 
 
148 The Deterioration of France 
 
 should think of its own shabby interests, and that such 
 an Assembly, enjoying a practically unbalanced power, 
 should make a dangerous use of it. Being individual- 
 istic, that is to say selfish, they could only act selfishly 
 and diffuse selfishness and the stupidity of selfishness 
 about them. Let them, with such a disposition, 
 attempt or suffer one of them to attempt a role in the 
 intricate politics of the worid, and the ridiculous impos- 
 sibility of being wise, strong, and persevering beyond the 
 frontiers while being the very reverse at home was sure 
 to appear, at the risk of tragic consequences. The 
 lesson of the history of the Third Republic is nothing 
 else than the trite lesson of all history, viz., that nothing 
 matters so much to a country as a good government. 
 
PART II 
 THE RETURN OF THE LIGHT 
 
 SECTION I. — IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCES OF THE 
 TANGIER INCIDENT 
 
 SECTION II. — INTELLECTUAL PREPARATION OF THE 
 NEW SPIRIT 
 
 SECTION III. — EVIDENCES OF THE NEW SPIRIT 
 
 (a) Instinctive Manifestations of the New Spirit 
 
 (b) More Conscious Manifestations of the New Spirit 
 
 149 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 The Tangier affair was a flash of lightning, after which 
 the clouds lifted. It was one of those events which 
 rapidly destroy a whole system of thought, or, at any 
 rate, throw into the shade the protagonists who only a 
 short time before seemed alone to hold the field, mean- 
 while liberating another system until then unnoticed 
 or disregarded. What has been called the regeneration 
 or even the resurrection of France dated from that 
 shock. 
 
 The admixture of materialism, veiled cowardice, 
 and self-delusion which had caused the deterioration 
 of the public spirit, and emphasized the political losses 
 of France, suddenly appeared in its ugliness; a silence 
 followed; and when it was broken, the men who had 
 been the oracles of the people for two generations found 
 they had lost this position ; they felt that all they could 
 do was to let some of them sneer and scoff, but they 
 were unable to prevent better men than themselves — 
 the elite of the country, in fact — ^from speaking thoughts 
 which either the catastrophe of 1870, or the excesses of 
 thought, speech, and misrule since then committed 
 had planted and ripened in them. 
 
 So it turned out that while the fear of being con- 
 quered — ^rather than the fear of going to war — caused 
 in the less reflective portion of the nation the reaction 
 of surprise, anger, and gradually determination natural 
 
 151 
 
152 The Return of the Light 
 
 to a courageous people, the thinkers who had a right to 
 the intellectual leadership of their fellow-countrymen 
 had an unexpected opportunity for making themselves 
 heard. And when they did speak, or when popular 
 exponents began to retail their ideas, these were found 
 to be nothing more nor less than the long-forgotten 
 ancestral wisdom. One may say without any fear of 
 contradiction that French voices had not sounded so 
 French since the troubled times of the sixteenth century. 
 
 Politicians may take advantage of a bad constitution 
 to come back to the charge, as they have done several 
 times already, they may even secure power and use it 
 against their own country, but nothing can undo 
 what was done after Tangier in 1905 and again after 
 Agadir in 191 1. French ideas are in the air, at present, 
 instead of internationalist doctrines, and the name of 
 France, which the governments immediately preceding 
 the Tangier affair were ashamed to utter in the accents 
 of patriotism, is now constantly on the lips even of the 
 Socialist deputy and the Syndicalist workman. This 
 much is a positive gain; the reintegration of France as 
 a directing idea of the French nation after the long 
 intellectual wandering of the nineteenth century can- 
 not be a transient phenomenon. 
 
 The following chapters will be an exposS of the 
 fortunate consequences of the Tangier incident, and 
 of the national spirit to which it gave birth, both among 
 the simple and among those more capable of rational 
 consciousness. 
 
SECTION I 
 
 IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCES OF THE TANGIER 
 INCIDENT 
 
 I. The Lifting of the Veil 
 
 It is a favourite theory that the French generally 
 act in what Julius Csesar calls the tumultus of their 
 ancestors, the Gauls. As a matter of fact, their history 
 is more one of upheavals than one of even progress. 
 Yet it is also a fact that they are apt to play a long time 
 with ideas before making up their minds about them, 
 and that when politics are placed between ideas and in- 
 tellectual vision they are slower than many other peoples 
 to see where their interest immediately lies. This may 
 account for the fact that although the Tangier incident 
 came as a shock and its illumination was sudden, it was 
 not accompanied by any panic. The country, it must be 
 said, had very different interests from those in which it 
 has been absorbed since ; it cared little for the Moroccan 
 conquest, about which neither the Foreign Minister nor 
 the press would enlighten it; and, on the contrary, it 
 followed the debates on the Separation Law with 
 passionate curiosity. So when the papers narrated the 
 arrival of the Kaiser's ship off Tangier, and gave the 
 text of his address after landing, people were slow to 
 understand. First of all, it had been settled once for 
 
 153 
 
154 The Return of the Light 
 
 all during the preceding years that the world was now 
 too civilized to harbour the idea of a war, and such a 
 comfortable notion is one which survives its causes as 
 the optimism of the gambler, and even the hopeful 
 sensation he had before being undone, survive his ruin. 
 Then, few people realized that Tangier and inaccessible 
 Fez and the rocky valleys of Morocco were of any 
 interest to France, so that the significance of the 
 Emperor^s step was almost lost upon them. It was 
 only when the papers began to say that M. Rouvier, 
 the Prime Minister, had constant conferences with the 
 German Ambassador, and, above all, when M. Delcasse 
 vanished from the Cabinet at a few hours* notice, that 
 the name War appeared in lurid letters upon the 
 horizon. 
 
 Then the veil was indeed lifted, and the French 
 had a clear view of the situation. The universal feel- 
 ing was the consciousness of an immense absurdity. 
 Pacifism had been a ridiculous farce. Because modern 
 people, too nervous to think of blood, had chosen to 
 think of commerce and money instead, because a few 
 dozen Socialists in France and Germany had bragged 
 that no fratricidal duel would henceforward be suffered 
 where they had their word to say; because M. Leon 
 Bourgeois had been admired at a Congress of the Peace, 
 and M. d'Estoumelles de Constant meditated writing 
 a crushing letter to the first monarch who should call his 
 people to the flag, war had been regarded as an impos- 
 sibility. But war at present was near at hand all the 
 same. It mattered little that France had not wished for 
 it, never given a thought to it — there it was. One ship, 
 half pleasure-boat, half ironclad, one man in a helmet 
 not only meant it, but also meant the preposterousness 
 of planning any resistance. Behind the yacht there 
 
The Lifting of the Veil 155 
 
 were scores of men-of-war built in a few years' time, 
 according to a single plan carried out by the same 
 men, and provided with every modern improvement; 
 behind the Monarch in a helmet there were all the 
 German nations, with their unique military training, 
 their millions of men, and their formidable armament. 
 How childishly foolish the anti-militarist doctrines 
 appeared! what a lout seemed the country doctor. 
 Combes, with his belief in Jaures and the peasantry 
 craft which he could only use in jockeying combina- 
 tions ! what puppets General Andre and the journalist 
 Admiral Pelletan must have been! If the French 
 arsenals were empty, if the French officers were de- 
 moralized by espionage and petty molestations ; if the 
 army had been persuaded that it had every object 
 except war, it was because those extraordinary leaders 
 had been taken in by shallow paradoxes of which many 
 a plain farmer glancing at the newspaper had seen at 
 once the futility. 
 
 SyndicaHsm had long been a bugbear, and, as is too 
 often the case with frightening objects, it had been 
 regarded as an unavoidable development. Now, in 
 the feeling of universal disillusionment which gained 
 the workman as well as the bourgeois, it became merely 
 irritating. During two or three years, as we shall see, 
 Syndicalism was to prove to the world that it might 
 checkmate the Chamber itself, but even this would not 
 restore its formidable magnetism. It would only be 
 another evidence of the essential weakness of the 
 Chamber. 
 
 As to the religious quarrels over which so much 
 time and energy, so much that might have been useful 
 to all the commonwealth, had been wasted, they 
 appeared in their true light, as academic disputes which 
 
156 The Return of the Light 
 
 the stupid hatred of the anti-clericals had embittered 
 to the point of making one of the parties forget every 
 idea of justice. 
 
 On the whole, a few months after the Tangier affair 
 there were not many Frenchmen whose outlook had not 
 been deeply modified. To most of them it had been 
 brought home that every individual, whether he likes it 
 or not, is tied by vital bonds, not to abstractions, but to 
 a territory, and that indifference to the fortimes of this 
 territory is unnatural and foolish, and must sooner or 
 later be paid for by humiliation or anxiety. 
 
 2. Awakening of the Instinct of Self -Preservation 
 
 The success of the Republicans in the decisive elec- 
 tion of 1876 had for its principal cause a vague but 
 universal feeHng which acted powerfully upon the 
 electorate. This was the hope that the new regime 
 might make of the welfare of the community the con- 
 cern of all the citizens. The wish to be an active ele- 
 ment in society, to be more than a mere looker-on, not 
 to seem to presume by taking a positive interest in the 
 affairs of one's country, and to help in promoting their 
 proper settlement is the pathetic side of the demo- 
 cracies; it is also their chief motive power. 
 
 The failure of the Third Republic to do more than 
 artificially keep up this feeling must be one of the chief 
 grievances of the social historian against it. This 
 bourgeois democracy will always be regarded as a fraud. 
 From the very first — ^that is to say, from the moment 
 the constitution of 1875 gave them an easy means of 
 exploiting their compatriots, these unscrupulous people 
 duped them. They went on repeating to them at each 
 election that they were the real masters of their de- 
 
Instinct of Self-Preservation 157 
 
 stinies, but taking every precaution lest the so-called 
 masters should have a single clear issue placed before 
 them on which they could pronounce. The effect of this 
 policy was certain. The electors, interested at first, 
 became gradually indifferent to politics which they not 
 only did not sway, but hardly ever understood, and 
 settled into the apathy which has been the character- 
 istic of the Third Republic. So that the only people 
 who were attentive to the public affairs were for years 
 the very wide-awake politicians in the Chamber from 
 selfish motives, and later on that section of the working- 
 classes which came to consciousness through Syndicalist 
 propagandism. In the main, the chief object the nation 
 had had in welcoming the Republic thus appeared 
 nullified. 
 
 What the development of the Republican institutions 
 had not done, the Tangier incident did in a few weeks. 
 Once more the French recovered that freshness of 
 citizenship, that unanimity of feeling and purpose which 
 have impelled them to action at all the great moments 
 of their history: the Communist movement, the Cru- 
 sades, the Revolution, the great wars of 1792, and the 
 first wars of the Empire. 
 
 The threats of Germany might indeed have been 
 traced to causes which ought to leave the lower classes 
 indifferent : the dissatisfaction of a few bankers or ship- 
 owners, the Imperialist ambitions of some university 
 professors, the jingoism of the Prussian officers, etc.; 
 but these considerations, if they were put forward, 
 could not outweigh the natural impulse of patriotism in 
 its most elemental form, self-preservation. From high 
 to low the French felt that they were threatened with a 
 foreign domination, and the most unbearable foreign 
 domination they could imagine ; it was enough to revive 
 
158 The Return of the Light 
 
 in them the passionate interest in their State which 
 used to possess their ancestors, and to give them 
 the ennobHng consciousness of participating in its de- 
 fence, if not in its government. In truth, it is on the 
 memory of those moments that France has lived ever 
 since, and her fountain of new energy rose when she 
 reaHzed the significance of the Kaiser's demonstration 
 in Morocco. 
 
 After Tangier the feeling gave birth to a feverish 
 desire for being ready soon, whatever the cost might be ; 
 after Agadir — that is to say, six years later — circum- 
 stances having changed, the army being in perfect 
 training, the arsenals full, and the French artillery 
 showing a decided superiority over that of Germany, 
 the reaction was even more resolute. For the first 
 time since the brilliant and imprudent days of the 
 Second Empire, the whole French nation waited im- 
 patiently for a declaration of war. The suspense lasted 
 only a fortnight, but it had been the suspense of courage 
 and wounded pride, and no longer that of nervous 
 incertitude, and after that fortnight the French were 
 not the same. Not only the vague formulae clothing 
 vaguer hopes with which they had been amused so long 
 were forgotten, but the ghost of 1870 — that slowly- 
 growing fear of Germany which materialism in the guise 
 of Pacifism had increased — ^had been laid at last. I 
 know that a sentimental impetus is only too quickly 
 spent, and I have seen people imagine that this one 
 would be like every other. But the events have shown 
 that there must have been in the Tangier and Agadir 
 commotions something that was of another, higher, 
 and more endurable order. The French may be as 
 indifferent to mere politics as they we're beforehand, 
 but their attitude the moment a truly patriotic interest 
 
Revival of the Military Spirit 159 
 
 is at stake proves that they have regained their fuhiess 
 of civic consciousness on a few vital points. The way 
 in which the immense majority of the nation welcomed 
 the Three Year Law and the financial measures attend- 
 ing it had the calmness accompanying a rational 
 operation, and not the excitement inherent in purely 
 instinctive impulses. 
 
 3. Revival of the Military Spirit 
 
 It is almost a tautology to say that the feeling of self- 
 preservation promptly gave rise to a revival of the 
 military spirit. All the effort of the French since 1905 
 has had the army for its object. And the common good 
 sense of the people did not beat about the bush for the 
 means of defending France at a minimum of sacrifice; 
 it went straight to the only practical method. Those 
 were the days when Jaures, in endless speeches and 
 writings, would explain that the best army was not an 
 army at all, but the whole nation in arms on any men- 
 ace against its independence. So-called serious people, 
 inured to absurdities by the ocean of paradoxes on 
 which France had drifted since 1899, lent the new gen- 
 eral an attentive ear, but they gazed in severe doubtful- 
 ness at the real soldiers who took the trouble to explain 
 that all these fine theories were not theories at all, 
 but dreams which might look well only in Michelet's 
 or Victor Hugo's pages ; soldiers were under a ban and 
 supposed to know less than anybody else about every- 
 thing, including tactics. 
 
 The bulk of the nation were not long in scouting this 
 moonshine. An army was a military concern, and 
 civilians knew nothing about it; the more military it 
 was, the better. The eastern frontier ought to be pro- 
 
i6o The Return of the Light 
 
 tected at all times by a thick line of regiments ready to 
 march, and the defence of that most important approach 
 was not, on any account, to depend on the uncertain 
 arrival of reserves. Garrison towns like Toul, Lune- 
 ville, Verdun, and the lonely forts in their vicinity, — • 
 places the very names of which used to sound disagree- 
 ably in the ears of the recruits, — became in great de- 
 mand.' The yearly manoeuvres, which reservists had 
 formerly been glad to shirk, were accepted as treats. 
 The officers who commanded those of 1905 are unani- 
 mous in their statements that the men were as different 
 from themselves as if twenty years had intervened; 
 the proportion of reservists on the sick list was wonder- 
 fully small. The technical conclusions of the Manchu- 
 rian war had just begun to be widely circulated, and it 
 seemed as if the soldiers were as ready to understand 
 them as their officers; they could be summed up in the 
 superiority of offensive over defensive tactics, and in 
 the necessity of giving the men habits of decision and 
 initiative. Nothing, of course, would be better in 
 keeping with the military tradition of the French, 
 and the principles at which officers arrived were acted 
 upon immediately. Many observers must have been 
 surprised at noticing the change in the men*s impres- 
 sions concerning their officers. They used to be con- 
 fined to trivial or merely funny remarks about their 
 personal disposition and its effects upon daily barrack 
 life. Now the soldiers would discuss their chiefs 
 entirely from the professional point of view, and in 
 most cases their appreciations applied wonderfully to 
 
 * The present writer knew personally a lad of twenty, a poor college 
 servant, who insisted on undergoing an operation, lest he should not 
 serve his time, and applied for one of the Lorraine garrison towns instead 
 of staying in or near Paris, as he could easily have done. 
 
Revival of the Military Spirit i6i 
 
 the military — not parade-ground — value of the officers. 
 Once more the army was what it purports to be on the 
 first line of the booklet known as the Theorie Militairey 
 viz., a school for war, and not, as the Dreyfusists would 
 have had it, for peace. 
 
 It is remarkable, also, that the development of avia- 
 tion, which almost coincided with this change, was 
 never regarded from the scientific or sportsman's point 
 of view, but was viewed through its military possibili- 
 ties. The naive statements of Vedrines — possibly the 
 best representative of his craft — which caused so much 
 sympathetic amusement in England, corresponded to 
 a universal feeling. 
 
 Meanwhile the success of General d'Amade and 
 General Lyautey in Morocco effaced what traces of 
 ill-will against staff officers might have been left after 
 the Dreyfus affair. Both were typical French soldiers: 
 brave, dashing, and brilliant, persevering, flexible, and 
 good-htimoured, but, above all, intelligent, making the 
 most of every opportunity — in their own interest, no 
 doubt, for they are ambitious, but, above all, for the 
 success of their mission. These are qualities which will 
 always win popularity in France. It was in vain that 
 Jaures and his party cried out against the folly of 
 colonial enterprises, and proved with long columns of 
 figures that the Moroccan campaign cost enormous 
 sums of money which might have been better employed 
 elsewhere; the country, as a rule so sensitive to argu- 
 ments of this kind, hardly listened. The general feeling, 
 which went on gathering strength as the years passed, 
 was evidently that France is rich enough to pay for her 
 glory. 
 
 Gradually the army, which had almost been com- 
 pelled to hide itself, and seemed to be merely on 
 
i62 The Return of the Light 
 
 sufferance in a country which had outrun every other 
 in anti-miUtarist so-called civilization, was pushed 
 again to the forefront, and when one of its most popular 
 manifestations, the ** retreat," or Saturday night pa- 
 trolling with the bands, was revived, it was nothing 
 short of a triumph. 
 
 But nothing can give a better idea of the return of 
 France to her traditional military spirit than the 
 changed tone of the politicians when they speak of the 
 army. General Andre, during the long four years in 
 which he was Minister of War, would warm over the 
 "nation in arms," but he always spoke of officers in a 
 tone unpleasantly near the apologetical. It was obvious 
 that he thought them benighted, and felt more in- 
 clined to criticize than to defend them. His immediate 
 successor, M. Berteau^c, a broker, a busybody, and a 
 politician with some of the politician's worst faults, but 
 with keen receptivities and a conceit which occasionally 
 would look like proper pride, felt the change in the 
 country. The present writer can remember him in the 
 Chamber, shortly after the Tangier affair, standing in 
 his bench and threatening with violent gestures his 
 own political friends who had made insulting allusions 
 to the army. M. Messimy, advanced as he was, and 
 with the initial disadvantage of having left the army for 
 politics, appeared much more military in office than 
 might have been expected. As to M. Millerand, his 
 character being equal to his intelligence, he not only 
 freed the army from the wretched trammels which 
 Dreyfusism had put upon it, but treated it with a 
 respect which could not but be contagious. The politi- 
 cians who resented it were, however, compelled to copy 
 such respect, and to-day even the worst ungentlemanli- 
 ness in the Chamber seems decidedly cured of the tone 
 
The Chamber Dethroned 163 
 
 it complacently affected about 1903. The division 
 between France and the French army is a thing of the 
 past. 
 
 4. The Chamber Dethroned 
 
 During the whole of its history the French Chamber 
 was popular only once; that was after May 16, 1877, 
 when three hundred and sixty-three deputies rose 
 against President MacMahon and, right or wrong, em- 
 bodied for a while the feeling of the majority in the 
 nation. The Chamber had been in existence only a year 
 then and was as full of promises as the Republican 
 regime itself. After that date, it never once succeeded 
 again in securing the national sympathy, and more 
 than once it drew the national contempt on its head. 
 
 However, the sentiment into which the country 
 gradually settled after a long and disappointing ex- 
 perience of Parliamentary government was chiefly one 
 of profound indifference. The deputies were the rulers 
 of the country; that was a matter of course; how they 
 ruled it did not concern one Frenchman in twenty. 
 
 After 1905, not only the Tangier affair, but a series 
 of occurrences modified that feeling. For thirty years 
 the Chamber had treated the short-lived Cabinets which 
 it made and unmade as if fully conscious of their 
 inferiority. On no occasion had it been compelled to 
 appeal to anybody, or even trust anybody. The 
 Tangier incident made the deputies feel, and, for the 
 first time really appear, not only defeated but bewil- 
 dered. They tried, indeed, to lay the blame of their 
 shame on M. Delcasse, but the Cabinet in which M. 
 Delcasse had served had been too submissively their 
 obedient agent, and no one would believe that men so 
 
164 The Return of the Light 
 
 haughty the day before were not responsible for their 
 actions. Meanwhile the attention of the whole country 
 and of Europe itself became centred on one man, M. 
 Rouvier, and as the negotiations between France and 
 Germany were carried on for the first time not only at 
 the Foreign Office or at the German Embassy, but 
 through semi-official statements in the Press of both 
 countries, the Chamber suddenly receded into the 
 background and assumed the humble part of the 
 looker-on. It was a great falling off, and, strange to 
 say, nobody seemed to notice it otherwise than with 
 satisfaction. 
 
 In the years which followed, the Chamber had the 
 ill-luck to be seen repeatedly in the same predicament. 
 It did not even attempt to deal with the vine-growers' 
 disturbances in the south of France, and once more the 
 country saw its interests placed in the hands of one 
 individual, who this time was the wily Clemenceau. It 
 was as passive when a new power, another Parliament, 
 with chiefs and a discipline, the Syndicalist Labour 
 Bourse, suddenly rose against it and fairly had it at bay 
 on two occasions. Nobody who lived in Paris at the 
 time will ever forget the electricians' and above all the 
 postmen's strikes. There was considerable discomfort 
 in the city, and after a time there was a certain amount 
 of impatience which never bore the semblance of a 
 panic; but through it all there was a sly enjoyment of 
 the embarrassment in which the deputies found them- 
 selves, and whoever met some of them at the time must 
 have seen that they realized it with some confusion. 
 This was emphasized during the postmen's strike by the 
 treatment which M. Buisson and a few other Radical- 
 Socialist deputies received at a meeting of the strikers. 
 They were hooted off the platform where they had taken 
 
The Chamber Dethroned 165 
 
 their seats uninvited, and that was the first open 
 manifestation of the breach between the bourgeois 
 Socialism and earnest Syndicalism. The strike of the 
 Northern Railway-men gave rise to a similar situation, 
 the Chamber appearing helpless and hardly attempting 
 to disguise its annoyance under pointless speeches, 
 while M. Briand, then Minister of the Interior, was 
 practically left to adjust the difficulty alone. 
 
 Such experiences cannot be repeated at short inter- 
 vals without effect. The gradual displacing of the 
 basis of authority from the Chamber to the Prime 
 Ministers, which I will point out in the next chapter, 
 dates from those days. 
 
 But with effacement came an increased contempt 
 when the deputies, apparently satisfied to have taken 
 a back seat, made up for the humiliation by tangible 
 advantages they craftily secured for themselves. They 
 certainly obeyed unwise suggestions when they — un- 
 known to the country and on one occasion profiting by 
 the absence of most of the minority — voted for them- 
 selves, first a handsome old-age pension, and later on 
 an increase of two thirds of their salary. The nick- 
 name Quinze Mille — their salary now being, in fact, 
 fifteen thousand francs — sticks much more unpleasantly 
 upon them than even the memory of the Panama 
 corruption. The elector never became reconciled to the 
 notion that while his own taxes rose the salary of his 
 deputies should rise too. Even a reform like Propor- 
 tional Representation, which at other times would have 
 appeared eminently moral, did not succeed in im- 
 pressing people with the disinterestedness of the Cham- 
 ber. The only conclusion which the country thought 
 safe was that deputies could not very well resist an 
 impulse stronger than their own. 
 
i66 The Return of the Light 
 
 5. The Craving for Strong Men 
 
 After the General Election of May, 1914, M. Jaur^s 
 declared triumphantly that France had shown once 
 more her antipathy for personal power. He added that 
 if the logic of the election were pressed to its conse- 
 quences, as it ought to be, the Presidency of the Re- 
 public should be abolished. The Socialist leader was 
 partly right, undoubtedly. If the logic, not of an 
 election, but of the interpretation by successive Parlia- 
 ments of the Constitution were pressed to its conse- 
 quences, the Presidency would appear an expensive and 
 confusing superfluity. The present volume is nothing 
 else than the recognition of this fact. But while M. 
 Jaures objected to any initiative on the part of the 
 President, I deplore the fact that the person who so far 
 appeared the most in harmony with the so-called Con- 
 stitution was M. Fallieres — that is to say, the President 
 — whose lack of individuality and pitiful self-efface- 
 ment were the nearest approach we could conceive 
 to nonentity. 
 
 But, as I said above, M. Jaures was only partly right. 
 Logic was not that gentleman's forte, although he was 
 a Utopian, and Utopians frequently make as much of 
 logic as the devil does in Dante. The logic of a poor 
 election is — no more than the logic of a poor constitu- 
 tion — the logic of facts. M. Poincare, having been 
 elected against the wish of M. Jaures and his friends, 
 it was natural that if the electorate seemed to favour 
 the latter they should cry out that the country abode 
 by them against the President. But I have pointed 
 out several times already, that French elections, having 
 never once since 1877 offered the voters any definite 
 issue can never claim to be clear answers of the elector- 
 
The Craving for Strong Men 167 
 
 ate as they are in England. The only inference that 
 could be drawn from the election of 191 4 was, that in 
 the present electioneering system, Radical prefects, 
 guided by a Radical Cabinet, as that of M. Doumergue, 
 were sure to return a Radical majority. But this has 
 nothing to do with the state of public opinion concern- 
 ing the superiority of some responsible person over 
 an irresponsible Assembly. 
 
 The indisputable fact is that since the Tangier 
 affair France has constantly been in search of a man 
 — to such an extent, that successive disappointments 
 have only made her longing more acute. Let me leave 
 out the traditional love of the soldier which waits only 
 for a chance of manifesting itself, and limit myself to a 
 rapid review of the politicians she has magnified into 
 statesmen or chiefs, merely because they were not 
 afraid to take their responsibilities. 
 
 At the moment of the Tangier affair, it was M. 
 Rouvier, a man with a past, a disreputable past, but 
 a self-made, energetic man, whom the ups and downs 
 of existence had steeled against surprises, and who 
 rather enjoyed a fight. I have said above how 
 he monopolized an attention which nobody since 
 Gambetta had ever commanded. 
 
 At the time of the Agadir difficulty the head of gov- 
 ernment was M. Clemenceau. This remarkable in- 
 dividual is not easy to analyse. His purely literary 
 works, which his political fame throws into the shade, 
 reveal a very different personality from that to which 
 the newspapers have accustomed us,' and, were it not 
 for a pitiably narrow philosophical outlook, they would 
 make the author decidedly sympathetic. But this side 
 
 * I have endeavoured to disengage their characteristics in an article 
 in the Nineteenth Century and After, May, 1907. 
 
1 68 The Return of the Light 
 
 of M. Clemenceau is almost unknown. That which has 
 made him famous is a bitter irony which has many- 
 times disported itself in actions even more than in 
 words, and a capacity for political hatreds which talent 
 and an off-hand manner of distributing contempt alone 
 save from being repellent. Altogether M. Clemenceau 
 had, during most of his existence, produced on his com- 
 patriots the effect which the presence of Gambetta 
 at the head of affairs would, according to Bismarck, 
 produce in Europe; he was a drummer in a sick man^s 
 room. But he had the good fortune during his tenure 
 of office to be able to resist Germany instead of ne- 
 gotiating, with her, and for the first time in his life his 
 pride was indistinguishable from dignity. Then this 
 man who appeared to be the lineal descendant of the 
 great Jacobins, and obviously cultivated the resem- 
 blance, was on several occasions placed face to face 
 with the Revolution, and every time crushed it in 
 perfect disregard of its great name and perfect con- 
 sciousness of the littleness of its supporters; finally, he 
 who as a mere deputy had made himself the judge of so 
 many Cabinets, treated the deputies and senators as if 
 they were rather unintelligent boys with more rights 
 to the birch than to information. One of his com- 
 munications to the Chamber on the subject of the 
 Entente Cordiale will remain famous by its reticence 
 and almost insulting brevity. On the whole, M. Clem- 
 enceau, who had never acknowledged any authority, 
 showed himself the most authoritative of Prime Minis- 
 ters, and, in spite of all that in his already long life had 
 been known against him, the country loved him for it. 
 Three men came after him: M. Briand, M. Poincare, 
 now President of the Republic, and M. Barthou. The 
 three had real if unequal rights to the name which M. 
 
The Craving for Strong Men 169 
 
 Barr^ gave to the chief leaders of the RepubHcan 
 parties; they were 'Hhe sons of the wolf." M. Briand 
 had been not only a Socialist, but an anarchist, and it 
 seemed unpleasantly probable that his conversion to 
 order had been more sincere than his interest in strikes. 
 M. Poincare had a clean past, but he had been too long 
 in politics not to have gathered some of the political 
 dust upon him, and his somewhat narrow anti-clerical- 
 ism could not be associated with greatness. As to M. 
 Barthou, a shrewd Southerner with elegant ambitions, 
 he was celebrated for a recantation which he had made 
 when a member of the Meline Cabinet, and which was 
 not easily distinguishable from a political treason. 
 Yet, one after the other, these three men were looked 
 upon as rescuers, and it might take them years of 
 passivity to exhaust the reserve of hope which the 
 nation once placed upon them. Why should this be? 
 Merely because at various periods of their governments 
 they had to speak up, show the strong hand, and on 
 the whole make the enemies of order realize that they 
 felt the country on their side against anarchy, and 
 would act in consequence. 
 
 If you will contrast this impression with that which 
 spread not only through the country but through 
 Europe — ^with the sole exception of Germany — when 
 the Doumergue Cabinet went into office, and it seemed 
 once more as if there were no man at the wheel in 
 France, with a foolish and riotous crew instead, you 
 will have no doubt that France has a passionate longing 
 for strong men. If M. Jaures, who denied it, had been 
 more capable of criticism, he would have been sur- 
 prised at his own lack of popularity, in spite of qualities 
 which ought to have been essentially popular in France. 
 Mere talent is at present played out, and character has 
 
170 The Return of the Light 
 
 taken its place; men like Marshal MacMahon, or the 
 Due de Broglie, who only secured esteem in the early- 
 years of the Republic, would be to-day enthusiastically 
 followed; the Tangier affair, by disclosing the danger of 
 weakness, recreated the respect for energy. 
 
 6. Transformation of Newspapers 
 
 The difference between French and English news- 
 papers before the Tangier incident must strike the 
 least attentive. The English have been placed by their 
 situation in the world in the necessity to be attentive 
 to what is going on in the whole world. And their 
 patriotism is so wide awake, so much on its guard 
 against untested theories and uncontrolled information, 
 that it goes by facts and is mostly occupied with facts. 
 This accuracy, coupled with the businesslike manner 
 the English have almost universally in discussing the 
 interests of their country, produces the wonderfully 
 illuminating articles we can read in the great London 
 dailies. English people are so absorbed in the matter 
 of those compositions that they hardly ever notice 
 their Demosthenic terseness and unconscious literary 
 perfection. 
 
 The French, in their taste for conversation, contro- 
 versy, eloquence, and repartee, are the real descendants 
 of the Gauls, and this tendency is so strong that it 
 causes them too often to be indifferent to the subject 
 on hand, and to take their chief pleasure in the handling 
 of it. It is not surprising, therefore, that at least since 
 the days of Louis XV — when the French Colonial 
 expansion practically stopped and the Revolutionary 
 ideas engrossed every intellect — foreign topics should 
 not have been frequent in their talk and, above all, 
 
Transformation of Newspapers 171 
 
 in their Press; those objects are too remote and often 
 too dry to be made impassioning. 
 
 During the years which immediately preceded the 
 danger of France, speculation, as I said before, ran 
 riot, and the newspapers were full of it. No editor 
 would have dreamed of trying to interest his readers in 
 Tunis or the Congo when the whole country was mak- 
 ing its mind up about the advisability of continuing or 
 discontinuing the Church. The Temps newspaper 
 would indeed go on devoting its first column to dis- 
 cussions of foreign questions which, as a rule, were a 
 faint reflection of the same in the London Times, but 
 either this was skipped or it was that which gave the 
 paper its exaggerated renown for dullness. In most of 
 the other dailies, foreign news had to be hunted in the 
 invisible corner where it had replaced the abstract of 
 the Parliamentary proceedings under the Second 
 Empire. 
 
 In a few weeks after the Tangier affair, this feature 
 of the French Press vanished. The semi-diplomatic 
 conversations carried on in the Temps and the leading 
 German papers, lent a dignity so far unhoped-for to the 
 daily Press. A whole school of young journalists, with 
 special training, abilities, and ambitions, were de- 
 lighted to have a chance of playing a real part in the 
 affairs of Europe, and while in company they would 
 astonish by their reticence, they gradually filled the 
 periodicals with their knowledge. To-day it is im- 
 possible to open even a provincial French paper without 
 seeing a comparatively large space of it devoted to 
 foreign news, and leading articles frequently discuss it. 
 At first, indeed, it was only a fad or a pose to pretend 
 information or interest in international questions, but, 
 while the aristocratic readers of the Gaulois may be 
 
172 The Return of the Light 
 
 negligible in this connection, the readers of the Petit 
 Journal are not, and whoever travels in the country 
 must have noticed frequently how intelligently plain 
 persons retail their paper on these questions. 
 
 The importance of this change cannot be exaggerated. 
 I shall point out in another chapter how the substitution 
 of the European for the mere party point of view in the 
 politics of France is at the bottom of the improvement 
 in the national spirit. 
 
 7. Rapid Diffusion of a New Mentality 
 
 France, before the Tangier shock recalled her to 
 herself, was in a state of complete anarchy. Im- 
 mediately after, the reaction produced by the con- 
 sciousness of danger brought about a beginning of 
 order, and even something like a healthy — if elemental 
 — political creed. The instinct of self-preservation, the 
 love and respect of the army, the craving for a man, which 
 I have pointed out as aspects of that reaction may be 
 purely spontaneous in appearance, but they cannot 
 exist without principles making for authority and dis- 
 cipline, and bound ultimately to develop into a positive 
 political system. In fact, the attitude which I shall 
 describe farther down, as the consequence of the new 
 spirit of France, is little else than this development. 
 
 But the French are seldom content with living their 
 ideas; they must think and speak them, and it cannot 
 be denied that since the second half of the eighteenth 
 century the habit has constantly gathered strength. 
 It is not surprising, therefore, that as the Tangier affair 
 threw its light over mere political deficiencies, it should 
 also have shown their connection with dangerous 
 formulae. As the Dreyfusist nubes were dispelled, a 
 
Diffusion of a New Mentality 173 
 
 desire for a saner and higher philosophy than that 
 which was responsible for the nation's blindness and 
 feebleness was universally felt, and it did not wait very 
 long for its satisfaction. The following chapters will 
 show that while materialism under all its forms — 
 philosophical, social, and literary — had been gradually 
 filtering from its earliest exponents to the lower strata 
 in French society, some of these exponents themselves 
 had reconsidered their ideas, and a numerous elitCy 
 soberer and better-informed than the Dreyfusist ''in- 
 tellectuals," had heard of their recantation. This was 
 not all. While the slow-going masses were left to their 
 digestion of materialism, other doctrines had been 
 propounded by men far superior in talent to Zola 
 and in intelligence — as distinguished from mere wit — to 
 Anatole France. The books of these men had never 
 been popular enough to counteract the coarser current, 
 but they were universally known all the same, and the 
 public mind had only to turn to them for the systems 
 without which the French always seem uncomfortable. 
 In this way a body of ideas which had been clear and 
 distinct in the minds of thousands of cultivated in- 
 dividuals, but had been hindered in their expansion by 
 unfavourable environment, was suddenly liberated, and, 
 rapidly diffused at present by literature and by the 
 Press, took possession of the large majority among 
 those capable of lucid thought. 
 
 The following chapters will recapitulate the most 
 vital of these ideas. 
 
SECTION II 
 
 INTELLECTUAL PREPARATION OF THE NEW SPIRIT BY THE 
 EXPERIENCE OF THE BEST 
 
 This is the counterpart of the preparation for the 
 intellectual and moral decadence of France which I 
 traced to the philosophy and literature of the Second 
 Empire, but which might be traced further back — to 
 the Revolutionists and their prophets, the Encyclopaed- 
 ists. As I said in the first chapters of Part I, France 
 was degraded by the poor philosophy of its leading 
 circles during the greater portion of the nineteenth 
 century, and if this lowering of the rational light had 
 continued, no shock, no catastrophe would have been 
 strong enough to produce the effects which we hope to 
 see arise more and more from the awakening of 1905. 
 In fact, the Revolution was no lesson for most of its 
 cultivated adherents, and, in the same way, 1870 was 
 in a few years forgotten by the masses, because in one 
 case, the metaphysics of the Revolution remained in the 
 ascendancy at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
 and in the other only a few exceptional intellects were 
 shaken by the German victory. The lucky coincidence, 
 without which this book would have no object, was the 
 combination of a great patriotic emotion of the nation 
 at large with a radical intellectual change of the most 
 distinguished thinkers and writers. Were it not for 
 this conversion the effort of France towards her re- 
 
 174 
 
Reaction Against the Revolution 175 
 
 covery would depend entirely upon the political fluctua- 
 tions, and would no doubt be in great jeopardy, whereas 
 in the present circumstances politics can only weaken 
 or retard it transiently. The fact is that the deteriora- 
 tion of the country would be at an end at once, if the 
 handful of politicians who make use against it of a 
 superannuated machinery could either be swept aside 
 by popular indignation, or, which is, unfortunately, less 
 probable — be won to saner ideas. There might be more 
 mistakes made, but the national atmosphere would 
 seem incredibly more pure and freed from its deceptive 
 or baneftd influences. As it is, the least defeat of Par- 
 liamentary omnipotence, even the least obstacle placed 
 in the way of the Radical majority, is attended with a 
 feeling of universal relief. All this would be impossible 
 if the intellectual and ethical, or sentimental changes, 
 which the following chapters will point out, were not 
 deeper than any similar modifications of the national 
 standpoint since the Revolution; unquestionably more 
 so, for instance, than the poetic conversion produced 
 by Chateaubriand with the assistance of Napoleon's 
 strong hand. 
 
 I. Reaction against the Revolution 
 
 The French Revolution is one of those colossal 
 events which not only baffle adequate appreciation, but 
 balk the imaginative effort; after years of deeply 
 human reading which ought to result, and apparently 
 does result, in vivid tahleauXy even the historian finds 
 himself inclined to think of the years 1 789-1 794 as 
 belonging to an age divided from ours by something 
 mysterious and intangible, almost unreal. 
 
 The political consequences of the Revolution par- 
 
176 The Return of the Light 
 
 take of the same character. They forced themselves 
 on the world with a violence which made criticism as 
 difficult as composure may be during a natural cata- 
 clysm, and after sixscore years, democracy is still a 
 dogma in millions of intellects, while the fascination of 
 the word Liberty, without any analysis of its content, 
 has lost little of its power. 
 
 It would, therefore, be a momentous occurrence if, 
 in the very country which made the Revolution, an 
 intellectual change should happen universal enough to 
 counteract the weird effects I mentioned above, and to 
 be in itself a sort of living criticism of the Revolutionary 
 principles. A mood may be modified to some extent by 
 arguments, but it can only be displaced by another 
 mood. 
 
 Very few signs of such a transformation were seen 
 during the nineteenth century. There were, indeed, 
 many people whom their tastes, traditions, and too 
 often their interests or prejudices preserved from the 
 revolutionary fascination, and they had representatives, 
 far better than themselves, in literature, philosophy, and 
 politics. The names of De Maistre, and De Bonald, of 
 Lamartine — in his early verse — and of Berryer, need 
 no comment. The Church, too, looked upon the 
 Revolution as a sort of heresy, and this attitude ulti- 
 mately resulted in the promulgation of the celebrated 
 Syllabus of Pius IX, a document in which all the con- 
 sequences derived from the dogma of liberty were 
 anathematized. But whatever might be the authority 
 of these opponents to the principles of 1789, the former 
 foimd favour in every part of Europe — in Italy more 
 than anywhere else — and either initiated, or assisted, 
 or attended a universal rise, first of the bourgeois classes 
 against the autocracy and aristocracy, later of the 
 
Reaction Against the Revolution 177 
 
 working classes against capitalists of all descriptions. 
 In France alone, the minor revolutions of 1830 and 
 1848, the Commune in 1871, the Republican election of 
 1876, and the Socialist election of 1898, were all mani- 
 festations of the same spirit — they all indicated the 
 civic and economic ascent of classes so far regarded 
 as inferior. 
 
 Meanwhile a parallel state of mind became apparent, 
 which was called Liberalism — that is to say, an opinion 
 savouring of the doctrines of Liberty — and was an 
 attempt of people rather conquered by than won to the 
 Revolution to present its tenets in a light which might 
 make them acceptable even to the Catholic Church. 
 This so-called Liberal state of mind arose from the 
 certainty in which these people were that no human 
 power could resist the Revolutionary headway, and that 
 it was sheer waste of energy to try to do it. Such a 
 compromise was inevitable. It found one great theorist, 
 M. de Tocqueville, the author of a book on the United 
 States of America, which has hardly taken a few 
 wrinkles, and several champions whose names will be 
 remembered among those of great and good men: the 
 Comte de Montalembert, the Due de Broglie, Pere 
 Lacordaire, Bishop Dupanloup. But compromises are 
 seldom successful. This one failed repeatedly, the last 
 time in a conspicuous manner, when the ralliement 
 advocated by Pope Leo XIII obviously fell short of its 
 comparatively modest object, and had finally to be 
 negatived by the next Pope, Pius X. The Liberals, on 
 one hand, never were acknowledged by the ultramon- 
 tane Catholics, and as a portion of the modem world 
 they were so scanty a body as to be almost unperceived. 
 Altogether, neither the anathemas of Pius IX nor the 
 concessions of Leo XIII were of historical weight in the 
 
178 The Return of the Light 
 
 mighty Revolutionary development, and we shall pre- 
 sently see that the reaction came from men foreign or 
 hostile to theological considerations, and was chiefly 
 produced by positive experience. 
 
 Nothing can be more striking than the impression 
 left on Taine by the events of 1 870-1 871, and visible in 
 his correspondence.^ This pure idealist, whom I have 
 described in another chapter as completely indifferent 
 to contingencies, had a whole portion of his soul re- 
 vealed to him by the war and the Commune. He was a 
 patriot and a man of order quite as much as a philo- 
 sopher. Everything sounds surprising and almost ex- 
 aggeratedly simple in this great writer, but that is 
 because he lived in a realm of abstractions. The dis- 
 covery of his own feelings reacted upon him as it must 
 on a man accustomed to generalize from all and any 
 data, and he who had been so remote from political 
 considerations started the great political work which 
 eventually became the monument called Origines de la 
 France Contemporaine. 
 
 The only work worth mentioning on the same 
 subject was Thiers*s well-known but very superficial 
 Histoire de la Revolution. Taine applied to these new 
 researches a mind trained in three or four departments 
 of literary activity, and a method which even his sys- 
 tematic intellect could not deprive of its highly scientific 
 character. The results were remarkable. Even the 
 criticism of such a carping specialist as M. Aulard leaves 
 the Origines untouched as a great historical monument. 
 
 Now, what is, on the whole, the Origines de la France 
 Contemporaine? It is, in the first place, an historical 
 investigation, the conclusion of which is the emphatic 
 statement that the Revolution was the work, not by 
 
 * H. Taine, Sa Vie et sa Correspondance, Paris, Hachette, Ltd. 
 
Reaction Against the Revolution 179 
 
 any means of the nation — which only wanted reforms — 
 but of the violent few, whose history is that of the clubs 
 of Paris and the largest provincial towns. In the second 
 place, it is an analysis tested by numerous facts, of the 
 Revolutionary mentality. What is this? Practically 
 that of Rousseau as appearing mostly from the Contrat 
 Social. In fact, whenever the Revolutionists spoke in 
 their own name, the principles could easily be brought 
 round to those of Rousseau's short treatise, and they 
 never lost a chance of expressing their sense of in- 
 debtedness to him. And what is the Contrat Social? 
 An entirely idealistic construction which even the 
 literary genius of its author could not have made the 
 basis of an immense social rebuilding if the age had not 
 been poisoned by speculation, and, above all, if cir- 
 cumstances had not been so extraordinary. 
 
 The Contrat Social is a mere play of the intelligence. 
 Rousseau made abstraction while writing it from all 
 historical data, and although he had more political 
 sense than his modem critics will admit, ^ he finally 
 produced a work which is nothing else than a philosophi- 
 cal hypothesis. Society existed exclusively by the free 
 consent of the individuals composing it ; so the author- 
 ity or government could only be delegated by the commu- 
 nity to one or several representatives, and could not be 
 alienated for ever. Careful distinction ought to be made 
 between the sovereign, who in reality is the community, 
 and the government that is only its representative. 
 There were no subjects ; equality was the basis of society, 
 and liberty was its corollary, as nobody can be bound to 
 his equal for a longer time than he chooses to be. 
 
 » The Contrat Social concludes in favour of decentralization, which, 
 in fact, is acknowledged to-day as one of the best counter-weights to 
 the tyranny of democracy. 
 
i8o The Return of the Light 
 
 The Revolution applied these ideas in their rigour. 
 Instead of reforming the monarchy, it made a tabula 
 rasa of French society, and persuaded itself that it was 
 rebuilding it according to the superior standards 
 summed up in the motto, " Liberty, equality, fraternity.** 
 
 This is not the place to criticize the Contrat Social; 
 this has been done a hundred times before. Suffice it to 
 say that the evil to which the present volume reverts 
 in numberless passages, viz., the inadequacy of a gov- 
 ernment immediately dependent upon the multitude 
 is the direct outcome of the doctrine of Rousseau. 
 What I deal with here is merely the influence of Taine's 
 analysis of the Revolutionary mentality as reflected 
 from the Contrat Social. After several years of hard 
 work on his book, Taine endeavoured to disengage his 
 own impression, and it was so elemental that he was 
 afraid it might appear ridiculous. It could be summed 
 up as follows: Rousseau and the Revolutionists, Taine 
 said, imagined that the government of a nation was a 
 very simple arrangement which only needed reason to 
 be perfect. It was an enormous mistake. Politics is less 
 a science than an art, and this art is one of infinite com- 
 plication, which only long practice helped by heredi- 
 tary qualities can teach. The Revolution, ignoring this 
 principle, was doomed to build on the unreal, and, in 
 fact, it appears as purely systematic. Taine's ideal in 
 politics was evidently the English view, which is less 
 a view than an ethos ^ endlessly suggesting reform, no 
 matter how partial, rather than wholesale destruction 
 and rebuilding. 
 
 The reputation of Taine, when he wrote the eleven 
 volumes of the Origines was at its zenith. He was 
 universally looked upon as impartial. As a philosopher 
 he could not be regarded as exaggeratedly attached to 
 
Reaction Against the Revolution i8i 
 
 the beliefs of the past ; in fact he professed to ignore the 
 past in his speculations, and with the tendencies of an 
 ascetic he had been the protagonist of materialism. As 
 a critic and writer he had no rival. Altogether his 
 spirit, method, and art had made him less the chief 
 of a school than a model, and whoever in French 
 literature claimed any degree of sincerity acknowledged 
 his influence. 
 
 It was inevitable that his historic views, startling 
 as they were to a generation which had been accustomed 
 to take the Revolution as a whole and without discus- 
 sion, should modify the concepts so far admitted. A 
 few people entered reservations; the Due de Broglie 
 said that he could easily bring forward as many facts 
 in favour of the Revolution as M. Taine had adduced 
 against it. But there were no protests, and after a 
 quarter of a century the effect of the Origines is obvi- 
 ously greater every day. Taine's criticisms have been 
 substantiated by most of his successors. His purely 
 historic views on the Revolution are those of M. Sorel, 
 of M. Madelin, and of M. Len6tre, and M. Aulard has 
 lost rather than gained in his encounter with grateful 
 disciples of the master. The epic grandeur of the 
 Revolution still remains with the nation in arms against 
 all Europe, but it has been taken away from the maniacs 
 of the Comite de Salut Public. The apologists of 
 Robespierre and Marat, even of Danton, are so few as 
 to be invisible, and if M. Clemenceau were to speak 
 to-day of the lesson, as he called it, given to Kings on 
 January 21, 1793, in the tone he could take ten years 
 ago, he would sound more ridiculous than horrible. 
 As to the analysis of the political philosophy of the 
 Revolutionists, its results seem to have been final. 
 The notion of a wholesale remodelling of a large 
 
1 82 The Return of the Light 
 
 country appears absurd, and the sovereignty of the 
 multitude is either an academic notion, which St. 
 Thomas Aquinas might hold, or it is an absurdity. 
 
 This change in public opinion showed itself in a 
 manner that could admit of no doubt in 1912, at the 
 time of the Rousseau celebrations. The fact is, that 
 after Taine, two writers of rare merit, M. Faguet and 
 M. Jules Lemaitre, had resumed ex professo the in- 
 vestigation into the Swiss philosopher begun in connec- 
 tion with the Revolution by the author of Les OrigineSy 
 and their conclusions had been severe. Rousseau was 
 a genius, no doubt, but genius has been known many 
 times to co-exist with more than serious shortcomings. 
 In this instance these shortcomings were a callousness 
 to moral niceties which seems unsurpassable, and a rare 
 power for seeing the wrong or paradoxical side of a 
 question. Rousseau was a great writer, a contemptible 
 character, and what the French language calls better 
 than any other, an esprit faux. Later on M. Paul 
 Bourget was to dwell — somewhat ponderously — on an- 
 other taint of Rousseau, which he called sheer lunacy, 
 and which the readers of the philosopher's well-known 
 letter to Hume must have noticed, even if they called 
 it by a milder name. As it is, when it was mooted in 
 Parliament that the Rousseau celebrations should as- 
 sume a national character, M. Maurice Barres, who 
 rose to speak against the bill, was certainly the mouth- 
 piece of all the cultivated portion of the country. In 
 fact, when the celebrations did take place, and when, 
 as had been proposed, the Government appeared 
 officially at them, the absence of literary men suf- 
 ficiently independent to be representative of their 
 profession, proved clearly that the event had been 
 changed into a mere political manifestation. The 
 
Reaction Against the Revolution 183 
 
 notion that Rousseau was a benefactor of the country 
 whose language he wrote with such mastery seems 
 impossible to revive, and the refutation of minor errors 
 on the part of M. Faguet and M. Jules Lemaitre will 
 never amount to a rehabilitation. 
 
 Taine was not alone affected by the war and the 
 Commune to the extent I have just indicated. With 
 less of the feeling of a catastrophe, and more of a dis- 
 appointment, with elegance, and often with the disdain 
 of elegance for coarse contingencies, the other prophet 
 of the Second Empire, Renan, after taking the same 
 lesson, took almost the same method to enforce it, and 
 advocated similar remedies to prevent its repetition. 
 His surprise at the brutality of the Prussians, when he 
 had been used so long to regard their country as the 
 home of culture, did not shake his belief in culture; it 
 only made it more decided. But the signal failure of the 
 Republic in the first two decades of its existence left 
 upon him a deep distrust of the democratic aptitude 
 for government. His book. La Reforme Intellectuelle 
 et Morale de la France, is an apology for the supremacy 
 of the intelligence, and an overt indictment of the 
 democracy. Renan thought that no country can be 
 true to itself unless the best in it are responsible for the 
 government; and his natural tendency was to look for 
 such an aristocracy among, not the so-called best-bom, 
 but the best-informed. Sages and philosophers ought 
 to be the legislators in his Commonwealth. 
 
 This was an idea which experience had to test like 
 every other. It was tested and found wanting when the 
 Dreyfusist "Intellectuals" were associated with politi- 
 cians in framing the public spirit of France, and when 
 M. Berthelot, Renan's bosom friend and a chemist of 
 universal repute, was made Minister of Foreign Affairs. 
 
i84 The Return of the Light 
 
 The results were laughable. But Renan's name was 
 so great towards 1880, his judgment had so much 
 weight, that to see him secede in cold blood from the 
 democratic side took in the eyes of the elite the im- 
 portance of an historical fact. The impression it must 
 have made on M. Jules Lemaitre and on a number of 
 Lycee professors is easily gathered from their intellectual 
 curve. 
 
 On the whole, the Revolutionists' fallacy, that power 
 ought to be vested in the multitude, had been exploded 
 long before the European event which showed its ab- 
 surdity ; the Revolution appeared not only to the then 
 rising school of the Action Frangaise, but to many 
 reflective minds, as a movement completely deviated 
 from its proper object, and the plain but far-reaching 
 principle that a country's government ought to be in 
 the hands of experts was ready to pass into popular 
 consciousness. 
 
 2. Reaction against Scientism 
 
 Another *'idol" which, in 1905, was still standing, 
 and blindly worshipped by the millions, had also been 
 considerably shaken before the end of the nineteenth 
 century. That was Science, as its name used to be then 
 written, like that of a god or living genius. 
 
 It was unfortunate that the famous phrase, "the 
 bankruptcy of science," was, towards 1895, fathered 
 on Brunetiere, who was not responsible for more than 
 its popular commentary. Brunetiere was more dreaded 
 than respected ; he was a formidable polemist, with un- 
 suspected resources, which made him the more danger- 
 ous, but his rhetoric was often empty, his apparent 
 logic was frequently mere dialectics, and he had a bold 
 
Reaction Against Scientism 185 
 
 way of generalizing, which put one on his guard against 
 him. The consequence was that the formula "Science 
 is a bankrupt" was challenged at once as being one of 
 the epigrammatic statements habitual to the critic, 
 and numberless refutations of it were given by men 
 worth speaking for science. 
 
 It then appeared that Science was not a bankrupt, 
 since it had not made the promises it was accused 
 of not having redeemed, and consequently the emotion 
 created by M. Brunetiere had been unfounded. 
 
 Yet this emotion was not in vain. It might be true 
 that Science, even as represented by Descartes in 
 La Methode, or Condorcet in his Esguisse, or Renan in 
 VAvenir de la Science — ^had not hinted that the key to 
 the universal riddle should be found in Science properly 
 deduced, but innumerable people had believed that 
 such a promise had been made, and among the bour- 
 geoisie nearest to the lower classes the belief was hardly 
 short of a dogma, and productive of powerful effects. 
 It was, therefore, all-important, that if there existed a 
 misunderstanding concerning Science, it should be dis- 
 pelled in a way likely to serve at the same time as 
 an illumination and a clearing away of a dangerous 
 sophism. 
 
 In fact, the consequences of this belief in Science bore 
 more immediately on practical life than was generally 
 supposed. The logic of the people could not help in- 
 ferring that the triumphant progress of Science meant 
 the end of vSuperstition, and Superstition, since the days 
 of Voltaire, was difficult to distinguish from faith. 
 This was the speculative victory of Science, and it 
 enabled the unreflective individual to trust to his 
 betters for a system of verities that would at last be 
 worthy of the name; many a poor school-teacher who 
 
1 86 The Return of the Light 
 
 had just caught a ghmpse of modem knowledge at his 
 training college, lived in the hope that education would 
 some day, perhaps in the near future, furnish a com- 
 plete explanation of the world and life, and provide 
 simple rules to replace the superannuated ethics. But 
 there was another prospect which appealed to even 
 larger numbers. Science meant speculative light, but 
 it meant also practical progress, civilization, a maximum 
 of happiness on a minimum of effort — the vision, in a 
 word, which the Socialists everlastingly conjured up 
 before their simple audiences. 
 
 Religion, with what its enemies call her ready-made 
 truth and her ready-made bliss in an hypothetic future, 
 has often been charged with soothing believers into apa- 
 thy. But no apathy could exceed the passivity into which 
 the new faith caused ignorant people to settle. It left 
 them only the outward routine of morals ; the inner im- 
 pulse was promptly exhausted in default of a living source. 
 
 Therefore, it was fortunate for the moral health of 
 France that an exaggerated mistrust of Science suc- 
 ceeded an exaggerated belief in it. It was good that the 
 notion of effort in the domain of life as well as in that of 
 thought was restored to the public consciousness, even at 
 the cost of some disquietude. Effort is better than ignoble 
 satisfaction and, above all, silly certitude. There was 
 more virility in France after Brimetiere's somewhat the- 
 atrical demonstration than before, and it was virility of 
 the best kind, that which arises from lucid thought. 
 
 3. Reaction against Materialism 
 
 I have pointed out above that Realism in literature 
 was not exclusively a literary method, but had a moral 
 substratum which was promptly to appear when Realism 
 
Reaction Against Materialism 187 
 
 grew as radical as it was in its nature to be, and became 
 known as Naturalism. This underlying principle was 
 the conviction that as there is neither beauty nor ugli- 
 ness in the subjects of literary composition, there is no 
 such thing as moral good or evil either. So the same 
 sincerity which absolves an artist from the reproach of 
 having no preference for beauty also absolves a man 
 from the reproach of cynicism. The sincerity of pessim- 
 ism was all the ethics of the school of Zola. I shall 
 draw attention in another chapter to the converse 
 influence of psychological literature on the tone of the 
 writers who are attracted by it; moral elevation is its 
 immediate consequence along with literary distinction. 
 So I need only remind the reader of this chapter that 
 among the ideas which had been "seeds of light," and 
 only waited for an opportunity to develop, was the 
 condemnation of materialism in literature and art 
 which Brunetiere once more called in 1896, the Revival 
 of Idealism. While the lower classes were absorbing 
 slowly and after long reluctance the poison of Natural- 
 ism, there was an elite, led by Brunetiere in criticism, 
 by M. de Vogue and M. Paul Bourget in literature, and 
 by Puvis de Chavannes in art, which had broken away 
 from the stifling dungeon and lived in sentiment instead 
 of living in sensation. Let any great emotion impress 
 the multitude with the feeling that sometimes sacrifice 
 may be as natural as self-seeking and more attractive, 
 and this noble philosophy would be sure to meet a 
 spontaneous demand. 
 
 4. Reaction against Internationalism 
 
 The well-known name of this reaction is Nationalism, 
 and it is a phenomenon which has reappeared many 
 
1 88 The Return of the Light 
 
 times in the course of French history. In its latest 
 form it was represented and embodied rather than 
 formulated by Paul Deroulede. Deroulede was tall 
 and warm-hearted, eloquent and poetic; this was 
 enough for some people to call him quixotic. In reality 
 he was a shrewd and practical organizer as well as a 
 bard, and no idea of ridicule ought to attach to his 
 quixotism. He was not twenty when the War of 1870 
 broke out, but he immediately enlisted, and when a 
 short time afterwards he was wounded and incapaci- 
 tated, his mother came to his general with her younger 
 son, a lad of barely seventeen, and offered him as a 
 substitute. After the conclusion of the peace, which he 
 regarded as shameful, Deroulede devoted his life to the 
 noblest propagandism for the return of the lost pro- 
 vinces, and to an endless warfare against the enemies of 
 France out and inside the frontiers. His conspiracy, 
 trial, and banishment are well-known episodes of a 
 career which no suspicion of selfishness or attitudinizing 
 ever touched. 
 
 Edouard Drumont was the theorist of Nationalism, 
 its historian, and for many years its dreaded pamphle- 
 teer. For Drumont the real enemy of France was not 
 the German, but the Jew. The German could only be 
 dangerous when he broke through the frontier, but the 
 Jew had no such effort to make. He was comfortably 
 settled in Paris, within easy reach of all the vital organs 
 of French life. These, of course, he could not handle 
 himself, but it was child's play for him to set in motion 
 the links between himself and the Government. Dru- 
 mont firmly believed in the equation of finance with 
 politics and of finance with Israel, and the Panama 
 affair came as a striking confirmation of his theory. 
 The immediate consequence was not inconsiderable. 
 
Reaction Against Internationalism 189 
 
 Nationalism took on the much more active form of 
 Boulangism, and if Boulanger had had the least touch 
 of the Roman in him, the play would have promptly 
 been played out; the Parliamentary Republic, which 
 was making such a poor debute would have been swept 
 off, and men less open to bribery would have replaced 
 the unpleasantly notorious Chamber. 
 
 The lineal descendant of Drumont's Nationalism is 
 the doctrine of the same name actively promoted since 
 the Dreyfus affair by the Action Frangaise. The 
 founder of this group, M, Henri Vaugeois, saw in the 
 Dreyfus agitation the proof of the presence within 
 the frontiers of France of the hostile influence which 
 Drumont had revealed before the Panama affair. Only 
 it appeared to him that the Jew was not alone to live 
 quartered in France, fattening upon the best of the 
 land; in his opinion there were three more classes of 
 people who have no business in the country; the 
 Protestants, the Freemasons, and the nondescripts 
 from all parts of the world, whom he calls the Meteques 
 or barbarians. The evident duty of good Frenchmen 
 was to rid, if not the territory, at any rate the Govern- 
 ment, of this quadruple plague, and *'La France aux 
 Frangais" is a motto which it is imperative to take at 
 once in its literal meaning. 
 
 Such a doctrine was sure to be frequently exaggerated 
 from Nationalism to chauvinism, and to sound more 
 resolute than Christian, or even reasonable. Inter- 
 preted by a man like M. Leon Daudet, with whom 
 violence and exaggeration are a style, no matter how 
 attractive to some people by its picturesqueness, its 
 inevitable result would be much more to rouse hatreds 
 than to create unity. It is doing a poor turn to one's 
 countrymen to persuade them that they are better 
 
190 The Return of the Light 
 
 than everybody else, hinting at the same time that 
 everybody else is mentally or morally deficient. Yet 
 the Nationalism even of these overheated people, helped 
 as it was by an excellent criticism of much in our 
 democracy, was not wasted. It acted as a tonic, and 
 at a time when the tendency was towards universal 
 dissolution, it was not so much of a fault as it might 
 have been, if it mostly appealed to young men, and was 
 likely to send them excited into the streets. The clam- 
 our of a popular manifestation was welcome after years 
 of unquestioning submission or stupid inertness. 
 
 5. Success of Provincial Literature 
 
 What is called *' Provincialisme** is intimately con- 
 nected with Nationalism, and, in fact, might be re- 
 garded as its literary form. It does not belong to any 
 writer or thinker in particular, as its roots were visible 
 in a great deal of the literary production antecedent 
 to the current use of the name, yet it is difficult to view 
 it apart from the personal development of one highly 
 interesting individual, M. Maurice Barres. 
 
 M. Barr^ is a very fair type of modem Frenchman, 
 and almost an epitome of the progress of France which 
 this book endeavours to follow. He started with all the 
 characteristics of the diseases of his day. He was an 
 exasperated dilettante, passionately fond of intellectual 
 enjoyment, haughtily disdainful of inferior pleasures, 
 and hardly less so of inferior duties. His early volumes. 
 Sous rCEil des Barhares, U Homme Libre, Le Jardin de 
 Berenice, were handbooks of exquisite sensualism. Yet 
 he had solidity under his apparently unbridled fancy, he 
 had a sound judgment, his power of analysis was too 
 great to admit of long self-deception, and he could but 
 
Success of Provincial Literature 191 
 
 weary of a search after elusive pleasures, which endless 
 variety alone was capable of prolonging. 
 
 In fact, by the time he wrote Les Deracines he had 
 discovered a source of self-realization which, beside 
 those he had known so far, had the appearance and a 
 great deal of the virtue of disinterestedness. Man soon 
 wearies of sensations, no matter how refined, but he 
 never wearies of himself. So, if something in him could 
 be made the centre of his affections, he would no longer 
 be at the mercy of adventitious pleasures. M. Barres 
 thought he found this centre in the relation of man with 
 the milieu to which he owes the most, in which his roots 
 are deepest — that is to say, his home, his family, his 
 environment, the habits and traditions of his province, 
 the spirit of la petite patrie — in one word, that which is 
 dearest to him, because it is most instinctively himself. 
 The help which a nobleman derives from the thought 
 of his ancestry and their traditions everybody can ob- 
 tain from a similar consideration of associations which 
 are his own, and which nobody can borrow or steal from 
 him, because they are truly part of his soul. 
 
 This systematic ''Provincialism,'' as it is called — 
 without any unpleasant sense being any longer attached 
 to the phrase — would apparently be in conflict with the 
 comparatively recent idea of French unity. A Lorrain 
 like M. Barres might be inclined to remember that his 
 province had only been part of the greater France for 
 about three centuries, but the power of exclusion of 
 everything foreign included in provincialism compen- 
 sates this weak point. Besides, the natives of the 
 French provinces, if they push back far enough into 
 their history, ultimately come to Celtic times, where 
 they have to stop, and where once more they find unity. 
 The desire for this refreshing sensation is certainly at 
 
192 The Return of the Light 
 
 the bottom of the effort made by many recent Celtic 
 scholars to reduce to a minimum the Prankish and 
 Roman influx into the autochthonous population, and 
 it shows to what extent a real French feeling is alive 
 under conceptions which would seem to belong ex- 
 clusively to the savant or to the poet. 
 
 This revelation of the native land, not as a poetic 
 symbol, but as a sort of permanent ancestor, was to 
 produce a whole train of practical consequences. M. 
 Barr^s gradually came to reason as follows : 
 
 If our native land holds in itself such a virtue, it must be 
 because some active conviction forced itself upon the 
 generations which came before us, and prevented them 
 from adulterating the treasure handed down to them. 
 Had it been different, had there been a breach in the 
 precious chain, we should seek in vain for the place where 
 we find our support. So it is with thankfulness that we 
 look back to the past. But what a disheartening prospect 
 if we were to fear that our successors may disregard what 
 we ourselves have done and interrupt the tradition we 
 strive to keep in its purity! The inference which such a 
 thought immediately brings in its train is that we have 
 certain rights which our descendants ought not to ignore, 
 but it is also that we should be careful to respect the rights 
 of those who have preceded us. In this way a continuity 
 arises in the history of our country, the dead participate 
 in the life which they have transmitted to us; they have 
 their rights, the consideration of which is no burden on our 
 minds but a refreshing element of stability. 
 
 A mere sentimental fad, some people have said. Is 
 it a sentimental fad which alone makes the history of 
 our country not only interesting, but even possible.^ 
 Is not the notion of the presence of the dead at the 
 bottom of that great thing, the patriotism of the 
 
Reaction Against Socialism 193 
 
 Japanese? Is it not a fact that the philosophy of 
 the Roman history which Fustel de Coulanges has so 
 admirably set forth in La Cite Antique is built on an 
 idea almost identical with this? 
 
 We are compelled to admit that this new NationaHsm, 
 half poetic and half scientific, is merely the intellectual 
 formulation of one of the most venerable instincts in 
 our nature. It wears an appearance of austereness 
 which is not prepossessing to strangers, it is true, but 
 it also gives to those who make it the basis of their civic 
 life that touch of reasonableness in self-denial which 
 was so visible in the ancients, and after a period during 
 which elegance was to renounce patriotism as a bar- 
 baric selfishness — even if unmanly indolence attended 
 the sacrifice — such an attitude appears as a return to an 
 essential duty. In fact, it ought not to be called a new 
 Nationalism or any such appellation; it is merely the 
 feeling which must have been deep in Jeanne d'Arc, 
 or even Philippe Auguste, and to which the modern 
 inclination towards analysis only adds consciousness. 
 
 It is not out of place to observe also that a system of 
 very practical reforms termed Regionalism is immedi- 
 ately connected with Provincialism. The effort towards 
 decentralization through provincial assemblies, provin- 
 cial legislation, provincial universities, etc., is part of the 
 antagonism against the tyranny of Parliamentarism and 
 the routine of bureaucracy, and opens practical channels 
 for an impulse too deep not to tend towards actual 
 realization. 
 
 6. Reaction against Socialism 
 
 I have no intention to number Conservatism — ^honest 
 and intelligent as it may be when represented by men 
 13 
 
194 The Return of the Light 
 
 like M. Leroy-Beaulieu, for instance — as one of the 
 vital tendencies which, long before 1905, had held out 
 hopes of a saner spirit in France. This criticism of the 
 Socialist claims is too purely economical, too doctrinaire 
 also, to rank with the moral motives I have recapitu- 
 lated in the preceding chapters. 
 
 The only resistances to Marxist Socialism worth re- 
 cording were very different from that cold-hearted 
 discussion. There was on one hand the school of 
 Catholic sociology, practically founded by Leo XIII, 
 and which devoted itself to studying economic questions 
 in the light of human brotherhood and, on the other, 
 Syndicalism as opposed to bourgeois Socialism. I have 
 not the least doubt but the efforts of men like M. de la 
 Tour du Pin, M. Lorin, M. de Mun, etc., will some 
 day be recognized when it appears that they were made 
 in the only spirit combining reasonableness and a 
 Christian point of view ; but the practical effects of their 
 doctrine are more visible in Belgium and Germany than 
 in France, and I ought not to make capital of them. 
 
 It is very different with Syndicalism, which in the 
 last twenty years transformed the outlook in the world 
 of labour, and at the same time gave rise to the highly 
 interesting philosophy generally known as that of M. 
 Georges Sorel. Until almost the end of the nineteenth 
 century, French Socialism was little else than ancient 
 Communism, which a political revolution ought to 
 bring from theories into practice. It was hardly dif- 
 ferent in the exposes which M. Jaures made in 1898 
 from what it was fifty years before, when Louis Blanc 
 was its representative. Both men held that the work- 
 ing multitude should save itself from its exploiters by 
 sending into the legislating assemblies enough deputies 
 to secure the majority, and afterwards modify at will 
 
Reaction Against Socialism 195 
 
 the regime of industrial property. But after half a 
 century it appeared that if the method had not been 
 perfected, the spirit of its protagonists had not im- 
 proved either. Certainly Louis Blanc was less am- 
 bitious, less self-satisfied, and a great deal more efficient 
 than M. Jaures. There were a number of Socialist 
 deputies in the Chamber, but they were either bourgeois 
 like M. Jaures himself, or workmen rapidly evolving — 
 under the influence of a salary, of good clothes, and fine 
 talking — into bourgeois. Meanwhile the working-classes 
 were not much better off ; they seemed only a Httle more 
 bewildered than before by beginnings as disappointing 
 as the dreams of yore. 
 
 It was then that a poor consumptive clerk, Femand 
 Pelloutier, bethought himself of a new idea. Bourgeois 
 Socialists were bourgeois all the same ; they could not be 
 representatives of labour. Chambers and Senates had 
 nothing in common with the working-classes. Therefore 
 the working-classes ought to turn their backs upon 
 them and try to manage their own affairs. But could 
 this be done? Easily; the principle of Association had 
 been recognized although its legislation was not com- 
 plete ; there were trades unions everywhere. Let these 
 multiply; let their most energetic members make the 
 need of them, and also the practicability of them, 
 recognized by fomenting strikes on any pretence 
 wherever they did not exist, and their numbers would 
 soon increase. Supposing that. Syndicalism thus tak- 
 ing strength, a wide federation of unions might become 
 possible, some day this federation would be strong 
 enough to vote a universal strike, during which the 
 workmen would capture all the industrial instruments, 
 and from that day use them without any reference to 
 capital. This is the hope that was called le grand Soir, 
 
196 The Return of the Light 
 
 Pelloutier died too soon to see the expansion of 
 Syndicalism which resulted in the fotindation of the 
 General Labour Confederacy and the manifestations of 
 its power at the time of the postal and railway strikes, 
 but the transformation of Socialism from a political 
 ticket into a system of professional vindications was 
 accomplished when he died. There were no longer 
 parties in France, but classes more deeply divided by 
 their conflicting interests than nations by their frontiers. 
 
 One man, who was not a workman himself, but was 
 an intimate friend of Pelloutier, was a keen observer and 
 a philosopher worth the name, saw this change with the 
 gratification possible to a rarely-equipped intellect capa- 
 ble of subtle, though broad, comprehension, and at 
 the same time with a satisfaction of a higher character 
 which I will presently describe. M. Georges Sorel was 
 past middle age when he began to be known. He had 
 been an engineer and a manufacturer keenly interested 
 in industrial, economic, and labotir problems, and 
 watching the organization of the working-classes with 
 the attention both of the observer and the well-wisher. 
 He had borne away from the Ecole Polytechnique the 
 craving after plain clear truth so evident in the writings 
 of Henri Poincare, and he spent years patiently recon- 
 sidering his ideas, and cleansing, as he says, his mind 
 from the sediment left on it by education. He led an 
 independent, retired, disinterested life, and more and 
 more his esteem went exclusively to truth and sincerity, 
 while his hatred of half-lies or half-truths and his 
 contempt of pretence increased accordingly. 
 
 The results of this long course of meditations were a 
 considerable nimiber of communications to the Mouve- 
 ment Socialiste, a review of very high standing, which 
 ultimately reappeared in book form. Of these five or 
 
Reaction Against Socialism 197 
 
 six volumes, two are chiefly remarkable, and embody 
 all the author's, not only experience, but very interest- 
 ing temperament. One is Les Illusions du Progrhs^ an 
 analysis of the historical formation of the deception 
 known as Indefinite Progress, and the other is Re- 
 flexions sur la Violence, an apology for heroism, even if 
 associated with violence. In both volumes there was, 
 latent or explicit, a detestation of Parliamentary So- 
 cialism as represented by M. Jaur^, and a keen sym- 
 pathy with Syndicalism, which at the time was not yet 
 in the hands of questionable ring-leaders. In fact, 
 Socialism is nothing else than the vague — and conse- 
 quently despicable — belief in Progress as inseparable 
 from the Future. The idea that evolution is invariably 
 for the better is a poor invention of the Encyclopaedists, 
 which the no less poor average education popular 
 through the nineteenth century spread among the 
 working-classes. The success of Socialism was entirely 
 built on the idea, that along with the development of 
 science must come a development of civilization, and, 
 eventually, the millennium promised by M. Guesde 
 and M. Jaures. 
 
 At the bottom of this notion was the exaggerated 
 esteem of knowledge regarded as superior to moral 
 worth, and the identification of the noble idea of 
 civilization with mere material progress. After all, 
 what was the ideal proposed to the workers by their 
 Socialist leaders? A very poor one indeed. It meant 
 little else than the hope of little work, much leisure, 
 few moral obligations, and, in default of an eternal life, 
 which could not exist, and was only a dangerous super- 
 stition, a scale of enjoyments varying from a somewhat 
 low materialism to the refinement of the artist. To 
 this must the diffusion of lights lead some day, and to 
 
198 The Return of the Light 
 
 nothing else; and that it could lead to thus much soon 
 appeared very doubtful to all critical minds. 
 
 Over against this philosophy the spirit of Syndicalism 
 seemed of an incredibly nobler order. Whereas the 
 Socialist ideal was nothing else than individual comfort, 
 obtained almost passively by the combination of easy 
 political methods with scientific development, the Syn- 
 dicalist ideal was worthy of the name. It ignored in- 
 dividuals, and was exclusively attentive to the class; it 
 proposed power as its object, but it was power for an 
 object which was represented as inseparable from jus- 
 tice; it recommended violence, it is true, but how re- 
 freshing such a violence was, compared with the 
 Socialists* yearning after pleasure. For the Syndical- 
 ist's violence was disinterested; it was, after all, a form 
 of patriotism, in which the idea of class was substituted 
 for that of a country; there was nothing demeaning in 
 it. 
 
 On the whole, M. Sorel was attracted by the Syndical- 
 ists and repelled by the Socialists, because of a funda- 
 mental preference in his mind for moral rather than for 
 intellectual distinction. Civilization to him meant 
 gentlemanliness rather than comfort. Like Loti, he 
 had much more respect for an Arabian sheikh than for a 
 politician with all the varnish of a course at the Sor- 
 bonne. What he loved in the Syndicalists, as in the 
 Jansenists, was the soldierly spirit and the aloofness 
 from compromise. One felt that Syndicalism, with 
 more results and less courage, would be indifferent to 
 him. He loved heroism and cared little on what field 
 heroism happened to display itself. 
 
 It is strange that the solitary reflections of an obscure 
 engineer, the friend of an obscure clerk, should have 
 reintegrated into the French consciousness the idea of 
 
A New Mentality Produced 199 
 
 heroism as lovable in itself which was for centuries one 
 of its chief elements. Along with it there was a respect 
 of truth and a disgust for mere words, a tendency 
 towards practical organization as opposed to ranting, 
 which were the very reverse of the politician's inborn 
 taste for appearances. Wherever we find a criticism 
 of the "philosophy of the belly, " or of the "philosophy 
 of humbug," we have no difficulty in tracing it to the 
 influence of M. Georges Sorel. 
 
 The manifestations of the saner intellect of France 
 which the six foregoing chapters recapitulate had, 
 naturally, not passed unperceived. It was impossible 
 that the criticisms of such men as Taine and Renan 
 on such an event as the Revolution should not have 
 been widely commented upon. The rise of literature 
 from Naturalism to Idealism was also a transformation 
 of which even the man in the street must be more or less 
 aware. As to the effects of provincialist literature, or of 
 the theories of M. Georges Sorel, I realize that readers 
 unaccustomed to the deep influence which ideas wedded 
 to a poetic or energetic expression have in France, 
 will be doubtful of their importance. But this is one of 
 the points about which familiar experience alone en- 
 ables us to make up our minds. The fact is, that if 
 it is true that no contemporary writer has enjoyed the 
 position of Rousseau at the end of the eighteenth 
 century, it is also true that literature as a whole is 
 more productive of effects at the present day than it 
 was at any other period of French history. At any 
 rate, we see clearly that the ideas which between 
 1880 and 1905 had slowly taken possession, some of 
 one part of the public, some of another, reappeared, 
 united and systematized, ready for daily use in num- 
 
200 The Return of the Light 
 
 berless intellects when the Tangier shock created a 
 powerful demand for right notions ordained towards 
 right actions. 
 
 This, and not merely a patriotic emotion, was the 
 wonderful result of the awakening of 1905. Ask any- 
 body worth while if there really is a change in French 
 mentality. He may at first be satisfied with mention- 
 ing the effects of the new spirit to which I shall presently 
 come, but if you help him to analyse his impression as a 
 Frenchman is always inclined to analyse it, the answer 
 will eventually be: Yes, there is another spirit in 
 France, and this spirit is one of lucidity, of diffidence 
 against brilliant formulae, of latent sympathy with the 
 national tradition; such a one, in a word, as had not 
 been alive in the country in the same degree since the 
 intellectual intoxication of the eighteenth century. 
 
SECTION III 
 
 EVIDENCES OF THE NEW SPIRIT 
 
 That the combination of roused patriotism with the 
 deep intellectual modifications expounded in the pre- 
 ceding section has produced tangible effects is a fact 
 which nobody can seriously question. I shall now go 
 into the examination of these actual manifestations, 
 some of which appear instinctive, while the others will 
 show us the conscious and reasoned aspect of the new 
 spirit. 
 
 DIVISION A. — INSTINCTIVE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE NEW 
 
 SPIRIT 
 
 I. A Patriotic Attitude Forced even on Internationalists 
 
 At the beginning of the twentieth century the out- 
 spoken expression of patriotism was rare; Dreyfusism 
 was voted the last word of culture, and the numberless 
 people with whom appearances count for more than 
 principles were afraid to indulge in a sentiment which 
 seemed belated and inelegant. The universally preva- 
 lent certitude of peace and in the long run of a fusion of 
 all nations caused patriotism to look unpleasantly like 
 chauvinism, and the consciousness of this likeness re- 
 stricted all but very reticent manifestations. 
 
 201 
 
202 The Return of the Light 
 
 To-day the situation seems completely reversed. I 
 need not revert to the revulsion caused by the Tangier 
 affair in men capable of a generous emotion and equal 
 to the conscience-examination generally invited by such 
 an emotion; men of this stamp influence rather than 
 exemplify public opinion. Nobody was very much 
 surprised to see M. Clemenceau, for instance, fly the 
 French colours just at the right moment and with the 
 proper emphasis. It also seemed natural that a man 
 like M. Andre Lefevre, till 1905 a Radical Socialist, 
 should afterwards become pre-eminently a patriot. The 
 real sign of the times was the transformation of less 
 virile and more receptive intellects, sensitive to the 
 pressure of opinion on the one hand and easily impressed 
 on the other by the conviction of minds they feel 
 superior to their own. In this respect nothing can rival 
 the Press for impressionability. The newspapers are 
 go-betweens gifted with wonderful tact and seldom 
 running the risk of being unpopular or that of appearing 
 behindhand. Now the contrast between the tone of the 
 papers towards 1900 and that which they have gradu- 
 ally adopted since 1905 cannot be exaggerated. The 
 ultra-civilized way of approaching international ques- 
 tions habitual in the days when M. Berthelot was 
 possible as a Foreign Minister would be unbearable 
 to-day even in the Lanterne. What a difference also 
 between the M. Berenger we knew not so long ago, who 
 advised us to tear the flags to pieces, and the present 
 very sensible editor of U Action! Between the former 
 editors of Le Rappel and M. Edmond du Mesnil! 
 Papers of this shade at present affect a supercilious 
 national sensitiveness, and frown and scowl at Germany 
 on the least pretence with the best chauvins of fifteen 
 years ago. As to the internationalist press, it is so low 
 
Patriotism on Internationalists 203 
 
 upon the horizon that only professionals know where to 
 find it. 
 
 The amorphous politician shows the same transfor- 
 mation. I have followed with as much interest as 
 amusement the subtle though quick phosphorescences 
 announcing modifications in the surroundings of young 
 men like M. Herriot, the Mayor of Lyons, and M. 
 Paul-Boncour, erewhile Minister of Fine Arts, both 
 perfect samples of the rising politician with whom 
 success means more than politics. How elegantly they 
 managed to become patriots while retaining the touch 
 of Socialism which was fashionable when they first 
 launched in politics! How cleverly they coloiu* the 
 somewhat sickening stuff they retail! How daintily 
 these consummate young actors let you infer by almost 
 unperceived intonations that they only want to please 
 you, but if you insist on being pleased with outspoken- 
 ness, they are ready to be more outspoken. Indeed, 
 such barometers are infallible. 
 
 But more obvious indications of the change are not 
 wanting. Is it not remarkable that the Socialist group 
 in the Chamber, which once refused to discuss any 
 question connected with the budget of war, is now ever- 
 lastingly engaged on military technicalities? No general 
 wrote or said so much about the driest details of mo- 
 bilization as M. Jaur^s. A stranger might hear him for 
 an hour in the Chamber without suspecting that he 
 was not a nervous patriot, hypnotized by the dangers 
 arising from an insufficient frontier line. Ten years 
 ago such speeches would have seemed barbarous, in- 
 sulting for neighbouring nations, and recklessly danger- 
 ous for peace. To-day they are merely the proper 
 expression of a feeling which it would be shameful to 
 ignore. 
 
204 The Return of the Light 
 
 The fact is, that whatever may have been, and may 
 still be, the influence of M. Maurice Barres's view of 
 patriotism as the noblest and richest of our emotions, 
 there is another more powerful cause which compels 
 even weaklings to declare themselves patriots. No 
 motive acts so energetically on the French as the fear 
 of appearing either ridiculous or cowardly. It seemed 
 ridiculous before 1905 to speak of the possibilities of a 
 war, because war was supposed to be impossible, and 
 one ran the risk, by thinking the contrary, of being 
 regarded either as a braggart or an uneducated lout. 
 To-day the ridicule is for people — there are still a few 
 left — simple enough to believe, as Jules Simon did in 
 1867, that France ought only to give the example of 
 disarmament, to be followed by the rest of Europe, and 
 the shame would be for those who might appear to 
 dread war from personal considerations. This is quite 
 enough to change the whole philosophy of war with the 
 most independent spirits. The transformation was 
 visible at the time of the Agadir incident in 191 1; the 
 most resolute Syndicalists, men with whom interest 
 counts less than an ideal, no matter how wrong some- 
 times, in a moment forgot the pacifist theories they had 
 held or heard for years, and were for taking up arms 
 immediately. 
 
 What is only an attitude with neutrally disposed 
 individuals is a much deeper feeling with the bulk of the 
 French nation. The trend of politics alone during the 
 last few years is enough to prove it. Patriotism has 
 gradually become one thing with the military precau- 
 tions destined to safeguard the national independence 
 of France, but these precautions having been first sug- 
 gested by the Cabinets of M. Poincare, M. Briand, and 
 M. Barthou, the political enemies of these gentlemen 
 
A European Point of View 205 
 
 have thought it a good platform to advocate, on the 
 contrary, an alleviation of military charges. The first 
 impression of patriots, therefore, was one of anxiety 
 when they saw Radicals of the type of M. Doumergue 
 and M. Viviani come into office. Were they not bound 
 by solemn promises, taken at a plenary convention of 
 their party at Pau, to move at once a reduction of the 
 military service to a period inferior to three years? 
 Yet nothing of the kind was done or even mooted. 
 It is very well for a convention of politicians to devise 
 a useful platform before an election, but the platform 
 cannot be made the basis of a serious parliamentary 
 action without the risk of mortally offending the coun- 
 try. Nothing shows better the progress made by France 
 in the direction of efficient patriotism than this im- 
 possibility for demagogues to propose to the country a 
 measure likely to flatter careless tendencies, but at the 
 same time to alarm wide-awake watchfulness. 
 
 2. Substitution of a European for a Party Point of View 
 
 This is only another aspect of patriotism. When 
 the French were absorbed in the welfare of the universe, 
 they forgot to consider whether the interests of man- 
 kind might not be in conflict with those of their own 
 country. Now that the Dreyfusist philosophy has been 
 found to lead, not to the liberty of all, but to a great 
 danger of thraldom for its own apostles, the situation 
 is reversed, and — as Vernon Lee wrote, in surprise and 
 disgust, to the well-known philosopher, Paul Desjardins 
 — the French watch the movements of Europe with so 
 much attention, that they neglect all their former 
 interests. It is not merely, as this lady said in the 
 same letter, because they are engrossed by the thoughts 
 
2o6 The Return of the Light 
 
 of a war, some fearing, others longing for it. It is 
 rather because they have become conscious once more 
 of political realities, and, in spite of six generations of 
 Idealists behind them, see clearly that they have either 
 to pay attention to trivial details, or make up their 
 minds to be dupes for ever. This new attitude may 
 be occasionally nervous, sometimes reluctant, but it is 
 practically universal, and as we see the Socialists take a 
 soldier's interest in things military, we also hear them 
 frequently discuss economic or diplomatic questions 
 with a great display of references to consular reports. 
 It was not under the Combes government that the 
 settlement of a minor difficulty with the customs of the 
 United States could have been given so much attention 
 as it received in the summer of 1 914. I noticed in a 
 previous chapter the space which even popular news- 
 papers now devote to such technicalities as those 
 concerning the Bagdad railway or the Persian oil-fields. 
 Many indications of the same interest could be found 
 in the frequency of economic investigations, travels for 
 an economic purpose, the predominance of commercial 
 geography, or of questions relative to international law 
 at examinations, etc. This kind of erudition, com- 
 bined with the general patriotic feeling, has gradually 
 brought about an attention to contingencies which, 
 only a few years ago, we were inclined to regard as 
 eminently English, but which is no surprise to the 
 student of French diplomatic history from the days of 
 Louis XII till those of Louis XV, and even of Louis 
 Philippe. The spread of French civilization then was 
 not left exclusively to the contagion of French culture. 
 Whatever may be the ultimate results of this change 
 of outlook, its present effects are certainly good. It 
 makes for lucidity and decision, two qualities which, 
 
A European Point of View 207 
 
 until the national mind was poisoned by humanitarian- 
 ism, were looked upon as characteristically French. 
 In this respect it is only one side of the steady return to 
 tradition noticeable in so many other manifestations. 
 But one immediate consequence of it ought to be con- 
 sidered with special attention: I mean the decrease 
 of party spirit, which intelligent patriotism kills as 
 effectively as quinine kills fever. 
 
 Here, of course, we find the stone of scandal on which 
 many good Frenchmen and all the well-wishers of 
 France abroad are sure to stumble. Everybody realizes 
 that devotion to the great interests of the country is 
 irreconcilable with petty divisions, and yet such divi- 
 sions exist in France ; and every now and then they still 
 fill the papers or the Parliamentary proceedings as 
 they used to do towards 1900; they appeared scandal- 
 ously at the time of the presidential election, at the 
 Pau convention, in the overthrow of M. Barthou and 
 M. Ribot, in the sly opposition made by M. Clemen- 
 ceau, M. Caillaux, and M. Jaures to President Poincare, 
 and they are evident whenever the least pretence makes 
 it possible to give a theological tinge to any discussion. 
 
 This is true. But in spite of its visibility, this 
 anomaly is only important in appearance, and because 
 the paradox of a Chamber with an unbalanced power, 
 as I have said before, and shall have other occasions 
 to repeat, must magnify all that relates to Parliamentary 
 politics. In fact, the divisions of the Chamber are 
 based less on dissimilarities of standpoint concerning 
 important issues than on conflicting personal interests, 
 and they result in talk rather than in tangible action. 
 The danger of this jockeying would be evident, did it 
 only result in loss of time, in bewildering the cotmtry, 
 and puzzling foreign observers. But it is rather the 
 
2o8 The Return of the Light 
 
 consequence of a bad system than an essential evil, 
 like the inferior philosophy which once caused universal 
 deterioration. In other countries political divisions 
 inevitably lead to variations of policy. It is not dif- 
 ficult to imagine, for instance, how different the history 
 of England in recent years would read had the Con- 
 servatives been in office. But in France we saw M. 
 Viviani carry on exactly the policy of M. Barthou, 
 which as a deputy he constantly opposed. The wider — 
 what we might call the European — point of view forces 
 itself both upon the country and its Government, and 
 party divisions only subsist as convenient watchwords. 
 This appears evident in the attitude adopted by 
 men of an independent spirit, whatever their political 
 opinion may be, who cannot refrain from pointing out 
 what strikes them as a ludicrous paradox. Very few are 
 more interesting to hear than M. Marcel Sembat. 
 This gentleman is one of a few wealthy young men who, 
 towards 1898, when Socialism was young and elegant, 
 could not resist the attraction of the new doctrine, and 
 devoted their millions to the cause of M. Jaures. M. 
 Sembat seldom influences the Chamber ; he is too gay, 
 too sarcastic, too sceptical about men, whether friends 
 or foes, too detached from the effect his speeches might 
 produce, and all this gives him an appearance of super- 
 ficiality which warrants resistance on the part of 
 deputies undoubtedly his inferiors, but who think them- 
 selves more serious because they are less witty. Yet 
 M. Sembat is none the less one of the clearest intellects 
 there are in Parliament or in the Press, and although 
 he never influences a vote, all that he says or writes 
 is noticed and commented on. Now he is convinced 
 that peace is better than war, and that progress can be 
 conceived apart from territorial expansion — that is to 
 
A European Point of View 209 
 
 say, he thinks that one day may come when Socialist 
 humanitarianism will be sufficiently spread in Europe 
 to serve as a basis for international relations. But 
 whereas Dreyfusist politicians would act as if this state 
 of affairs already existed, M. Sembat sees clearly that 
 it is only a very remote hope, and that, meanwhile, war, 
 whether offensive or defensive, must be a constant 
 consideration in modern politics. Now, while French- 
 men, grown up with the blinkers of party spirit tiniv^r- 
 sal before 1905, would look upon the persistence of the 
 Republican regime as a dogma to which even the ex- 
 istence of the country ought to be made subservient, 
 M. Sembat thinks, as practically every sensible person 
 at present does, that the question of the regime is a 
 minor one in comparison with that of the national 
 independence. In this state of mind he was not afraid 
 to publish in the summer of 19 13 a volume defiantly 
 entitled, Faites un Roi, sinon faites la Paix. Evidently 
 he believed that the Republic has for its chief object 
 the maintenance of peace, but he also realized that 
 peace or war was not the free choice of European 
 nations at the present day, and he sacrificed the whole 
 fabric of his party to the exigencies of a higher policy 
 than that of parliamentary groups. The book may not 
 have promoted royalist propagandism as much as 
 royalist writers imagined, but it was a powerful demon- 
 stration of the complete change in outlook brought 
 about by the danger revealed in 1905 and 19 10, and as 
 such its importance was considerable ; party as opposed 
 to patriotism, the Republic itself as placed over against 
 France, are now things of a past, when the French lived 
 like Leibnitz's monad, without any outside windows. 
 
 The substitution of a European for a mere political 
 standpoint is so deadly for petty considerations that 
 14 
 
210 The Return of the Light 
 
 we have seen it several times replace even religious 
 questions in their true perspective and show that blind 
 anti-clericalism may be as pernicious for France as 
 anti-patriotism itself. This is no small achievement, 
 for the idea of the Roman tyranny, with its escort of 
 intellectual oppression and universal regress, is a long- 
 lived bugbear. Two men who were never suspected of 
 an exaggerated partiality for religion, M. Leygues and 
 M. Frangois Deloncle — the latter of whom especially 
 was long known as an active Freemason — ^have been 
 able on various occasions to point out to the Chamber 
 consequences of the complete separation from Rome 
 which exposed its absurdity. The protectorate of Catho- 
 lic missions which made the presence of the French flag 
 a matter of course wherever there were Catholics in the 
 East, was virtually abolished by the Separation Law, 
 which its authors meant as a declaration of indifference 
 to all religions, and since the enforcement of that law 
 it has quietly passed over, according to circumstances, 
 to Italy or Germany. In the same way, the law against 
 religious orders was not intended for religious estab- 
 lishments — according to Gambetta's principle that anti- 
 clericalism is a bad export — ^but it was inevitable that if 
 orders should be suppressed at home their numbers 
 would promptly decrease abroad. These alternatives 
 were dwelt upon at considerable length by M. Leygues 
 and M. Deloncle without any show on the part of the 
 Chamber of the childish sensitiveness of yore, and for 
 the first time since the suppression of the Embassy to 
 the Vatican, a religious question could be discussed 
 exclusively from the national point of view. I am 
 aware that after that date the Government suppressed 
 a number of religious establishments which had been 
 tolerated since 1901, but this is only another instance 
 
Anachronism of So-Called Idealism 211 
 
 of the opposition between the spirit of the country and 
 the action of politicians. The Government suppresses 
 convents to reassure the Radical party on its tottering 
 condition by creating in them the illusion that nothing 
 is changed, and it will secretly support CathoHc French 
 schools at Beyrout or Jerusalem. 
 
 3. Anachronism of So-called Idealist Manifestations 
 
 Some people are impervious to all the reasons they 
 might have to modify either their notions or their at- 
 titude. They are not always unintelligent ; they may 
 be only obstinate — sometimes with great gentleness — 
 or inattentive and dreamy or nervously enthusiastic. 
 Almost in every case it is not difficult to account for 
 their indifference to what is going on in the world by 
 subtle interests blinding them to the logic of a situation. 
 Whatever may be the reasons of their behaviour, it is 
 inevitable that they should be few, that their influence 
 should be small, and that a touch of perplexing singu- 
 larity should be attached to what they say or do. 
 
 This is the case with the rare groups of men one may 
 still find, who have hardly modified their line since the 
 Dreyfus ebullition. Such periodicals as Les Droits de 
 VHommej edited by the son of Pdre Loyson, Les 
 Documents du ProgreSj Le Courrier Europeen, Les 
 Cahiers d'Aujourd'hui, continue to think of France as 
 pre-eminently the intellectual laboratory of the imi- 
 verse; but how imimportant they have become since 
 the not very long past days when their columns were 
 the store-rooms of advanced thought! What a feeling 
 of sameness and staleness we experience whenever we 
 have an occasion to look into them! How antiquated 
 their effort to appear fresh and unconventional seems 
 
212 The Return of the Light 
 
 to us, wedded as it almost invariably is with artistic 
 or literary formulae of more than impressionistic so- 
 phistication and about which we have long made up our 
 minds. We know quite well that the restricted public 
 which retains its belief in those performances may 
 think itself distinguished, but rather deserves to be 
 called eccentric. If one were to deduct from the 
 subscription lists of these periodicals the names of 
 foreign artists or foreign nondescripts, who will mistake 
 the exceptional for the rare, of the Jews who cater for 
 them, of the Bohemians who imagine or pretend they 
 take an interest in novelties, there would be a very 
 small number of real natives left. French taste and 
 French conviction have been hopelessly alienated from 
 humanitarianism since it turned out to be profitable 
 to everyone except France. In the last months of 
 1 91 3, two new magazines appeared, one of which, called 
 MessidoYy purported to be resolutely idealistic, and the 
 other, called La Renaissance, stated its object to be all 
 that can unite the French ; the difference of welcome in 
 favour of the latter on the mere reading of advertise- 
 ments was striking, in spite of brilHant and reassuring 
 names on the staff of Messidor, 
 
 All that recalls the dangerous vagueness or the 
 gullible broad-mindedness of the years 1898- 1905 has 
 become ridiculous or repellent ; a Franco-German league, 
 the Berne conference for peace, a committee for the 
 erection of a statue to Robespierre, are all equally 
 mocked or equally despised, and the general tendency 
 is to suspect foreign influences in them. 
 
 One fact can help the reader in measuring how far the 
 French have progressed in the direction of lucidity and 
 in antipathy against false positions; it is the distance 
 between the literary and the patriotic estimation that 
 
Distrust of Parliament 213 
 
 are made of two such men as M. Romain RoUand, and, 
 above all, M. Anatole France. Jean-Christophe would 
 undoubtedly be a popular masterpiece if its atmosphere 
 were not such as to invite at once a German translation. 
 In spite of the author's resolute statement that "he 
 has annexed Germany, " the readers will believe that he 
 simply felt the fascination which Michelet had expe- 
 rienced before him and been annexed himself. As to M. 
 Anatole France, he has lived long enough to become a 
 sort of conundrum. It is disconcerting to find that the 
 same man may have distilled the wisdom there is in 
 such books as the Bergeret volumes or Les Dieux ont 
 Soify and ranted in a turgid manner at Socialist meet- 
 ings; that a man who intellectually is so unmistakably 
 French should put his name to anti-militarist posters 
 or prefix it with Salut et fraternite. The writer who 
 undoubtedly represented in its highest perfection the 
 charming dilettantism of 1890, the flower of French 
 perversion, when this perversion was not supposed to be 
 dangerous, is only at the present day really popular 
 abroad. In his own country, strange as it may sound, 
 M. Anatole France is a fossil. 
 
 4. Increased Distrust of Parliamentary Action 
 
 The Chamber which, after long swaggering and 
 hectoring, had finally to confess its helplessness in the 
 settlement of the difficulties with Germany, and later 
 in the repression of Syndicalist disturbances, and the 
 Chamber — its immediate successor — which voted the 
 raising of the deputies' salary, were regarded with 
 undisguised contempt. Since then, the Chamber which 
 went out in 1914 did two things which somewhat 
 reconciled the country to it, and created a better feel- 
 
214 The Return of the Light 
 
 ing: it passed the Proportional Representation Bill, 
 which is a moral measure, and the Three- Year Service 
 Bill, which was a necessity indeed, but could not be 
 done without something like courage. The Chamber 
 returned in May, 1914, has ratified the Three- Year 
 Service Law, and it contains a fair proportion of deputies 
 not unwilling to consider a reform of the Constitution, 
 which would inevitably result in a diminution of the 
 Chamber itself. This again looks like conscientiousness. 
 It would seem, therefore, as if Parliament stood better 
 chances in public opinion than it has had for many 
 years. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the Chamber elected in 1914 
 is in the power of the Radicals, as the rapid doom of the 
 Ribot Government proved without any question, and 
 what are the Radicals in public estimation? First of 
 all, the enemies of M. Poincare, who, at the time of his 
 election at least, represented the best French tendencies; 
 then the liars who declared themselves against the 
 Three- Year Law at the Pau convention, and dare not 
 abide by their own decision; finally the inquisitors into 
 private fortunes who have abetted the Socialists in the 
 drawing up of the Income Tax Law. 
 
 All this, joined to the consciousness, every four years 
 strengthened, that the elections are fundamentally 
 insincere and invariably unintelligible, results in a 
 feeling of deep mistrust which the recent importance 
 taken by the Senate only increases. Until the presiden- 
 tial election of 1913, the Senate brought on itself less 
 of the animadversion gathering around the Chamber. 
 The Upper Assembly lived in comparative obscurity 
 and humility, and its dealings seemed hardly public. 
 So while there was no sympathy for it, there was none 
 of the antipathy which attached to the ravenous 
 
Syndicalism Checked 215 
 
 Chamber. This was changed in the spring of 1913, 
 when the Senate did its best for the nonentity Pams 
 against M. Poincare, at a time when the country was 
 pining for a man. Since then the impression has been 
 that ParHament is less than ever the representation of 
 the country, that a few influential persons there as 
 everywhere else pull wires and regulate the whole loose 
 machinery, and that a subtle hypocrisy enables the 
 Chamber to pretend to do things which it knows the 
 Senate will undo. So the prevalent feeling now, as in 
 1905, is one of hesitation and mistrust of Parliament, 
 with a greater consciousness of the impossibility of doing 
 anything against it. 
 
 Is not this disposition irreconcilable with the return 
 of lucidity and energy which I regard as the fortunate 
 consequence of the Tangier conversion? Not at all; it 
 is only the uncomfortable sensation that there is some- 
 thing hopelessly wrong in the Constitution. Under- 
 neath this sensation there is the passionate longing for 
 a change, which, in the first decade following 1875, 
 would have been unthinkable, and the possibility of a 
 sudden overthrow to which I shall revert in the third 
 part of this volume. The country can apparently do 
 nothing against its half -unconscious oppressors beyond 
 wishing for their disappearance, but such a wish is a 
 force in itself. 
 
 5. Syndicalism Reduced to its True Proportions 
 
 In the early years of the present century, S3mdicalism 
 appeared formidable. The trade unions, advised by 
 Femand Pelloutier, had taken advantage of the law of 
 1901 on Associations, not only to have their individual 
 existence legally recognized, but to lay the foundations 
 
2i6 The Return of the Light 
 
 of the vast federation known as the General Labour 
 Confederacy. It seemed inevitable that a poptdar move- 
 ment, revolutionary in its object, no doubt, but appar- 
 ently justified by contingencies, and not illegal, should 
 attract all the energies of the working-classes and spread 
 to all the corporations. It seemed almost as certain that 
 the Government of those days, resting largely on the 
 Socialist vote, and Socialism not appearing as yet 
 clearly distinguishable from Syndicalism, the number 
 of Socialist deputies must promptly become large 
 enough to make a revolution a matter of course. The 
 postmen's and electricians' strikes, on the other hand, 
 showed how powerful the Bourse du Travail had already 
 become, and the negotiating attitude of M. Clemenceau 
 and M. Briand, then Prime Ministers, meant the 
 consciousness of impotence. So Syndicalism was the 
 spectre before which everybody trembled. 
 > But here, too, the Tangier, and especially the Agadir, 
 emotion brought a change. Syndicalism did not mean 
 only a corporate movement; it amounted to anti- 
 patriotism and anti-militarism. It seemed a certainty 
 that in case of a war the Syndicates would obey the 
 directions all ready at the Bourse du Travail, and oppose 
 the mobilization. Now, after Agadir it turned out that 
 the workers, even the Syndicalists, were, in an over- 
 whelming majority, prepared to follow their military, 
 rather than their labour leaders. A deeper reaction 
 could not but follow, and it put the workmen on their 
 guard against ring-leaders who, according to the recent 
 avowals of one of them, Pataud, were only too inclined 
 to go over to the bourgeois, just like the Socialists. As 
 this coincided with the appearance of stronger govern- 
 ments made necessary by the common danger, it soon 
 appeared that the General Labour Confederacy had 
 
A Higher Moral Standard 217 
 
 been more influential through the terror it inspired than 
 through its real position, which, moreover, was now 
 demonstrated to be decidedly illegal. Finally, in 19 13, 
 anti-militarist propagandism having once more been 
 denounced as coming from the Bourse du Travail* 
 M. Barthou had the building searched, confiscated 
 documents, and imprisoned several of the chief leaders, 
 without raising any serious protest. Ten years before 
 such an action would have been madness, to-day it 
 appears common good sense. 
 
 As a conclusion, the Syndicalist movement seems at 
 present less revolutionary in France than it is in Eng- 
 land, or in America, and one terrible ghost has been 
 laid. In its place two very different fears — the anxiety 
 over German progress and discomfort at the mis- 
 management of the Senate and Chamber — have risen, 
 and as they are founded on circumstances which can be 
 fought and modified with much less difficulty, they are 
 far less depressing. 
 
 6. A Higher Moral Standard Forced on the Public Spirit 
 
 The reader, in several of the following chapters — 
 dealing with the younger generation, with the influence 
 of the Church, and with contemporary literature — ^will 
 find various indications of a return of the French to 
 traditional morals, and even to religion as the most 
 powerful element in the morality of a nation. But it 
 would be misleading not to emphasize a transformation 
 which, in spite of some hesitancy, is characteristic of 
 the spirit I am describing. 
 
 A moral lowering was inseparable from the intellec- 
 tual deterioration which we have examined in the first 
 part of this volume. Scepticism invariably results first 
 
21 8 The Return of the Light 
 
 of all in elegant, and sooner or later in coarse cynicism. 
 The passage from eighteenth-century persiflage to Revo- 
 lutionary grossness was exactly repeated in the passage 
 from the comfortable negations of the Second Empire 
 to the moral vulgarity of the Third Republic. 
 
 For years this admixture of intellectual indifference 
 with moral looseness was in all Europe a scandal not 
 only to goodness, which was natural, but also to igno- 
 rance or hypocrisy, which made France seem to be in a 
 worse condition than she was in reality. The French 
 never struck careful observers as morally inferior to 
 most European nations, but they knew no convention- 
 ality, no outward restraint, and, as a consequence, they 
 boldly denied the metaphysical basis of morals, paraded 
 cynicism, professed themselves worse than they were 
 when they happened to be bad, and smiled at their own 
 goodness when they happened to be good. In short, 
 they were the victims of low doctrines, no doubt, but 
 above all, of a low tone. 
 
 To-day this style has so entirely ceased to be fashion- 
 able that it looks provincial even in the country, and 
 the French show themselves sincere admirers of all 
 moral elevation. They are not very good preachers as 
 yet, because their education leaves them convinced 
 that preaching only belongs to deep religiousness, and 
 because the national thoroughness prevents them from 
 attempting what they feel they can do only in part. 
 But wherever they see a good doctrine or a good 
 example they recognize it, and they do their best to 
 extirpate a few shortcomings which used to give special 
 offence. Every newspaper speaks against depopulation 
 and advocates legal action against its apostles; the 
 long-tolerated indulgence of the juries for crimes 
 passionnels is so frequently inveighed against that in 
 
A Higher Moral Standard 219 
 
 the long run the protest must create a wholesome 
 severity; even the looseness which attracts so many 
 foreigners to a few Parisian theatres has lost its de- 
 fenders; the so-called artistic excuses which used to be 
 put forward to keep up certain exhibitions are never 
 heard with so much sarcastic scepticism as when they 
 come from apparently convinced people. The censor- 
 ship has been abolished, but the very papers that used 
 to mock and rally it, set the police in motion to do the 
 work it once did so badly, whenever there is a serious 
 reason for it. 
 
 We are still far from a healthy degree of austerity, 
 without which nations fall easy preys to moral diseases; 
 the whole atmosphere emanating from commercial or 
 industrial as well as literary activity, that which trans- 
 pires through conversations, and is imderstood imder 
 every printed statement, is a wish for easy, independent 
 living, with enough money to make to-day enjoyable 
 and to-morrow secure. But if people thus stand for the 
 vie large, they have ceased to stand for the vie libre. 
 Loose principles no longer seem inevitably associated 
 with the possession of fortune; the complete failiu-e of 
 Le Phalene, the play of M. Bataille, conceived in an 
 atmosphere undoubtedly superannuated, was a proof 
 of this. 
 
 As to the reasons, they are many and complex. 
 But the two causes which we discover at the end of all 
 the mental avenues we happen to enter in this investiga- 
 tion are visible here as everywhere else. In the first 
 place, a better philosophy, based on a more thorough 
 criticism of principles once welcomed as scientific, has 
 restored a metaphysical value to the moral instincts 
 of mankind, and, in the second place, a sane pragma- 
 tism arising from the necesvsity of giving food and 
 
220 The Return of the Light 
 
 support to collective as well as to individual courage, 
 compels the man who champions good citizenship to 
 promote at the same time a moral creed without which 
 self-denial is impossible or transient. To this extent 
 can we say that the national awakening has produced 
 ethical revival. 
 
 7. Anomaly of the Stage Considered 
 
 It has been too ready an assumption with some 
 writers that life and the drama are parallel, and that 
 the morality of the modem world can be inferred from 
 that of its theatre. Printed instances are numerous. 
 J. J. Weiss, an admirable dramatic critic, too much 
 forgotten already, though he was at his zenith twenty- 
 five years ago, has entitled one of his volumes Le Thedtre 
 et les Mceurs; another volume by a clever and witty 
 though rather superficial barrister, M. de Saint- Auban, 
 is called Uldee Sociale au Thedtre; another, written by 
 M. Frangois Veuillot, almost exclusively from the 
 religious standpoint and very sound in many ways, 
 approaches dramatists as Les PrSdicateurs de la Schne, 
 All these works assume more or less explicitly that a 
 modem play being a slice of life, if you bring enough 
 of these slices together you will have a very nearly 
 complete image of modem life, and if you disengage 
 their points of view, you will obtain something like the 
 modem man's philosophy. 
 
 Nothing is apparently so like daily reality as the 
 play; the language we hear in the theatre is our common 
 slang in all its stages of refinement or coarseness; the 
 ideas, the prejudices, the manners of theatrical charac- 
 ters must be like those of the people we meet in real 
 houses, or we damn the play as turgid or sentimental. 
 
Anomaly of the Stage 221 
 
 We resent any intrusion of the dramatist into the 
 actions and utterances of his creations, and we imagine 
 that the numberless histrionic attempts which year 
 after year succeed one another must exhaust the situa- 
 tions possible to our contemporaries. Curiously enough, 
 we conceive no mistrust against the veracity of play- 
 wrights from their occasional indulgence in the apo- 
 logues called pieces d theses^ or plays with a purpose. 
 Their frequent awkwardness gives us no misgivings, 
 and their confidence, that of the prefaces with which 
 they are generally published, that of the critics who 
 discuss them gravely in the newspapers, only confirms 
 us in the belief that the stage mirrors the world. It is 
 only when we look attentively into some considerable 
 portion of the dramatic production that we find out that 
 plays are hardly ever written for our enlightenment, 
 but merely for our amusement ; that their outlook is as 
 restricted as that of the short stories in the magazines; 
 that they are beset on all sides with conventionalities 
 and cramped by the narrowness of the stage; that 
 the so-called theses are mostly another effort to give 
 the plays actualite; the philosophical disquisitions of the 
 critics on their import inane verbosity or sheer humbug, 
 and the so-called ex-professo books on the ethics of 
 the stage strings of forgotten articles reprinted under 
 fallacious titles. Then you realize that you would be 
 more than imprudent to seek the standard of a nation's 
 morality exclusively or even principally in its dramatic 
 literature, and you modestly limit yourself to taking 
 stock of what the play really holds of current ideas and 
 modem situations, without hoping to rival in any way 
 a judicious collection of faits-divers from the penny 
 newspapers. There are cartloads of mere literature 
 in these professedly objective productions. The moral 
 
222 The Return of the Light 
 
 influence of the old comedy was summed up in the 
 Latin phrase: Castigat ridendo mores ^ and that of the 
 tragedy in the notion which some Goethean heroine 
 had formed to herself of a good romance — viz., a book 
 with characters one would like to resemble. To-day 
 our playwrights want to be regarded as philosophers 
 and directors of conscience. I once saw with no little 
 surprise a Latin volume of Casuistry in the hands of a 
 young friend of mine. *'Are you tormented in your 
 soul.'*'* I asked. "No," replied he, "I am looking for a 
 dramatic theme. ** But before fifteen years are over he 
 may give moral consultations to deferential journalists. 
 He will be in the right of it; playwrights sit side by 
 side with jurists in the committees for marriage reforms. 
 They have taken the place of bishops in the councils 
 of the commonwealth, as physicians replace the con- 
 fessors in family consultations. Alexandre Dumas, 
 junior, with just a mite of his father's genius, was the 
 first Frenchman who played this r61e with perfect 
 seriousness. He wrote plays which were technically 
 good and morally daring — that is to say, doubtful; he 
 appended to them prefaces which were generally much 
 better than the plays; when, in his preface to VEtran- 
 ghre, in 1879, he stood as a conservative against the 
 radicalism of Zola, his ethics got the credit of his 
 literature, and he was well-nigh looked upon as a 
 Father of the Church. 
 
 Some ten years later the French discovered Ibsen, 
 and their pleasure in the discovery doubled their 
 belief in the play with a far-reaching moral import. 
 Inferior snobbism immediately disported itself in sym- 
 bolism, while the superior kind resulted in Maeter- 
 linckian adaptations. But the credit of the theatrical 
 moralists became greater and greater, and several of the 
 
Anomaly of the Stage 223 
 
 rising young playwrights did not take the trouble to 
 conceal their ambitions, and boldly began to preach at 
 once. 
 
 M. Hervieu is the least sophisticated of all. His 
 dramas are simply apologies or demonstrations, and he 
 does not mind if the rough side of his tapestry is as 
 visible as the other. In order to show that the old 
 adage, Verba volant, is right only when the words are 
 kind or at least indifferent, he writes Les Paroles 
 Restent, a real charade, in which we see a woman ruined 
 by an imprudent speech of a man who afterwards does 
 all he can, but in vain, to redeem his inconsiderateness- 
 The title of the play is quite superfluous; the least 
 attentive spectator would supply it at a second's notice 
 if it were missing. M. Hervieu is clearness itself. He 
 is a great feminist, and looks upon our Code as bar- 
 barously partial for the men. He just picks up some 
 text in it and embodies it in a dramatic action destined 
 to show its absurdity. In Les Tenailles it will be the 
 article which empowers the husband to conduct the 
 education of his children. We shall see a man and 
 woman fighting over a delicate boy whom the husband 
 wants to send to school while his consort refuses. Such 
 scenes happen every day, and Captain Marryat has 
 painted one in an immortal manner in the first pages of 
 Mr. Midshipman Easy without troubling his head about 
 any sort of philosophy. But M. Hervieu makes his case 
 highly dramatic by letting us know that the husband 
 is not the father of his son, and by turning in conse- 
 quence the wife into a martyr at once. In La Lot de 
 V Homme it is another aspect of the same situation. 
 An exquisite woman, Madame de Raguais has to live 
 with her husband, a low creature, because she cannot 
 legally establish his unworthiness — of which, however, 
 
224 The Return of the Light 
 
 she is sure — and she must bear to see her daughter 
 marry the son of her husband's mistress because the 
 wretch takes the side of the impassioned girl. 
 
 When you read a drama of M. Hervieu's you see both 
 the tragic action and the legal demonstration proceed 
 together step after step with infallible and geometrical 
 precision, and you realize that, whatever legal possibil- 
 ity you might give to M. Hervieu to treat, he would in 
 a minute carry it on to the stage with counts and coun- 
 tesses instead of the Caiuses and Titiuses of the old 
 ethical treatises. But are we convinced by his precise 
 machinery? Not at all. We leave the theatre with our 
 old impression that everything is not right here below, 
 far from it, but it is wise after all that the head of a 
 family should be entitled, at least in theory, to final 
 decisions on serious issues. The drama lives on in- 
 dividual cases, laws are just the reverse. 
 
 The method of M. Brieux is less rigid than that of 
 M. Hervieu; we feel less while seeing his plays that we 
 are in the hands of a school teacher who will not let us 
 go until we know our lesson thoroughly, but his inten- 
 tion is even more decidedly to reform modem society. 
 Blanchette is an indictment against the hypocrisy of the 
 so-called encouragement given to primary education. 
 We persuade a girl that if she succeeds in taking a 
 degree she will inevitably be successful, and will at 
 once rise above the station to which she belonged; but 
 when she has secured the precious parchment she finds 
 herself not above but out of her class, and need drives 
 her to the worst extremities. M. de Rehoval is the story 
 of a senator who thinks himself a politically unim- 
 peachable character, and privately a model of virtue, 
 because he has managed to keep up two homes without 
 causing any scandal. The whole fabric of his life comes 
 
Anomaly of the Stage 225 
 
 to grief when his son in home No. i falls in love with 
 his daughter in home No. 2. Les Trois Filles de M. 
 Dupont shows the necessity in which girls are nowadays 
 not to marry or to marry beneath them if they have no 
 money; no novelty, to be sure, but the play is an 
 admirable drama. La Robe Rouge — M. Brieux's great- 
 est success — is a violent attack upon the magistracy. 
 A minor judge in some provincial court has no other 
 dream than to don the red gown of the high councillor 
 in Paris. By extraordinary good luck a murder is com- 
 mitted in his district, and he feels sure that if he can 
 find and convict the murderer his promotion is certain. 
 In fact he hunts down the supposed assassin with the 
 ferocity of a bloodhound. Les Remplagantes is a scath- 
 ing criticism of the frivolous Parisian women who will 
 not nurse their children — I mean their one child — 
 themselves, and who trust its life to a woman "from 
 whose glass they would never drink, *' without reflecting 
 that the woman has left her own baby and her husband 
 in a far-away village, and that through their selfish 
 indulgence a home has been broken up. 
 
 M. Brieux has treated the question of divorce in 
 three or four plays — Le Berceau^ La Deserteuse^ Su- 
 zette — ^invariably from the feminist point of view in- 
 herited from Alexandre Dumas. The future of the 
 children seems to him the chief question to consider, 
 and he thinks that no household where there is a child 
 ought ever to be broken up, but that if this catastrophe 
 actually happens, the children must be left with their 
 mother, whose claims upon them are supreme. Other 
 plays deal with Parliamentary corruption, with the 
 betting mania among the poorer classes, with a certain 
 foolish respectable reticence, etc. M. Brieux is scared 
 by no object. 
 
 IS 
 
226 The Return of the Light 
 
 Beside this revolutionist, with a great deal of latent 
 Christianity in him, we can place M. Paul Bourget, 
 who has become harshly traditional as he has become a 
 practising Catholic. His plays are quite as successful 
 as his novels, but they are very different from his early 
 productions, so subtle and tender. He takes invariably 
 the side of the strong and narrow-minded if they happen 
 to have tradition on their side, and advocates his 
 ideas in apparently solidly built dramas. In Le Divorce 
 it is the disruption of a man and wife's happiness 
 because the wife, after years of untroubled bliss, has 
 religious scruples about her husband's previous divorce ; 
 in 1! Emigre it is the r61e of the aristocracy in our mod- 
 em society; in La Barricade it is the class-fight, and in 
 Le Tribun it is the impossibility for a politician to be 
 true at the same time to his Socialist principles and 
 to his paternal instincts. Wherever the exponents of 
 the individualism invented by Rousseau and made 
 popular by the Revolution speak of the rights of man, 
 M. Bourget comes forward full of the rights of society, 
 and showing that they can be maintained only by the 
 sacrifice of individuals. If you are rich, strong, and 
 contented, M. Bourget's plays will give you reasons 
 for putting up with the woes of your less fortunate 
 brethren; if you are weak, ill-treated, and imhappy, you 
 had better keep away from his theatre. 
 
 To these three best-known stage preachers one 
 might add M. Mirbeau, M. Ancey, M. Descaves, and a 
 few others of less note. Most dramatists go the ways 
 of novelists, and as age and fortune come to them they 
 feel a growing propensity towards moralizing. 
 
 Have you an impression that any of the subjects I 
 have mentioned is likely to cause consideration among 
 the public, even among playgoers? Or do you feel, on 
 
Anomaly of the Stage 227 
 
 the contrary, that all that may be interesting, but 
 the proper time for discussing it is after dinner in a 
 smoking-room, while morals, real morals, are reserved 
 for private meditation? To ask the question is to an- 
 swer it. Nobody will get very much excited over the 
 situation of school teachers, or the laziness of society 
 women, or the corruption of politicians, or the ante- 
 diluvian difficulty of marrying off girls sans dot, or the 
 grievous faults of Dame Justice, or the grievances of 
 the French aristocracy. One knows that a good 
 deal of what is wrong here below is inherent in 
 some fundamental wrongness, and that the rest has 
 such deep and intricate roots that it is difficult to pluck 
 up the principal one. The notion is a philosophy in 
 itself. 
 
 What people take a real and living interest in is 
 tangible, and not academic. If the high cost of living 
 could be clearly and dramatically exposed on the stage, 
 the play would be a tremendous success. Write against 
 the Yorkshire schools or the meat-packing scandals, 
 you secure an audience at once, and the indignant feel- 
 ing you raise does more than forty years* work. Or 
 take advantage of some transient but very warm 
 emotion, and have Electra performed in Spain, or some 
 anti-militarist play in Paris at the right moment; you 
 are sure of endangering several lives and shaking various 
 institutions. 
 
 If you go to history and inquire what dramas with a 
 purpose have ever been effectual, you will invariably 
 find that they summed up and voiced some diffused 
 impression, not always the one which the dramatist 
 wanted to make use of. La Dame aux Camelias aimed 
 at being a denunciation of Philistine hypocrisy; and 
 it was that, no doubt, but it was, above all, the signal 
 
228 The Return of the Light 
 
 of a conscious and henceforth avowed indulgence for a 
 certain class of women. Les Avaries, by M. Brieux, 
 was also intended to be an apology for outspokenness 
 about a very delicate and terrible subject, but the feel- 
 ing it produced was selfish and cynical. Whenever an 
 idea is in the air the least spark will make it flash. 
 When it is not, no amoimt of tragical preaching will 
 create it. That is why, after all, successful dramas 
 with a purpose are first good comedies or tragedies, no 
 matter what their purpose may be, and it is foolish, if 
 one wishes to be informed of the preoccupations abroad 
 in a country, to go to the theatre ; the right place is the 
 roadside inn. 
 
 It is another matter if, instead of being in quest of a 
 list of widely-discussed issues capable of being put down 
 in a note-book and eventually in a newspaper, one is 
 anxious to come at the innermost soul of a nation, at the 
 something impalpable which with individuals is felt 
 rather than seen in the smile or in the tone of the voice, 
 and with communities constitutes what is called their 
 spirit or manners. Of this dramatists are admirable 
 though very partial exponents. They are, they have 
 to be, men of the world, and their vocation, as their 
 success, lies in their aptitude to reproduce the gestures 
 of the world, what modem parlance terms in a very 
 distorted and restricted sense — life. 
 
 What is the characteristic of the life we can see in the 
 most famous works on the modem stage? It is unfortu- 
 nately too easy to say. The knowledge of the age, its 
 activities, its peculiar courage, its manifold aspirations, 
 are all there, but never as the chief interest; they are 
 only the background or the frame. The centre of 
 interest for the dramatist is at present exclusively love. 
 And let there be no mistake; the love which we see 
 
Anomaly of the Stage 229 
 
 night after night on the Parisian stages has long ceased 
 to be the high feeling productive of noble actions which 
 it was inexhaustibly in mediaeval literature; it is a 
 passion, all violence and selfishness, possessing its vic- 
 tim so entirely that we can never know anything about 
 her or him, through four or five acts, except that he or 
 she is on the verge of insanity. 
 
 Here it is evident that dramatic literature is not 
 only the picture of life, but one of its factors. The 
 drama combines with modern art, modem music, and 
 practically every materialization of modern sensibility, 
 to make a daily and all-the-year-round phenomenon of 
 what nature had intended as a transient condition. It 
 is not in vain that all we hear and see conjures up the 
 same ideas; given a state of society in which idleness 
 and eternal self-analysis are the rule with leisured 
 people, these people must exasperate the string on 
 which they are for ever harping. This, in fact, is the 
 result which we see attained in all artificial lives, whether 
 real or imaginary ; one consciousness dominates all the 
 others, and it is the sexual one. 
 
 This being the case, it is not surprising that what 
 used to be called the storms of passion, the gathering 
 violence of love, its crises — jealous or otherwise — its sud- 
 den ending, have vanished from attention. When the 
 curtain rises on a play of M. de Porto-Riche, M. Ba- 
 taille, M. Bernstein, or any of their numerous imitators, 
 we know that the heroine will be at least in the condition 
 of the Phedre of Racine, and we have no illusion as to 
 what we may expect. No chance of any deep-running 
 passion which might be everlasting, but might also be 
 mute. Fehris est libido nostra. The Didos we see may 
 easily commit suicide if they are given up by their 
 loves — nothing in their state of mind is more likely; 
 
230 The Return of the Light 
 
 but if their love dies, a strong instinct tells us that they 
 will soon marry again. 
 
 M. Georges Riche — generally known as De Porto- 
 Riche — was the initiator of the drama based on this 
 kind of passion. He is no benefactor of mankind, to be 
 sure, but he ought not to be classed along with the 
 common corrupters whose sole object is success. His 
 latest play, Le Vieil Homme, performed in March, 191 1, 
 brought forth enthusiastic praise, which such a glar- 
 ingly immoral piece did not deserve, but also a storm of 
 abuse, which the author did not deserve either. M. de 
 Porto-Riche is a true artist. He has begun as a poet, 
 and nobody is more fastidious about his workmanship 
 than he is. His enemies make fun of his everlasting 
 delays in the production of his pieces, but artistic 
 scrupulousness is so rare nowadays that it ought to be 
 encouraged and not laughed at. Certainly M. de 
 Porto-Riche came, in one of his plays. Amour euse, very 
 near the perfection, not of Racine, as some people will 
 say, but of Marivaux. Unfortunately the tact of the 
 man is not so fine as that of the writer. M. de Porto- 
 Riche has the modem Jew's inevitable propensity 
 towards the doubtfully rare, the unhealthy exceptional, 
 and the sweetness of his honeysuckle is not enough to 
 cover other smells from his mould. The naturalness, 
 vivacity, and wit of his dialogue, the Parisian charm of 
 his women, the poetical atmosphere which he spreads 
 over his creations, will not redeem his fame. When 
 French literature recovers — as another chapter shows 
 that it will — ^its former healthiness, M. de Porto-Riche 
 will be remembered as the first man who managed 
 to make conjugal love look impure, and built a whole 
 play, Le Vieil Homme, on a painfully equivocal situa- 
 tion summed up in this speech of a wife and mother to 
 
Anomaly of the Stage 231 
 
 her husband: *'Your son is in love with your mistress." 
 The sadness which fills those briUiant, sparkling plays, 
 the idea that love brings a special Nemesis along with 
 it, is not enough to make them moral. The moraUty 
 one would be apt to gain from a prolonged familiarity 
 with these works is pure nihilism; get as much out of 
 life as it can possibly give you, and when it has nothing 
 left to tempt you, turn your back upon it. 
 
 M. Bataille and M. Henry Bernstein are the im- 
 mediate disciples of M. de Porto- Riche; they have his 
 belief in the fatalism of passion, his cynicism — I trans- 
 late the word fearlessness generally used — in taking it 
 for granted, and his dangerous tenderness in watching 
 its effects; but M. Bataille is even more refined than his 
 master in the notation of subtle corruption; and M. 
 Bernstein has rapidly made a reputation for his capacity 
 in imagining and handling harrowing scenes of violence. 
 M. Bataille is the historian of the women of forty who 
 fall in love with the school friends of their son, aged 
 nineteen; or of the ageing courtesans whose sons, 
 hearing that they are on the eve of being given up by 
 their protector, suddenly appear on the scene and 
 frighten the truant into loyalty by means perfectly 
 impossible to tell. M. Bernstein makes studies from 
 the same kennel, but his low heroes are always on the 
 point of committing suicide, or of being irreparably 
 disgraced, or of having with their parents horrible 
 scenes in which they dare and insult them. You go out 
 of these spectacles with well-nigh shattered nerves, but 
 that is exactly the sensation which some people are in 
 quest of. 
 
 It is needless to say that there is no trace whatever of 
 moral beauty in these plays. It seems to be one of the 
 most recognized dramatic principles of the day that 
 
232 The Return of the Light 
 
 true nobleness of life or feeling does not exist, or exists 
 so exceptionally as to be totally unconvincing on the 
 stage. Stupidity — ^invariably relieved by the author's 
 own wit — ^hypocrisy, falseness, selfishness, and cruelty 
 in every form are the staple of what is called Le Theatre 
 Rosse; that is to say, the deliberate expression — occa- 
 sionally heard even at the Comedie Frangaise — of the 
 basest tendencies in the human soul. The dark comers 
 which the classic writers did not ignore, but to which 
 they barely alluded, are emptied out in the full blaze of 
 the lights. M. Abel Hermant with icy-cold bitterness, 
 M. Courteline with a curious admixture of good-nature 
 and irony, are the chief representatives of this heartless 
 satire. 
 
 As a contrast we find the plays of M. Lavedan and 
 M. Donnay, which probably picture best the aspects 
 of society on which modern drama seems mostly to live, 
 and the philosophy with which our contemporaries 
 generally regard them. 
 
 M. Lavedan and M. Donnay are the painters of idle 
 high life, and as such they are the lineal successors of a 
 woman on whom a considerable portion of this light 
 literature depends, Madame de Martel, better known 
 as Gyp. The characters we see in their plays, as in 
 Gyp's dialogues and novels, are mostly butterflies, with 
 not enough consistency to be capable of real wickedness, 
 but butterflies that had lived in the vicinity of a colony 
 of much coarser beings and caught their language. 
 When we try to remember the flimsy, brilliant creatures 
 which fill those hundreds of volumes, numerous as they 
 are, we see only a few types always the same; the man of 
 prey who brings all his energies to bear on the one 
 object, to please himself in everything; younger men 
 whom he trains for the same career or occasionally 
 
Anomaly of the Stage 233 
 
 fleeces mercilessly and smilingly; mere boys who are 
 already so tired of the game that they speak like old 
 men with perfect naturalness; old men who are pun- 
 ished, in Joubert's phrase, "for loving women too much 
 by loving them too long," and cry over their lost 
 pleasures like disappointed boys; women risen from 
 nothing into the semblance of something, viewing life 
 sometimes with the rapacity, sometimes with the reck- 
 lessness, of the people, and perfectly destitute of moral 
 sense. Whether we think of Le Nouveau Jeu, or Le 
 Vieux Marcheur, or Le Marquis de Priola, or Education 
 de Prince, or even Amants, it is the same thing, and one's 
 ears are full of Folly's bells. The scenes we remember 
 are those on which the curtain rises in nine out of ten 
 plays, till we are sick of them — suppers at Montmartre, 
 very unhealthy seaside places, suspicious boudoirs. 
 The philosophy is always the same, too, complete 
 cynicism so reckless that it ends by turning against 
 itself and sounding like sincerity. As to the language 
 which those flitting shadows speak, it is worthy of 
 them; assisted by professional word-handlers — writers 
 and artists — they have created a peculiar dialect which 
 is better than a slang, both coarse and elegant, blend- 
 ing Maupassant with Marivaux, searching, accurate, 
 subtle, winged, and elusive, and yet worse than cynical, 
 full of qtiick allusion, ungrammatical, punning, and 
 cheap, but as picturesque as mediaeval French. 
 
 The true influence of the plays written after these 
 models lies less in the contagiousness of the characters — 
 perfectly inimitable for whoever is not both young and 
 rich — than in this remarkable quality of their language. 
 As I said above, writers copy it, but they improve it, 
 and thousands of Parisians or would-be Parisians do in 
 the theatre what M. Lavedan does in the various 
 
234 The Return of the Light 
 
 milieus he haunts; they take careful note of what 
 phrases strike them as Hkely to astonish or dazzle the 
 uninitiated, and they retail them to their friends. The 
 pity is that this means attitudinizing, and a pose of 
 this kind entails the very easy imitation of the senti- 
 ments it presupposes. Most of the so-called Parisian 
 corruption is only a varnish of words on the thinnest 
 veneer of materialism, but many people are too weak, 
 when once they have learned imitation, to be themselves 
 ever again, and it takes a new current of opinion to 
 sweep the puppets out of the way. 
 
 The difference between M. Lavedan and M. Donnay 
 is very slight. The former has evident contempt for his 
 paltry heroes; scorn is diffused through all his books, 
 even those in which he has no chance of moralizing ; and 
 his play, Le Duel^ as well as a great portion of his non- 
 dramatic productions, shows that his philosophy differs 
 widely from that of his models. But he is not free from 
 a certain subtle weakness which causes him to affect 
 excessive indulgence, and has recently decoyed him 
 into writing a frankly immoral comedy, Le GoUt du Vice, 
 when he wanted to satirize modern laxity. 
 
 M. Donnay has the same indulgence, rendered more 
 dangerous by the charm he gives to his women, and by 
 an evident propensity towards moral anarchism from 
 which M. Lavedan is free. He has lived too early in 
 the near vicinity of the mad set he describes not to find 
 it impossible to shake off all that he has caught from 
 them. Yet he has his philosophy too: the gentle 
 melancholy inevitably found in epicures. Life is fasci- 
 nating, love is intoxicating, but life and love are fleeting 
 and leave sadness behind them. The heroes of M. 
 Bernstein disappear with the bitterness of hatred and 
 disappointment in them; those of M. Donnay survive 
 
r 
 
 Anomaly of the Stage 235 
 
 with a taste of soured honey for ever in their mouths. 
 This too is copied by thousands of poetic snobs, and 
 many a retired coquette who sighs distinguished epi- 
 curean stoicism behind her fan, only recites bits from 
 Donnay. 
 
 The characteristic of the plays of M. Lavedan, 
 M. Donnay, and, I ought to add, M. Capus — whose 
 optimism and good humour are a clever counterfeit of 
 real health — is the contrast between the ready wit of the 
 characters in them and their invariable moral medio- 
 crity. Most of these people would be charming after- 
 dinner companions, none could make a real mate in life. 
 As to their creators themselves, superior as we realize 
 they are to their puppets, they are too eclectic in their 
 sympathies, too ready to see the pros and cons even in 
 moral difficulties in which a healthily trained mind 
 would see only one course, too superficially intelligent, 
 in short, to be of much use for whoever seeks more than 
 the amusement of an evening. Even the best of us want 
 more than a knowing shrug of the shoulders or winking 
 of the eye to be held above the low waters of modem 
 society. 
 
 Are there then no theatres where we can find "people 
 we would like to resemble"? Yes, but they are few. 
 For years the historical plays which will never cease to 
 appeal to the eye and the soul reminded us that the 
 theatres used to be the home of heroic sentiments. 
 Plays like La Fille de Roland, by Gaston de Bomier, 
 were far more effective morally than the best- 
 constructed pieces d theses. A great deal of even Sar- 
 dou's reconstitutions had a value of the same kind ; and 
 if M. Rostand had chosen to draw on that vein which 
 was so rich in him rather than on his imagination, he 
 had an undoubted gift for expressing the peculiar 
 
236 The Return of the Light 
 
 quality of French courage. Nobody could see dramas 
 from the braver epochs of our national history without 
 being conscious of present inferiority. But even the 
 historical play has gradually been tainted by the canker- 
 ing materialism which literature calls realism. The 
 tendency is to treat it not as a drama, but as an anec- 
 dote — very much in the tone of M. Lenotre's fascinating 
 books, and the results are not always good. If you 
 asked M. d'Annunzio why he made an immoral work of 
 the story of Saint Sebastian, he would no doubt tell you 
 that it was out of respect for truth. 
 
 Between the drama proper and the play with a pur- 
 pose there is room for another kind of play working 
 at the same time on the brain and the heart of the spec- 
 tator, and which, in default of a better word, one can 
 call the idealist play, the development of a high idea or 
 a noble feeling. It is remarkable that in this age of 
 scepticism and hardly-disguised selfishness these echoes 
 of the teaching of old are enthusiastically welcomed, 
 not only by the critics, but even by average audiences. 
 M. Lavedan*s greatest success was undoubtedly Le 
 Duely which stands out among his works as a fine old 
 residence sometimes appears among tinsel seaside villas; 
 it is the story of a priest, once a man of the world, who 
 kills the last germs of self-love in himself. The dramatic 
 work which caused most sensation in the last few years 
 was an awkwardly built but highly thought and nobly 
 written drama, Les Affranchis, by Mademoiselle Leneru. 
 This play, from the technical point of view, was rather 
 poor, and if we lived at an epoch in which moral greatness 
 was not considered a literary fault, it would have taken 
 the second or third rank, but in these barren days of real- 
 ism it appeared as a piece of Platonic beauty. The 
 critics spoke of it with exceptional respect, which in itself 
 
Anomaly of the Stage 237 
 
 would have been significant enough, but this was not all ; 
 the play was one of those which M. Antoine used to 
 produce at the Odeon "out of s)mipathy for young 
 dramatists" — that is to say, in plainer language, 
 because he was paid to be charitable for unknown 
 talents — and it was to be performed only once, or at 
 most twice; in fact, it had to be given over and over 
 again, and before a month was over, it had found its 
 way into the regular repertoire. Clearly the inspiration 
 of an inexperienced artist had joined a reaction of the 
 public taste at the right moment. 
 
 But the already established and still growing fame 
 of another independent playwright ought to have long 
 pointed out to dramatic writers that modem audiences 
 have a surfeit of love, or even of brilliantly varnished 
 realism, and crave something else. It is nearly twenty 
 years since the admiration of all competent judges 
 and the surprised enthusiasm of the public for two plays, 
 entitled L'Envers d'une Sainte and Les Fossiles, made 
 the name of M. Frangois de Curel known and deeply 
 respected. The example of this pre-eminently honest 
 writer could be proposed to the most ambitious as well 
 as to the most sincere. A descendant of an ancient 
 Lorrainese family, he might have lived a luxurious life, 
 but he chose to follow the career — ^very far from smooth 
 in France — of an engineer. Endowed with powerful 
 dramatic faculties, he might have achieved highly 
 popular success; he courted supreme distinction. He 
 always chose the narrow way in everything. He lives 
 mostly in the country, in his native district, dreaming 
 his dreams, waiting for real inspiration, indefatigably 
 writing and rewriting his works without any attention 
 to outward suggestions. The result is first of all a 
 private life eloquent in itself, and in the second place a 
 
238 The Return of the Light 
 
 literary production which is not faultless but which 
 compels admiration. 
 
 The faults of M. de Curel are intimately connected 
 with his qualities. He bears his creations so long in his 
 mind that they all ultimately borrow something of his 
 ways of thinking and expressing himself ; their language 
 is not by any means bombastic, but its simplicity could 
 be attained only by exceedingly refined, intelligent, and 
 noble recluses who spent their lives in meditation and 
 spoke only on great occasions. It has something 
 rhetorical in its spirit, as there is oratory in the general 
 expression of the plays themselves. This may be part 
 of the peculiar power of the dramatist, but it requires a 
 certain co-operation from the spectator which the latter 
 is not always disposed to give. 
 
 However, the necessary harmony between the author 
 and his audience once established, M. de Curel's plays 
 appear as rare productions in which we discover under 
 every sentence the presence of a poet, a psychologist, 
 and a philosopher, master of a singularly noble expres- 
 sion and an aristocrat in the true meaning of the phrase. 
 M. de Curel is as incapable of imagining a low char- 
 acter and a common plot as others may be incapable 
 of the reverse. His natural bent is towards heroism. 
 A brief sketch of one of his best-known works, Les 
 FossileSj will give an idea of his manner. The scene 
 is an old chateau, in which an ancient family is slowly 
 dying away with only the pride of its name to give it 
 courage. The head of the family, the old Duke of 
 Chantemelle, and his son Robert, spend their lives in 
 their woods, hunting or brooding, and perfectly unsoci- 
 able. The duchess and her daughter Claire visit the 
 poor and pray. The all-absorbing thought for all of 
 them is that there was imequalled dignity in the great- 
 
Anomaly of the Stage 239 
 
 ness of their name, and the cankering anxiety is the fear 
 that the name is on the eve of disappearing for ever, 
 for Robert is threatened with consumption. One 
 day Robert tells his mother that before his end comes 
 he would like to see once more the governess of his 
 sister, a poor girl whom the duchess has turned out 
 because she suspected her husband to be unduly atten- 
 tive to her. The young man soon confesses he has had 
 a child by the unfortunate governess. He will never 
 marry the mother, but he thinks of her baby with the 
 anxiety of imminent death. When the duke hears all 
 this his first impulse is furious anger, for he has really 
 been in love with Helene Vatrin himself. But gradu- 
 ally he calms himself ; a thought has dawned upon him : 
 the lost hope of a descendant, here it is revived. Let 
 Robert marry Helene and the name of Chantemelle will 
 not die out. "I thought of it," answers Robert, "but 
 if Helene comes here she must be the equal of all." 
 In turn, the old duke, the duchess, and the pure and 
 proud Claire accept the sacrifice. But Helene is no 
 common woman, and her own pride has to be conquered 
 too. When it is, and she is the wife of Robert, peace 
 seems to inhabit at last the villa near the Mediterranean 
 where the family have come to try and save Robert's 
 life. But the nurse of Robert's child, an abominable 
 woman, who knows the story of the old duke's relations 
 with Helene, tells Robert the awful truth. The latter 
 receives the revelation calmly. He does not care for 
 life now that his aim has been attained. He travels 
 north with the certainty and the hope — soon fulfilled — 
 of dying, and the play ends with the reading of his will, 
 a page of quiet sublimity. 
 
 M. de Curel has not always been so successful as in 
 this play. Only once, in the Repas du Lion, has he hit 
 
240 The Return of the Light 
 
 on a plot capable of this full development, but all his 
 pieces are conceived in the same spirit and written with 
 the same elevation. His place among French drama- 
 tists is curious. If you ask any ordinary playgoer who 
 are his favourites, he will seldom mention him, but if 
 you ask him where he places the author of Les Fossiles, 
 he will often unhesitatingly give him the first rank. 
 The fact is that our minds are inevitably influenced by 
 the immense number of dramas written to amuse, but 
 it is also true that the streak to which M. de Curel's 
 production corresponds is large enough to be regarded 
 as a feature of the public mind tired at last of mere 
 froth and elegant corruption. 
 
 What is the impression left by a comparatively 
 extensive study of the modern French stage and of 
 the chief French dramatists followed not only in their 
 plays, but in all the expressions of their philosophy? 
 Can we find a formula that will enable us to bring 
 order into the somewhat intricate statements we have 
 made? Is there not, first of all, uppermost in our 
 minds, and difficult to dispel, the sensation that 
 modern dramatic production in France is, in spite 
 of a few exceptions, a tremendous factor of public 
 demorahzation ? 
 
 Certainly, forty-nine in fifty Parisian plays are more 
 or less overtly immoral. The individualism, which has 
 been turned loose at the great Revolution, and has 
 almost uninterruptedly gained in the literary realm 
 even more than elsewhere, is rampant on the stage. 
 The fact is that duty is less dramatic — I only mean that 
 it is less easy to dramatize — than passion, and unbridled 
 creatures are more eloquent than sober men and women 
 accustomed to self-denial and to habitual suppression 
 of inordinate sentiments. The consequence is that 
 
Anomaly of the Stage 241 
 
 anarchism is frequent and that no excuses are given 
 for its appearance. Nay, dozens of so-called disciples 
 of Ibsen still go on reasoning about the most vital issues 
 and place in the mouths of the characters they invent 
 radical utterances about the destruction of religion, 
 society, and even family. But all this radicalism is 
 only the cant of the stage, and, in spite of all their 
 apparent boldness, the successors of Alexandre Dumas 
 are, as I have said, more anxious than ever to retain 
 their claims to the title of guides of the modem con- 
 science. Summer after summer, when invited by 
 respectable journalists to decide about the great issues 
 of the day, they deliver themselves of distinctly con- 
 servative opinions. They are guarded and timid, 
 the moment they swerve from the beaten track, and, 
 on the contrary, decisive and resolute when they find 
 themselves on traditional ground. This is the contra- 
 diction in playwrights. 
 
 The same is found in the immense majority of 
 playgoers. They seem to favour vice — ^for they will 
 taboo no spectacle, and too often they give their 
 wives the same liberty — ^but they openly blame, on 
 leaving the theatre, what they have been so anx- 
 ious not to miss. It is the paradoxical disposition 
 which M. Lavedan intended to impugn in his Goilt 
 du Vice, 
 
 What are we to infer? That there are in the air two 
 long-familiar tendencies, one of which is of the flesh 
 while the other is of the spirit. Modem people have 
 become used to over-exciting food, and though a con- 
 stantly better enlightened instinct warns them more 
 loudly against the danger of anarchical doctrines, they 
 cannot wean themselves from the sights and language 
 which subtle corruption and ever-increasing talent 
 
 xd 
 
242 The Return of the Light 
 
 have made fashionable. Both writers and public are 
 living a fallacy. 
 
 The immediate conclusion we must draw is that the 
 theatre does not mirror the city, and that the play is 
 not painted after the audience. The theatre is 
 something eminently artificial. Whatever playwrights 
 might say or imply, they know that they work outside 
 real life. The play is an after-dinner affair, never 
 included in the concerns of the serious hotirs, attended 
 by people who wear a special garb, bring in special dis- 
 positions, expect a special light, and would be — in 
 fact are every now and then — considerably startled 
 when they meet something more like the morning light 
 and morning thoughts, as in the plays of M. de Curel. 
 It is agreed on all sides that the theatre, just like the 
 music-hall, is a concession made by seriousness to folly. 
 The most successful plays are none of those I have 
 named for their literary or philosophical excellence; 
 they are mere pieces of extravagant drollery, like 
 Papa or the Manage de Mademoiselle BeulemanSy with 
 which neither morals, nor philosophy, nor art in the 
 higher sense of the word, have anything to do. A great 
 deal of the language of an epoch is manufactured on the 
 stage by clever artisans in phrases — not essentially 
 different in this from the higher class of tailors — but 
 its ideas come from deeper sources — economics and 
 politics to be named first — ^which the novel, literary 
 criticism, and the multiform newspaper article handle 
 and begin to formulate long before the theatre takes 
 note of their histrionic value and gives them its appar- 
 ently vivid but in fact flimsy reality. The destructive 
 plays we have reviewed in this chapter are manifesta- 
 tions of a belated stage of French opinion and of artificial 
 appearances. The state of mind at present in the mak- 
 
Anomaly of the Stage 243 
 
 ing would be found in the evolution of a typical French- 
 man like M. Jules Lemaltre, or in that of M. Barres, and 
 in the literature of their disciples. It means a strik- 
 ing advance in the direction of seriousness, a mistrust 
 of wit for wit's sake, as well as of the empty formulae 
 that the past generation delighted in, an anxiety about 
 the morrow made of selfishness, to be sure, but includ- 
 ing a recognition of solidarity and an accompanying 
 responsibility; above all, it means a sense of the real 
 which we seemed to have lost and which the rising 
 generation possesses to a refreshing exaggeration; for 
 a time comes when narrow-mindedness and stubborn- 
 ness appear refreshing compared to cheap scepticism. 
 Of this change the stage shows no traces yet, though 
 literature has noticed it for several years. If the reader 
 should wish to realize the gulf between the theatre and 
 life he would only have to read a little book, Mon 
 Filleul, published by M. Lavedan just as he produced 
 Le GoUt du Vice. The contrast is extraordinary. 
 There is more wit in the play than in the book, but this 
 is not the question. M. Lavedan is a very good French- 
 man and, I might say, a very good man — though some- 
 what ashamed of it — and in both the book and the 
 play there is a moral inspiration, a desire of improving 
 the times. But, as I said above, Le Gout du Vice was 
 a signal failure, stage necessities making it imperative 
 for M. Lavedan to be light and affect immorality when 
 intending to preach seriousness and morals, while 
 Mon Filleul is highly persuasive. Yet in Le GoUt du 
 Vice, as well as in Mon Filleul, the author wanted to 
 present, and, in fact, did present, modem types. But 
 the characters in the play are evening Parisians who 
 could only be artificial, superficial, and bubbling, while 
 those in the book are a very tolerably real godfather 
 
244 The Return of the Light 
 
 and godson talking about the subjects of the day in 
 the language of the day. 
 
 8. The Rising Generation 
 
 It is generally admitted that the change in the 
 national spirit brought about by the Tangier awakening 
 is more visible in the rising generation — the men be- 
 tween eighteen and twenty-five — than in its predecessor 
 and some people maintain that this change is so marked 
 that it amounts to a modification in the traditional 
 temperament of the French. We shall investigate the 
 change and discuss the so-called modification. 
 
 First of all, is there really a contrast between the 
 generation which came to manhood towards 1870 and 
 its offspring? Yes, imdoubtedly ; but so much has been 
 written on this contrast that a great deal that is born 
 of words has already taken the place of plain truth, and 
 one feels on one's guard. 
 
 To begin with the doomed period, the much despised 
 last decade of the nineteenth century, it is too often 
 judged from the celebrated preface to Le Disciple, in 
 which Bourget, in 1889, divided contemporary youth 
 into two sections ; one consisting of the brutally cynical, 
 and the other of refined if enervated nihilists. This 
 preface is an estimable piece of rhetoric, but it is rhetori- 
 cal from beginning to end, and, as is invariably the 
 case with unduly successful rhetoric, it has begotten an 
 immense progeny of mere words. It is true that there 
 were brutal cynics and dainty Revolutionists among the 
 young men of those days, but were they a majority? Is 
 it not better to say that they represented that portion 
 of young Frenchmen who, being either professional 
 writers or abstractions from contemporary novels 
 
The Rising Generation 245 
 
 — ^those of Daudet, for instance — were, above all, 
 
 literary matter? 
 
 It has been the pleasant lot of the present writer 
 to see a great deal of French youth from the year 1890. 
 These young men were mostly fervid and enthusiastic, 
 as fortunately young men will be. We did see some 
 specimens of effete aristocracy or wealth, we occasion- 
 ally heard brutal assertions concerning the use of life, 
 and I knew two perfect samples of the pretty affectation 
 which was then called Buddhism and turned a boy of 
 twenty -two into a sort of indulgent old man; but these 
 were exceptions. The fact is that there was no object 
 for popular passion, no definite ideal of any kind. 
 Politics ran high, but they were hardly ever taken 
 seriously, and a young man might spend the time 
 between his leaving school at eighteen and his marry- 
 ing at twenty-five without encountering any subject 
 that really appealed to him. Some few individuals 
 owed to their surroundings an interest in the campaigns 
 of Drumont against the Jewish power, or of Barres 
 against Parliamentary corruption, or — this was my case 
 — ^in the evolution of the Church towards acceptance of 
 modern conditions, and the ralliement advocated by 
 Leo the Thirteenth; but they were very few, and the 
 truth is that universal stagnation prevailed. 
 
 Consequently, we may say that personal experience, 
 even in the case of a man connected all his life with 
 intellectual milieus and intelligent young men, provides 
 us with very few positive data, and on the contrary 
 with a great deal that is purely negative. So it was 
 mostly through books and magazines, through the 
 innumerable manifestoes which esthetic or ethical 
 ** schools" issued so freely, through inferences, in a word, 
 from literary evidence, that we gathered anything 
 
246 The Return of the Light 
 
 about the restricted Parisian circles which are fre- 
 quently offered us to-day as having given its tone to 
 that period. 
 
 Tolstoism was purely literary, and so was Buddhism, 
 and no less so the Nietzscheism which appeared in the 
 early works of Barr^s, and the Socialism which we 
 discover rather retrospectively in the books of Peguy. 
 The cynicism of which Bourget complains did exist, no 
 doubt, but in many cases it was created more than 
 represented by the theatre, and thus was literary too. 
 Young men were restless in default of something really 
 mastering to give themselves to, and they tried all that 
 came within reach without much conviction. We have 
 heard many times that for several years, Jaures had 
 great influence over the students at the Ecole Normale, 
 and we find in fact that two or three of them found their 
 way behind him into the Chamber and a few others 
 into the Press. But read the recollections of Peguy to 
 which I referred above, you will feel immediately that 
 the so-called Socialist wave was limited to the delight of 
 a few lads in being distinguished by a famous orator, 
 and magnified by the same delight in an imconscion- 
 able manner. As much might be said of the influence 
 of Paul Desjardins, or of Barr^s in his first years, or of 
 many a man who seemed to be a man at the time — ^for 
 instance, Ernest Lajeunesse — and is at present hardly 
 a name. 
 
 The average young men of the declining nineteenth 
 century, therefore, were mostly what their fathers* 
 conversation and the tone of the age made them. 
 Scientism ruling, they were far from all belief, but not 
 averse to a vague mysticism; Renan having been the 
 great admiration of the generation before them, they 
 affected a distinguished dilettantism, or a distinguished 
 
The Rising Generation 247 
 
 scepticism, or a distinguished nihilism — even Jules 
 Lemaitre knew these affectations; peace seeming set- 
 tled, they had a great contempt for war, and were 
 above barbarism and Revanche; they were incredibly 
 jealous of their liberty, but this was chiefly talk, as they 
 consented readily enough to become officials, with no 
 other liberty than that of shirking their work. In short, 
 they were the products of a time in which nothing 
 decisive was taking place, either in man's thought or in 
 his life ; they had vague ideals, vague ideas, and a vague 
 though frequently expressed disgust of it all, which 
 sounded more like cynicism than surfeit, but was in 
 reality surfeit. 
 
 Against this description we should now place the 
 portrait of the contemporary young man. It ought to 
 be easily drawn as the model is before our eyes, but we 
 are confronted with the same difficulty which stood in 
 our way with respect to the foregoing generation; too 
 much has been written already, too much is affirmed 
 because it sounds logical, and we have to sift and criti- 
 cize once more. In the course of the years 19 12 and 
 1 9 13, the newspapers and magazines were ftill of this 
 Dauphin, the modern young man. Elderly gentlemen 
 interviewed him day after day with that respectful 
 eagerness which gives a somewhat silly appearance even 
 to some letters written by Taine when the Dauphin was 
 called Bourget; and the answers poured, decisive and 
 confident, rather systematic too, with a dash of philoso- 
 phy thrown over the facts. Many an interested reader 
 must have concluded, as did M. Faguet in the Revue des 
 Deux Mondes: "Yes, they are very well, but, by Jove, 
 they are not modest." The fact is, they generally talk 
 as if they were the masterpiece of their own hands. 
 
 Of course, they are only the sons of their fathers, bom 
 
248 The Return of the light 
 
 under happier — morally — circumstances, and enjoying 
 the privilege which belongs to all happily bom sons, 
 of having no doubts about themselves. 
 
 They certainly are sensible. You never hear them 
 launch into fine speeches about the vague ideals which 
 triumphed with the Dreyfusists. They are guarded 
 and reserved in the presence of theories, they insist on 
 being given chapter and verse about everything, and 
 you see them boldly do a thing which was considered 
 uneducated and almost ill-bred in 1895 — viz., foresee 
 consequences. They also have sober ideas about the 
 rights of man, those rights of man the mention of which 
 was formerly enough to throw down every barrier to 
 individual freedom. They stand for duties and dis- 
 cipline. They take no nonsense from Socialism, and 
 the tendency is so universal that you find it' among the 
 younger Syndicalists themselves. They respect the 
 police, and despise indulgent jurymen; in short, they 
 are a great deal more reasonable than their own fathers, 
 and Ludovic Halevy — the author of La Famille Cardi- 
 nal, it is true — when he said that he stood rather in awe 
 of his sons, was only a little way in advance of the times. 
 
 But if you analyse the environment and circum- 
 stances in which this phenomenon took place, you will 
 find that the fathers and tutors of these young men are 
 largely responsible for it. 
 
 No lad of eighteen ever took up the cudgels for wis- 
 dom, order, restraint, and generally the soberer virtues, 
 unless he was made to love them, and it takes consider- 
 able eloquence to make him love them. But there sel- 
 dom were more eloquent people than the fathers of 
 these young fellows, because they were not only sincere 
 but pathetic, and to a certain extent comical in their 
 disappointments. If they had not so heartily believed 
 
The Rising Generation 249 
 
 in Liberty they would not have been so heartily tired of 
 seeing Liberty never result in Hberties. If they had 
 not listened with complaisance to the florid speeches of 
 Jaures and his compeers they would have been less 
 irresistible when they at last broke out into the "words, 
 words, words" of perfect disgust. Perhaps if they had 
 not been deluged with so much filthy literature they 
 would not have had such a surfeit of it. As it was, they 
 spoke with an admixture of surprise and discontent 
 which a boy will invariably construe as akin to naivete 
 and esteem in consequence. Certainly there is a shade 
 of contempt in the appreciation of the last years of the 
 nineteenth century by the men who are now twenty-five, 
 because they could not but feel certitudes where they 
 saw their fathers only arrive at inferences. 
 
 In the same way it took either genius or the best kind 
 of Catholic education to resist the influence of Taine, or, 
 above all, Renan, in the 'nineties, because determinism 
 and scepticism were positively in the air. The vogue 
 of a doctrine acts as a physical law. To-day our young 
 men find that scientism is effete, determinism coarse, 
 and scepticism provincial. They find that the fash- 
 ionable philosophy taught by a non-Christian — there is 
 something amiss in calling M. Bergson a Jew — adopted 
 on all hands, and just enough contradicted by theolo- 
 gians not to appear immediately religious, is a vindica- 
 tion of spiritualism and free will, and indirectly a 
 demonstration of a divine power; it is inevitable that 
 they should be without effort all that was most difficult 
 thirty years ago. 
 
 Again, it is true that French education is still exag- 
 geratedly literary; and that, judging by the plans and 
 methods recommended, often too by actual practice, it 
 would seem as if every French boy were destined for 
 
250 The Return of the Light 
 
 the career of a writer, often of a playwright, or at least 
 of a dramatic critic. But professors have changed 
 all the same. They are no longer those whom Bourget 
 knew in the -Paris lydeSy who never said a word to their 
 boys outside the class, and during class never said a 
 word that did not concern literature, and more or less 
 overtly the Hterature of the day. The fallacy which 
 placed true greatness exclusively in the power of feehng 
 or. imagining and expression is rapidly making way for 
 something more broadly human and manful. The 
 professors of to-day have not yet become what different 
 conditions caused the professors of the seventeenth 
 century to be: men who used the classics as a means 
 and not an end, in the absolute certainty that neither 
 themselves nor, above all, their pupils, had one chance 
 in ten thousand of ever printing a line. They still write 
 a great deal, and the enormous amount of printed 
 matter accumulating outside the school walls weighs 
 upon their imagination and reacts on their speech, but 
 they have served their time in the army and remember 
 it with pleasure, and few are those who do not honestly 
 reaHze that being comes before writing. The notion of 
 a man as an intelligent will rather than a longing 
 fantasy once more becomes familiar and banishes the 
 opposite monstrosity. 
 
 All this being the atmosphere we breathe and take 
 in quite naturally cannot but have results, and the 
 "contemporary young man," if he is not all that he 
 thinks and says of himself, is at least no fiction. 
 
 As I said above, he is somewhat positive and trench- 
 ant about principles, and is seldom decoyed into a dis- 
 cussion of the bases of individual or even social ethics. 
 It seems as if in this respect the experience of his father 
 had actually passed into his blood, as if he remembered 
 
The Rising Generation 251 
 
 the endless debates of twenty-five years ago, and had 
 made up his mind that he has had quite enough. The 
 purely academic attitude is a very rare exception, which 
 however, I met with some time ago. It was at the house 
 of an engineer whose name was mentioned at the time of 
 the Dreyfus Affair. A young professor of philosophy 
 was there, a good-looking, smartly dressed man of 
 twenty-eight, with an eager and yet cold expression, 
 which I could not at first make out. It was only as 
 the conversation became more animated that I saw 
 where the eagerness tended. This young philosopher 
 was full of doubts, which is certainly not amiss in a 
 philosopher, but he was dying to play them off, and 
 gradually did so with an imperfectly disguised satis- 
 faction which was very unpleasant in itself; in religion 
 and morals, as well as politics, there was nothing he 
 would not question. The sons of our host — three 
 young men between eighteen and twenty -four — sturdy, 
 whole-souled fellows, instantly fired up, not once 
 deigning to discuss his arguments, which would not 
 have been very difficult, but constantly reverting to the 
 fact that these hair-splittings were all very well in a 
 room where nothing was going on except cigarette- 
 smoking, but were worse than useless in the street. 
 The difference in the point of view was vital, and the 
 young philosopher looked curiously anachronistic. 
 It is not surprising that the verbiage of mere politi- 
 cians should be treated with contempt by the rising 
 generation. The politician is regarded as not only 
 intellectually but morally inferior, a man who drives a 
 profitable though disreputable trade, and covers his 
 dealings with patriotic pretences. Even a Gambetta 
 would be impossible to-day unless he preached exactly 
 the reverse of Gambetta's doctrine — that is to say, did 
 
252 The Return of the Light 
 
 not see remedies in the success of a party. Young 
 men no longer go to political meetings with no other 
 immediate object than the return of a deputy; the very 
 idea is enough to move either their laughter or their 
 anger. The consequence is that political divisions 
 among them are immaterial compared with what they 
 were in 1880. If Deroulede had died then, his funeral, 
 instead of being attended by a hundred thousand men 
 so united in the great patriotic idea that not one jarring 
 cry was heard, would have been a riotous scene. If 
 General Picquart had died before 1906, we should not 
 have seen what took place at St. Cyr on the occasion 
 of his funeral : permission granted to the nine hundred 
 cadets to attend the ceremony independently if they 
 pleased, and not one taking advantage of it, because 
 doing so would have looked like a decidedly political 
 demonstration. 
 
 The purely patriotic feeling has almost universally 
 replaced political tendencies, and it is at present at 
 least jealous and sensitive. The Sorbonne professors, 
 having imder the influence of M. Monod, and espe- 
 cially in the exaltation which accompanied the Dreyfus 
 Affair, been imduly indulgent to Internationalism and 
 insistently partial for German methods, are far from 
 popular with their audiences. Men like MM. Aulard, 
 Seignobos, V. Basch, and Andler, who a few years ago 
 found no contradiction, are frequently spoken of now as 
 shamefaced Frenchmen, taken to task for their short- 
 sighted erudition, and, which is worse, made to look as 
 the representatives of a dead and not very honourable 
 past. Students are still fond of going abroad, and, in 
 fact, almost a majority of them manage to spend a year 
 or two at some foreign university. But what a contrast 
 between the impressions they publish and those of their 
 
The Rising Generation 253 
 
 seniors ! The latter either wrote in the cold impersonal 
 spirit of Taine or in that of Loti, at best in that of Bour- 
 get's Sensations d'Oxford. All that rose in these pro- 
 ductions above mere poetic dilettantism was a regret of 
 some opportunity missed in France and envied where 
 the writer found it. The point of view was invariably 
 individualistic, and is apt to-day to look selfish or child- 
 ish. The travelling impressions of students nowadays 
 are still picturesque, but they would be ashamed of 
 being nothing else, and in most cases they might be 
 written not by men with a literary training and object 
 but by diplomatic or consular agents constantly bear- 
 ing in mind the patriotic point of view or the European 
 relation of France. Stendhal is much nearer these 
 wide-awake inquirers than Gobineau, and the German 
 tendencies of the latter are probably responsible for 
 the neglect in which he is already left. 
 
 It is not surprising, and I ought hardly to mention, 
 that the Tangier shock should have been felt more by 
 young men than by anybody else. I have said else- 
 where how it affected even the working classes, and it is 
 remarkable that the impulse which was then given has 
 not lost any of its energy. Interview, if you have a 
 chance, a private soldier : you will find not only that he 
 accepts the prospect of serving three years without 
 repining, but takes a keen interest in the progress of the 
 twenty-year-old recruits who joined his regiment at 
 the end of 1913; he evidently has thought much of war 
 as a practical possibility and is preoccupied with it. 
 
 Matter-of-fact and business-loving as the richer 
 classes have become, they gladly take on the military 
 charges. You never hear the impatient jests of former 
 days about the absurdity and uselessness of much that 
 is done in the barracks. The great object ennobles all 
 
254 The Return of the Light 
 
 the mean details. There was something almost pitiful 
 in a letter of Bernstein, the dramatist, admitting two 
 or three years ago that he had not seen at twenty the 
 greatness of military servitude as he saw it now. A 
 young man like Lieutenant Ernest Psichari, the grand- 
 son of Renan, giving up his career and exchanging his 
 prospects for the life of a private in an African regi- 
 ment, would have seemed a brainless madcap at the 
 end of the nineteenth century; to-day he is a typical 
 Frenchman. 
 
 Even schoolboys have felt the universal influence 
 and show it in their simple way. It seems yesterday 
 that the present writer knew a boy of seventeen, the 
 son of French parents, but brought up in America, 
 who used to shake his head in polite disapproval when- 
 ever war was mentioned, and only excited amusement 
 among the other boys. To-day he would be hooted or, 
 more probably, speedily converted. When the possi- 
 bility of a war is mentioned, all professors notice those 
 signs of interest about which an experienced man is 
 never mistaken. 
 
 All this is clear enough and certain enough. Owing 
 to the experiences and disappointments of past years, 
 the Frenchman of to-morrow will be what the French 
 have been throughout their history, excepting a short 
 period evidently partaking of the nature of a disease, 
 neither afraid of nor philosophically antagonistic to war, 
 and probably inclined to it. A great deal that is said 
 about this subject by men who are not young sounds 
 rather boastful and bombastic, but it is only because 
 they are not young. The same things said by their 
 sons seem natural. These carry about with them a 
 changed atmosphere. 
 
 It is difficult to be as affirmative on a few other points 
 
The Rising Generation 255 
 
 which have been frequently discussed recently. MM. 
 Tarde and Massis in their book, Les Jeunes Gens 
 d'Aujourd'hui, say that the rising generation is purer 
 and more moral than its predecessors. It certainly 
 stands a better chance, for literature is infinitely less 
 salacious than it used to be, philosophy is no longer a 
 dissolvent, and the tone of conversation is improved; 
 the insistence upon gauloiserie, which was the rule since 
 the empty brilliant days of the Second Empire, is now 
 bad form, and that perfectly Parisian type the fanfar on 
 de vice looks provincial even in the country. But we 
 have to be content with those appearances, which after 
 all have generally been supposed to mirror with com- 
 parative accuracy the real state of affairs, and possibly 
 with the fact that young men have a tendency to marry 
 earlier than was customary, as appears from University 
 and Army statistics. 
 
 The same ought to be said of the religious inclination 
 of young men. There is no positive evidence that they 
 are better Catholics than their seniors, but they are 
 hardly ever anti-clerical, and their philosophy leads to, 
 rather than from, a religious life. Here again we are 
 conscious of an atmosphere which is not of yesterday, 
 and the superiority of our young men lies in their finding 
 it ready instead of having to create it. Perhaps if the 
 foregoing generation had not had the unpleasant experi- 
 ence of blighting unbelief, or had not painfully groped 
 its way out of the vague religiousness associated with 
 the name of Tolstoi, the field would appear less open 
 for Catholic influences than it is at present. But per- 
 haps again the conditions we see, being the fruits of 
 disgust rather than of faith, may amount only to a sort 
 of neutral goodwill with a great deal of the notion — 
 widely spread after the Revolution and after 1898 — 
 
256 The Return of the Light 
 
 that religion is indispensable for a nation, but individu- 
 als need only be generally favourable to it. This view 
 usually results in the estabHshment of apparently strong 
 ecclesiastical institutions apt to deceive the clergy about 
 dangerous undercurrents, and only effective if they help 
 and do not replace proselytizing. 
 
 The last characteristic of the contemporary young 
 man is his taste for action. Here so much perplexing 
 nonsense is heard and repeated that we must proceed 
 carefully and light up our path with useful distinctions. 
 All the yoimg men whom MM. Tarde and Massis have 
 interviewed declare that they are tired of theories and 
 talk, and that if they have to go to school in order to 
 live, it shall be the school of life itself. This sounds 
 very much like theories and talk in disguise, and we 
 are not surprised to see this exalted resolve occasionally 
 supported by the authority of William James, or — more 
 timidly — by Whitman: there is a great deal of mere 
 literature or philosophizing in it. Let us give credit for 
 these speeches only to the inborn want of the French 
 to have intellectual systems to rest upon. Now we 
 must ask ourselves what the people who really do some- 
 thing are doing. Is it more, or of a better quality, or 
 accomplished in a higher spirit? M. Gustave Le Bon, 
 who is a well-known, and deservedly well-known, social 
 philosopher, does not think so; modem young men, he 
 says, are all ''arrivistes.'' This is sweeping indeed and 
 seems insufficiently demonstrated. Probably M. Le 
 Bon, who is an idealist, is unpleasantly affected by the 
 fact that the possession of wealth or influence is the 
 apparent object of practically every activity. But this 
 may only be an appearance, or a bequest of the preced- 
 ing generation, which does not essentially belong to 
 o\irs. The real question is whether our young men are 
 
The Rising Generation 257 
 
 not impelled toward action by a more or less conscious 
 craving after self -development, and it seems that the 
 answer ought to be in the affirmative. 
 
 The American taste for "doing something,** what- 
 ever it may be, which M. Demolins proposed more than 
 twenty years ago for our admiration and imitation, 
 certainly is at the root of French activity. Young men 
 still marry heiresses — and commercial and industrial 
 expansion rapidly multiplies the number of heiresses — 
 but they would be ashamed to live on their wives' 
 money ; they are often seen to go into partnership with 
 their fathers-in-law instead of leaving them to their 
 low avocations. When such chances do not offer, 
 they seldom resign themselves to the passivity which 
 used to be the rule ; in default of something better they 
 travel, trying to give to their pastimes the appearance 
 of utility. The recently developed literary hobby 
 among the aristocracy, ridiculous in one aspect, pro- 
 ceeds however from the dread of being useless. 
 
 The evident progress among women also works in 
 the same direction. Society women who spend their 
 mornings in hospitals qualifying for the Red Cross, girls 
 who take up the classics, or medicine, or the law, as 
 hundreds and thousands do at the present moment, 
 often without any mercenary views, could hardly co- 
 exist with the shameless specimens of laziness that 
 Lavedan, Donnay, and Gyp before them looked upon as 
 representative in the 'nineties. Energy is in fashion, 
 and veulerie, as it is called in the most unpleasant 
 syllables in the language, is superannuated. 
 
 Another proof of this change is the comparative 
 desertion of Government careers. The official is 
 frequently despised on account of his lack of independ- 
 ence, his indifference to his work, the uneventfulness 
 17 
 
258 The Return of the Light 
 
 of his life, and the habit he has of thinking himself the 
 master instead of the servant of the pubHc. This 
 contempt begins to tell. The competition for situa- 
 tions in the great industrial enterprises at one end of the 
 scale and for the big shops at the other is speedily re- 
 placing the old struggle after "quiet positions.** The 
 number of candidates even for professorships is not 
 half of what it was twenty years ago, and at the last 
 examination for agregation in natural philosophy the 
 jury found just enough competition for a bare applica- 
 tion of their rules. All this shows an evident return to 
 the spirit of enterprise which characterized the French 
 quite as much as the English when France and England 
 were the only nations with colonial empires. 
 
 Another sure sign of the same reaction is the popu- 
 larity of sports, and, above all, the consciousness of 
 the qualities developed by sports. Sports used to be 
 regarded in France from two different standpoints. 
 There were the people who enjoyed open-air exercise, 
 and those who did not care at all. The former would go 
 in for riding, fencing, fives or rackets, but they were 
 quite as ignorant as the latter of that reasoned pleasure 
 in them which is characteristic of the modem practice 
 of sports. A man might fence or play tennis every day 
 of his life, and not take the least interest in a boxing 
 match, which to him would be only a circus perform- 
 ance. Sport was first of all exercise, then an art, and 
 then to a certain extent rivalry, but the latter was in as 
 small a proportion as can be conceived. To-day the 
 numberless boys whom you see in the streets kicking 
 a small ball according to mysterious rules, or in the sub- 
 urbs of towns playing Rugby as scientifically as they can, 
 certainly enjoy the physical sensation of the game, and 
 the excitement of it, but they seem above all to delight 
 
The Rising Generation 259 
 
 in doing it because a certain difficulty is attached to 
 doing it to perfection. Their pleasure is quite similar 
 to that which their fathers used to take in being drilled 
 at the imminent risk of being punished. Sportiveness 
 is a conviction rather than a taste, and in numberless 
 instances it does duty for religion. There is an effort 
 under it all. The pleasure of obeying in spite of being 
 French is novel and piquant, and is sustained by a cer- 
 tain amount of exaltation, and by the delight of having 
 a vote and a voice in a club. The absolute spontaneity 
 of the Englishman in the enjoyment of games is here 
 replaced by the consciousness of pleasant self-conquer- 
 ing, and I will show by and by that this feature is pro- 
 bably the most important. At all events, the tendency 
 of sporting young men is a highly self-realized one, 
 involving attention to physical and moral development 
 much more than the impassioned condition one is con- 
 scious of in an English or American boxing-ring. 
 
 Some people affect to speak of aviation as a kind of 
 sport, and lay great stress on French superiority in it, 
 but the least effort at analysing the airman's state of 
 mind shows that it has nothing in common with that 
 of the sportsman ; it is entirely and exclusively an aspect 
 of the old military spirit of the French, and as such is 
 far more significant than any amount of sporting in- 
 terest. Certainly there is a world between the sages 
 of 1898 and the fascinating specimens of French pluck 
 we see at Buc and Villacoublay. 
 
 To conclude, the new generation appears stronger in 
 its instincts, more resolute, and almost stubborn, in 
 its ideas than its predecessor, altogether nearer nature 
 and less artificial, in spite of the wisdom it has inherited 
 rather than acquired. In one respect it seems to show 
 an unheard-of development of the national character, 
 
26o The Return of the Light 
 
 and we must now ask oiirselves whether the traditional 
 temperament of the French is really undergoing a 
 change about which we ought to make up our minds, 
 whether it be to accept or counteract it. 
 
 9. Is the New Generation Less French? 
 
 This so-called change has been pointed out several 
 times and deplored by friendly foreigners, the best 
 known of whom is Mr. J. E. C. Bodley. ' To anybody 
 who knew and loved France some fifteen years 
 ago, these writers say, and revisits it at present, the 
 contrast is striking and painful. The idealism for 
 which the French have been famous throughout their 
 history has vanished, so have their broad-mindedness 
 and their warm-heartedness, and even the gaiety with- 
 out which they were almost unthinkable. Paris is 
 absiu'dly overestimated: any foreigner who lives there 
 for any length of time will find it a depressing place with 
 a dull atmosphere. The French are almost universally 
 what they used to be once in rare exceptions — viz. 
 Chauvinists, on their guard against their neighbours, 
 thinking a great deal more of war and revenge than of 
 culture, thinking of money too. They used to be 
 charming conversationalists, but in this also they have 
 lost ; they have replaced the drawing-room with the field, 
 and make unsuccessful efforts to become sportsmen. 
 Seriousness and application are not becoming to them: 
 the strain easily turns to sadness; in fact, they are 
 melancholy. 
 
 The great grievance seems to be that the French are 
 less good "Eiu*opeans" than they were. Paris was a 
 
 ^Vide "Decay of Idealism in France," in Cardinal Manning and 
 Other Essays. Longmans, 191 2. 
 
The New Generation 261 
 
 sort of national park for Europe, not so long ago. 
 Everybody could come there, and not only find a wel- 
 come, but even a something yielding which was the sub- 
 tlest of flatteries ; an aptitude to lend oneself to a foreign 
 point of view, to see and point out charm in a visitor, 
 when the visitor himself was not quite conscious of it; 
 a contempt for prejudices, which was unspeakably 
 refreshing after the narrow-mindedness one had left at 
 home; a dash, often a recklessness, which bespoke that 
 wonderful apprehension of things suh specie ceternitatis 
 which was the fascination of Renan and helped you to 
 realize that there was a philosophy under cosmopolitan- 
 ism. Now the French are only French, and seem to be 
 that somewhat defiantly: a great falling off! 
 
 This impression shows clearly that — owing no doubt 
 to the development of France as a purely intellectual 
 nation which began with the Encyclopaedists, was at 
 its fullest in the heyday of Renan's celebrity, but became 
 only thoroughly conscious of itself in Anatole France's 
 compositions — the French had grown to be in the eyes 
 of leisured Europeans supremely dainty, costly, ingen- 
 ious toys, but toys all the same, with which it had long 
 ceased to be dangerous to play. France was a wonder- 
 ful field for experiments of all sorts; literary, moral, 
 religious, political, or social, which the natives carried 
 on for the enjoyment of Europe with captivating dar- 
 ing. To what extent the admiration was mixed up with 
 something less sympathetic it is not easy to say, but 
 when its expression was unqualified it was apt to sound 
 unintelligent as much as friendly. 
 
 Place beside it the terribly wide-awake clear-sighted- 
 ness of a barbarian of genius like Bismarck, or the out- 
 spokenness of a writer with manly instincts like Kipling, 
 the truth flashes upon you at once. The so-called 
 
262 The Return of the Light 
 
 friends of France were as blind as she was herself to the 
 earthly, not metaphysical, consequences of her attitude. 
 They were evil companions, dangerous flatterers, and 
 as in their hearts they could not abstract themselves 
 from worldly considerations, every time France was 
 struck and they could not refrain from thanking Pro- 
 vidence for not being born toys, they appeared hypo- 
 critical. Uncritical love is apt to find itself in that 
 position. 
 
 If it is folly to imagine that a nation can keep its feet 
 steady on the earth with its head in the clouds, it is 
 ignorance to suppose that France, in the typical periods 
 of her history, was frivolous and delightful, or ideal- 
 istic and reckless, as the so-called *'good Europeans" 
 like her to be. We have every reason to believe that 
 the recent and deplorable development was a literary 
 disease and nothing else. Nations, like individuals, 
 show various reactions, occasionally have moods which 
 do not touch their original character. The classical 
 description of the Gallic disposition, with its two 
 propensities: rem militarem et argute loqui, never ceased 
 to apply to the French temperament; but there are 
 times for everything. A hundred and twenty years 
 ago there were probably already in Paris refined circles 
 in which argute loquentes slurred their r's and strutted 
 to insufficiently dressed women, but it was lucky that 
 toward the same time armies of ragged men with several 
 very uncivilized notions were guarding the frontier and 
 carrying on rem militarem irrespective of rhetoric or 
 philosophy. 
 
 Hardly two ages in the succession of French history 
 present the same physiognomy. There is a world 
 between mediaeval simplicity and the violence of the 
 sixteenth century. The age of Louis the Fourteenth 
 
The New Generation 263 
 
 is as different from its successor as a retired diplo- 
 mat is different from a sprightly young seigneur com- 
 ing back from England full of M. de Bolingbroke, of 
 theories and persiflage. Sometimes the strong side, 
 sometimes the brilliant side of the national character 
 appears. What we see in history we could have seen in 
 the chess-board of the various classes. Literary people 
 of inferior quality, politicians, worldlings who live only 
 by shining, all the individuals who, after the fashion of 
 the mask-like fairies in Scandinavian mythology, sub- 
 sist only so long as nobody sees their hollow side, are 
 very different from the millions which form the back- 
 bone of the nation. While they talk the French are 
 apt to indulge in all sorts of nonsense, but it is no less 
 true that they distrust mere talk the moment they act. 
 When the great carnival of theories which went on 
 during and immediately after the Dreyfus Affair was 
 the success of the day, one might have supposed that 
 everybody was in it. Yet if you had inquired among 
 the classes which are the true representatives of French 
 activity, the useful — not the butterfly — aristocrat, the 
 bourgeois merchant, the peasant, and the soldier would 
 all have given you sound common-sense even on the 
 burning question of the day. Add that Paris may be 
 saying what it pleases to amuse itself and its guests, but 
 all the time it does so, slow-going Flanders and wary 
 Champagne, crafty Normandy and stubborn Brittany, 
 wise Touraine and shrewd Lorriane, astute Provence and 
 solid Dauphine, all the cautious old provinces in their 
 castellated fortresses of plain good sense are silent and 
 expectant. The time always comes when these reserves 
 are turned to account. 
 
 Frothy Paris — or, I should say, the froth of Paris, 
 for the rue Saint-Denis is decidedly sensible — with its 
 
264 The Return of the Light 
 
 babbling deputies and tattling journalists, its loud thea- 
 tres and over-subtle lecture-rooms, has been silenced for 
 a time, and whoever realizes that France is a greater and 
 better thing than the cosmopolitan guartier de VOpera 
 ought to rejoice at seeing stronger, if ruder, elements 
 come uppermost just when they are needed. Surely 
 young Frenchmen are not less French for hating hu- 
 manitarian nonsense and preferring their own country. 
 
 It would be absurd to deny the existence of a few 
 ridiculous features in the new generation, which cannot 
 but strike the visitor somewhat unpleasantly. Exag- 
 geration is the fault of all collective impulses. 
 
 To begin with, the fashion tends towards gravity, and 
 gravity does not sit well on the average Frenchman. 
 The interest in foreign politics has created a new breed 
 of journalists who enjoy the advantages of being the 
 first of their kind in this country, and magnify their 
 importance accordingly. I have described in another 
 chapter their social attitude : it consists in silence, silence 
 in all its eloquent meanings, from heroic self -suppression 
 to unquestionable triumph. A council of such mutes 
 in the dining- or smoking-room is irresistible : the Ama- 
 dan Academy did not come near it. It is needless to say 
 that this is copied by fashionable young men who pre- 
 tend to lunch with Sir Edward Grey and dine with M. 
 Venezelos, and unaffectedly let us admire their thorough 
 mastery over some such question as the Naxos fisheries. 
 The sportsman, too, is a very reticent person. He is 
 afraid of passing for a braggart, and although he merely 
 plays football at Arcueil or even golf at Neuilly, he is as 
 modest as if he were Bleriot or Vedrines themselves. 
 He, in his turn, is not only imitated but improved 
 upon by that very un-French creation, the boy scout. 
 The boy scout is too young, otherwise he would be 
 
The New Generation 265 
 
 clean-shaven ; he dresses in khaki, which will never look 
 well in the Meudon woods ; he is unduly tall for his age 
 and country, wears enormous boots which he never 
 thinks ugly enough, shows any amount of spindle legs, 
 and apes to perfection the globe-trotting gait of the 
 American artists in the Boulevard Raspail. His chief, 
 a young man of twenty-four, in a sombrero and sober 
 grey, is a cross between a Methodist minister and a 
 New England schoolmaster; I have never seen one 
 whom I could suppose to have been in a line regiment 
 the year before; I have never met a party of scouts in 
 the train on a Sunday afternoon without a vague fear 
 lest they should demurely rise and solemnly strike up a 
 hymn. With what a regret they make one look back 
 to the lazy dawdling columns of the lyceens of old, who 
 had never walked more than four miles when they left 
 school, and thought nothing of twenty the week after 
 they joined a regiment ! But it takes no great divining 
 power to prophesy the disappearance of all khaki boys 
 within two years and their absorption into the societis 
 militaires. 
 
 Some foreign observers will have it that it is not only 
 seriousness but sadness and anxiety that are visible in 
 modem Frenchmen. Are they right? Certainly the 
 workman of yore seemed to do his work more cheerfully 
 than he does it to-day, and the tradesmen who retired 
 from their little shop to a house in the hanlieue thirty 
 years ago seemed to talk more light-heartedly than we 
 hear them now. Syndicalism, machinery, and banks 
 at every corner are no elements of cheerfulness. You 
 feel no inclination to merriment when you contemplate 
 a strike of which your wife strongly disapproves ; you do 
 not attempt to sing, even if you are a mason, a carpen- 
 ter, or a painter, when your every movement is regu- 
 
266 The Return of the Light 
 
 lated by a noisily puffing steam-crane; and you will look 
 grave behind your counter, even if pennies pour into 
 your till, when rubbers go down just after you bought 
 them. Modern civilization, if civilization we must call 
 it, is as deadly to simple joy as mere ecus were to La 
 Fontaine's cobbler. With the multiplication of money 
 one can notice the disappearance of taste. It is obvious 
 in the passion of the Sunday sportsman for gaudy col- 
 ours ; the sight of two teams of motley Neapolitan-look- 
 ing footballers in the fortifications makes you feel an 
 alien among these young men. And the house of the 
 thriving clerk goes the way of his clothes. The environs 
 of Paris, which were, and still are in many places, so 
 harmonious, are a nightmare in some others. The 
 house which the Parisian petit bourgeois fancies stands in 
 a lotissement — that is to say, the site of an historical park 
 brought over by a Jewish syndicate and geometrically 
 cut up — it is narrow so as to save space and high- 
 shouldered so as to gain some; it is made of brick or of 
 the hideous yellow meulihe because it must be cheap, 
 and is exposed in its ugly nudity because creepers are 
 said to be damp, and the creamy or softly pink casts of 
 old are only good for villagers' houses ; it has a garden, 
 but no tree, shrub, or hedge is suffered in it because 
 doctors recommend light and the thriving clerk is a bom 
 gardener; there it is, looking like a sentry-box in its 
 desolate prison yard. Look out when you come from 
 Calais for a place called Aulnay, a few miles before you 
 reach Saint-Denis : you will see what the thriving clerk 
 has made, of all places, of the forest of Bondy ; or visit 
 Meudon and see what horrors the few magnificent 
 cedars that are left of the Dauphin's park are made 
 to shelter; or visit Ecouen, with its princely chateau, 
 and see — no, do not see anything else. Alas, 
 
The New Generation 267 
 
 alas, how much there would be to say about Paris 
 itself! How much has gone down, and how much 
 has gone up, the thought of which is almost un- 
 bearable! The municipal councillor is of the same 
 essence as the grocers who elect and, which is worse, 
 pay him, and the architect is as servilely cringing to 
 the Jew as the suburban builder is to his colonies 
 of clerks. 
 
 What sort of people live in those houses? What 
 are their ways and deportment? What is their talk? 
 Much is said that is disheartening. These people are 
 mostly the sons of provincial immigrants, people bom 
 among the vineyards of Burgundy or the lavender hills 
 of Provence; their fathers had traditions, a peculiar 
 accent, and racy old phrases which conjured up a 
 rich background as they spoke. Sometimes quaintly 
 dressed relations visited them, and often the old woman 
 who waited at their tables had not parted with the head- 
 gear of her valley. All this is gone. Modern civili- 
 zation razes old ways as it does old houses; the sons 
 of these new families copy the American lads they see 
 in the rue de Rivoli, their conversation is said to be 
 deliberately heartless and colourless, even the French 
 they speak is emptied of its flavour. It is learned, not 
 in the Place Maubert where Montaigne would linger 
 listening to market women speaking even more pictur- 
 esquely than he wrote, nor from Moli^re, or La Fon- 
 taine, or the familiar classics, but from the morning 
 paper with its impersonal political language on the first 
 page, and its columns of foreign news on the third, 
 translated from blank international English by a night- 
 clerk often as disarmed before French as he is before 
 English, seeking security in vagueness, and letting the 
 good old French words grow so thin under his drowsy 
 
268 The Return of the Light 
 
 hand that they seem to have floated where they are on 
 the metaphysical waves of the wireless. 
 
 All this sounds very like transformation, and trans- 
 formation for the worse. If young Frenchmen copy 
 foreign fashions, lose the traditional French taste, are 
 practical and money-making, suffer their language 
 to lose flesh and colour, in a word look as modern as 
 Australians, does it not mean that the Iron Age is too 
 strong for any resistance, and that France will not be 
 equal to her vocation? 
 
 First of all, let it be remembered that these appear- 
 ances have nothing to say to the two chief character- 
 istics of contemporary youth in France, which are an 
 instinctive aversion from words and an instinctive 
 appreciation of energy. These seem to be vital, the 
 rest is only appearances. But even these appearances 
 ought to be qualified. 
 
 To begin with, it is very likely that they will be 
 ephemeral, because they are the products either of 
 imitation or of transient conditions. The French have 
 always been fond of imitations, which, however, leave 
 their national temperament as intact as the carnival 
 mask does their face. The two periods in French history 
 which have left the most decidedly brilliant impression 
 upon foreigners are the later part of Louis the Fif- 
 teenth's reign and the Second Empire. Now, the smart 
 people whom Walpole visited at Paris and Versailles 
 showed such an Anglomania that he was at first amused, 
 but gradually disgusted; and as to the Second Empire 
 galaxy, it had a — to-day astonishing — partiality for the 
 Prussian aristocrats, who were constantly welcomed 
 at the Tuileries or at Compiegne. Khaki, large boots, 
 clean-shaving, the affectation of self-control, all these 
 fashions will be replaced by others within a decade. 
 
The New Generation 269 
 
 Then we ought to make allowance for the social modi- 
 fications which are invariably attended with exaggera- 
 tion and effort. In France, as in the rest of the world, 
 the step onward from peasantry and simplicity produces 
 unpleasant effects: affectation, a display of poor taste, 
 the levelling uniformity. But this step is not the first, 
 and those which came before were not very different. 
 The turbaned old women from the South, whose con- 
 versation seems to us so delightfully old-fashioned, 
 would appear civilized and uninteresting beside their 
 grandmothers; each generation sheds a few character- 
 istics — which the next generation does not regret be- 
 cause it has no idea of them — but originality is not 
 attached to such appearances: when it fails us in the 
 plain workman we find it in the well-dressed artist ; sin- 
 cerity is the parent of originality, and no amount of 
 civilization will prevent sincerity from occasionally 
 bursting upon the world. The French language as we 
 see it degraded in the newspapers is only the ghost of 
 itself, but Fenelon and La Bruyere thought they saw 
 the same phenomenon in their time, and yet the lan- 
 guage survived in the works of Voltaire and Rousseau, 
 Chateaubriand and Michelet. I shall point out later 
 that at this present moment respect for words is much 
 more general among writers than it was throughout the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 The same may be said of the decadence in architect- 
 ural taste : its chief cause is the recently acquired inde- 
 pendence of classes which are rich enough to demand 
 comfort and not developed enough to care for beauty. 
 But while rows after rows of hideous houses dismay the 
 sensitive vision, the delight of numberless artists in the 
 quiet harmony of the old farm or the old country house 
 is daily made more contagious, and must before long 
 
270 The Return of the light 
 
 result not only in rescuing what is left of the past but in 
 forcing its imitation. 
 
 We may safely conclude that mere fashions in cos- 
 tume, language, and ways ought not to be given more 
 importance than fashions have a right to. They must 
 be put up with, like the weather, and if they are counter- 
 acted let it be gently. But it would be a thousand 
 times deplorable if seriousness, praticalness, and mis- 
 trust of unreasoned impulses resulted, as some people 
 contend they do, in moroseness, unintelligence, and 
 apathy. A morose, unintelligent, apathetic France 
 would have no business in Europe. But) this catas- 
 trophe is very remote. In spite of superficial appear- 
 ances magnified by paradoxical observers, the French 
 are still gay. When they put on gravity the uncontrol- 
 lable spirit soon breaks through, were it only in the in- 
 ferior form of irony. But gravity is the pose of few 
 circles. You will find no trace of it in its affected aspect 
 outside the "world," literary milieus, and possibly 
 sportsmen. When half a dozen Frenchmen are engaged 
 in a real conversation the conversation is gay, and 
 circumstances matter little. In spite of persecutions 
 and confiscations, priests and nuns have lost nothing of 
 the childlike light-heartedness which makes their chief 
 charm, soldiers are gay, and workmen are only taciturn 
 where they have to be, in the thundering factory, in 
 the crowded train, in the busy hostile street. Select a 
 sullen-looking navvy in a trench and ask him a few 
 questions : in spite of his Syndicalism and of his prob- 
 able antagonism to your class, it will be very extra- 
 ordinary if in a minute or two you do not see him give 
 a funny, good-humoured twist to his answers. I met 
 once three straggling young scouts who probably would 
 have looked duly Methodistical had they been with 
 
The New Generation 271 
 
 their friends. Playing truant as they did, they were 
 irresistible in their view of their irregular situation. 
 The oldest one indulged in a comparison between his 
 own kind and a party of American scouts who were just 
 being entertained in Paris. Fanfan la Tulipe circa 
 1750 would have explained his case with exactly the 
 same insouciance. 
 
 It is also the effect of mere appearances if the so- 
 called loss of Idealism is said to have resulted in loss 
 of the elan which belongs to the race. Propagandism, 
 which Joseph de Maistre, a foreigner, noted as the chief 
 French characteristic at the end of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, is still at the root of all French action and the 
 fountain of French eloquence, but for the present it has 
 lost its guiding formulae — the multiform embroidery 
 of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity which dazzled the 
 nineteenth century. The Third Republic has gradu- 
 ally emptied them all of their dynamic force, and the 
 patriotism which has taken their place in the last seven 
 years is wise enough not to be loud. Certainly it is thus 
 quiet merely because it differs from the Revanche spirit 
 of 1887, in being much deeper and stronger. If there 
 had been a war in 191 1 — ^not in 1906 — it would have 
 been entered on in as brisk a spirit as can well be con- 
 ceived. In default of a war, any great cause worth the 
 name would easily bring together youthful energies, but 
 careful analysis of the present situation in France re- 
 veals the lack of any such cause, apart from the national 
 peril. The disgust created by Radical politics is deep 
 and universal, but its origin is so protean and confused 
 that it escapes the popular grasp. 
 
 Is there any more reason for fearing lest the French 
 of the rising generation should have lost their ancestral 
 capacity for abstracting and generalizing? Are they 
 
272 The Return of the Light 
 
 going to fall, from sheer mistrust of verbiage and atten- 
 tion to matter-of-fact realities, into what Carlyle 
 called the "post-prandial" — precisely as opposed to the 
 French — way of conceiving things? Is the argute logui 
 a gift which can be lost at a few years' notice? The 
 very idea seems ludicrous. No generation was ever 
 more full of generalizations about everything — ^itself 
 included — than the present one. It would be a fault 
 if it were not merely the national bias which nobody can 
 resist. Take the three or four volumes which have been 
 written about the recent developments, read any of the 
 many works in which the private views of young 
 writers — in default of literary schools — are summed up ; 
 you will find them as conscious and systematized as 
 if they had been dictated by a Condillac. The marvel 
 is to see the identical sportsmen, who think so highly of 
 action for action's sake, infer as complete a philosophy 
 from their tendencies as if they were professional critics. 
 As to the conversations one hears — say among ofi^cers — 
 they are simply brimful of "ideas, " and as it is true, on 
 the other hand, that theories or "views" are mis- 
 trusted, it must be merely because the native pro- 
 pensity has never been so unconscious of itself, so 
 instinctive and rich. Surely its intimate connection 
 with unintellectual human patriotism makes it far more 
 active than it was in the days of Taine and Renan, when 
 speculation ran riot. 
 
 Let these croakers croak, and, in spite of childish 
 affectations, do not let us suppose that Frenchmen are 
 less French for being sensible and cool-headed; France 
 had been herself for many centuries before she became 
 infected with the intellectual diseases from which she is 
 at present recovering. I hope that the reader sees 
 clearly that the credit of the recovery, as I have en- 
 
The Church and France 273 
 
 deavoured to show, does not belong entirely to the 
 superior insight of the younger generation — practically 
 the only men of fifty who have learned little or nothing 
 by the experience of the last twenty years are limited 
 politicians — ^but France as a nation gives to-day the 
 impression of something young, whereas at the end of 
 the nineteenth century it gave the impression of age, 
 fatigue, and disillusionment. It is natural, therefore, 
 that we should associate the characteristics of the 
 country in this new state with its younger members. 
 That these characteristics are not likely to vanish as 
 superficial agitations — obviously political — ^have done 
 before, there is every reason to suppose, and the 
 greatest part of this volume is a defence of such 
 hopes. 
 
 10. Does the Church Play any Active Part in the Trans- 
 formation of France? 
 
 This question is one which sympathetic inquirers 
 abroad constantly ask and about which they seem most 
 uncertain, sometimes hearing uncritically sanguine ac- 
 counts, sometimes unduly pessimistic rumours. It will 
 be made clearer if we ask ourselves to what extent the 
 Catholic Church is responsible for the reaction towards 
 a higher morality, a more solid social order, and a better 
 mental equilibrium which is the subject of this volume. 
 Two descriptions will enable the reader to answer for 
 himself. 
 
 It is a fact that all the distinguished individuals 
 whose conversion from indulgence to morals I have 
 pointed out in another chapter have undergone a 
 similar transformation with regard to religion. They 
 may not be believers, most of them are not and will 
 
 X8 
 
274 The Return of the Light 
 
 probably never be; they have been too deeply tainted 
 with the scepticism in which they were bred, or they 
 are both lazy and critical, and they are afraid to launch 
 — somewhat late in the day — into researches which 
 almost invariably demand an undivided and passionate 
 attention, but they speak of religion, of the Church, of 
 priests, monks, and nuns with seriousness and respect. 
 Not only men like Jules Lemaitre or Barres — not to 
 speak of Bourget — who may have semi-political reasons 
 for leaning to that side, but typical Parisians like Capus 
 or Lavedan, men who once represented that vanished 
 entity the boulevard^ and even at present aim hardly 
 higher than at being the sages of the green-room and 
 the divines of the Figaro or U Illustration, men whose 
 attitude is the more easily copied because in most cases 
 it is only a reflection from movements in society itself, 
 show an imfeigned respect for the tenets, ethical teach- 
 ing, and constitution of the Church. Twenty years 
 ago writers of this stamp could not refrain from shrugs 
 and smiles, which meant, as plainly as elaborate 
 treatises might have, that there were things in which a 
 modem man could not possibly believe — they abound 
 in the early writings of Jules Lemaitre — ^all that could 
 be hoped from them was the piety of Renan which the 
 CathoHcs of those days resented as the worst kind of 
 blasphemy. At the present moment, graces of this 
 description are left to country school teachers. A man 
 in M. Aulard's position loses, even from the scientific 
 point of view, more than is just, because he will sport 
 in La Lanterne the wit of M. Cardinal. Look over the 
 list of the French Academy as it stands to-day and 
 compare it with what it was towards the date of Renan's 
 election; the difference is startling: who are the Vol- 
 tairians of the present day? Anatole France, of course, 
 
The Church and France 275 
 
 but he has given up the Academy long ago ; M. Lavisse, 
 but how careful he is not to give any offence; M. 
 Hanotaux, but his superficial unbelief made room for 
 explicit belief in his book on Jeanne d'Arc; M. Hervieu, 
 but he never printed a line against religion. The next 
 to be quoted ought to be M. Richepin, but he would be 
 very angry if anybody took the entirely literary violence 
 of his early verses seriously. And the numbering must 
 end there. The thirty-five other Academicians are 
 either practising Catholics or favourable to Catholicism. 
 This state of affairs would be found to be the same 
 in all the literary circles of Paris, in the lecture-rooms, 
 in the provincial universities, in the local literary 
 academies. Men inclined to speak harshly or satirically 
 of religion feel that it is better form in them to refrain, 
 and they do refrain. In order to find exceptions we have 
 to go down to TJniversites Populaires where an un- 
 frocked priest or a Syndicalist with a philosophy may 
 innocently retail Haeckel to a not very enthusiastic 
 audience. The transformation obvious in Literature is 
 hardly less so in the Press. Apart from La Lanterne, 
 1! Homme Libre — edited by M. Clemenceau — and pos- 
 sibly, on a few occasions, papers as ignored as Le Gil 
 Bias has become, the Parisian periodicals have gradu- 
 ally adopted at least an apparently sincere neutrality 
 in religious matters. The radical suppression of any 
 anti-Catholic articles in the Revue des Deux-Mondes 
 was the very remarkable forerunner of this change from 
 the day when F. Brunetiere took the Review over, after 
 the death of Buloz. The Figaro, the Eclair j the Echo 
 de Paris are completely different from their former 
 selves. The few people who complain that the stories in 
 Le Matin and Le Journal have become so proper that 
 even girls may read them, do not seem to miss the old 
 
276 The Return of the Light 
 
 anti-Catholic lampoons once habitual to these papers. 
 Only a few years ago Le Matin was justly regarded as 
 deliberately and craftily working against religion. The 
 appearance of the journal Excelsior ^ a Catholic rival, 
 compelled it to adopt another policy which is said to 
 have been officially notified by the proprietors to the 
 Archbishop of Paris; certainly it is a far cry from the 
 miniature essays of M. Vautel — a genre which suits 
 the French reader admirably — to those of the late M. 
 Harduin in point of orthodoxy. The accomplished busi- 
 ness men who conduct the paper are anti-Christian 
 Jews, no doubt, and this still appears sometimes too 
 clearly; but their commercial instinct as well as the 
 intelligence of some of their subordinates shows them 
 the advisability of discretion in religious matters. A 
 very widely circulated weekly, Les Annates, edited by 
 Madame Brisson, the daughter of the rabid anti-clerical 
 Sarcey, having given offence on a few minor points to 
 CathoHc readers, not only made public amends for the 
 slip but applied to the Paris Archbishop for a priest 
 who would correct the proofs from the theological 
 standpoint. The Journal des Dehats has become a 
 liberal but decidedly Catholic organ. Many such in- 
 stances could be quoted. Suffice it to say that no 
 popular journalist can be named who is anti-Catholic 
 in his writings, and the best known of that kind, the 
 great anarchist of fifteen years ago, Urbain Gohier, 
 points out religion as the only solution to the moral and 
 the social problems of to-day. If we look back to the 
 history of the past three centuries we shall find that this 
 neutral or sympathetic attitude of the intellectual ad- 
 viser of the man in the street is an unheard-of pheno- 
 menon. Since the days of the Renaissance they have 
 been either resolute believers or no less resolutely* 
 
The Church and France 277 
 
 though not always openly, the reverse. Broad re- 
 ligiousness in Frenchmen grown up outside the pale is a 
 feature of the last few years, and it shows that at least 
 prejudice has come to a standstill. 
 
 Parallel with this transformation is one which was 
 inevitable in the public spirit. The violent hostility 
 against the Church which prevailed among the aristo- 
 cracy in the days of Saint-Evremond and Fontenelle 
 among the upper bourgeoisie at the time of the Ency- 
 clopasdists, among the teaching body under Louis- 
 Philippe and Napoleon the Third, and which finally 
 gained the lower strata under the influence of Gam- 
 betta. Ferry, and Paul Bert, has almost ceased to be 
 visible in France. Of course, it still exists in the 
 Chamber among the Radicals, and in the narrow pro- 
 vincial circles which keep Radicalism alive against 
 the whole country as four or five Jacobins would keep 
 up the Terror in a town against the whole population. 
 But you have to look for it, and its rampant attitude 
 of the days when M. Comtes was master is only an 
 irritating memory. Those people have long lost the 
 contagiousness of faith, and all their energy comes from 
 the desperateness of their greed. This cannot last long; 
 let any fortuitous circumstance dispel the equivocations 
 which are to-day their only protection, and even the 
 pitiably dog-like submissiveness of the country elector 
 to his master, good or bad, will lose its last support. 
 
 The Freemasons who even in the not far away days 
 of the espionage system were so much spoken about, so 
 dreaded on one side and so courted on the other, who 
 reigned almost supreme in the Chamber and Senate, 
 and were not afraid of excommunicating a politician 
 for dissenting from them in a division, who thought 
 themselves so powerful that they had finished by taking 
 
278 The Return of the Light 
 
 pride in the terror they caused, could hardly aspire 
 nowadays to the r61e of scarecrows. The Radicals, it is 
 true, understudy them, but their old parts are all worn 
 out, and no amount of Masonic brotherhood will give 
 freshness to denunciations of the Inquisition when it is 
 the Income Tax that is at issue. The Lodge as a rival 
 of the Church has had its time, and if ever it resumes 
 that position it will have to go to school to better 
 teachers than it used to have. 
 
 There are no vestiges of the anti-clerical feeling 
 which was positively in the air as long as the lower 
 classes identified social progress with politics, and 
 insisted on seeing in the Church the last bulwark of 
 tyranny. Priests are not popular, except in some of the 
 poorer quarters, but they are no longer gibed at when 
 they go about; no songs are heard against them, and 
 when you happen — ^perhaps once in a year — to see an 
 advertisement for some feuilleton recalling the days 
 when a Jesuit was the villain of the play, you involun- 
 tarily wonder if it did not get there by mistake. Even 
 Syndicalists with the poor materialistic notions which 
 often accompany their social doctrine are only anti- 
 clericals in a sort of neutral way. They have long ceased 
 to regard the idea of heaven as in the way of terrestrial 
 improvement and have no more objection to priests 
 than to astronomers; their quarrel is with the Socialist 
 deputies who exploit them and with the belated work- 
 men who will not increase their numbers; the Syllabus 
 is nothing to them. 
 
 As to the more refined circles, they affect the greatest 
 reverence for everything ecclesiastical; though a mild 
 indecency is rather the rule among them, it is fashion- 
 able not to blame the Bishops when they blame the 
 tango; it is good form on the contrary to try to give 
 
The Church and France 279 
 
 them some sort of satisfaction, were it only by changing 
 the name of the objectionable mode or pastime, and you 
 should see how zealously aspiring young hostesses take 
 the cue. 
 
 Another very striking feature is the reserved attitude 
 of the public with regard to the internal divisions of 
 Catholics about politics or discipline. At other times 
 the newspapers would have been filled with angry or 
 bantering comments on such questions as the condem- 
 nation of the Sillon, the substitution of Pius the Tenth's 
 indifference for Leo the Thirteenth's sympathy with the 
 Republic, the exceptional mode of electing the Bishops, 
 the attempts at founding a Catholic party, especially the 
 prohibition made to the Abb6 Lemire to stand for 
 the Chamber; now hardly anything is said on those 
 subjects. Is it because the country has become so in- 
 different that it would not care for discussion? Or is it 
 rather because there is a sort of tacit understanding 
 among the French not to make capital of anything 
 likely to bring the Church once more unpleasantly to 
 the forefront? The latter, no doubt ; but the reader will 
 see this more clearly later on. For the present I am 
 merely stating facts, and it is a fact that the old feeling 
 of hostility or superiority to the Church is no longer 
 discernible in our atmosphere. 
 
 All that I have said so far concerned rather the 
 passive or receptive portions of the country than its 
 active influences. What of these? Are they friendly or 
 antagonistic? What is the attitude of people intelligent 
 enough to be interested in religious problems? 
 
 The honest answer is that there is very little said on 
 these subjects. Catholics have become reticent about 
 their theological views since the publication of the 
 
28o The Return of the Light 
 
 Encyclical against Modernism. The difference be- 
 tween the young priests ordained in the last seven or 
 eight years and their predecessors is very great; the 
 latter were full of the necessity of a proper apologetic 
 to influence the highly intellectual modem man, the 
 former are active propagandists of a decidedly pastoral 
 type. Not one of them has begun to make his mark as 
 a scholar, but several have attained to distinction 
 almost on leaving the seminary, as leaders or organizers. 
 The great theological production which we saw be- 
 tween the years 1895 and 1905 has dwindled down to 
 the usual output, and nobody, outside a small circle of 
 men who cannot fancy the prospect of keeping their 
 manuscripts under lock and key after Horace's ninth 
 year, seems to mind. 
 
 The same inactivity prevails in the opposite camp. 
 A Catholic untrained in scientific or biblical criticism 
 need not be afraid of appearing in the circles in which 
 he was sure not very long ago to be taken to task. His 
 former opponents have had to make up their minds 
 about the truth of Brunetiere's once famous indictment 
 of Scientism; it seems ludicrous to-day that people 
 should have expected the last word on the vital pro- 
 blems to be said by physicists or biologists. Bergson 
 and William James have come, and with the return of 
 Pluralism the sense of mystery has reappeared, along 
 with a lassitude at the mere idea, as Bossuet says, of 
 everlastingly seeking and never resting satisfied. This 
 is not the time for speculation. Philosophizing de- 
 mands peace and the prospect of a long leisure, and 
 what everybody seems to be craving is merely a little 
 truce and breathing space to await less impatiently the 
 final settling of multiform difficulties. The typical 
 positivist who could not meet belief without challeng- 
 
The Church and France 281 
 
 ing it at once to state its reasons is a fossil. As to the 
 sceptic who disdained launching into discussions because 
 all creeds were absurd, his point of view has changed; 
 he is as silent as before, but his motive is different; all 
 creeds, he thinks, are wedded to insoluble problems, 
 and he is respectful where he used to be supercilious. 
 
 Even the war which the Radicals in or out of office 
 still wage against the Church is not what it used to be. 
 Of course, the Doumergue Cabinet could not resist the 
 temptation to gain a little time and please a few of its 
 friends at a small expense by suppressing a batch or two 
 of the surviving religious orders. M. Doumergue also 
 repealed the two decrees taken under the preceding 
 Ministry, concerning the rights of fathers to have some- 
 thing to say as to the choice of school books, and the 
 advisability for naval officers to hoist the flag at mid- 
 mast on Good Friday when ships of other nations did 
 the same ; but this is only the ungentlemanliness of the 
 Radical who does you a good turn without loving you, 
 and an ill one just because it may please somebody else ; 
 there is no faith in it. The moment there is the least 
 appearance of a possible resistance no action is taken. 
 No government, however Radical, would dare take 
 measures against the Catholic Associations de Phres de 
 famille, or against the Catholic schools; the splendid 
 headway which persecution made under M. Combes is 
 lost. Meanwhile several steps have been taken since 
 19 10 which showed a wish on the part of the successive 
 governments to conciliate Catholics. The courts have 
 invariably and with a sort of complacent coquetry given 
 proofs of impartiality in cases wherein ecclesiastics were 
 involved, and more than once have taken Canon Law 
 into implicit account ; the military chaplains have been 
 quietly reinstated, at least in case of war; the Barthou 
 
282 The Return of the Light 
 
 Cabinet refused to withhold the allowances granted to 
 the Beyrout University conducted by French Jesuits; 
 the feast of Jeanne d'Arc has been declared a national 
 festival — sl measure which had repeatedly been thrown 
 out so far; finally it would not be difficult to adduce 
 instances of collaboration in the Near East between the 
 French and the religious authorities; the decoration 
 by the Government of a Levantine Bishop, Monsignor 
 Chebli, and the distinctions given to the Lazarist Lobry 
 by the French Embassy at Constantinople had a very 
 marked meaning. The universal feeling is that many an 
 unbelieving deputy who advocated disestablishment 
 would gladly undo what he has done, if deputies could 
 make abstraction from the sordid sides of their trade. 
 
 As a conclusion we may say that the Catholic Church 
 has fewer enemies at the present moment and more 
 friends outside her own pale than she has had since the 
 lull after 1848 — ^when the feeling seems to have been 
 very similar, and the moral atmosphere which the 
 French wish for — when they do not actually produce 
 it — is very like her own. 
 
 All this is encouraging, no doubt, but it sounds more 
 negative than positive, and the reader may be saying 
 to himself that the action of the Church in France is 
 more like a magnetic influence than a visible interfer- 
 ence. This impression is correct; if it were not, the 
 numerous English well-wishfers of the Church would 
 not ask, so anxiously and doubtfully, as they generally 
 do, how she stands and what are her prospects. It 
 would be unjust to deny that she makes conquests ; the 
 conversion of men like Bourget, Claudel, Peguy, Francis 
 Jammes, Psichari, and many imitators of less note but 
 of intelligence and culture, is a tangible and very im- 
 
The Church and France 283 
 
 pressive result of efforts in valuable quarters, but this 
 progress compared with the situation of Catholicism 
 in happier times or countries cannot be called con- 
 siderable. Practising Catholics are still little more than 
 a fraction of the French population, about a third; 
 most French people are christened and buried by a 
 priest, but between those two terms they stay away, 
 and their ignorance and indifference are appalling; 
 politically speaking, their numbers are so small that 
 one had better not mention them. So, compared with 
 the position of their co-religionists in Germany, Bel- 
 gium, or even in the United States, the French Catho- 
 lics not only have no power, which goes without saying, 
 but they have hardly any weight ; there is not one con- 
 stituency in twenty in which they can control an 
 election. They begin indeed to have their own Press. 
 The Croix is one of the big dailies, and several provin- 
 cial papers are so thriving as to appear comparatively 
 influential, and yet influential they seldom are outside 
 the few countrysides I have just referred to ; or if they 
 are, it is by showing their conservative rather than 
 their religious tendencies. As a body of men with whom 
 the leaders of the great political factions have to reckon, 
 therefore, they hardly count. Being scattered, that is 
 to say unable to show anything like an imposing front 
 in an emergency, they are practically invisible, and this 
 accounts for the ignorance of them in which even well- 
 informed and travelled foreigners remain. 
 
 It would be more than unjust to say that the Church 
 of France is, in her active representatives, below par. 
 Her clergy have never been more regular; in a great 
 many places they live in circumstances which would 
 revolt even their poorest peasants, and they never say 
 a word; they work and persevere with a simple cheer- 
 
284 The Return of the Light 
 
 fulness which often strikes as perfectly heroic if one 
 remembers that the hope of better days does not even 
 begin to dawn ; the seminaries are wonderfully managed 
 considering the difficulties their rectors have had to 
 encounter, losing their professors in a great many 
 dioceses after the expulsion of the religious orders, and 
 having to vacate their houses everywhere after the 
 Separation; the teaching is on an average better than 
 it was, and the spirit of the young men is exactly what 
 the Bishops want it to be; discipline seems much more 
 natural to them than to the preceding generation. As 
 to the religious communities which survive on semi- 
 tolerance or are dispersed and awaiting the chance of 
 reforming, it is too heart-rending to think of their 
 hardships to weaken them by expression. A great book 
 could be made by most of us merely collecting the 
 instances of simple courage which have come to our 
 personal knowledge. But all this expense of patience 
 in numberless forms is himible and unknown; it keeps 
 the Church alive, but the effort is unperceived and the 
 results are obscure. Certainly many people, friends or 
 foes, were surprised at seeing the Church survive when 
 her ruin had been looked upon as a matter of course, but 
 her existence is, as might have been expected, without 
 6clat. The roll of her famous men is short. There may 
 be somewhere a country priest as holy as the cur6 
 d'Ars was sixty years ago, but no prodigies are worked 
 in his little church, and we do not see pilgrims from 
 every part of Europe flock to his confessional. The last 
 mystic writers worth the name — and how inferior to 
 Olier! — ^were Monseigneur Gay and Pere Libermann. 
 We do not see any great bishops with genius enough 
 and eloquence enough to play the part of Pie or Du- 
 panloup. The preachers we hear are good and holy, 
 
The Church and France 285 
 
 they tend toward that simplicity which is the condition 
 of efficiency, but how far they are from a Lacordaire, 
 even a Ravignan! Their fame seldom travels beyond 
 the few churches in which they periodically appear. 
 What Catholic writer can we place beside Veuillot? It 
 is a strange thing that the literary champions of the 
 Church, men of the type of Bourget, Bazin, Bordeaux, 
 or the poets Claudel or Jammes, should be laymen 
 rather than ecclesiastics, and that the most eloquent 
 of all, the advocate of the country churches, Maurice 
 Barres, should not be a believer at all ! The only realm 
 in which Catholics achieve distinction is, in spite of the 
 rarefaction I have mentioned above, ecclesiastical erudi- 
 tion. The Dictionnaire de la Foi Catholique, the 
 Dictionnaire de la Bible^ the Dictionnaire d'ApologetiquCj 
 the Dictionnaire d' Archeologie Chretienne^ the Diction- 
 naire d'Histoire Ecclesiastique in process of publication 
 or just published are great undertakings, and the names 
 of the Abbes Batiffol, Touzard, Tixeront, Jacquier, 
 Saltet, Michelet, of the Dominicans, Lagrange, Vin- 
 cent, Dhorme, of the Jesuits, Lebreton, Prat, De 
 Grandmaison, Condamin, and Cavallera, are greatly 
 respected. But outside a small circle of specialists 
 who knows either the works or the names? 
 
 It is not surprising therefore that the Church should 
 be almost hidden in France. No numbers, no social 
 or political power, no fascination of great talents, all 
 these negations combine in making her position one of 
 great possibilities rather than achievements. And it is 
 not surprising either that without some guidance and 
 proper illumination outsiders should have no idea of 
 her situation. 
 
 We are therefore placed before this apparent paradox : 
 a Church destitute of every means for captivating the 
 
286 The Return of the Light 
 
 imagination and working upon hesitating wills, and a 
 country which fifteen years ago rebelled against it in 
 every possible way now showing its influence in all the 
 manifestations of its inner life. 
 
 Paradoxes in real life do not exist; they are only 
 logical paradoxes with which our astonishment at some- 
 thing unexpected will amuse itself. It goes without 
 saying that the Church in her present reduced condition 
 in no wise recalls the powerful society she was in the 
 thirteenth century ; but were she a thousand times more 
 overshadowed in France than she is at present, it 
 would not prevent her from being an irresistible force. 
 Was there a great deal of real antagonism in this 
 country when persecution was raging? Everybody 
 acquainted with the true feelings of the French knows 
 that there was not. Anti-clericalism was political, and 
 it never spread far outside poHtical circles. Let this 
 kind of politics wear itself out, and anti-clericalism was 
 sure to pall. Let the quiet indifference of the bourgeois 
 be alarmed at the sight of confiscations, and anti- 
 clericalism was sure to become frightening. Let the 
 intelligence of the cultured get a surfeit of materialistic 
 confidence, of ever-disappointing promises to explain 
 or explain away everything, and sympathy with mys- 
 teries was bound to succeed the craving after too 
 simple theories. Let a great national shock like the 
 Tangier affair bring home to millions of patriots the 
 necessity of being united instead of persecuting one 
 another, and the idea of petty molestations could not 
 but become sickening. 
 
 All the possibilities of anti-clericalism lie in certain 
 memories and certain fears. The memories are not, as 
 people will often imagine, those of the Ancien Regime; 
 these are quite forgotten. But there are still men who 
 
The Church and France 287 
 
 remember the state of affairs described in Taine*s early 
 letters, and against which he is never tired of inveigh- 
 ing. Their fear is of a Church powerful enough to 
 control civil power, or possibly to present mysticism 
 too universally. Take away that fear, and the French- 
 man of to-day, like his ancestors — the mediaeval man 
 and the critical seventeenth-century scholar — leans 
 immediately towards the Church; for on one hand he 
 may dislike dry theology, but he loves directing his 
 actions by the light of a fixed doctrine, and on the other 
 he cannot possibly sever morals from its religious basis. 
 Now it matters little whether the Church is strong and 
 numerous or weak and scanty ; the Frenchman does not 
 look upon her as a body, the object of the statistician's 
 or the social philosopher's study — all these details he 
 ignores — she is part of his traditional life, and when he 
 goes back to her, it is as a man goes back to his earliest 
 experience. Indeed, as unreasoned as a natural process 
 is the movement towards Christianity we are witness- 
 ing ; it ought not to be looked upon as the passage of a 
 man from a house to another house, but as the gradual 
 and almost unconscious return of a family to a disused 
 but very convenient room. Criticalness is totally 
 absent from it. 
 
 The question naturally arises: What is the Church 
 doing in the obscure condition which has just been 
 described? Even if she is not very active in France as a 
 body, she must have some sort of activity of which 
 individuals at least cannot but be aware, and the 
 knowledge of which is sure to make the present more 
 intelligible and the future easier to foresee. 
 
 A brief summary will help the reader to realize how 
 far the Church does influence individuals, and to what 
 
288 The Return of the Light 
 
 extent she is even beginning to make her presence felt 
 in the State in her new situation as an independent 
 community. 
 
 Everybody knows that Napoleon's Concordat with 
 Pope Pius the Sixth worked in two ways. After nearly 
 ten years' disappearance it restored the Church to an 
 official position, but this Church had been so diminished 
 during the Revolution, she had lost so completely the 
 wealth, knowledge, and corporate traditions which had 
 given her independence even under Louis the Four- 
 teenth, that the State must inevitably have the upper 
 hand over her. The consequence was that when the 
 State was favourably disposed towards her, as under 
 the Restoration, or in the early part of the Second 
 Empire, she appeared powerful and prosperous ; when 
 on the contrary the civil power was jealous of her, as 
 under Louis-Philippe, or really hostile, as during the 
 Third Republic, she seemed to be despised. In either 
 case everybody was conscious that she was dependent, 
 and being dependent she had no enterprise and but 
 little energy. The Bishops, being appointed by the 
 Government, were often reduced to the humiliating 
 position of "prefects in purple"; they were carefully 
 kept isolated, commimicating with Rome under difficul- 
 ties, and hardly at all between themselves; the priests 
 also were mostly appointed and always maintained by 
 the State; their churches and houses were not on their 
 hands; so though poor they lived an easy peaceful life; 
 their flocks saw them through the haze of ancient habit 
 or ancient prejudice, as institutions rather than persons, 
 and respect rather than obedience was the keynote of 
 their intercourse; besides, the rectors, apart from 
 exceptional periods when Government used them as 
 political delegates, seldom demanded obedience; the 
 
The Church and France 289 
 
 tradition since the Concordat was for them to stay 
 at home a great deal, and when the times were against 
 them they merely took refuge in the hope of a "good 
 Government.'* 
 
 All this means that their attitude was on the whole 
 unimpeachable, but differed entirely from that of the 
 really influential clergy as seen in Germany, Belgium, 
 Ireland, Canada, and the United States. 
 
 It is not surprising therefore that they should have 
 been inclined to accept the Separation Law when it 
 was passed in 1905, and that they should have been 
 somewhat bewildered when, the year after, Pope Pius 
 the Tenth imposed upon them the virile but unexpected 
 course of not accepting it. The consequence was 
 liberty, but liberty with all its burdens. Bishops with 
 not a farthing of the old Church property left found 
 themselves confronted with the necessity of procuring 
 accommodation for their seminarians, and money 
 enough to keep their priests; poor country rectors in 
 poorer neighbourhoods were turned out of their houses 
 and had not only to look after themselves but to pro- 
 vide for the expenditure involved in the worship. For 
 the first time since the very beginnings of the Church 
 in Merovingian Gaul, the French clergy had to seek an 
 economic basis for an existence which had been purely 
 spiritual because it was perfectly secure. 
 
 It seemed strange at first to see the priests going 
 from house to house collecting money for the Denier du 
 Culte, Money plays in the life of the French peasant 
 so important a part that it is proverbial, but money 
 transactions are generally buried in deep secrecy, and 
 it was a shock to see the man who for ages had been the 
 most remote from anything worldly engaged in financial 
 manoeuvring before the eyes of a whole parish. Yet the 
 19 
 
290 The Return of the Light 
 
 tradition is established already; the comparatively 
 small amount necessary to secure for each priest the 
 thirty to forty pounds with which he is satisfied is 
 found in almost every diocese, and one immediate 
 result of applying to the faithful for assistance was to 
 make them feel, for the first time, an interest in the life 
 of their Church, and to render Catholic Associations 
 possible. They now exist in every diocese, and except- 
 ing the well-known countrysides in Central France in 
 which religious indifference is the rule, practically in 
 every parish. The old vestry councils have been re- 
 placed by more active committees, no longer exclusively 
 consulted on parochial expenses, but interested in 
 religious progress generally, and comparing notes in 
 occasional congresses. The anti-clericalism of a great 
 many school teachers almost automatically produced 
 the creation of Associations de Peres de famille^ which 
 only see that the books used and the teaching given do 
 not exceed the limits of neutrality, but which the evi- 
 dent purity of their point of view has made, from the 
 first, exceptionally influential. In the richer or more 
 religious dioceses there exists a certain number of 
 Catholic schools which the State not only does not help 
 but tries — vainly enough, it must be confessed — to 
 suppress or impede. Wherever such a school can be 
 founded the parochial life shows remarkable intensity. 
 Women have done more than the men for the re- 
 organization of the Church. The Ligue Patriotique des 
 Frangaises numbers more than half a million women 
 who have managed so far to keep away from politics, 
 and show unparalleled activity. Very few are the 
 villages in which they do not help the priest in hearing 
 the children their Catechism, and every now and then 
 do not get some Parisian lady member to give a public 
 
The Church and France 291 
 
 lecture in a hired room, a great novelty and a great 
 attraction in rural districts, where the kinematograph 
 only begins to penetrate. In most of the larger villages 
 the priests have been able to build a special room for 
 such entertainments, and the presence of this building, 
 which is the first visible evidence of Catholic activity 
 in its new form, strikes the rustic mind more than any- 
 thing else. I have seen people comment excitedly on 
 the appearance outside a railway station of a plain 
 house destined for the Catholic railwaymen. The 
 superb churches or schools which they might have 
 admired a few years ago, and which had also been built 
 from private subscriptions, did not strike the popular 
 imagination so vividly as the prosaic sign implying that 
 railwaymen are not afraid of calling themselves be- 
 lievers. Wherever there is a beginning of organization, 
 something to show, as the humble propagandists put 
 it, the clergy find it easy enough to bring together a 
 number of individuals whom mere preaching used never 
 to reach. In many industrial towns, where the men are 
 naturally grouped by their work, it is not exceptional at 
 Easter to see no less than seven or eight himdred men 
 in church together. These results, brought about by 
 the gradual employment of association — a discovery of 
 yesterday in France — and by the inevitable contact of 
 the priests with their people, are of course very local 
 and hardly perceptible outside the parish, but they 
 are the real commencement of Catholic life as distin- 
 guished from the mere Catholic tradition, and as such 
 are highly interesting to record, only eight years after 
 the Disestablishment. 
 
 Besides activity on the lines of association, there is 
 another great feature which I can say to be characteris- 
 tic of post-Separation Catholicism: that is rigidly en- 
 
292 The Return of the Light 
 
 forced concentration. This concentration, needless to 
 say, is the work of Rome, and Pope Pius the Tenth is 
 largely responsible for it. It was the Pope who, in 
 1906, decided that the Separation Law should not be 
 accepted, and several measures — the direct appoint- 
 ment of the Bishops by Rome, for instance, and the 
 postponement of plenary assemblies of the French epis- 
 copate — were evidently intended to keep the French 
 clergy immediately under the influence of the Papacy. 
 The Roman authorities probably thought it wiser that 
 the French clergy, so long used to the tutelage of the 
 State, should not be left too much to themselves, during 
 these first few years after their liberation. 
 
 It is needless to recall that the war waged against 
 Modernism showed the same protecting spirit, but the 
 opposition made by Rome to what is called inter- 
 confessionalism may be less known; the condemnation 
 of the Sillofij the prohibition made to clerics against 
 attending lectures in the State universities, the con- 
 demnation of the Maison Sociale founded by the well- 
 known Sister Mercedes, had no other object than to 
 keep Catholics among themselves, and discourage them 
 from joining, qua Catholics, even excellent works 
 initiated by other communions or merely undenomina- 
 tional. Clearly the wish of the Pope is for Catholics to 
 appear before the world as primarily believers. 
 
 It was inevitable that such a policy should find 
 exaggerated and consequently dangerous champions. 
 Half a score of men, most of them jotmialists, and all of 
 them arrogating to themselves the mission they take, 
 sometimes very doubtful morally but invariably loud, 
 have had no difficulty in bullying the Church of France 
 in the name of obedience to the Pope, inventing new 
 heresies, charging their opponents with Episcopalism 
 
The Church and France 293 
 
 when they could not accuse them of Modernism or 
 LiberaHsm, abusing people worthy of all respect, one 
 after the other, until they came to speak of the Count 
 de Mun as a dangerous Liberal, and to denounce 
 learned Jesuits as Modernists in disguise. This crew — 
 in spite of the fact that one of them was found to'be a 
 hypocrite leading the loosest life while affecting ortho- 
 doxy, and finally getting turned out of his order and 
 reappearing the next day as an agnostic journalist — 
 might have gone on spreading terror through the 
 Episcopate and the Catholic Press, if the Jesuits on the 
 staff of the Etudes Religieuses had not published' a 
 powerful article which, although written in self-de- 
 fence, was nevertheless a general indictment. This 
 article produced universal relief, and it is to be hoped 
 that henceforward the Bishops, and not a handful of 
 cowardly bullies, will interpret the Pope's policy for 
 the Church of France. 
 
 Is there anything like a definite political action of the 
 French clergy? No. Pius the Tenth differed from his 
 predecessor insomuch as he did not recommend ad- 
 hesion to the Republican constitution, but he did not 
 recommend any constitution whatever. He insisted 
 on Catholics preserving their political liberty, and being 
 at will Republicans, Monarchists, or Imperialists, so 
 long as they promoted the Catholic liberties. This 
 evidently cannot serve as a basis for any popular 
 politics that might be called Catholic. But nobody is 
 sorry. Practising Catholics who are numerous enough 
 to maintain the moral influence of their Church in 
 France are not numerous enough nor politically imited 
 enough to appear at any advantage at an election. 
 
 » Vide Etudes Religieuses, 5 Janvier 191 4. 
 
294 The Return of the Light 
 
 The attempt made by two very good men, Colonel 
 Keller and M. de Bellomayre, to found a Catholic 
 party that would be a real party, was a woeful failure. 
 So the French Catholics have no political programme. 
 There may be a few Bishops who are personally Mon- 
 archists, and the general disaffection with the Republic 
 throughout the country has certainly cooled the loyalist 
 enthusiasm which greeted Leo the Thirteenth's adhe- 
 sion to the regime; also the slow but steady antagonism 
 against the ideas, dreams, and vague modes of speech 
 of the French Revolution which has been the fashion 
 since Taine amounts to a perpetual criticism of the 
 Democracy, and Catholics hear it as everybody else; 
 but all this is not enough to make unity where there 
 is variety, and only Radicals can seriously denounce 
 clericalism where they see reaction. Only in two 
 points have the Bishops conducted a resistance — which 
 proved successful — against certain provincial news- 
 papers like the Diptche of Toulouse, and against the 
 selection by school teachers of anti-Catholic books. 
 There was no question of the Republican constitution 
 there, and the Bishops were helped in their campaign 
 by notoriously Republican organs. 
 
 One might go into many more details; the school 
 question alone would require a long chapter to be 
 presented in its entirety, but details are not necessary 
 for my present purpose, which is merely to ascertain 
 how far the moral trend of France is influenced by the 
 progress of the Church, and on the contrary they might 
 impair the clearness of our vision. In troubled periods 
 like this, details often take an undue importance and 
 mislead rather than enlighten. Suffice it to say that the 
 Church not only has survived the crisis in which she 
 was expected to perish, but that she is doing better 
 
The Church and France 295 
 
 than she did for a long time, having galvanized dor- 
 mant forces, and living as near as possible to her 
 spiritual ideal. Slowly and silently she grows used to 
 her new conditions and becomes conscious of her new 
 self. She has no wide designs, no sublime conquering 
 prospects; her members are too much occupied with 
 trivial problems which have to be solved day after day, 
 for any of them to reveal the outlook of a Saint Bernard. 
 So she goes on, cheerful and childlike as usual in the 
 everyday life of her members, guarded behind a pro- 
 tecting zone of strict theology in her corporate existence. 
 But of all this the "world" outside is ignorant, facing 
 its own difficulties and viewing the Church as a home 
 tradition, not at all as a society in the making; its 
 development and her development are parallel pheno- 
 mena with hardly any contact. 
 
 What the future will be it would be futile to prophesy. 
 Who can tell whether the present mood of France is a 
 beginning or only a phase? Materialism as a philosophi- 
 cal doctrine is outlived undoubtedly, and patriotism 
 takes in numberless instances the Christian form of self- 
 denial. But who would be sanguine enough to read in 
 these changes a return to the Gospel and its detach- 
 ment from the earth? The Bishops complain that 
 vocations to the priesthood are becoming rarer every- 
 where, and some people account for the decrease by the 
 military laws, and by the timidity which the persecu- 
 tion of ten years ago left in the minds of Catholic 
 parents. But is this a sufficient explanation? Is it not 
 true that the self-indulgence which has come every- 
 where along with improved economic conditions, and 
 with everlasting discussions about man's rights apart 
 from his duties, is becoming universal ? Is it not possi- 
 ble that the decrease in clerical vocations arises from 
 
296 The Return of the Light 
 
 gradual resistance to one of the strictest injunctions of 
 the Church, and that this problem is intimately bound 
 with the larger question of depopulation? Families 
 with one child will hardly dedicate their one son to the 
 service of the Church, nor will the Church be much in- 
 clined to look to such for her ministers or even cham- 
 pions. There is little doubt but this will be the crux of 
 the near future; Catholic theology offers no loop-hole 
 of escape, and yet the inclination to forget it appears 
 universal. If this inclination becomes stronger, not 
 only will the difficulty to keep up the numbers of the 
 clergy grow worse and worse, but the quality of the 
 Catholic family will deteriorate, for subtle selfishness 
 corrupts all that is more characteristically Christian, 
 and only leaves intact respectable conformity. Eco- 
 nomism, with its multiform consequences, undoubtedly 
 is the most terrible obstacle that Christianity has as 
 yet encountered, and minor phenomena are merely 
 indications of its magnitude. 
 
 But, on the other hand, a saint may arise. There is 
 enough self-forgetfulness bordering on heroism in the 
 devotion of the clergy to their work to make the hope a 
 probability, and who can foretell the effect on a genera- 
 tion which may abhor poverty, but does not seem 
 afraid of death in the cause of an ideal? Certainly the 
 hope of the future does not lie to-day — as it did in the 
 not remote past when everything was hanging on 
 intelligence and theories — in an adaptation of belief to 
 science, but in the superiority of belief as a source of 
 heroism over the mediocrity of economic philosophies. 
 The sight of a saint might change into religious abnega- 
 tion the energies which are so far limited to patriotic 
 courage. We can only wish and hope, but it is a fortu- 
 nate coincidence that just when France as a nation 
 
The Church and France 297 
 
 feels the need of an uplifting faith the depositary of the 
 ancestral creed should be through persecution and pov- 
 erty as pure a medium as can well be imagined. This 
 at least is a fact, if all the rest be only hopes, and it is 
 speaking from the mere historic standpoint to say that 
 the Church seldom, if ever, had such rare opportunities. 
 
DIVISION B. — ^MORE CONSCIOUS MANIFESTATIONS OF THE 
 NEW SPIRIT 
 
 I. The Return of French Literature to its Traditional 
 
 Spirit 
 
 That there is an ethical change not only in French 
 literature, but in the French press and in the French 
 spirit generally, is a fact which I have shown in previous 
 chapters; what I wish to investigate is whether, along- 
 side of this moral and probably pragmatic change, 
 there is not another, of a purely intellectual or artistic 
 character, which would matter even more ; for nations, 
 like individuals, will sometimes feel that it is useful for 
 them to act right, whereas thinking right is a vital 
 process through which they cannot go at will, and the 
 consequences of which are immeasurably further- 
 reaching. 
 
 It seems to me that the French think more according 
 to their tradition and temperament at the present 
 moment than they have done for a long period. 
 
 Let any Englishman ask himself what the word 
 French connotes in his mind; I am certain that in 
 nineteen cases out of twenty he will find that it is 
 intelligence, wit, brilliance, a certain dash, a certain 
 outspokenness of a very decided character, a gift for 
 clarity in expression, a natural balance, an aversion 
 for obscurity and exaggeration. As he reviews these 
 
 298 
 
Literature Traditional Again 299 
 
 characteristics, there are others which he resolutely 
 discards: depth, the working everyday variety of com- 
 mon sense, the proportion between object and method 
 which constitutes practicalness — above all, the inclina- 
 tion towards a richer if less definite apprehension of 
 spiritual realities which in one of its aspects is religion 
 and in the other, poetry. Of course it will be found that 
 this view of the French nature not only does not apply 
 to every representative French individual, but even 
 does not cover every period in the history of French 
 thought; I feel convinced that the idea of the French 
 temperament almost universal in England has been 
 abstracted mostly during the two periods in which 
 Englishmen seem to have derived most pleasure from 
 living in Paris, viz., the eighteenth century and the 
 most brilliant years of the Second Empire — the time 
 of Chesterfield and Walpole, and that of Sir Richard 
 Wallace. 
 
 Now what Walpole appreciated in the countrymen 
 of Voltaire was not by any means that in them which 
 was paving the way for the Revolution, but rather the 
 reverse; what the brilliant English colony in the Paris 
 of i860 loved was not the sober philosophy of Taine, 
 no matter how English in its parentage, but the frothy 
 spirit rife on the boulevards, and this evidently was 
 rather a restricted view. Pascal, Racine, Bossuet, the 
 great French scientists, the great French inventors, 
 can no more be left out of an estimate of the French 
 genius than Shelley can be ignored by a Frenchman 
 trying to see how far poeticalness is associated with the 
 matter-of-fact genius of England. Yet the notion 
 which we form to ourselves of a people foreign to us is, 
 as a rule, the product of the consciousness and pride of 
 that people itself rather than an abstraction of our 
 
300 The Return of the Light 
 
 mind. The Frenchman pleases the Englishman when 
 he ascribes sound common sense to him, and he in his 
 turn feels that the Englishman is right in thinking of 
 the French as mostly a clear-headed nation with more 
 logic than imagination. It is with these notions as a 
 background that, comparing the nineteenth century 
 with the beginning of the twentieth, we can pronounce 
 the latter to be, on the whole, more obviously French 
 than the former. 
 
 The nineteenth century can be described as the age 
 of Romanticism and Naturalism, and neither the 
 Romanticists nor the Naturalists seem unmistakably 
 French. Victor Hugo and his contemporaries offer a 
 new type in the history of French literature. Not that 
 in many parts of their productions they do not voice 
 feelings deeply seated in the national soul, and per- 
 ceptible, say, in the poems of Villon or in the mediaeval 
 epics, but their literary ethos is a novelty. The 
 national characteristics before them had been summed 
 up in La Fontaine's couplet: 
 
 Ne forgons point notre talent, 
 Nous ne ferions rien avec grace. 
 
 There were ease and balance in the French writers 
 of every degree, from Bossuet down. Nobody seemed 
 anxious not only to appear, but even to make himself, 
 more gifted than he naturally was; there was in litera- 
 ture a sort of hierarchy — based on admiration for 
 others, to be sure, but also on self-respect — which was 
 not its least charm. 
 
 Now when we read George Sand, Michelet, Balzac — 
 that is to say, the great Romanticists — and especially 
 the greatest of all, Victor Hugo, we are everlastingly 
 
Literature Traditional Again 301 
 
 conscious of a contradiction. Here is wonderful facility 
 and versatility, an immense production which ought to 
 suggest enjoyment quite as much as labour, and yet we 
 cannot get rid of an uncomfortable impression that 
 under this activity there was an effort. Not one line of 
 Voltaire or Diderot ever produces this effect, and 
 almost every line of Victor Hugo does. Giants as he 
 and his compeers were, they all look like Sisyphus. All 
 their lives they tried to be more than they were, to 
 achieve more than they could do. They were all of 
 them hypnotized by a notion, which they had made 
 for themselves, of what genius is. Instead of seeing 
 genius as a possibility and a more or less frequent 
 realization, they woiild imagine it as a permanent 
 mental condition — ^in their own language, they per- 
 suaded themselves that Dante or Shakespeare was as 
 continuously Dante or Shakespeare as an Alp, a Pyra- 
 mid, or a Cathedral is what it is, and they strove to 
 live up to their imagination. Hence their frown and 
 the anxiety they sometimes conceal, sometimes com- 
 placently display; hence their haunting idea of an 
 imheard-of creativeness, the longing after an expression 
 which may be at the same time lyrical, epic, and 
 philosophical, the straining after the sublime, or at all 
 events the startling, in every word they write. In one 
 short phrase from the classic vocabulary they so much 
 despised, they are inflated — that is to say, exaggerated 
 and discontented, and they are failures. Even the six- 
 teenth centiuy authors, bombastic as they often are, 
 and frequently inferior to their ideal as the lack of a 
 fixed standard must have inevitably made them, seem 
 happier; and as to the writers of the two classic ages, 
 they invariably strike by the successful appearance of 
 their mental lives. The notion of suffering as the 
 
302 The Return of the Light 
 
 inseparable companion of literary work owes its origin 
 entirely to the Romanticists. 
 
 Failures also are the Naturalists, even the most 
 famous of them; Flaubert, and — a. long way behind 
 him — the Goncourts and Zola. They not only suffer 
 from the inordinate ambition bequeathed to them by 
 their predecessors, but from the constraint of a formula 
 in which they deliberately shut themselves up. Flau- 
 bert, whose natural bent was poetic and lyrical, spent 
 his whole life in compressing his gifts and trying to make 
 his splendid imagination the handmaid of what he 
 insisted on calling the real. He had revelled in the 
 composition of La Tentation de Saint Antoinej the first 
 version of which must have been written in pure 
 delight ; but Madame Bovary was a work of labour and 
 patience, and L' Education Sentimentale is as depressing 
 for the reader as it must have been for Flaubert himself. 
 Naturalists excluded everything that did not fall under 
 the category of the real, and poor Flaubert, who had a 
 strong, if not very noble wing, had to clip it, keep his 
 eyes steadily fixed on a few square feet of a very prosaic 
 world, and peck at almost invisible little facts instead 
 of flying freely. However, his failure is less one of 
 achievement than one of method. VEducation Senti- 
 mentale, although painful reading, is true art all the 
 same, and might have been written in artistic enjoy- 
 ment. The mistake of Flaubert was ambition in 
 the wrong direction, an exaggeration of modesty, the 
 suicide of a man passionately in love with life. 
 
 Very different the error of Zola ; it recalls that of the 
 Romanticists. The author of the Rougon-Macquart 
 certainly was a bom realist, a collector of small facts, 
 with a sense of their individuality. If he had had no 
 higher ambition than that of being an accurate painter 
 
Literature Traditional Again 303 
 
 of low life, one might have a certain contempt for his 
 nature, but not for his artistic vision ; he would be a sort 
 of Restif de la Bretonne. But Zola had as much ambi- 
 tion as Hugo. The latter wanted to be a sublime seer; 
 Zola would be the social philosopher, condescending to 
 translate his philosophy into images as true as life itself, 
 and more easily intelligible. He honestly believed that 
 his thirty volumes, each one of which was more arti- 
 ficially conceived than its predecessor, were a faithful 
 picture of life, a document for statesmen and moralists 
 to build upon. The illusion at all times would have 
 been strange — no sane man can imagine that fiction is 
 the truth, and it took the literary gullibility of the nine- 
 teenth century to suffer mere novelists to place them- 
 selves on the pedestals from which they looked down 
 upon their betters — ^but in Zola it was ludicrous. The 
 philosophy he pretended to embody was the wire and 
 pasteboard doctrine known as Determinism; Zola felt 
 sure he could build the history of the Rougon family as 
 infalHbly as Taine thought he could deduce the philo- 
 sophy of English literature from a cold and foggy climate, 
 and it was in all seriousness that he regarded himself 
 as such a reader of the modern soul that his counsel 
 ought to be sought on all hands ; he felt his responsibility 
 with irresistible comicalness. 
 
 The same can be said of all his school, and it is 
 chiefly on that account that we are inclined to look upon 
 their ethos, as well as that of the Romanticists, as for- 
 eign to the national temperament. It is not because 
 they are low and immoral that we can with difficulty 
 think of them as legitimate products of the ancestral 
 soil, but because they are glum, gruff, and dictatorial, 
 short-sighted and maniacal, and because, when we 
 complain of their inferior morality, they can only offer 
 
304 The Return of the Light 
 
 us, in order to redeem it, the seriousness of the moralist 
 instead of the smile of the ironist. 
 
 On the whole, the good-natured, unassuming and 
 comrade-like French disposition was offended by the 
 Romanticists aiming higher than anybody has a right 
 to, and by the Naturalists calling their impassivity a 
 scientific attitude, and their taste for the filthy a devo- 
 tion to the truth. Besides something debasing, the 
 French felt there was something hypocritical in the 
 Realist School. 
 
 When, towards 1890, dawned the transformation 
 which Brunetiere very aptly called the Renascence of 
 Idealism, France was ready for the change. The public 
 had had enough physiology, and wanted to hear about 
 souls; they were tired of harshness and craved tender- 
 ness and pity; tired also of the depressing and the 
 coarse, they longed for elegance and cheerfulness. This 
 satiety caused the tremendous success of Bourget, who 
 was refined and a psychologist; of Anatole France, who, 
 beside Zola, looked like an eighteenth-century engrav- 
 ing after a public-house daub; of Loti, whose every 
 feature was a novelty; of Barres, too, who in his early 
 manner seemed positively to flit along the earth where 
 so many were still crawling. Distinction, wit, humour 
 were delightfully refreshing, and the roused native taste 
 of the French welcomed them as long-lost, prodigal 
 sons coming home at last, sick of too coarse a world. 
 
 Was it or not an untoward circumstance that along 
 with this return to the traditional ideal came the ac- 
 quaintance with foreign literature, which we owed above 
 all to Melchior de Vogiie? Certain it is that the move- 
 ment, which in its origin — the criticism of Brunetiere 
 and the inclination of Anatole France and Bourget — had 
 been distinctly French, soon became Russian and 
 
Literature Traditional Again 305 
 
 Scandinavian. It was in vain that Jules Lemaitre 
 pointed out in one of his subtle articles that if we 
 wanted pity and tenderness, the apology of love and the 
 canonization of suffering, we need not look for them 
 further than the novels of Victor Hugo, George Sand, 
 and the Goncourts, or the dramas of Alexandre Dumas; 
 the public would not hear, and during a decade French 
 thought and French feeling, which had just found them- 
 selves, were deeply tinged with the powerful emotion of 
 Tolstoi and Dostoievsky, and the inferior but irresisti- 
 bly magnified influence of Ibsen and Bjornson. 
 
 The love of the humble, the sympathy with the 
 suffering, the passion for justice which ran so deep in 
 Tolstoi's broad current, certainly were needed after the 
 heartless Scientism of the writers on the wane; but 
 what was not needed was the predominance of feeling 
 over reason which suddenly filled French literature as 
 it had filled it before the Revolutions of 1789 and 1848, 
 the unresisting abandonment to foreign ideals, and the 
 humanitarianism which was so soon to transform the 
 Dreyfus Affair from a judicial case into a civic war. 
 
 At the close of the nineteenth century the battle of 
 the national tradition against its restriction to Natural- 
 ism had been won, it is true, but apart from a few imi- 
 tators of Anatole France and Bourget, French writers, 
 as a rule, would have been at a loss to prove that their 
 literary ideal was more French than foreign, and the 
 atmosphere of their productions, like the Romanticist 
 atmosphere, once more possessed a noble but vague 
 quality, an excitement both fascinating and baffling 
 which disconcerted the native taste for self-control in 
 the expression of sentiment as well as of ideas. 
 
 On the whole, then, we are warranted in saying that 
 the nineteenth century may be a fortimate reaction 
 
3o6 The Return of the Light 
 
 against the pallid classicism of the latter part of the 
 eighteenth, and a return to sources of inspiration which 
 had been eminently French until the Renaissance, but 
 both this reaction and this return were accompanied 
 with excitement and fever, exaggeration and violence, 
 and they were often helped on or out of their way by 
 foreign influences, which give them an uncouth appear- 
 ance. Bombast, obscurity, a one-sided view of art 
 placing the sublime in the exaltation of the low, a 
 research after originality which was to end in the 
 elaborate complications of the Decadents, have no 
 right to call themselves French. 
 
 It is beside this description of the French way of 
 thinking during eight or nine decades that we will at 
 present place our attempt at an inventory of contem- 
 porary characteristics in literature, leaving it to the 
 reader to find for himself how great is the contrast. 
 
 The germs of a fresh growth of the national taste 
 which I have pointed out above in the success of 
 Bourget and Anatole France, Loti and Barres, also in 
 the return of Moreas to a purely classical form, and in 
 the curious partiality of a Verlaine — a. modem Villon — 
 for the eighteenth century, its fetes galantes, its mar- 
 quises, its peculiar emotiveness hidden under polish, its 
 graceful bravery and its limpid expression, all this unex- 
 pected craving for the traditional charm was, strange to 
 say, accompanied once more by a foreign element. Wag- 
 ner, the prophet of heroism, commented upon by 
 Nietzsche, the admirer of brute force and the revealer of 
 Napoleon, had his day of popularity, but it was to teach 
 the French that the only way of being great is to be 
 one's self. From that day the French mind and spirit 
 have tended with all their energies to be resolutely, 
 nay, exclusively French, and the change is visible in 
 
Literature Traditional Again 307 
 
 every department of literature ; it can be pointed out in 
 poetry and in the novel as well as in criticism. 
 
 It is difficult to mention French poetry to English 
 readers without calling forth the somewhat contemp- 
 tuous smile of Charlotte Bronte. The French language 
 is not poetic, they think, nor is the French mind. Both 
 are too clear and clear-cut ; place Racine beside Shake- 
 speare or Musset beside Shelley ; French poetry is only 
 an eloquent cadence. 
 
 I am not going to discuss these strictures. It is a 
 fact that the French mind uses prose as its readier 
 instrument, and it is also a fact that, at this present 
 moment, when the French spirit reasserts itself, poetry 
 is far in the background compared to what it was at the 
 beginning of Romanticism, when Hugo, Lamartine, 
 Musset, and Vigny occupied the front part of the stage. 
 There are more poets than there were at any period of 
 French literature, and their average work is superior to 
 what it was in the nineteenth century ; but poetry is not 
 popular, and the best-known poets, the most successful 
 — say, Henri de Regnier and the Comtesse de Noailles 
 — do not reach the twentieth part of Victor Hugo's 
 public. 
 
 The reason is not because the French are less capable 
 than they were of appreciating poetry, but because 
 poetry has suffered in popular estimation from its too 
 obvious faults of twenty years ago. Who was the great 
 French poet towards 1890? Mallarme, no doubt. And 
 what was Mallarme? Worse than an Alexandrian, for 
 his pleasure in writing poetry was not the Alexandrian's 
 pleasure in mere words, but the Cubist's perversion in 
 using a medium for a purpose not its own. Mallarme's 
 object was so to use words and images that twenty 
 readers of the same poem might be placed by it in 
 
3o8 The Return of the Light 
 
 twenty different states of mind, and no such over-refine- 
 ment will ever be popular. I have not the least doubt 
 but that if Francis Jammes or Madame de Noailles, 
 especially such a true poet as Charles Guerin, had 
 appeared immediately after the Parnassians, before 
 Mallarm6 had run away from Parnassian harshness to 
 the other extreme of disintegration, they would be even 
 more popular than Sully- Prudhomme was in his last 
 years. Poetry has never been the national mainspring 
 in France — ideas and eloquence play that part — the 
 French have had no Homer, or Dante, or Shakespeare, 
 or Goethe — but it would be absurd to say that they do 
 not love poetry, seeing that when they cannot get it at 
 home they go all over the world to find it. Only they 
 want it to be as intelligible as prose, if it is in a different 
 way; hence their partiality for Villon, Racine, and 
 Musset; hence, conversely, their shyness of the 
 Decadents. 
 
 Now it is certain that the contemporary school of 
 poetry is reassuring. We may safely say that its 
 principal names are Madame de Noailles, Francis 
 Jammes, Viele-Griffin, Henri de Regnier, Paul Fort, 
 Claudel, and Verhaeren, to whom we feel almost con- 
 strained to add Charles Guerin and Angellier, both 
 recently dead and better known after their death than 
 they had been in life. All these poets are clear, except 
 Claudel, whose occasional obscurity gives him an almost 
 farcical appearance entirely irreconcilable with the su- 
 perior parts of his productions. It is not always easy to 
 disengage the pagan philosophy of Madame de Noailles 
 from its expression; hers is a childish little soul with 
 great flashes of joy or sadness springing unexpectedly 
 from the childishness, and the contrast is perplexing; 
 but you find your way in and out of her meaning as 
 
Literature Traditional Again 309 
 
 easily as in and out of the French gardens she so fondly 
 describes. Henri de Regnier and Viele-Grififin started 
 with the technical singularities in vogue twenty-five 
 or thirty years ago, but they gradually gave up this 
 Decadent legacy, and their most popular poems demand 
 no effort or commentary. Francis Jammes's trans- 
 parent purity naturally excludes complication, and if 
 Verhaeren is apt to appear tumultuous and misty, it is 
 after the manner of the torrent; the least attention 
 shows order where there is only too much matter. Paul 
 Fort often recalls La Fontaine. As to Guerin and 
 Angellier, the sensitiveness of the former and the wealth 
 of imagery of the latter are united to a precision of 
 expression which almost requires some training not to 
 appear cloying. 
 
 The same may be said of the rising generation of 
 poets. There may not be much poetry of the truly 
 heart-felt and heart-nourishing order in the verses of 
 Jules Bois, H. Barbusse, Bocquet, Rivoire, Pottecher, 
 Bonnard, Porche, Caillard, even in those of Lucie 
 Mardrus and Helene Picard — two women of virile 
 intelligence — or in those of the Catholic poets, Mauriac, 
 Vallery-Radot, and especially Mercier — an amazing 
 handler of words and a sincere believer — ^but there is 
 nothing that will discourage the long-scared reader, 
 there is none of the carelessness which gave an occasion- 
 ally amateurish appearance, even to Lamartine and 
 Musset, even to Hugo, and there is frequently the 
 rarity of touch, the sudden gleam over an everyday 
 word which delighted the first readers of Tennyson. 
 
 What are we to conclude ? That after the Parnassian 
 glacier and the Decadent jungle, French poetry is 
 coming to a more open space, where the sun and the 
 breeze of real inspiration may rise any day, and if 
 
310 The Return of the Light 
 
 Claudel or Madame de Noailles cannot be called 
 national poets, they possibly are the forerunners of one 
 who will be truly French. The mediaeval emotion of 
 Claudel certainly is French, and so is the medium which 
 he might borrow from Jammes, or Madame de Noailles; 
 why should not the combination of such an inspiration 
 with a form as clear as that of the seventeenth century, 
 and more poetical, mean greatness, and greatness of a 
 decidedly national character? 
 
 I said above that owing largely to the unintelligibility 
 of the Decadents, the French are less devoted readers 
 of poetry than they used to be. But there is another 
 reason for this comparative desertion. At the begin- 
 ning of the nineteenth century, when Hugo, Lamartine, 
 Musset, and Vigny, all poets, were the protagonists of 
 the literary world, the purely material conditions of 
 literature were very different from what they are to-day. 
 There were yet but few papers, and even magazines; 
 literature was expensive, though not very well paid, 
 and as a consequence poetry stood a better chance than 
 it does nowadays, when high and low are simply be- 
 seiged with newspapers, reviews, and volumes of all 
 kinds. The literary grandee since the development of 
 the Press after 1830, and the invention of the femlleton, 
 has been the novel, and whether we like it or not, if we 
 want to ascertain the tendencies of a time or country, 
 it is in the novel that we must look for them. It is 
 remarkable that this kind of literature attracts authors 
 quite ^s much as readers, thanks to a fallacy which one 
 minute's examination is enough to dispel, but which 
 most people will not see. The novel combines two 
 powerful attractions : it is easy — considering the multi- 
 tude of its adepts — and yet it is great — considering that 
 the fame of Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoi, and George Eliot 
 
Literature Traditional Again 311 
 
 is built upon it. The consequence is that the many 
 modern activities which are attracted to literature 
 because it is a handy manner of gaining distinction 
 mostly devote themselves to it. The ineradicable hope 
 which lives in every literary mind of some day, through 
 luck or patience, producing a masterpiece, deceives 
 them; no man so much as the novelist flatters himself 
 to attain the maximum of effect with the minimum of 
 effort, and the tangible result is a daily increasing flood 
 of fiction. 
 
 Is it possible to bring order and light into this chaos 
 of names and books? Can criticism see its way through 
 such a confusion ? Many who have engaged in this task ^ 
 seem to have given it up in disgust. The idea now pre- 
 valent among critics is that we are too near this over- 
 whelming production, and that it will take years to 
 distinguish its really important features. Attempts at 
 clarifying are discouraged by a circumstance which is a 
 novel trait in modern literature, and makes discrimina- 
 tion more difficult. Nothing was so striking in the 
 literary history of the nineteenth century as the inclina- 
 tion of writers to be their own interpreters. From 
 Victor Hugo to M. Saint Georges de Bouhelier, from 
 Romanticism in its cradle to Naturism, no sooner had a 
 young man an idea which seemed of any promise, than, 
 instead of testing it through production, he began to 
 theorize about it in the tone of a consummate artist 
 who, with forty volumes behind him, could draw on 
 his experience and build solidly upon it. This was 
 sometimes daring, sometimes — much oftener — comical, 
 but the results made for clarity. All these disquisitions, 
 
 'Vid. MuUer et Picard: Les Tendances PrSsentes de la Nouvelle 
 Litterature. Paris, Basset, 1913. Henriot: A quoi R^ent les Jeunes 
 Gens ? Paris, Champion, 1913. 
 
312 The Return of the Light 
 
 revelations, and manifestoes, frequently accompanied 
 with acclamations, denunciations, and excommuni- 
 cations, almost immediately crystallized in formulae 
 which attracted attention and eventuated in the forma- 
 tion of schools. This self -analysis and clarification, of 
 course, made the business of the literary historian much 
 easier than it would have been without them. 
 
 To-day these conditions have changed. The gregar- 
 ious instinct has deserted literary men, and they live 
 apart. Is it because they have seen the folly of expect- 
 ing inspiration from recipes, or because they have a 
 tendency to despise all Bohemianism and would blush 
 to meet at the cafes of old, or simply because literary 
 jealousy has been irritated by very practical considera- 
 tions arising from the advantages attached to a literary 
 connection with a daily or weekly paper? Certain it is 
 that, apart from a few beautiful friendships, literary 
 men nowadays avoid one another as carefully as news- 
 paper correspondents are apt to do, and whenever they 
 hit upon an "idea" seem as anxious to keep it to them- 
 selves as their predecessors were to crow over it and 
 make it obtrusively public. 
 
 The consequence is that most essays in contempo- 
 rary literature limit themselves to guarded statements 
 extracted from authors and reconciled more or less 
 satisfactorily with their books. Synthesis is hardly 
 ever attempted. Yet the idea of the modem literary 
 isolation, like most general ideas, is one which becomes 
 less discouraging upon examination. The gregarious 
 instinct is for the time being in abeyance, it is true, but 
 the even stronger instinct of imitation at its root is not, 
 and we can still, without too much difficulty, see it at 
 work in the literary world. That there are tendencies is 
 clear, and plagiarism makes them as visible as the glar- 
 
Literature Traditional Again 313 
 
 ing tickets of old used to. In fact, had we only the 
 titles of modern novels from which to conjecture their 
 affinities we could do it ; in nothing does imitation 
 betray itself so much as in the choice of a title, and 
 talent itself frequently falls into this pit. 
 
 Careful observation of the literary field shows beyond 
 a doubt that two tendencies have for some time been 
 at work ; one which we feel immediately constrained to 
 call realistic, and another for which we are, on the 
 contrary, at a loss to find a name, but which seems 
 obviously to take no pleasure in too close a reproduction 
 of the real. 
 
 Modern Realism is well represented in a literary 
 body which was at first regarded with some distrust, 
 but upon which duration has conferred authority, viz., 
 the Goncourt Academy. This Academy, consisting 
 only of ten members, was founded by Edmond de Gon- 
 court, not in imitation, but in evident rivalry of the 
 French Academy. The latter, having throughout its 
 existence associated moral with literary canons — with 
 the result of leaving out such men as Moliere, Balzac, 
 and Flaubert, discouraging Daudet and openly despis- 
 ing Zola — seemed to E. de Goncourt unworthy of 
 representing the pure artistic feeling, and so he made 
 his own foundation on absolutely different lines. The 
 present members of this Academy, MM. Geffroy, Rosny , 
 Bourges, Hennique, Mirbeau, Descaves, Leon Daudet, 
 Paul Margueritte, and Madame Judith Gautier, cer- 
 tainly have very little in common with the French 
 Academy; the something forceful but bordering on the 
 violent which distinguishes almost all of them would 
 be decidedly objectionable at the Palais Mazarin. 
 Year after year the Goncourt Academicians seem in 
 their choice of the books to which they award their 
 
314 The Return of the Light 
 
 prizes to have in view mainly some amends to a young 
 writer for being unjustly and narrow-mindedly over- 
 looked by the official judges in the French Academy. 
 This attitude is so marked, that even an ordinary 
 reader would begin to see his way through the multi- 
 tude of modern novels merely by putting apart such as 
 he feels would be agreeable to the Goncourt Academy 
 and suspicious to the other. 
 
 Now, how should we characterize this realism of the 
 Goncourt Academicians and of the writers they patron- 
 ize? It is as different from the realism embodied in 
 Zola as Zola himself was different from the Goncourt 
 brothers. It is true that La Fille Elisa paved the way 
 for rAssommoir, but La Fille Elisa was written by 
 Edmond de Goncourt after the death of his brother, and 
 the real Goncourt taste was certainly not for the gratui- 
 tously low and horrible. These writers were artists; 
 they were so with so much resolution that the reader is 
 conscious of an effort where they wanted only to apply 
 a method, but the effort is in the opposite direction to 
 that followed by Zola. Where Zola wanted the dreary 
 fatalism of what he called life to reign supreme, the 
 Goncourts would seek another element; they selected 
 and arranged, and their pleasure lay as much in the 
 treatment as in the accuracy of their matter. With 
 more taste than power, and yet an inclination towards 
 a kind of novel which required power before everything, 
 it was impossible that they should ever rise to the first 
 rank, but it is no less true that their notion of realism — 
 nature artistically dealt with — ^has been realized in the 
 best fiction, from the Odyssey to Les Paysans or Middle- 
 inarch. 
 
 It is in this same spirit that we see practically all 
 contemporary realists approach their subjects. Leav- 
 
Literature Traditional Again 315 
 
 ing aside a few older writers, like Mirbeau, Descaves, 
 or Hennique, who never could tell robustness from 
 brutality, they see that the inherent faults of realism, 
 viz., lack of mellowness or atmosphere, aloofness and 
 harshness, are indeed faults and not distinctions, and 
 they try to remedy or conceal them. 
 
 Most of them believe, like the Goncourts, in the 
 redeeming virtue of style; they are artists. The only 
 difference between men like the Rosny brothers, P. 
 Margueritte, and — ^in spite of his exaggerations — Paul 
 Adam, or — among the younger generation — writers 
 like J. A. Nau, Mme. Colette, Binet-Valmer, Savignon, 
 Elder, Werth, Hamp, Roupnel, Pergaud, and the ultra- 
 refined imitators of the classics, of whom we shall speak 
 by and by, is merely that they seek a higher relief 
 than the others and are more attracted by popular 
 naturalness or intensity. 
 
 Beside these we find others as incapable as them- 
 selves of painting otherwise than from life, but whose 
 natural bent is to tinge the picture with their own 
 mental colouring. Some of them, undoubtedly under 
 the influence of Dostoievsky, are positively soaked 
 in sadness and tenderness. Geffroy, the author of 
 L'Apprentie, Frapie, the author of La Maternelle, above 
 all Ch. M. Philippe — ^recently dead, but a daily grow- 
 ing influence — and his obvious imitators, Hirsch, 
 Moselly, Ch. M. Garnier, and Marguerite Audoux, 
 are all painters of the humble life, but they select it for 
 its inherent pathos, which reveals an abyss between 
 them and the soulless author of VAssommoirj who 
 selected it for its crudities. 
 
 Finally, another school seems also to crave some- 
 thing richer than nude reality, but its tendency is 
 not sentimental. L. Bertrand, the Leblond brothers. 
 
3i6 The Return of the Light 
 
 d'Esparbes, the seaman writer Claude Farrere, Mont- 
 fort, often also P. Adam and the brothers Rosny, 
 locate their stories in sumptuous surroundings, fre- 
 quently under glowing colonial heavens, and with a 
 general wealth of background throwing its reflection 
 over the everyday details. This method once more 
 brings us much nearer Salammho than La Terre, and 
 evidently ignores the canons of Naturalism. 
 
 On the whole, it appears evident that the gloomy 
 workshop, or, if you prefer another simile, the sordid 
 hospital room next door to a charnel-house, in which 
 the school of Zola indulges its sombre mania, has been 
 deserted, and that the taste for the real, without which 
 the works of Moliere, Lesage, and I'Abbe Prevost would 
 not exist, is once more associated in French literature 
 with art, its indispensable guide. 
 
 This, after all, is merely the condition of literary 
 beauty in any language or country, and might only 
 mean that the French have recovered from the strange 
 exaggeration into which the sickening formality of 
 classicism in its decay had thrown them ; but it is only 
 one aspect of the contemporary production, and there is 
 another of far greater significance. 
 
 The literature of the nineteenth century, as already 
 said, almost invariably gives us the impression of an 
 effort. The Romanticists as well as the Realists and 
 the Naturalists always seemed to show off — they com- 
 pelled us to admire their muscles. Their redundance 
 is nothing else than the complacent repetition of the 
 amateur dumb-bell performer, and it is not surpris- 
 ing that it gave so much offence in the few eighteenth- 
 century drawing-rooms which were reopened after the 
 Revolution. It jarred as barbarous, ungentlemanly, 
 and foreign. After nearly a himdred years it is the 
 
Literature Traditional Again 317 
 
 same reaction we witness in at least fifteen out of twenty 
 literary people, and one refrains with difficulty from 
 labelling the schools I have just reviewed as *'less 
 French," in the sense which I endeavoured to define 
 at the beginning of this paper. 
 
 What the Romanticists bequeathed to us consisted 
 chiefly in an admiration of the exceptional; a straining 
 after originality which, in the space of a decade or two, 
 completely transformed not only the literary con- 
 ceptions, but, which is more extraordinary, the lan- 
 guage itself. Thousands of snobbish imitators of Hugo 
 forgot the medium they had received from Voltaire, 
 because they despised what they called its cheap 
 elegance and superficial clarity, but they could not so 
 easily invent one capable of taking its place. The 
 French they wrote was now bombastic, now bordering 
 on the coarseness which Revolutionary levellers had 
 imposed with the "/w" and the '' citoyen'' ; but it was 
 hardly ever rich. One single generation is unequal to 
 the long work of ages in the formation of a language 
 combining accuracy with picturesqueness. The semi- 
 international and fleshless vocabulary of the Press, just 
 then finding favourable conditions, completed the dis- 
 aster. Whereas literature spoke a language of its own, 
 different with each writer, and which was eventually 
 to develop into the wild inventions of the Decadents, 
 mere readers learned another, from which the grace 
 and the pith of its predecessor were entirely gone. So 
 after the decadence of taste we saw the decadence of 
 the language, which is the beginning of barbarism, and 
 one could have hardly foreseen that a restoration of 
 both taste and language was so near. 
 
 Who is responsible for this unexpected turn, it is not 
 very difficult to say. Renan, by his classic taste and 
 
31 8 The Return of the Light 
 
 intellectual honesty, was a link between our writers 
 and those who thought more of what they had to say 
 than of the manner of saying it; Anatole France wor- 
 shipped the French undefiled of the eighteenth century, 
 and many a young man learned it in his books as one 
 learns a foreign tongue; Jules Lemaitre, both in his 
 style and in his way of judging things, even in his 
 charming personality, was a revelation. Here was a 
 Frenchman of wide influence, content with the popular 
 qualities of his race and disdaining anything that his 
 countrymen could not with proper culture attain, and 
 yet with this modest ambition it appeared that he not 
 only made the most of his gifts, but, compared with others 
 of apparently higher flight, was found decidedly supe- 
 rior. Once more the art of thinking summed up in 
 
 Ne forgons point notre talent 
 
 showed its long-forgotten efficacy, and the lesson was 
 taken to heart. Add that the something vulgar in 
 French politics of which everybody became more and 
 more conscious and tired, threw the dissatisfied minds 
 back to gentler times, and went far to prepare the soil 
 for finer literary seeds. 
 
 The characteristic of the generation of literary 
 prose writers now between twenty-five and thirty-five 
 is certainly, in the phrase of one of its representatives, 
 M. Andre du Fresnois, that '' elle a rappris Vaisance,'^ 
 They have re-learned naturalness, and their gait is 
 elastic and free. They never frown and they often 
 smile ; they are capable of emotion, but they shun senti- 
 mentalism, and morbidity is loathsome to them ; instead 
 of everlastingly talking about truth, they aim at what 
 our ancestors modestly called "justness"; you never 
 
Literature Traditional Again 319 
 
 hear them utter the word ''attempt" with the boastful 
 humility of the Decadents, to whom anything new 
 was a thing admirable, but they are not afraid of think- 
 ing of perfection; they are enthusiastic, but when they 
 feel so it is for good reasons, which they are ready to 
 give you; finally, they have gone back to the days 
 when the language was full of idioms and racy phrases 
 or images, which certainly were the common property of 
 all, but had more charm on the lips of a porter who had 
 caught them from his mother than in the books of a 
 Romanticist who laboriously re-invented them; their 
 French is once more crisp and direct, or graceful, and 
 to the immense relief of some of their elders, they spare 
 us adjectives. In short, they are very near the com- 
 bination of qualities which foreigners were wont to call 
 French in the days when this word had the most mean- 
 ing; and being French, that is to say themselves, they 
 are happy, which is a precious literary asset, far supe- 
 rior to the vain hope of becoming some day sublime. 
 Trying to number these new writers would be futile ; 
 their multitude baffles the most honest desire of keeping 
 up with their production, and frequently discourages 
 classification. A great many of them are mere imi- 
 tators of that greatest of imitators, Anatole France, or 
 at best of the writers whom Anatole France imitates. 
 Behind Henri de Regnier, Pierre Louys, Marcel Bou- 
 lenger, the brothers Tharaud, etc., you could find a host 
 of men and women who have had the revelation of 
 the remarkable virtue of the pastiche, viz., to make in- 
 spiration possible for people who otherwise would never 
 know what it meant. There is no deep originality 
 there, to be sure, but there is a simplicity nearly akin to 
 sincerity, and there is, above all, the resurrection of the 
 language. Were it not for his irony, Anatole France 
 
320 The Return of the Light 
 
 would only be the top boy in a large class of pupils of 
 Voltaire and Montesquieu, and, in better days, would 
 not be taken seriously. But seeing that what he gave us 
 is exactly what we needed, he is, in one respect at least, 
 a genius, and his imitators, if they are only imitators, 
 are at all events the makers of an atmosphere in which 
 something better than imitation will grow. 
 
 Even now we meet with many works which it would 
 be unfair to label as mere imitations, although their 
 classical parentage can easily be traced. Of humorists 
 like Tristan Bernard, Andre Beaunier and Jean Giraud- 
 oux we feel constrained to say that what imitation has 
 afforded them was only the possibility to be themselves, 
 and that they are really themselves. 
 
 Besides we already find a whole school of novelists, 
 the special quality of whom has no prototype ; it is the 
 school of refined and poetic writers who do too much 
 honour, it seems to me, to Rene Boylesve by speaking 
 of him as a chief. All that should be said is that he was 
 a forerunner. Here the sharpness of the eighteenth 
 centiuy lines is softened by a smiling tenderness which 
 in most cases must have come straight from Dickens — 
 extensively read in France — or by the poeticalness of 
 Fromentin. Marcelle Tinayre, J. des Gachons, A. de 
 Chateaubriand, Jaloux, Larbaud, Miomandre, Viollis, 
 Lafon, Nesmy, Mainiac, Vallery-Radot, G. de Voisins, 
 all suggest the classic conception, but all make us see 
 in the background of their stories a bright rainbow 
 which the eighteenth century never conjured. 
 
 A similar remark may be made concerning the 
 psychologists, A. Gide, the Tharaud brothers, Benda, 
 especially Emile Clermont, whom two volumes have 
 been enough to render famous. Their novels are ob- 
 viously conceived and written in close imitation of what 
 
Literature Traditional Again 321 
 
 used to be called recits, and betray the haunting pre- 
 sence of Adolphe and of the less-known stories which 
 Adolphe has thrown into the shade, but there is a quality 
 in them which would not be found even in Adolphe, 
 What this quality is cannot be easily defined ; it may be 
 only the contrast between the high plane which a true 
 soul crisis requires and the low physiology of Natural- 
 ism, but whatever it may be, it strikes us as an original- 
 ity. I must also mention a class of writers less intent 
 upon the merely artistic aspect of their work, but who, 
 however, help quite as much as the rest in measiuing 
 the distance between the present generation and that 
 which worshipped Zola. After Bourget, Barres, and 
 Bazin, men like H. Bordeaux, P. Acker, J. Psichari, 
 Variot, and A. Baumann, and — in spite of his splendid 
 isolation and different spirit — R. Rolland, are as 
 interested in the moral and social lesson of life as in life 
 itself, and would be best called Idealists, although the 
 wish to be true is alive in them, as in any Realist. 
 
 As a conclusion, let me repeat emphatically that if 
 anybody had predicted in 1880 that less than forty 
 years later the source of inspiration and the whole tone 
 of the French novel would have changed, the prediction 
 would have sounded more than improbable. Yet this 
 apparent impossibility is to-day sober reality, and has 
 for some time ceased to astonish. The battle in which 
 Bourget, Loti, Barres, and A. France engaged with Zola 
 has been won twenty times over, and no signs show 
 that another corruption of the public taste is likely. 
 
 The reader may very naturally ask himself whether 
 this fortunate change for the better has been productive 
 of exceptional effects, and whether the rising generation 
 has any masterpieces to show. The answer must be in 
 the negative. Not only have our young writers failed 
 
322 The Return of the Light 
 
 as yet to produce anything that may be named with 
 the classics of the French language, but one hesitates 
 to compare them with the authors mentioned above as 
 entering the field before them, viz., Bourget, France, 
 Loti, and, shortly afterwards, Barres. These young 
 men are all distinguished, but you can hardly call any 
 of them powerful. Is it because their principles are 
 opposed to exaggeration and even insistence, that they 
 are afraid of a strong treatment and apt to indulge in 
 mere daintiness? Or is it because, thinking the literary 
 professionalism of the nineteenth century bad form, 
 they are inclined to act as men of the world with an 
 aversion to repetition? Or are we, the public, to blame, 
 and is it because we have been so long accustomed to 
 the enormous effort of men like Hugo, Balzac, and Zola, 
 even Bourget and Anatole France, that we cannot 
 separate greatness from productivity, and would rather 
 tolerate repetition than apparent inaction? I should 
 not be surprised if this were largely the truth. We can- 
 not remember the days when Bourget and A. France 
 having only produced their first works — ^which proved 
 not to have been their worst — we looked upon them 
 merely as promising young men, very like the promising 
 young men of to-day. Perhaps we only place Romain 
 Rolland apart from the rest because he was lucky 
 enough to strike a vein or, more accurately, adopt 
 a method which enabled him to insist and repeat 
 without being taken to task for it. It may be that if 
 he had written his ten volumes on ten different subjects 
 instead of indefatigably expanding the story of his hero, 
 we should complain of his monotony instead of extol- 
 ling his power. Certainly the inspiration of the less 
 productive novelists does not differ in quality from 
 that of Romain Rolland; their common characteristic 
 
Literature Traditional Again 323 
 
 is naturalness and facility, whether the writers indulge 
 in or hold in check their facility. 
 
 It may be also that we are coming to a period in which 
 the quantity and comparative excellence of productions 
 will result in a highly estimable uniformity similar to 
 that which strikes the student of literary history in the 
 first two thirds of the eighteenth century; surely this 
 would be better from the mere artistic standpoint 
 than the ambitious poverty of the second part of the 
 nineteenth. 
 
 But whether we are in the presence of mere promises 
 or have to be content with what we have been given so 
 far, all this is pure speculation, and need not detain us 
 any longer. From the positive point of view adopted in 
 this volume, it is not so, and we can speak with certi- 
 tude. Certainly the defeat of that low offspring of 
 Romanticism and Realism — the naturalist novel — and 
 the substitution for it of another infinitely more flexible 
 in its forms and calling forth some of the most sterling 
 French qualities — balance, wit, elegance, psychological 
 penetration, and, above all, that incomparable dowry 
 of the national genius, clarity — is of capital significance, 
 not only for literature, but for the intellectual health of 
 the nation at large, and this, as we said at the begin- 
 ning of this chapter, is what really matters. 
 
 In fact, what was the reaction of Hterature on the 
 popular consciousness from the Revolutionary to the 
 Dreyfus times? A very enervating one. The affecta- 
 tion of impossible sentiments by the poets, the high- 
 flown theories of second-rate philosophers, the laborious 
 obscurity of even everyday prose-writers, were all 
 puzzling and bewildering; and the exquisite letters of 
 Dupuy and Cotonet in Musset's works are only the 
 amusing expression of a very general and very depress- 
 
324 The Return of the Light 
 
 ing experience. Its immediate consequence was an 
 exaggerated respect for scribblers of all kinds, which 
 had originated under the Encyclopaedists, but gradually 
 increased to the extent of making Hugo's influence 
 greater than that of Voltaire or Rousseau. Finally, it 
 reversed the scale of values in the minds of all except the 
 lucky illiterate, placing art before action, and inducing a 
 preference for sentimental experiences of a rare kind, 
 crises, as they were called, and things which would look 
 well in print, instead of the manly enjoyment of positive 
 influence. Emma Bovary, in this respect, is a wide- 
 embracing analysis. The nineteenth century will 
 appear in French history as a curious lapse in the tradi- 
 tional frankness during which a peculiar kind of atti- 
 tudinizing prevailed, impelling people to pretend 
 understanding, when they did not understand, and 
 to demand sympathy for emotions they never could 
 feel. 
 
 Quite the reverse is the result of the recent literary 
 evolution. The transparency in concept and expres- 
 sion which has become an indispensable condition for 
 acceptance is so natural to the French that while it 
 gives them pleasure it causes them no surprise, and con- 
 sequently the enjoyment of literary excellence has 
 become once more a calming influence. Conversely we 
 see a declared aversion, not unmixed with scorn, to 
 unreasoned enthusiasm, that of Michelet as much as 
 that of popular Dreyfusism, and an impatience of 
 *' clouds" of all kinds. The question which was never 
 asked during the classical ages, because it never had to 
 be asked, nor during the nineteenth century, because 
 it would have been asked too often : What do you mean? 
 is so universal to-day that it will soon become super- 
 fluous. It is remarkable that there is only one critical 
 
Meaning of M. Bergson's Success 325 
 
 school at the present moment, that of Neo-classics, and 
 that clarity is its only canon. 
 
 So literature is gradually resuming its true place, 
 which is behind life as a beautiful reflection of life, and 
 not in the forefront. The literary colossus of the Hugo, 
 Michelet, or Balzac type, who towered above the nine- 
 teenth century and intimidated even a man like Taine 
 would now be impossible. If his place is to be filled, 
 it will be by a new Napoleon and not by a writer. 
 
 I see two main tendencies set free by the literature 
 of the last thirty years, one embodied in the psychologi- 
 cal concept of Bourget and Barres and the other in the 
 irony of Anatole France. The former makes for libera- 
 tion, for personal responsibility; the latter stands for 
 the superiority of common sense, of French lightness — 
 not levity — of wit as the gaiety of intelligence; both 
 amoimt to the predominance of action over books. In 
 one word, France is practically cured of the literary 
 malady which went far to make her vital reaction more 
 difficult after 1870 than it would have been a himdred 
 and especially two hundred years before ; recovering her 
 taste for Hght, she cannot but recover her health. 
 
 2. The Meaning of M. Bergson*s Success 
 
 Is it merely a philosopher's success? Is not, on the 
 contrary, this startling vogue another sign of the 
 appreciation of clarity and sincerity which is perceptible 
 on all hands and rapidly changes the characteristics of 
 contemporary literature? I think so. 
 
 Fight your way, if you can, into the ridiculously small 
 room in which M. Bergson lectures at the College de 
 France, and wait among the expectant crowd until the 
 hour comes. Perhaps you know nothing about the 
 
326 The Return of the Light 
 
 professor, except that he is quite original, constructs 
 the worid in a manner entirely his own. This rather 
 intimidates you; philosophy is naturally overawing, 
 and you dread having to make a special effort to under- 
 stand this particular system. On the stroke of the 
 hour the professor appears. He is a spare little man, 
 with nothing remarkable besides his admirably formed 
 brow and an exceptionally winsome smile. He has not 
 been half a minute in his chair before you feel that the 
 audience is in simple and familiar sympathy with him. 
 He begins to speak, summing up his previous lecture in 
 the old fashion, and annotmcing his subject for to-day. 
 There is no solemnity whatever in his utterance, nothing 
 that is not perfectly natural in the wonderfully managed 
 voice, so clear that only after a few minutes do you 
 notice that it hardly rises above the very lowest key. 
 All he says is simple, but as he says it you become 
 conscious of a constantly growing interest in the ques- 
 tion, as if you had never heard it discussed before. 
 From time to time hard and dry facts are adduced 
 from some learned work, but so much to the point that 
 it seems as if they had been collected to serve the pro- 
 fessor^s purpose. M. Bergson himself is conscious of it, 
 and his charming smile brightens up the thin face. 
 Everything he says makes the subject clearer, until it 
 appears as elemental as if it were propounded by the 
 mind of a child, and philosophy must be the plainest 
 answer to very natural questions which nobody has a 
 business to complicate. The old saying about the ora- 
 tor who turned out to be not an orator but a man sings 
 in your ear, and as you hear it you feel compelled to 
 substitute another phrase of a more purely French 
 character. This man who sees things so directly and 
 expresses them in such clear, almost everyday language 
 
Meaning of M. Bergson's Success 327 
 
 is a modem Descartes converting philosophy from jar- 
 gon, indeed; but he also is what the French language 
 since the days of Descartes has called, very simply but 
 very forcibly, Vhonnete homme, as distinguished from the 
 pedant. Then you notice that if the presence of a cer- 
 tain number of smartly dressed women in this room is 
 objectionable in one respect, it is not so from another 
 point of view; M. Bergson speaks in a whitewashed 
 lecture-room, but it is not amiss that this room should 
 recall a salon. How far we feel from the days — not long 
 past, though — when everything, from literature to 
 politics, was acceptable only if it paraded imder a thick 
 mask of technicalities ! 
 
 You leave the College de France after a lecture of 
 M. Bergson*s as you leave a concert-room after Mozart, 
 with the sensation of something sunny which you would 
 like to be able to re-create when you would ; and, as you 
 cannot always be at the College de France, you buy the 
 philosopher's three or four volumes and you begin 
 studying them. Are you perfectly satisfied? No. 
 The volimie on Les Donnees Immediates de la Con- 
 science sums up a great deal of purely scientific reading; 
 Matiere et Memoire is so compact and full that its 
 apparent clarity is elusive; L' Evolution Creatrice is a 
 poem which you read as you read Dante, wading 
 through difficult parts in the hope of coming to enchant- 
 ing oases. So philosophy, even with Bergson to intro- 
 duce you to it, cannot avoid being philosophical and dry. 
 This is a disappointment. Another experience in the 
 course of your reading is even more so. As you begin 
 to realize what M. Bergson means by intuition, you 
 conceive great hopes. This intellectual process, which 
 puts us in immediate communication with realities — it 
 is not philosophy, it is something more general and 
 
328 The Return of the Light 
 
 simple — ^why, everything told, ought it not to be called 
 an "art of thinking"? The discovery is elating. M. 
 Bergson's philosophy is only a metaphysical novel, as 
 likely or unlikely as the others, and you are not unwise 
 enough not to notice that it is built from the Evolution- 
 ists' note-books. But an "art of thinking" is what we 
 all, consciously or unconsciously, are for ever seeking. 
 Nothing makes us so happy as the discovery of a truth; 
 it is what we everlastingly hope to chance upon in talking, 
 and the idea gives something almost feverish to French 
 conversation. And what is, after all, the great charm 
 of M. Bergson's lectures? Only that for an hour he 
 produces no end of startling truths from his simple 
 premises. So the idea that he may give us his secret 
 for thinking right and bright is highly exciting. But as 
 you re-read and re-think what he says about the intui- 
 tive process, one unfortunate intuition gradually dawns 
 upon you. This magic process, which looks at first 
 sight like a sublime recipe, is, after all, only a descrip- 
 tion, and a description of what? — of all things, a descrip- 
 tion of genial thinking. What do you gain by being 
 told that the only way of thinking right is to think like 
 Plato, Kant, or Pasteur, and not only think as they did, 
 but think as they did in their most divine moments? 
 This, indeed, is disheartening. 
 
 But put the volumes back on your shelves and seek 
 once more the whitewashed room at the College de 
 France. This time M. Bergson is lecturing on Berkeley 
 or Spinoza. He may be tempted by some point in his 
 subject to evoke the springing fountain which helps 
 his imagination to visualize the effort upwards of life as 
 spirit and its dropping down as matter ; and according to 
 your individual tendency you will like or dislike the 
 invitation the poet-philosopher makes to you of uniting 
 
Meaning of M. Bergson*s Success 329 
 
 almost mystically with the universal flux; but possibly 
 you will hear nothing of the kind. M. Bergson will not 
 make any attempt at solving the great enigma; per- 
 haps he will say nothing that will strike you as deep or 
 even novel ; but as he proceeds in his delightful leisurely 
 manner to expound Berkeley's or Spinoza's doctrine 
 you will be conscious of a wonderful gift for showing 
 us a human attitude behind the tendency of a meta- 
 physical system, and you will marvel once more at an 
 expression so perfectly subdued that it hardly seems 
 different from the thought. 
 
 This means that what you admire the most in Berg- 
 son is his talent. And do not let the discovery shock 
 you. Certainly there are among the young philo- 
 sophers who follow M. Bergson some who may be as 
 interested as himself in a scientific representation of the 
 world, and there are also many among his admirers who 
 rejoice at the change from Taine's philosophy to his, at 
 the possibilities his criticism of materialism has opened 
 for the moralist; but the intellectual attraction which 
 the most intelligent section of the public feels for M. 
 Bergson is not philosophical. It is not purely literary 
 either. It is that higher aspect of the literary tendency 
 which really is a moral one and constitutes an ethos 
 in itself, viz., perfect sincerity, as opposed to the craze 
 which impelled the nineteenth century literary man to 
 say anything as long as it looked well in print. That 
 M. Bergson is interested in metaphysics appears as a 
 minor point ; that he is interested in it as the seventeenth- 
 century people were interested in everything — deeply, 
 seriously, and without any reference to writing or being 
 read — is what really matters. What our contempo- 
 raries love the most in M. Bergson is his honesty, and 
 the clear-sightedness which is its reward comes after. 
 
330 The Return of the Light 
 
 This is enough to place the present generation above 
 that which admired Renan. Renan wrote with some 
 of the qualities which M. Bergson displays in speaking, 
 but he was more envied for writing than for feeling like 
 a man of the classical ages. M. Bergson would be 
 followed even if he never wrote a line. Here, again, we 
 see the deep reaction which differentiates the beginning 
 of the twentieth century from the end of the Romantic- 
 ist period, and in default of masterpieces is an evidence 
 of the return to the ideal which gives birth to master- 
 pieces. 
 
 3. The Restoration of Classical Studies 
 
 The reform of the haccalaureat initiated by the 
 decrees of 1902 was not badly received at first by the 
 public. Most people had no suspicion that its spirit 
 was political, and it was not easy for them to discrimi- 
 nate between that which in the reform was the work of 
 professors they respected, and that for which inexperi- 
 enced politicians at the Ministry of Education were 
 responsible. The novelty of the arrangement attracted 
 as it always does, and its apparent broadness reassured. 
 Latin and Greek were not sacrificed ; whoever wished to 
 have these languages taught to their children had only a 
 word to say. Many a father, remembering that he had 
 always been poor at the classics and entertaining no 
 delusions about the use he made of them, was glad that 
 a useless burden was not to be put on his son. Mothers 
 rejoiced at the comparative facility of the new ex- 
 aminations. Certainly English and German with a 
 governess must be easier than Greek with formidable 
 dictionaries. During seven or eight years few protests 
 were heard about the new methods, and they mostly 
 
Restoration of Classical Studies 331 
 
 came from writers opposed to the Government and 
 who might be actuated by political animosity. Things 
 changed towards 1910, after the reform had been given 
 its full chance and the results it must produce had 
 become visible in young men of from eighteen to twenty- 
 one years of age. A strong reaction then set in, and 
 remonstrances came the weight of which could not be 
 denied. To the unbounded astonishment of the news- 
 paper readers, the first that was made public came from 
 quarters where it had been little expected. This 
 indictment, couched in strong and remarkably well- 
 chosen terms, was the work of an engineer, M. Guillain, 
 holding no less a situation than the presidency of French 
 Forges and Furnaces. This gentleman complained to 
 the Ministry of Education about the falling off he 
 noticed in young men applying to him. 
 
 It was a serious anxiety for people interested in the future 
 of French industry to find so many signs of weakened culture 
 in these young engineers. They managed to get passed at 
 the entrance examinations for the Ecole Polytechnique or the 
 Ecole Centrahj but they were not prepared for making 
 the most of the teaching which they received there, and 
 the results were too visible. 
 
 Another scientist, M. Lechevallier, well known 
 among the best mining engineers, substantiated the 
 same complaints in an admirable tract which was 
 widely circulated, and which the present writer has 
 been several times both delighted and siuprised to see 
 in almost humble homes to which a wise decision about 
 the boys' education is of paramount importance. 
 Almost simultaneously Raoul Blondel, M.D., declared 
 that his experience of medical students led him to 
 the same conclusions. They might give proofs of pre- 
 
332 The Return of the Light 
 
 mature erudition, they hardly ever gave indications of 
 originality or of that curiosity which only an intelligent 
 early training will awake. 
 
 On the whole, good judges who were neither professors 
 nor literary people, but who happened to be in a place of 
 vantage to see where the reform of 1902 was leading 
 to, held it responsible for a weakening of acumen which 
 might well be called a crisis of the French culture. 
 
 The phrase promptly became a watchword, and in a 
 short time another was frequently associated with it. 
 There was not only a crisis of the French culture but a 
 crisis of the French language as well, and this time it 
 was chiefly noticed by professors in the lycees or by 
 examiners for the haccalaureat. The rising generation 
 of boys were uncertain about their own language; they 
 seldom could account for the words they used or for the 
 meaning they attached to them, and they seemed to 
 have vague notions about their origins, although a great 
 deal of philological zeal was spent on their educa- 
 tion. All the professors who thus complained traced the 
 lapse to the neglect of Latin as its chief cause. The 
 boys trained exclusively in translating from or into 
 modern languages and in the reading of French texts 
 appeared to be little helped by their translations, and 
 certainly got little out of their French reading. The 
 latter exercise was too easy to do when superficial, and 
 too difficult to force on the boy's attention when more 
 thorough, to be of any great use. The persevering com- 
 parison between French and its parent language, which 
 the old syllabus made of daily use during six or seven 
 years, was far more effective than any superimposed 
 philology. Nothing else would counteract the influence 
 of slovenly spoken French or of the fleshless language 
 which the newspaper spreads everywhere. 
 
Restoration of Classical Studies 333 
 
 The French Academy, the Societe des Gens de Lettres, 
 and two leagues — one of which was called Ligue des 
 Amis du Latin and the Ligue pour la Culture Classique — 
 echoed the professors' alarm, and a few answers to their 
 statements even by men Hke M. Croiset and M. 
 Lanson seemed timid compared to the universal protest. 
 There is little doubt that the return to the classical 
 models begun by M. Anatole France acted powerfully 
 on the public. The elegance of thousands of these 
 imitations not only struck the readers, but somehow the 
 connection between this style and the traditional grace 
 of the best French language could not, they realized it, 
 be divorced from the classic French education. In a 
 short time the effects of this movement of public 
 opinion became apparent. The Government — that is 
 to say, the bureaucracy at the Ministry of Education — 
 of course did not show any signs of having met with 
 this resistance in the country. The decrees of 1902 were 
 not repealed, and the syllabus remained the same. But 
 the parents did of their own accord what the state did 
 not encourage them to do except in the anonymous 
 advice of many headmasters. At the present moment 
 9 per cent, more boys take Latin than before the 
 reform of 1902, and it becomes shameful once more to 
 be foreign to the classical culture. Let a return to the 
 more virile methods in the teaching of Greek and Latin, 
 of which there are many signs, become more general, 
 and some day, it is to be hoped, official, and the intel- 
 lectual inheritance of France will be in safety. A classic 
 formation on the broad human bases which the Uni- 
 versite had laid for it in the early part of the nineteenth 
 century is sure to make the French conscious of their 
 best characteristics and to replace them in their most 
 natural tradition. 
 
334 The Return of the Light 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 On the whole, the French as a nation seem to be 
 recovering from several very dangerous diseases: the 
 criticisms of the Revolution by men like Taine and 
 Sorel, the revelation of the snares hidden in the Decla- 
 ration of the Rights of Man, the sickening abuse of 
 beautiful words like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" in 
 the service of very sordid interests, the transformation 
 by Syndicalism of a problem long considered as in- 
 dividual into a system of corporative claims, the sudden 
 realization, after Tangier, that a nation is not a col- 
 i/- itection of independent individuals, but a society; the 
 
 \/y\jjr reintegration of the past into the habitual thoughts of 
 k^. the citizens by Barresian literature have gradually 
 
 •/ cured the French of the individualistic point of view 
 
 made popular by Rousseau; their tendency, in the 
 presence of any political event or of an idea with enough 
 in it to make it yeasty, is less to examine how far the 
 individual may be affected by it than how far it will 
 promote or hinder the public welfare; they have re- 
 sumed the habit of viewing European politics in the 
 terms of two hundred years ago, saying "the interest of 
 France," "the doings of Prussia," as if each Frenchman 
 were an ambassador speaking for his whole cotintry, 
 and not a humanitarian innocent of frontier ques- 
 tions. There are still parties in France, but all except 
 one — the Radical-Socialists — are agreed that building 
 up the politics of a coimtry on its internal divisions is 
 the mistake of men who ought to be municipal coun- 
 cillors in their village and not the leaders of a nation. 
 Socialism and Syndicalism may be sometimes the cham- 
 pions of rights, oftener the supporters of disorder; they 
 have ceased to be either bugbears or dazing-mirrors. 
 
Conclusion 335 
 
 Finally, war itself has lost the power which defeat, 
 combined with a poor philosophy and with the increas- 
 ing abhorrence of all discomfort, had conferred upon its 
 very name. The French, having in 1910 honestly 
 wished for a call to arms which would have been purely 
 patriotic, on that day, we may hope, laid for ever the 
 ghost of 1870. 
 
 If we reflect that under the Second Empire and later 
 — ^as soon as the Third Republic was well established — 
 France was a very hotbed of fallacies sometimes con- 
 cealed, sometimes embodied in politics, it will appear 
 that few countries have made so much progress in the 
 direction of common good sense and patriotic energy 
 as this country has in the past ten years, and a glance 
 at the regress visible elsewhere will make the advance 
 even more striking. 
 
 All this nobody seems to question, and the German 
 press itself not only admits but, when it serves its 
 interests, exaggerates. What people capable of reflec- 
 tion ask themselves, from sympathy or from racial 
 opposition, is: Whether this convalescence will result in 
 recovery or in a relapse. 
 
 Nations, like individuals, have moods, and if the 
 laws of their changes are even more difficult to ascer- 
 tain than those of psychology, we know that they must 
 exist, and we often feel as if we were near discovering 
 them. Intellectual principles are deeply rooted in their 
 proper soil, i. e., the minds equal to the effort of nour- 
 ishing and not merely receiving them, but impressions 
 and impulses are fugitive in the souls of the multitude. 
 Will the ideas of the few be strong enough and stay 
 bright enough to support and enlighten the impulses 
 of the many, or, on the contrary, will not the non- 
 chalance of the millions obscure these lights in its lazy 
 
33^ The Return of the Light 
 
 vapour? France has had moods before: in 1876, when 
 the Republican spirit swept away the germ of political 
 good sense planted by Thiers and by the Due de 
 Broglie; in 1889, after the Boulangist agitation; in 1898, 
 when what was already called the esprit nouveau blew 
 over in a few months, and strainings after reason, 
 justice, and courage were seen to come to nought. Are 
 there more reasons this time to hope that the soul will 
 lift up the body instead of being dragged down by it? 
 The threat of a war for which she was unprepared 
 sobered France when she was intoxicated with false 
 ideas, and roused her when she was for indulging in 
 dreams; but if the war does not come, and if the danger 
 passes away, is it not probable that with peace and 
 indolence the old taste for dangerous speculation will 
 come back? 
 
 These are the questions which we hear, and which 
 English people especially frequently ask because their 
 civilization, apart from any transient poHtical condi- 
 tions, makes them value a healthy France. It is re- 
 markable that, along with them, another is often put, 
 and nearly always understood, "Will your Government 
 follow suit?" or again, "What sort of a Government 
 do you think you have at present?" 
 
 Travelling in Germany in 1805, Madame de Stael 
 experienced a similar uncertainty. She saw that the 
 Germans had a sublime philosophy, canonizing the will 
 and pregnant with heroism, and yet they were cringing 
 and unmanly, "using philosophy to account for that 
 which is the most incompatible with philosophy ; respect 
 for brute force, and the melting timorousness which 
 transmutes this respect into admiration." She fully 
 realized that the political state of Germany was re- 
 sponsible for this weakness, and prayed for the advent 
 
Conclusion 337 
 
 of free institutions to raise the manners to the level cf 
 the theories. What would she have said if, instead of 
 having to do with a philosophy of liberty confronted 
 with despotism of a mild nature, she had seen a philo- 
 sophy of reasonableness, courage, and self-denial at work 
 in a democratic, and we may well say, a demagogic 
 country? Surely she would have realized that heroism 
 is in great jeopardy in a community governed by men 
 whose interest it is to flatter weaknesses, and she would 
 have said out loud what the EngHsh observer politely 
 refrains from speaking but thinks all the same, and 
 thinks so continuously that we cannot but be conscious 
 of the thought: "Shall you have better men to make 
 the most of your better spirit?" 
 
 It is to this question that the last part of this book 
 will be dedicated. 
 
 aa 
 
PART III 
 THE POLITICAL PROBLEMS AND THE FUTURE 
 
 339 
 
PART III 
 
 THE POLITICAL PROBLEMS AND THE FUTURE 
 
 I. The Problem of the Two Spirits 
 
 The problem which puzzled Madame de Stael during 
 her stay in Germany in 1805 was: How is it that a 
 philosophy of the will does not produce energetic men? 
 The problem which has been hatmting the mind of 
 every Frenchman capable of thought since the Tangier 
 incident and its terrifying effects has been : Will this 
 philosophy of coin-age and order espoused more or less 
 consciously by the immense majority of the nation 
 get the better of the inferior tendencies still at work 
 in the swampy confusion of French demagogism? 
 
 In the early months of 19 13, when it became known 
 that against all probability and above all in spite of 
 the fury of the Radical party, M. Poincare, then Prime 
 Minister, intended to stand for the Presidency, the 
 problem was put in purely political terms and seemed 
 exceedingly simple: Will M. Poincare get in in spite 
 of the Radicals? For a few weeks the Prime Minister 
 who had had the good fortune to appear at the begin- 
 ning of the Balkan War as a statesman of international 
 celebrity, and who stood in his own coimtry for a reso- 
 lute military reform as the basis of an effective patriotic 
 
 341 _. 
 
342 The Political Problems 
 
 action, embodied all that was highest in the aspirations 
 of France. 
 
 An incident which, it is true, could not be overlooked, 
 cooled the enthusiasm of some of his most hopeful ad- 
 mirers. The ablest Minister in M. Poincare*s Govern- 
 ment was undoubtedly M. Millerand, to whom the 
 French army owes more gratitude than to any general 
 who has held office since 1875. Now M. Millerand, 
 having discharged a duty of common honesty in re- 
 deeming a promise made to M. du Paty de Clam — the 
 well-known anti-Dreyfusist — by the Minister who had 
 preceded him, was violently attacked for doing so. 
 Another member of the Cabinet, M. Pams, arraigned 
 his colleague in the Chamber, and M. Millerand felt 
 compelled to resign at the very moment when his action 
 was the most useful. M. Poincare did not shield his 
 Minister of War, and many people were unpleasantly 
 surprised at this passivity. Yet, as M. Poincare and 
 M. Millerand were personal friends, the opinion gradu- 
 ally prevailed that M. Millerand himself had insisted 
 on M. Poincar6's taking no steps lest an interference 
 on his behalf should be in the way of his election as 
 President. At any rate when, a few weeks afterwards, 
 M. Poincar6 declared his intention to stand for the 
 Presidency, his candidature was welcomed as the dawn 
 of salvation by all Frenchmen thinking more of the 
 interests of their country than of petty party intrigues; 
 and when the Radicals selected as an opponent to him 
 the incarnation of party politics, M. Pams, the situa- 
 tion was as clear as could be and highly exciting. 
 
 For the first time since the election of Grevy in 1879, 
 a Presidential election, though left — ^according to the 
 constitution — to the Deputies and Senators in Congress, 
 happened to be a national affair, and M. Poincare had 
 
Problem of the Two Spirits 343 
 
 on his side the majority of the nation while M. Pams 
 was merely the man of straw of the Radicals. M. 
 Poincare was elected, and during a few months the 
 country felt as if all its best tendencies, now simimed up 
 in one providential individual, were beyond the danger 
 of untimely blighting. 
 
 From the very day of the election there was no 
 doubt that the Radicals would never forgive M. Poin- 
 care, and that in the impossibility or quasi-impossibil- 
 ity of ousting him they would at all events fight all his 
 friends and impugn the ideas supposed to be dearest to 
 him, viz., Proportional Representation, the Three- Year 
 Military Law, and above all, a rapprochement with the 
 moderate elements in Parliament recalling the far- 
 away days of M. Meline. The country at large took 
 in the situation and there was no uncertainty as to its 
 preferences. The welcome which the President re- 
 ceived everywhere during his tour in the South of France 
 at the end of the simimer of 19 13 was full of significance. 
 It clearly meant: At last France has a President who 
 is her representative and not merely the representative 
 of politicians. Having been elected constitutionally he 
 can be loved without treason, and his enemies may be 
 regarded as the enemies of the country. So the over- 
 throw of M. Briand by the Senate on the question of 
 Proportional Representation was resented as an inso- 
 lence. However, it was not looked upon as a personal 
 defeat of the President. M. Barthou, who succeeded 
 M. Briand, was as much as the latter in perfect unity 
 of views with M. Poincar6. Certainly he was not sup- 
 posed to be as energetic as the President. He was a 
 clever, graceful Southerner, not a stem Lorrain. Yet 
 it soon appeared that this pleasant, genial man was not 
 to be shaken from his position on at least one vital 
 
344 The Political Problems 
 
 measure, the Three- Year Service Law, and people 
 universally concluded that the indomitable courage 
 he showed in defending this Bill was instilled into him 
 by the President himself. 
 
 The overthrow of M. Barthou in December, 1913, 
 therefore, came as a shock, and when M. Poincar6 gave 
 his succession apparently to M. Doimiergue but in 
 reality to M. Caillaux — one of his sworn enemies — 
 there was dismay. Some keener observers than the 
 rest had already felt misgivings at noticing that the 
 President would not take upon himself to remove, or 
 in some way intimidate, any of the numerous prefects, 
 who he must know were Radicals and likely to turn 
 against rather than serve him ; some Catholic journalists 
 had also pointed out with surprise that the President, 
 who had agreed to act as witness at the marriage of a 
 friend, had refused to go further than the mairie, and 
 shirked the Church in true Combist bigotry. This was 
 not all; during the trip in the South, M. Poincar6 had 
 not dared to visit the old Romanesque church of Saint- 
 Front at Perigueux, lest such a step should be inter- 
 preted as a clerical manifestation. There was certainly 
 an exaggeration of prudence in this. However, nobody 
 had supposed that the President — ^who apparently real- 
 ized, when he stood for his high position, that the 
 situation was such that he must face his responsibilities 
 in a different spirit from that of his predecessors — 
 would accept a change of Cabinet obviously directed 
 against him, without a word, without an effort, in the 
 humble spirit of the Constitution of 1875, and exactly 
 as M. Fallieres might have done. Some people will ask: 
 "What could he do? Dissolving the Chamber was out 
 of the question, as it cannot be done by the President 
 without the concurrence of the Senate; even a message, 
 
Problem of the Two Spirits 345 
 
 even a speech, clear enough to be more than banal, 
 would have amounted to a coup d'etat. *' 
 
 Precisely. The situation forced upon the chief of the 
 State by the Constitution of 1875, and above all by the 
 interpretation of it by ten jealous Parliaments in suc- 
 cession, gives the President no choice between a some- 
 what daring attitude and complete self-effacement. M. 
 Poincare has chosen the latter, and neither he nor any 
 of the supporters of his policy of silence can protest 
 against the effacement having been immediate and 
 complete. Popularity never seeks failure, and the suc- 
 cess of M. Caillaux appeared, even to the rudest peasant, 
 as the President's defeat. 
 
 No Englishman living in France can have felt other- 
 wise than as if the curtain had fallen on the career of the 
 brilliant Poincare one had imagined, and the gang of 
 the professional politicians was coming to the forefront 
 again. The general election of 19 14 only made this 
 situation clearer; it was hardly construed as a defeat 
 of M. Poincare — though in reality it was one — but 
 that was because M. Poincare had practically dis- 
 appeared from the stage. It is difficult to imagine that, 
 having lost the opportunities which universal popular- 
 ity offered him in the first year of his Presidency, he 
 will seize others which will not be half so encouraging, 
 and we may conclude that he will be, like his predeces- 
 sors, a mere Constitutional President, that is to say, a 
 President with power enough to appoint the Prime 
 Ministers whom the Chamber wishes, but with no 
 power to control either the Premier or the Chamber. 
 If the Premiers are congenial, his intelligence and ex- 
 perience, along with his patriotism, which nothing can 
 weaken, will give him influence, but it will be the timid 
 influence which alone is in keeping with the Constitu- 
 
34^ The Political Problems 
 
 tion; if they are inimical, the awkwardness of his 
 position will only emphasize the impossibility of shak- 
 ing the tyranny of the majority. In any case, he will 
 never be again, unless he should make a coup d^etatt 
 the representative of the generous spirit which uplifted 
 France and gathered every energy around him while he 
 was Prime Minister. 
 
 Does this mean that this spirit is doomed to die away 
 and leave France once more as she was between 1898 
 and 1905, without a national ideal or without the 
 courage to realize it? Not by any means. The im- 
 pulse given at Tangier, along with the slow but steady 
 reintegration of healthy notions into public opinion, is 
 evidently one of the events which history uses as land- 
 marks, and which the disappearance of an individual 
 only affects in a transient manner. France has been 
 so long waiting for a man, a real man, that whoever 
 succeeds in voicing her aspiration after order at home 
 and dignity abroad, and in securing power were it only 
 for a short time, will be welcomed as M. Poincar6 
 himself was. M. Briand, M. Barthou, above all, M. 
 Millerand — ^by far the clearest head and the strongest 
 hand this country has known since 1870, outside of the 
 army — ^have, each one in succession, been that man, 
 and may play the same part again. There may be 
 others less known whom national feeling would be only 
 too ready to acclaim. Two or three speeches showing 
 character as well as rare abilities have been enough 
 to place M. Andre Lefevre — ^until then a comparatively 
 obscure Deputy — apart from the rest. 
 
 But will the return of even these men to office mean 
 the entrance of France into smooth waters and the end 
 of nearly half a century of confusion? It might be so if 
 some fortimate transformation of the Chamber should 
 
Problem of the Two Spirits 347 
 
 give it the unity on a few vital points which made the 
 Assemhlee Nationale an effective collaborator of Thiers 
 after the War and Commune, but until this transfor- 
 mation happens, " clearings-up " will only be intervals 
 of respite, after which the usual depression will set in 
 again. The anxiety and lassitude evident in the utter- 
 ances of such undoubted Republicans as M. de Lanessan, 
 the former Minister of the Navy; M. Sembat, the bril- 
 liant Socialist, and M. du Mesnil, the Radical editor of 
 the Rappel, are shared by millions of their readers. 
 The root of the evil is in a system which tolerates the 
 occasional appearance of distinguished men — welcomed 
 for the time being as liberators — but will not give them 
 any real authority. As long as the Chamber remains 
 supreme in France, discarding or selecting governments 
 as it pleases without either the President or the Senate 
 being able to act as counterweights, and as long as the 
 same Assembly thus all-powerful consists of individuals 
 trembling before their electors on one hand and regard- 
 ing one another as the members of one great syndicate 
 on the other, an enormous mass of excellent work (in 
 the shape of reports and commission work, especially) 
 will be wasted, the wishes of the better class of citizens 
 will be nullified, and the presence of a few men really 
 worth while at the head of the Government will only 
 last long enough to make their defeat more disappoint- 
 ing. There will ever be an indestructible opposition 
 between the representatives of the elector and the 
 representatives of France ; a national spirit can have no 
 chances with men rising from the "stagnant pools," 
 nor will a truly national policy be carried on by Cabi- 
 nets everlastingly changing and in the power of the 
 groups in the Chamber. The experiment initiated in 
 1876 has now lasted long enough for sure conclusions 
 
348 The Political Problems 
 
 to be arrived at, and the main conclusion is that the 
 Constitution of 1875, ^^ its essence as well as in its 
 working, invariably proves productive either of anarchy 
 or of tyranny, and sometimes of both at the same time, 
 as was the fact under the Combes government. The 
 history of France compared with that of Italy, for 
 instance, in the last half century, is a demonstration of 
 the danger of a bad constitution. ^ 
 
 The inference is plain; something must be done to 
 modify a state of things about which there is no im- 
 certainty, and this change, whatever its conditions and 
 particular character, cannot but be in the direction of a 
 stronger authority and of greater stability. The na- 
 tional defence can no longer be left to the pleasure of 
 fourscore of demagogues; the foreign policy must be 
 something better than the routine of the bureaux or the 
 random speculation of a new Minister; it must become 
 impossible that a man of M. Poincare's talent and 
 position should lose all his effectiveness merely because 
 he ceases to be in the immediate dependence of the 
 Deputies. In one word, authority and responsibility 
 must be something else than words. 
 
 2. Is a Change of Regime probable in France ? 
 
 If we were to believe the many people who, in book, 
 magazine, or newspaper, take their desires for realities, 
 and unconsciously interpret their own disgust as an 
 infallible sign of the times, there would be no doubt ; a 
 change must not only appear inevitable, but it could 
 not be very far off. The formula at which all these 
 sanguine people have arrived and which they repeat 
 in the newspapers every day is: Either a change or a 
 crash. 
 
A Change of Regime 349 
 
 Are they right in their anticipation? 
 
 It does not appear clear to everybody. It is not 
 because the present system has given numberless 
 proofs of its rottennes that it cannot go on. In fact, 
 it was rotten from the first, and it has had not croakers, 
 but clear-sighted critics round its very cradle. It is not 
 because an institution is obviously imperfect that it 
 cannot persist through a long historical period. The 
 Ancien Regime dragged on for many a decade after its 
 death had been prophesied. Why has the Republic 
 managed to live since the establishment of its ruinous 
 constitution? Because its very constitution makes it 
 almost impossible for the country to bring about a 
 change otherwise than through a sort of personal 
 conversion, and such conversions are impossible to a 
 nation. The vice of the constitution lies in the sub- 
 ordination of every power to the Chamber, but it is the 
 country which elects the Chamber, and there have been 
 so far no sufficient motives at the moment of an election 
 to bring home to the Electorate the necessity of a 
 change. If a war were imminent, or if bankruptcy 
 could evidently not be staved off much longer, or if 
 business were flat while taxation was high, perhaps — 
 it is not certain — the elector might be persuaded to 
 choose less selfish and other representatives, and, even 
 without a change of constitution, such men might find 
 in their convictions the unity of purpose which — 
 whatever the constitution may be — insures order and 
 stability. The sight of mere corruption is not enough 
 to produce this effect; the French have seen the Gr6vy 
 and Wilson affair, the Panama affair, the Dreyfus con- 
 fusion, even the recklessness of the Combes administra- 
 tion with its scandalous disregard of common honesty 
 as well as its indifference to national security; and all 
 
350 The Political Problems 
 
 this has not been enough, because the cause of the evil 
 once removed — Grevy resigning or Combes being re- 
 moved from office by M. Clemenceau — the country 
 finds itself in the presence of a Protean power — ^which is 
 after all, its very image — ^and immediately becomes 
 helpless. The dispersed consciousness of twelve mil- 
 lions of electors cannot be expected to be more active 
 than the consciousness of six hundred deputies. 
 
 If then, the danger of a war can be put off either by 
 Germany expanding in directions where she will have 
 few chances of encountering France, or by the Socialist 
 influence in the Chamber averting causes of friction 
 at the cost of national dignity; if, as the past makes it 
 probable, taxation can be raised much higher than it is 
 and the public debt may be expected to rise in the same 
 proportion as it has done since 1875; if, as is also prob- 
 able, the commercial expansion of Germany and Amer- 
 ica does not cramp for a long time the opportunities 
 of French trade, the country may continue to live for 
 years more in its indifference to politics. Of course 
 France will suffer; her influence abroad cannot but go 
 on rapidly dwindling, ruinous treaties may deprive her 
 of colony after colony, her Exchequer may appear more 
 and more as a formidable wager laid by Levity against 
 Probability, but the crash, as it is called, may not 
 come for years and years, say until Italy is strong 
 enough to do what Germany would not have done. 
 
 This is the answer which many people give to those 
 who will see no alternative between a change and a 
 crash. 
 
 Theoretically this answer cannot be refuted; if the 
 past foreshadows the future it may be the lot of the 
 present generation to witness no change and yet see no 
 crash either. But the formula "A change or a crash*' 
 
A Change of Regime 351 
 
 has too much of the epigram or even the jingle of words 
 in its sound to serve as a basis for a serious discussion. 
 The true question is: Are there any indications of a 
 change? And if a change really takes place, what is it 
 likely to be? So worded it brings us from the realm of 
 possibilities to that of probabilities, and we immediately 
 see various facts which hardly anybody is inclined to 
 question, and upon which we can build solidly. 
 
 Let us recapitulate these facts. 
 
 The first and not the least important is the existence 
 in the national atmosphere of a longing, a sort of 
 Messianic expectation of a better state of affairs than 
 the present one. It may be only the proof that the 
 French are not yet ripe for the intelligent use of what 
 they call their liberty. The yearning after some in- 
 definite rescuer belongs to undeveloped natures and 
 negatives all that self-reliance and all that independence 
 of judgment which are supposed to be the moral accom- 
 paniment in the individual of the democratic progress 
 in a community. Certainly if the French elector, in- 
 stead of being content with giving his vote once every 
 four years, on no particular issue but exclusively on one 
 particular person about whom he is generally full of 
 doubts, were better aware of what he really wants, and 
 understood how he can get it by the judicious use of the 
 right of association, he would trust himself and nobody 
 else, or if he looked for a man it would be a servant, or 
 at best a champion, not a protector. However it may 
 be, the fact is that France wants a new order of things, 
 and is more or less conscious that her present woes are 
 the product of her bad constitution. 
 
 Some people will have it that it is an exaggeration to 
 say that France wants a Rescuer, that is to say, ulti- 
 mately a Master; she only feels the want of an author- 
 
352 The Political Problems 
 
 ity and looks for it everywhere without confusing it with 
 the personal influence of an individual. It may be so, 
 but practically the two nuances are almost indiscernible. 
 Throughout her history France has shown a taste for 
 strong men, and the moment she felt that the Republi- 
 can constitution which has fallen to her lot was an- 
 tagonistic to powerful individuals, but favoured the 
 tyranny of a kind of nondescript oligarchy, this taste 
 reappeared. The popularity of Boulanger in 1886, of 
 Rouvier and Clemenceau — unpopular as they had been 
 — in the years following the Tangier incident, of M. 
 Poincare in 1912, are well-known instances of this 
 propensity. 
 
 In spite of long years of anti-militarism, the French 
 have never lost their partiality for the brilliant 
 soldier. After Boulanger it was Marchand, after 
 Marchand, Gallieni, and since then D'Amade and Ly- 
 autey. The tendency is to regard a successful general, 
 not merely as a brave and able technician, but as a 
 rarely gifted man who, after conquering a country, 
 finds no difficulty in organizing and administrating it, 
 and does so through simple methods of his own which 
 the plodding intelligence of the civilian will never dis- 
 cover. The tradition of Bonaparte is still alive, and the 
 majority of Frenchmen have known soldiers who came 
 back from Algeria full of admiration for the genius of 
 Bugeaud and Lamorici^re. 
 
 This longing for energy, coupled with the admiration 
 for order, which has become part once more of the 
 national temperament after being long banished from it, 
 shows even a more unexpected effect; it has gradually 
 produced a sort of tacit reconciliation of the more cul- 
 tivated Frenchman with the Monarchist idea. It is re- 
 markable that under Louis Philippe, and especially imder 
 
A Change of Regime 353 
 
 Napoleon the Third, the Republican idea was mostly 
 upheld by the bourgeoisie; the lower classes were quite 
 sufficiently loyal to the "citizen-king," and enthusiasti- 
 cally devoted to the nephew of the great Emperor. 
 To-day the situation is reversed; after years of aliena- 
 tion — caused mostly by the recollections of 18 14 and 
 the mistakes of Louis XVIII and Charles X — the 
 bourgeoisie J apart from professional politicians, have 
 become estranged from the Republic and have assumed 
 towards the possibility of a restoration a neutral atti- 
 tude which is easily changed into sympathy. Sym- 
 pathy would probably be more frequent if the leaders 
 of the Action Frangaise were less violent under pretence 
 of being energetic, and above all less noisy under pre- 
 tence of being violent; if their polemics were not 
 constantly personal, and if purely journalistic denuncia- 
 tions — often built on frail foundations — did not 
 occasionally give them the appearance of being in that 
 crude stage of party spirit in which determination is 
 so resolute as to disregard good faith. 
 
 As it is, they possess a magnetism for many young 
 men, and have diffused a number of arguments in 
 favour of traditionalism, which, presented by soberer ex- 
 ponents than themselves, slowly penetrate into milieus 
 which the Action Frangaise itself does not reach or 
 would immediately repel. 
 
 This is not the only cause of a modification of the 
 bourgeoisie towards the Monarchist tradition. In fact 
 there are many others. To begin with, the youthful 
 sympathies with the Republic of fifty years ago have 
 become aged and wrinkled, while the old grievances 
 against the Monarchy were sinking more and more into 
 the past. Then the criticisms against the insufficiency 
 of the Republican constitution daily read in newspapers 
 33 
 
354 The Political Problems 
 
 of every opinion have produced a simultaneous — though 
 sometimes unconscious — attention to the advantages 
 of stronger constitutions. The French mind has risen 
 from the vagueness of sympathies and antipathies in 
 which shibboleths and formulae kept it so long to a more 
 lucid examination of the pros and cons and to conclu- 
 sions deserving to be called doctrines. At the same 
 time the remnants of Romanticist phraseology, which 
 described a Monarch in the words of Michelet or Victor 
 Hugo as a "tyrant on horseback," were rapidly be- 
 coming ridiculous, while the taste of Verlaine for the 
 courtly atmosphere of the eighteenth century appeared 
 to be shared by many people open to the charm of old 
 France. Artists are full of it; numberless writers can- 
 not dissociate it from the style they prefer; you notice 
 it not only in traditional Englishmen but even in demo- 
 cratic Americans, with whom it is part of culture and a 
 yearning of the imagination. In short, another atmos- 
 phere has been created in which historic considerations 
 seem totally different from what they were fifty years 
 ago. For a long time there existed deep in the French 
 consciousness an antipathy against the idle aristocracy 
 supposed to be the natural environment of a Monarchy. 
 The self-effacement of the titled classes along with the 
 evident effort of some of their representatives to make 
 the most of changed circumstances and be as loyal as 
 they could to modern principles has dispelled this in 
 part. At the same time the criticisms of industrial 
 conditions repeated in a thousand forms by the Socialist 
 writers brought it home to the workers that the modern 
 feudal lord is the manufacturer, and the real duke the 
 financier. The last inherited prejudices are rapidly 
 disappearing before this realization of concrete facts. 
 Perhaps the best chance of the Monarchy lies in the 
 
A Change of Regime 355 
 
 observations and comparisons which the taste for travel- 
 ling now common to all social classes inevitably pro- 
 duces. For many years the French had a bookish habit 
 of attacking or defending the monarchical institutions 
 exclusively from historic considerations. The writers 
 on the Action Franqaise have preserved it, and it is a 
 mistake on their part, for the evocation of long-dis- 
 appeared conditions does not help in making up one's 
 mind about questions of the vital present. Living 
 comparisons between the prosperity and the policies 
 of the countries we visit and those of our own country 
 are far more illuminating. This accounts for a con- 
 siderable mental change with respect to the monarchical 
 institutions in people who have frequently been abroad. 
 Their first feeling, when they have grown up in an 
 exaggeratedly Republican milieu, is some surprise at 
 finding no striking difference between the liberty they 
 enjoy at home, and that which they find beyond the 
 frontier. They never feel the unpleasant vicinity of 
 tyranny, and if they happen to see — in Belgium, for 
 instance, or in Scandinavia, or even in Germany — a 
 more frequent and more conscious use of the right of 
 association than they had expected, the truth is sud- 
 denly brought home to them that liberty is only a word 
 or at best, an aspiration, while liberties are positive 
 rights daily exercised and valued in consequence. From 
 that surprise they pass easily to a fair examination of 
 the connection between what they see and its political 
 causes; if their minds are lazy and sceptical, they be- 
 come confirmed in the indifference towards the form of 
 government which is so frequent in France at the pres- 
 ent day; if they are intellectually more virile, it is not 
 rare to see them arrive at definite conclusions, and 
 declare that even faulty monarchical constitutions 
 
356 The Political Problems 
 
 appear far superior in their effects to a poor system 
 of laws decorated with the name of constitution. 
 
 This is generally more of a speculative or at best 
 expectant attitude than a conviction ready to engender 
 propagandism, and many of those uncertain converts 
 would be as ready to welcome a Napoleon as a prince of 
 Orleans, but they would gladly see the prospect of a 
 change, and they look forward to it. If you will con- 
 sider that this more or less definite aspiration, after a 
 better regime, is increased by the universal longing for 
 a strong man, you will not be surprised at a statement 
 which the least familiarity with the background makes 
 almost evident, and which can be put in the simplest 
 terms, viz., a coup d'etat by a moderately sympathetic 
 person not only would meet with no indignation, but 
 would hardly cause any surprise. Vaguely, I admit, 
 but so powerfully, the yearning after strength, author- 
 ity, and order has taken hold of the best French, 
 especially in Paris, that a coup de force must be a 
 habitual if semi-conscious thought with them. 
 
 Leaving aside for the present the possible actors in 
 such a drama, let us content ourselves with trying to 
 imagine the conditions in which it would take place, 
 and the feelings with which it would be received in 
 Paris. Who are the people against whom this violent 
 operation would be conducted? Ask anybody living 
 in France; his embarrassment will show you at once 
 that the tyrant one would have to get rid of, is not very 
 formidable. It is not the President, it is not exactly 
 the Ministers, though some might be objectionable, it 
 is not exactly the Chamber, though it often appears as 
 a syndicate of dangerous babblers, and though the 
 Constitution works its worst effects through it. It is 
 rather the Senate, because the Senate has negatived a 
 
A Change of Regime 357 
 
 good impulse of the other Assembly on at least one 
 important reform — the Reform of the Suffrage — ^and 
 because it is the stronghold of the Radicals, who once 
 preferred M. Pams to M. Poincare. But who is likely 
 to show fight in the Upper Assembly? Who are the 
 influential or resolute persons whom it would be 
 dangerous to let at large on the morrow of a coup d'Stat, 
 because they might summon together the bravest in the 
 two Houses and try to form a centre of resistance 
 somewhere? The list is so short that it appears ridicu- 
 lous. Yes, if the resolute man, or group of men whom 
 we suppose, were to lay hold of a dozen individuals 
 in the Chamber and Senate, among whom M. Clemen- 
 ceau, M. Jaures, and M. Caillaux would probably be 
 the most conspicuous — and of three or four newspaper 
 editors — perhaps only one or two — and if the Parlia- 
 mentary session were suspended for a brief period, the 
 whole affair would appear so natural as to be little more 
 than an exciting f ait-divers. There might be an uncom- 
 fortable feeling in the public if the newspapers did not 
 appear in the morning, but this would be a mistake 
 which no intelligent men would make, and with papers 
 to give them the particulars of the operation, the 
 Parisians would be so pleased that long before noon 
 they would be enthusiastic. Some people will imagine 
 that the Bourse du Travail might become the centre of 
 resistance I mentioned above; but that is an imagina- 
 tion. The Bourse du Travail is not so formidable as 
 it used to be ; M. Barthou had it searched by the police 
 in the last months of 1913, and several of its chiefs were 
 imprisoned without much protest; as to the supposed 
 interest which these syndicates might take in the 
 Socialist Deputies, it would never be transmuted into 
 heroism, and of this the Socialist Deputies themselves 
 
35^ The Political Problems 
 
 entertain little doubt. I firmly believe that a fortnight 
 after the coup d'etat, the few persons whose liberty 
 might have been temporarily suppressed, could without 
 any danger be released. The more one thinks over 
 these possibilities the more one sees that the rampart 
 between a dictator and his success is neither public 
 opinion, nor any strongly organized and sufficiently 
 popular party, but a Senate and Chamber so divided 
 and weak, so impregnated themselves with the belief 
 in a change, that resistance on their part would practi- 
 cally be impossible. To sum up in one brief formula, 
 both the tyrants of France and her possible liberator 
 are anonymous, but the tyrant is a cardboard giant 
 who has long ceased to be a scarecrow, while the 
 liberator is a living hope. 
 
 The conclusion of this analysis of public opinion 
 seems naturally to be: a coup d'etat or a coup de force 
 cannot be long delayed. This is indeed according to the 
 logic of emotions, and shows how powerful the con- 
 tagion of a widely-spread belief invariably is; but the 
 advisability of doing a thing or the extreme facility for 
 doing it is only one element in the psychology of those 
 who ought to do it, and leaves unaffected the probability 
 or improbability of their accomplishing it. The fact is 
 that the few men who might be inclined to make a 
 coup detat in France are not likely to attempt it, 
 and as to the multitude which expects this from 
 them, it is in that state of expectation which is 
 productive of effects sometimes amazing, but is 
 seldom rewarded by seeing the fulfilmenc of its hopes. 
 There are at the present moment two of those pow- 
 erful visions acting magnetically upon French people; 
 the ** Grand Soir'* with the Syndicalists, and the Re- 
 storation with the Monarchists, and, although the latter 
 
A Change of Regime 359 
 
 has immeasurably better chances than the former, it 
 will probably be a cause of disappointment. 
 
 A coup d'etat in the stage of civilization we have 
 reached, with the organization of the police, the 
 facilities for rapid information and for rapid communi- 
 cations, is impossible without an immediate preparation 
 which makes it in the end a matter of course. Now, 
 the Duke of Orleans has indeed a certain number of 
 passionately loyal adherents, and it is a fact that a 
 great many other people are, with regard to his possible 
 advent, in a state of friendly neutrality which success 
 would rapidly change into declared sympathies; but 
 his really effective friends are too well known to the 
 police, they are too far from the magic telephone re- 
 ceivers, without which it is useless to think of rousing 
 Paris, to dream of any serious attempt, and it is prob- 
 able that the hand-book in which two of them have 
 described how the coup de force ought to be carried 
 out will remain their nearest approach to action.' 
 They will gradually subside into the delusion I men- 
 tioned above, in which people are sure of an event 
 coming to pass because it ought to take place, and con- 
 fuse possibility with probability. This mental disposi- 
 tion helps men to wait for years without dying of 
 impatience, and moreover it is no inconsiderable factor 
 in the formation of opinion. 
 
 Prince Victor Napoleon stands much better chances. 
 It is true that his poHtical doctrine is inferior in con- 
 sistency and cogency to that of the other Pretender — 
 the plebiscite or referendum on which it is built is a 
 terrible element of weakness in a constitution — but in a 
 time when the universal desire tends towards a man, 
 the doctrine itself matters little; controversy over it 
 
 ' Le Coup de Force, est il possible? by C. Maurras and Dutrait Crozon. 
 
360 The Political Problems 
 
 would only begin long after its representative had been 
 at the head of affairs. Now, Prince Napoleon enjoys 
 the advantage of the immense popularity which litera- 
 ture and art have gained and will long maintain, if not 
 for himself at least for his name; the criticisms of the 
 mistakes made by Napoleon the Third, which I pointed 
 out in the first part of this book, are hardly known 
 outside a small circle of specialists, and those mistakes 
 were the errors of an individual rather than of a regime; 
 above all, his personal situation is superior to that of his 
 rival. A happier marriage, with children and an im- 
 mense fortune, is no mean asset, but this is only one 
 detail. The chief superiority of Prince Victor lies in 
 the fact that while the Duke of Orleans has no friends 
 in active political circles, his rival is in touch with 
 influential men very near the centre of affairs, and with 
 financiers who may be even more influential. The 
 facility with which a Radical can become an Imperialist, 
 and vice versa, is an historical law which is not likely 
 to be contradicted in the near future. Against these 
 apparently overwhelming chances is the improbability 
 of three Bonapartes forcibly securing power in little 
 more than a century, the comparatively advanced age 
 of Prince Victor, and the passivity which his frequent 
 allusions to the plebiscitarian doctrine almost inevitably 
 engender. One may safely prophesy that if a movement 
 of public opinion should call Prince Victor back from 
 his exile, he would promptly be in a position to make 
 the coup d'etat, but it is because in that case the coup 
 d'etat would be merely a sort of formality. 
 
 The only person who could do with the greatest ease 
 what the others could do only with tremendous dif- 
 ficulty is President Poincare. Even after missing 
 several opportunities (especially at the time of the fall 
 
A Change of Regime 361 
 
 of M. Barthou) any bold initiative on his part would be 
 welcome — a message to the Chamber in the manly tone 
 of that of President Woodrow Wilson on the Panama 
 Canal would produce as much impression as a dissolu- 
 tion. As to the energetic operation which I described 
 above, with the suspension of the Parliamentary session 
 for a brief period, and the imprisonment of a dozen 
 people, anybody with eyes to see must realize that it 
 could be done with the concurrence of just three people : 
 the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of War, and 
 the Prefect of Police ; and it is not difficult to name the 
 men who ought to hold these posts to make the opera- 
 tion wonderfully easy, in the general inertness of the 
 lookers-on and the perfect isolation of the Radicals and 
 Socialists who alone might wish to oppose it. 
 
 But the President will not do this. He has settled 
 down too rapidly into the perfect constitutional atti- 
 tude, ^ and perhaps his political training has made him 
 more like his own enemies than the atmosphere in which 
 he was elected allows us, the public, to realize. 
 
 Yet the possibility of a Republican coup d'etat with 
 the establishment of some regime recalling the Directory 
 still remains. M. Poincare would be in this combina- 
 tion, naturally, but not as the principal actor, and the 
 plot being little more than a lobby intrigue would not 
 appear formidable to the protagonists. Perhaps, the 
 responsibility being shared among several, and the risks 
 appearing inconsiderable, an opportunity will be enough 
 to nerve the possible directors to decision. Whatever 
 might be the results — probably ephemeral, but in the 
 right direction — of their action, the resistance they would 
 meet would come only from rival ambitions, and the 
 country would witness the change with perfect serenity. 
 
 » Vide his address at Lyons on May 24, 191 4. 
 
362 The Political Problems 
 
 What I have said so far sounds rather paradoxical; 
 circumstances are such that they invite the resolute 
 interference of a strong man, but the conditions in 
 which the likeliest persons find themselves seem to 
 preclude any probability of their making up their 
 minds to interfere; a coup d'etat never appeared more 
 advisable, but what is the good or even the interest if 
 everything indicates that it will not take place? 
 
 I disclaimed from the first any intention of doing 
 more than to point out definite symptoms in the public 
 mind, or in its chief representatives, and draw there- 
 from the most cautious inferences. Now the fact sub- 
 sists that in spite of everything discouraging the hope 
 that a strong man will appear to redress glaring de- 
 ficiencies, the hope of seeing order restored in France 
 through a strengthened authority does not perish. 
 Such a feeling, conscious as it appears in numberless 
 articles, and in that highly enlightening volume, Faites 
 un Roiy Sinon Faites la paiXj by the Socialist Sembat, is 
 eminently one of those motive ideas which Fouillee 
 called idees-forces. An aspiration of this intensity 
 directed towards a Restoration would inevitably bring 
 the King back, if circumstances were more favourable ; 
 directed towards the return to authority, when the 
 opposition to it is merely the selfishness and jejune talk 
 of a few himdred politicians, it must produce some 
 effect. 
 
 What the effect would be might remain doubtful if 
 it were indefinite in the minds of those who work for its 
 realization. But this is not the case. By dint of feeling 
 and deploring deficiencies, the remedies have gradually 
 been found, and for the last five or six years they have 
 been made the basis of an extensive political agitation. 
 M. Charles Benoist, one of the best-known popularizers 
 
A Change of Regime 363 
 
 of political science in France, circulated these general 
 ideas through the whole country during the election of 
 1914, but they had long been common property, and 
 they are a familiar topic in far-away village inns. What 
 M. Sembat calls the "top-gap" — le trou par en haul — 
 would be sufficiently filled in if the President of the 
 Republic, instead of being a "hat and not a head," 
 should be given at least the authority and range of 
 action of a Prime Minister — in fact, if he became the 
 daily heard leader that Thiers was in the early years 
 of the Republic ; if the Cabinet Ministers were chosen 
 outside Parliament, or if at any rate they had to give 
 up their Parliamentary position, as in England, before 
 taking office; if Proportional Representation were sub- 
 stituted for the present electioneering system; and if 
 some sort of decentralization could counteract the enor- 
 mous bureaucratic congestion bequeathed to France by 
 Napoleon the First. That these simple reforms would 
 immediately transform the political outlook is univer- 
 sally realized, even by the handful who would be losers 
 in it; and, if they were actually brought about, the 
 sensation that an authority at last existed in France 
 would at once be felt. 
 
 Now the consciousness that between this relief and 
 its easy means there is only the weakness of the Cham- 
 ber, has grown to a degree in which it appears im- 
 possible that the Chamber, blind and lame as its origins 
 make it, should not realize it as well, and the Revision 
 of the Constitution seems inevitable. 
 
 How this will be done is a minor detail. Perhaps the 
 Proportional Representation Bill will be passed first, 
 and, its moralizing influence being certain, it may 
 gradually drag the rest in its train. Perhaps things will 
 happen very differently. It is not impossible — nay, it 
 
364 The Political Problems 
 
 is much more in keeping with the French aptitude for 
 sudden impulses and wide-reaching efforts after long 
 periods of indolence — that they should suddenly make 
 up their minds to rebuild the whole Constitution and 
 revise it in every detail. The national inclination for 
 vast systems would give itself free play in the effort, 
 and nobody will doubt that the same genius which in a 
 few years' time produced the Code Civil, would in a few 
 months produce a tolerable system of constitutional 
 laws. A new Assemblee Constituante with the memo- 
 ries of the errors of the first as a lesson, and the for- 
 midable teaching of contemporary European politics 
 to enlighten it, might find in wisdom the same pleasure 
 that the Utopians of 1848 took in generosity. We have 
 every reason to mistrust assemblies, but there are 
 motives at the present day for thinking that an assem- 
 bly could not but be influenced by the great wave of 
 practical good sense beating outside it. 
 
 Who knows? It is not impossible that such a Con- 
 stituante might resume the work of the first at the 
 precise point where it diverged from the tradition of 
 France, and instead of a Democracy — improved it is 
 true, but still bearing in itself the elements of instability 
 inherent in democracies — should give us a stronger 
 constitution. It may look Hke a dream, but the first 
 Napoleon was an impossible dream in 1798, and the 
 second was hardly less of one even in 1848. 
 
 Yet, let us not be carried away too far by the logic 
 of events. The only certainty that seems to deserve 
 this name is the certainty of a strengthening of au- 
 thority. The mode of this strengthening will be de- 
 termined by circumstances, as its time may be put 
 back by the hope of peace or advanced by inter- 
 national difficulties, but everything points to the 
 
The Democratic Progress 365 
 
 disappearance of the legal anarchy known as the 
 Constitution of 1875. 
 
 3. Inevitability of the Democratic Progress 
 
 Ought we to look further than the immediate proba- 
 bilities and ask ourselves what the tantalizing future 
 may be? Why not? The anticipation of things to come 
 appears frequently to be as illuminating as the lesson 
 of history itself. 
 
 Now, if it seems certain that the gradual return of 
 France to her traditional habits of mind, along with the 
 political necessities she has to face, must sooner or later 
 bring her back to a regime in which the multitude will 
 no longer be ruler, it seems no less certain that the rise 
 of the lower classes cannot and will not be impeded. 
 The word Democracy means two very different things: 
 it means, first of all, the absurdity which place's sov- i 
 ereignty in nimibers and entrusts the responsibility of / 
 the common welfare to those who are the least able to i 
 bear it, but it means also the extension of better ma- 1 
 terial conditions and of a higher intellectual and moral 
 culture to those who so far have not had the benefit of 
 them. 
 
 Now the history of the nineteenth century in Europe 
 and America leaves no doubt that what interests 
 modem minds the most in the development of nations 
 is this kind of democracy. When we look back upon 
 the history of France or England — ^in which merely 
 political elements have played less part than in the , 
 history of Germany or Italy — we are immediately f 
 conscious that, compared with it, all the rest — evolu- 
 tion of parties, succession of governments, etc. — shrinks 
 into insignificance. Such a test cannot deceive us. 
 
366 The Political Problems 
 
 It is a fact that the millions, which before the ex- 
 pansion of industrialism and the enormous enlargement 
 of armies were practically part of the soil, and hardly 
 distinguished from the agricultural map of countries, 
 have acquired, owing to this double organization, a 
 consciousness of the part they play which makes them 
 completely new factors in the history of nations. To- 
 day, the most obscure workman in an out-of-the-way 
 factory knows that some of his country's security and 
 some of its productivity rests upon him, and the exer- 
 cise he is taught to make of the right of association 
 magnifies a hundredfold for him the consciousness he 
 may have of his importance. The political organiza- 
 tion of the various countries in which this element is 
 found has little to say to it. It is the same in England 
 in spite of long traditions, in Belgium in spite of un- 
 heard-of prosperity, in Germany in spite of the iron 
 rod, in Japan in spite of recent victory and intoxicating 
 rise, and in the United States itself in spite of the 
 delusive optimism in which its workers live. The 
 governments may be strong or weak, they may object 
 to this movement or endeavour to guide it, the move- 
 ment is there all the same and will not be ignored. 
 
 It is a pity that the theorist of the best-known system 
 of a political Restoration in France, M. Maurras, should 
 have given a purely literary solution to a problem which 
 he could not leave out, but which evidently he disliked 
 considering in its concrete significance. This may be 
 partly the cause of some of the antipathy which yet 
 subsists in many milieus against the Monarchy, al- 
 though no essential antagonism can be pointed out 
 between such a form of government and the democratic 
 development. 
 
 M. Maurras is not only a Monarchist, but a resolute 
 
The Democratic Progress 367 
 
 oligarchist, and the consequence of this last tendency 
 is the return to nothing less than a caste organization. 
 I have already given the main line of what is Integral 
 Nationalism, and a brief criticism of its exaggeration 
 will be sufficient here. 
 
 M. Maurras and his friends are almost all converted 
 sceptics whose conversion has been brought about by 
 the sight of the decadence of their country, and who 
 have rebuilt their creed upon patriotism. They have 
 seen that the most frequent consequence of a metaphy- 
 sical culture is the superb indifference of Renan in his 
 early period to patriotic contingencies, and their soul 
 rebels against it. The true basis on which a man ought 
 to seat his life is the sacred soil of his country, and 
 whatsoever will not agree with patriotism must be 
 regarded as immediately false. Now it appears clearly 
 that Democratism and all the sentimental progress 
 dreamed of since the Revolution are dangerous, be- 
 cause they are the offspring of emotion and imagination 
 instead of reason, and invariably stand in the way of a 
 nation's greatness. Therefore let them be discarded, 
 and let something more substantial be substituted for 
 them. What this something should be is not difficult to 
 find out. Experience proves that the strongest society 
 which history has known so far is the Catholic Church. 
 Let us then copy its constitution. But some people 
 who — like M. Maurras himself, and in his own words — 
 ''feel uncomfortable so long as the notion of a Deity is 
 forced upon them," will object to a civil ideal being 
 derived from a religious society ; what can be suggested 
 to them? Here again the answer is easy: The Catholic 
 Church has had a model in the Roman Empire, and 
 whoever meditates on the organization of the Roman 
 Empire will see that real civic stability lay there be- 
 
368 , The Political Problems 
 
 cause the reason of the best few imposed its will upon 
 the va^ries of the many. 
 
 Here M. Maurras appears in perfect agreement with 
 Renan in La Reforme Intellectuelle de la France; in the 
 works of both men we see the necessity of a special class 
 to think for the rest and govern them according to 
 reason. 
 
 But the question cannot be entirely left out : What is 
 the rdle of the lower classes, and what share in the 
 patriotic development will be given to them? It would 
 be difficult for a modern man, no matter how remote 
 from Christianity, to be satisfied with the pagan views 
 about the poor, and difficult above all to state them 
 openly. The theorists of Nationalism have cast about 
 for a solution and found one, for which, however, they 
 have to thank M. Barres more than their own ingenuity. 
 The lower classes are not capable of thought, but they 
 are capable of emotion, and if their children are brought 
 up in the best traditions of the nation, if their artisans 
 are also kept within the tradition of their trade, their 
 emotions will be in the right direction, and may serve 
 as a sentimental reserve in which the intellect of their 
 betters will have its roots. In that way there will be 
 unity and harmony, order and a hierarchy. 
 
 I said above that this solution was merely literary. 
 In fact, it only looks well on paper but will not stand a 
 practical investigation, as is the case with most of the 
 theories of the same school. These philosophers detest 
 sentimental dreams, but they enjoy intellectual air- 
 castles. If the whole world were moving towards the 
 ideal they propose, it might be possible, by dint of 
 eloquence and persuasion, to give satisfaction to the 
 working classes with the noble though modest r61e 
 assigned to them. But exceptions would be dangerous, 
 
The Democratic Progress 369 
 
 and the germs of rebellion would inevitably come from 
 them even into the best-guarded monarchies. Now, 
 far from there being a move towards a separation of 
 classes and a return to castes, it is too evident that we 
 see the reverse. In spite of the daily effort made by M. 
 Maurras to convince us that, in Germany for instance, 
 the public spirit as well as uncompromising govern- 
 ments never let the Socialist theories interfere with the 
 practical welfare of the country, it is certain that 
 there, as elsewhere, the millions all tend towards an 
 economical independence which will raise them above 
 their present station. This in itself has nothing in com- 
 mon with Socialism or even Democratism. A man is no 
 Socialist because he wants to be better off. Yet in the 
 long run the economic evolution of the lower classes 
 must result in political changes. With independence 
 culture also will come, and with this the consciousness 
 of the new right to have a word to say in one's country's 
 affairs. Underneath the universal straining of the lower 
 classes after better material circumstances lies their 
 longing to be something more than a sentimental 
 reserve. 
 
 It is needless to say that if the dogma of Christian 
 fraternity is not, on any account, to be made convertible 
 into the chimera of equality, and cannot therefore be 
 regarded as synonymous with any levelling notion, it is, 
 on the contrary, easily reconcilable with the idea of a 
 moral and intellectual bettering which the classes at 
 present termed higher ought to promote in every possi- 
 ble way; the two great forces at work in the world, 
 faith and material progress, meet at this point. 
 
 As a conclusion, it seems difficult to resist the prob- 
 ability that the rise of the working-classes will go on in 
 spite of the dangers caused by some of its revolutionary 
 
370 The Political Problems 
 
 aspects. And it is possible that some day civilizations 
 may exist on this globe in which the idea of social 
 inequalities will be practically done away with, but 
 which may not have lost the territorial feeling. Such 
 communities might be as hostile to one another as 
 Sparta was to Athens. But this is not an immediate 
 probability. Present symptoms, on the contrary, point 
 to a victory of the class conception over the old terri- 
 torial idea; and if, as may be expected, the gradual 
 progress of Syndicalism eliminates finance with its 
 greed and militarism with its violence from the 
 dangerous points at which wars have been so far pro- 
 duced, long periods of peace can easily be imagined. 
 
 The consequence is plain. If this should be the case, 
 the globe would witness a universal establishment of 
 what in default of another word we may call humanita- 
 rian principles, and with their extension the old form 
 of patriotism associated with territories and frontiers 
 would become more and more philosophical, milder 
 and more poetic, imtil it would appear to have been 
 in its present notion crude and uncivilized. 
 
 4. A Moral Solution to the Political Problem 
 
 If patriotism, as we at present conceive it, is thus 
 doomed to disappear in the contempt of the wise, is it 
 very necessary that we should trouble ourselves so 
 much about its immediate destinies, and that in order 
 to save a sort of intellectual category we should steel 
 ourselves against our neighbours, look upon their 
 progress as our ruin, and go back to barbarism when 
 everything about us is becoming gentler? 
 
 This is the objection that will often present itself 
 to the modem mind morbidly anxious over its every 
 
A Moral Solution 371 
 
 thought and impulse, everlastingly fearful of wasting 
 any chance of immediate advantage, and trying in 
 everything to see the consequence of all its actions into 
 eternity. Many a good man has been enervated by this 
 kind of philosophy, the first effect of which is to throw 
 all that we think and do out of the human scale by 
 isolating it in the solitude of ages to come. 
 
 We have reasons to fear that people open to this kind 
 of reasoning would not reject another line of argument 
 which, however, is a great deal more shocking. If the 
 idea of possible peace between our nation and its 
 neighbours in the far-away future is enough to annihi- 
 late the energy of these long-sighted men, the certitude 
 of changes to take place much sooner ought unfortu- 
 nately to be enough to produce the same effect. The 
 vision of universal peace is not a discovery of modem 
 philosophers, and since it has been in the dreams of 
 poets, many nations have risen, been transformed, and 
 finally have melted away like snow into the earth. Why 
 should we take such pains over the preservation of 
 accidents without a substance? It is a folly to give 
 much attention to mere geographical outlines or even to 
 racial characteristics which slowly but inevitably wear 
 away. The map of France has been as changing as if it 
 were designed on water. In the last hundred years or so 
 the artificial importance attached by the Romanticists 
 to languages and to racial bonds has seemed to confer 
 more solidity on wide family groupings, but even this is 
 a delusion as much as a novelty. The Middle Ages 
 thought no more of languages than of frontiers, and if 
 there were abuses in those times they certainly were 
 not caused by this indifference to geography. In spite 
 of all that we may do, one millennium or two will make 
 the French language as different from itself as it is at 
 
372 The Political Problems 
 
 present from Latin, and the inhabitants of the Seine 
 and Loire valleys will be as uncertain of their French 
 descent as we are to-day of our Prankish or Gaul 
 origins. Why not be resigned to that which is not only 
 inevitable in the future, but is in the making at the 
 very moment we speak? 
 
 It is needless to enter into a controversy on these 
 subjects. Universal peace will be doubtful so long as 
 there are men with wants and passions and a desire to 
 get as much as possible by giving as little as they can, 
 but the mutability of geographical contingencies is a 
 fact and all that is said about it is irrefutable. But 
 something else is irrefutable because it can be deduced 
 from the same premises, that is the vital distinction 
 between the intellectual and the emotional order, and 
 the superiority of the former as a factor of true 
 happiness in man's life. 
 
 Political events mean nothing in themselves; com- 
 mercial agreements after long diplomatic controversies, 
 remodellings of frontiers in an unvisited colony, ex- 
 changes of influence, substitutions of protectorates, etc. 
 — all these have no more significance than mere changes 
 of Government, and many a man has led a good and 
 full life without taking any notice of them. But there 
 are times when everybody feels compelled to give his 
 attention to these apparently indifferent affairs. Then 
 the situation changes at once; we have to adopt an 
 attitude, and according to the side we choose we find 
 that our self-esteem rises or decreases. It is the case 
 whenever our freewill and no longer our intellect is the 
 arbitrator; we are placed before the alternative of 
 acting like men or feeling like cowards, and the con- 
 tingencies which have brought about this alternative 
 soon recede into the background and vanish. 
 
A Moral Solution 373 
 
 So we know nothing about the future except that 
 the ethical Hfe of man in ten thousand years will be 
 subject to the same laws as to-day. The notion of 
 fraternity may have prevailed then in such a manner 
 that civilizations will not only appear more perfect 
 than at present, but may even call forth the best 
 tendencies in every man, yet this is not certain. It may, 
 on the contrary, have degenerated into some sort of 
 Buddhism in which a feminine gentleness would replace 
 more virile virtues, and then where would be the profit? 
 
 Whatever may happen when our short lives have long 
 bubbled out, a problem lies before us about which we 
 have to make up our minds at once. Two tendencies 
 offer themselves to us which it was for years difficult to 
 characterize, and which only the clearer-sighted could 
 define satisfactorily to themselves, but which the flash 
 of lightning of 1905 suddenly made perfectly plain- 
 On one side we see the Socialist philosophy which might 
 have been very different from what it is, but which ^ 
 having gone to Materialism for its metaphysics, paid 
 the penalty of such a mistake by being — ^not in the acts 
 of the workers, but in the speeches of its theorists — low, 
 cynical, and ill-bred — ^in a word, the philosophy of 
 the belly. On the other side is the simple, patriotic 
 feeling, with no philosophy at its back, but a great 
 moral radiance which would not be there imless it had 
 reason on its side. Patriotism does not bother about 
 metaphysical rights and wrongs, it cares nothing for 
 philosophy, and cares only for that much of history 
 which it carries in itself. It does not take the trouble 
 either to scan scientifically the causes of the situation 
 before which it is placed; it hears a great deal that 
 seems probable enough and disgusting enough about 
 the responsibility of bankers and great money-makers 
 
374 The Political Problems 
 
 in wars; it even realizes that the ambition of a Napoleon 
 or that of a Bismarck are not altogether pure, but at no 
 time is this sufficient to damp its energy, and when, as 
 is the case in France at the present moment, every- 
 thing tends to simplify the alternative in which it finds 
 itself, nothing obscures its vision. Its choice is between 
 the lazy or cynical forgetfulness of the events which in 
 1870 detached more than a million Frenchmen from 
 France and forced an unprecedented humiliation upon 
 her, between the not very remote danger of another 
 invasion with its shameful or horrible consequences, 
 and the acceptance of the baptism of blood which the 
 Tangier demonstration made an immediate possibility 
 in 1905 and the Agadir affair transformed into an all- 
 powerful attraction in 191 1. Philosophy, evolution, 
 words of all kinds, fraternity in disguise, the watch- 
 words of parties, the hypocritical ranting of politicians, 
 all this vanishes before the prospect of losing that which 
 Socialism calls vain geographical appearances, but 
 which a man worthy of the name regards as the condi- 
 tion of his most valued life and of his self-esteem. The 
 future will be what it may, but the present is not am- 
 biguous, and if it had been less perspicuous this book 
 could not have been written. After a century of play- 
 ing with ideas and mistaking words for things, the 
 French have turned their forces towards the fields 
 in which men meet men, actions count for speeches, and 
 courage is the highest philosophy; if the nation could 
 have at present the chiefs — let alone useless representa- 
 tives — who would really feel as it does, there would be 
 no doubt left that since 1905 an era has been closed and 
 another has dawned which will see a simplification of 
 men's ideas and a strengthening of their feelings. 
 Indeed, under the patriotic impulse which I have 
 
A Moral Solution 375 
 
 followed in its manifestations, there is more than one 
 reaction. There is not only the weariness of scepticism, 
 the longing after clear principles on which to base one's 
 life even at the cost of the long-valued right to exercise 
 free thought in every domain, but there is also another 
 kind of lassitude. I referred at the beginning of this 
 chapter to one great modern characteristic which is 
 an everlasting consciousness of comfort or discomfort — 
 moral as well as physical — in their minutest percep- 
 tibility, a careful doling out of our efforts, as if all our 
 soul might go out of us by drops, a perpetual anxiety 
 not to be imposed upon or made to do more than our 
 share which spoils married lives themselves as it em- 
 bitters the intercourse between classes, in short a 
 general stinginess in the exercise of our faculties and in 
 the use of our existence. Modern men all seem to be 
 neurotic subjects shut up in their houses but fearing 
 visitors, and in default of something worse to tax their 
 nerves resenting the ringing of a bell and the barking 
 of a dog. This, in the long run, results like everything 
 else in a reaction. That exquisite selfishness sooner or 
 later disgusts, because it is not only ashamed of itself, 
 but self -torturing as well. Comparisons are made be- 
 tween this disquietude — in spite of so much self-seeking 
 — ^and the peace in which men lived when they gave 
 more freely of their own. Hence a yearning after 
 simplicity, and a longing to be detached from one's self 
 which accompanies even the most enthusiastic enco- 
 mium of progress. Hence, no doubt, many of the traits 
 of individual courage which France has witnessed in 
 the past few years. The French have welcomed with 
 gratitude the opportunity which the danger of their 
 country offered to them to know the rare taste of 
 heroism while merely doing their duty. They feel that 
 
376 The Political Problems 
 
 this great chance of breaking away from egotism may 
 restore them to the simpUcity of less sophisticated 
 times and rid them of the sensation of surfeit. 
 
 All this is after all an a posteriori proof that political 
 problems are ultimately reducible to moral problems, 
 as in fact they become the moment they are presented 
 in the concrete to each individual. Let there be in 
 a nation the disposition to self-sacrifice which alone 
 translates outward occurrences into the terms of ethics, 
 and the fluctuations of its history will matter little: 
 success will not weaken nor defeat depress it. 
 
 But the difficulty is to keep up such a disposition 
 after the excitement of a crisis has abated, and through 
 long historical periods. It is here that the possibility of 
 creating an atmosphere, a moral environment from 
 which individuals cannot escape should be considered. 
 Given such an atmosphere, even the weak become 
 strengthened; without it, many naturally strong will 
 waste their energies. But how can we produce this 
 invigorating milieu in which even Socialist institutions, 
 if they should ever be realized, would not be more 
 dangerous for the temperament of mankind than the 
 passage of Europe from feudalism was in the days of the 
 Communist movement? Only one answer seems possi- 
 ble; only one man will always and quite naturally raise 
 all questions to the plane of morals, high above petty 
 interest; this is not the philosopher, it is the believer, 
 or at any rate the philosopher who knows where belief 
 must begin. 
 
 Nothing, except faith, will do for a whole existence, 
 above all for the existence of a nation, what roused 
 patriotism only does at intervals. The energy necessary 
 for the building up of an Empire, nay, of such an 
 apparently trivial affair as the building up of a family 
 
A Moral Solution 377 
 
 of more than one child, will not be given to a whole 
 nation without a religious support. It takes the sim- 
 plicity, the trust, the almost unconscious habit of 
 self-forgetfulness of the Christian to stay on the self- 
 sacrificing level for any length of time. The everiast- 
 ing study of Frenchmen, therefore, ought to be, in 
 peace as well as in troubled times, the perfection of 
 their race and faith as it appeared in such examples as 
 Saint Louis or Jeanne d*Arc. With this admixture of 
 patriotic pride and Christian htimility, of true love and 
 manly dignity, of childlike simplicity and common- 
 sense as clear-sighted as shrewdness itself, history may 
 be remodelled many times, civilization may evolve 
 indefinitely, patriotism may assume numberless forms, 
 but the individual will have no difficulty in reading his 
 duty in historical circumstances. On the whole, politics 
 will always be made subservient to morals, and morality 
 is precarious without its eternal support; the lesson of 
 this book is the recommendation of a plain and virile 
 Christianity. 
 
PART IV 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 379 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 FRANCE AND THE WAR OF I914 
 
 The general import of this volume is plain enough; 
 France has been weakened by her disasters in 1870, but 
 the losses she sustained at that time would have been 
 made good easily, had it not been for the intellectual 
 deterioration which a baneful philosophy and a lawless 
 literature produced. The true weakening of France 
 came from ideas obscuring her reason and enervating 
 her moral powers. However, a country noted for 
 lucidity and logic cannot be a prey to paradoxes for a 
 longer period than that during which their brilliance 
 or their daring aspect deceive as to their essential 
 harmfulness. Let any circumstance reveal them in their 
 true character, and in more or less time the fascination 
 they create will be replaced by disgust. The circum- 
 stance with men of the intellectual capacity of Taine 
 and Renan, and hundreds of kindred intellects, was the 
 war of 1870 and the Commune of 187 1; it completely 
 changed their outlook, and showed to them that in 
 times like our own, during which the thought of the 
 philosopher, tentative as the latter may think it, is apt 
 to become the guiding rule of the millions, it is impera- 
 tive for the thinker to watch carefully the effects of his 
 
382 Conclusion 
 
 speculation and be modest in its expression. This 
 feeling, along with the development of doctrines less 
 narrowly intellectual than those in favour during the 
 greater part of the nineteenth century, has transformed 
 the tone of French literature, and brought it back to a 
 standpoint very similar to its traditional attitude. 
 
 The masses were sure in due time to follow the lead 
 thus given to them, but owing to the slow pace at which 
 ideas travel through passive minds this might have 
 taken long trains of years. The circimistance which 
 awakened the national common-sense, as the literary 
 man's responsibility had been roused beforehand, was 
 the danger of France which appeared after the Tangier 
 affair in 1905 and the Agadir incident in 191 1. From 
 that moment the seeds of wisdom and energy, which 
 had lain dormant while the multitudes believed in the 
 millennium of universal peace and universal prosperity, 
 developed with the rapidity of an unhampered natural 
 growth, to the delight of patriots and the disappoint- 
 ments of the enemies of France. It seemed as if, 
 almost suddenly, the body of the French nation were 
 recovering its long lost vigour in the bracing quality of a 
 purer and clearer atmosphere. 
 
 Yet, there was an obstacle in the way of this re- 
 covery. While the country craved order, morality, 
 and discipline as the conditions of self-preservation, a 
 considerable section of its rulers — ^in fact the majority 
 in the Senate and a strong minority in the Chamber — 
 did their best to keep up the lawlessness and the general 
 laxity, thanks to which they have been able during 
 almost forty years to make the most of a constitution 
 unworthy of the name for the promotion of their own 
 selfish interests. 
 
 History will not forget that in 191 3 the Radicals 
 
France and the War of 191 4 383 
 
 were against M. Poincare, whom popular feeling re- 
 garded as the representative of patriotism against 
 abdication to Germany, and that, in the spring of 19 14, 
 on the eve of a war which many signs portended as 
 imminent, they stood for a reduction of the military 
 service from three to two years, a colossal crime unless 
 it was a colossal folly. 
 
 Against the obstacle arising from the presence of 
 these men in office, there was the hope that the pressure 
 of opinion would be sufficient to bring about, slowly or 
 forcibly, through persuasion or through a coup d'etat, a 
 modification of the constitutional laws limiting the 
 powers of the Senate and Chamber, and giving sufficient 
 elbow-room to Government to make its name something 
 better than a mockery and its responsibility a reality 
 rather than a word. 
 
 The greatest portion of this volume has been written 
 in view of this situation. Its tone, which some people 
 will think alternately optimistic and the reverse, does 
 not deserve, I will venture to say, such epithets. Optim- 
 ism is built upon wishes rather than logic, and the 
 hopefulness prevalent through this book is only an as- 
 pect of gratification at tangible realities. The charge of 
 pessimism is hardly better founded ; there is no pessim- 
 ism in the certainty that a country destitute of a 
 better guidance than that of an irresponsible assembly 
 is, in spite of many favourable signs, in a dangerous 
 condition. Yet, I must confess that the apparent 
 success of the Radicals since the fall of M. Barthou 
 and the consequent effacement of President Poincar6 
 were not likely to produce hopefulness, and that many 
 a passage of this book was written in incertitude and 
 anxiety. 
 
 Now we have to find out for ourselves to what 
 
384 Conclusion 
 
 extent the war of 1914 has justified or disproved the 
 main views expounded in the foregoing pages. 
 
 Never was there an easier task. Never was light 
 more generously and evenly spread upon the great 
 issues before which only in July, 19 14, we still stood in 
 uncertainty. It must remain as the experience of all 
 those who lived in France during the eventful days of 
 the mobilization and the first weeks of the war that 
 all that had seemed complicated beforehand instanta- 
 neously became simplified, and as all the elemental 
 feelings of the human soul were finding expression, even 
 on sophisticated lips, with the naturalness of the most 
 ancient literatures, political questions suddenly became 
 clear to the minds even of the peasant and the child. 
 
 The real epilogue to this book was written in the 
 facts themselves during the last days of July and the 
 first days of August, 19 14. One week saw the acquittal 
 of Madame Caillaux and the response to the mobiliza- 
 tion order, and showed beyond a doubt that what is the 
 main certainty running through these four hundred 
 pages, viz., that if France was the victim of politicians 
 her own heart was sound, cannot be shaken now. Four 
 days after the sickening exhibition of sentimental de- 
 cadence in certain Parisian spheres, and of the loss of 
 honour among a certain section of the French magis- 
 tracy, while the smell of decay was still in the air, the 
 bells calling the French nation to arms were heard in 
 every town and village, and in one moment M. Caillaux 
 and his party with its ambitions and corruptions van- 
 ished from view as if they had never existed, and the 
 country, which so far had been only a sort of abstraction 
 perceived through literary phenomena or emotional 
 manifestations, became one great body every motion 
 of which was as perceptible as a familiar gesture. 
 
France and the War of 191 4 385 
 
 And what were the characteristics of this true France 
 rid at last of her political excrescences? Exactly those 
 which hundreds of us had devotedly hoped would be 
 revealed when the crisis came and the symptoms of 
 which we had watched through years of patient atten- 
 tion. The patriotism of the French was as pure as it 
 had been during the Hundred Years' War or the great 
 Revolutionary campaigns, and it was more universal. 
 Every man did his duty and every woman encouraged 
 him to do it with a simplicity which did not suppress 
 joy but subdued enthusiasm; there was no hatred, if 
 there was a degree of indignation, in its manifestations; 
 the self -analysis inevitable with the French even when 
 they are over-excited showed clearly that the war of 
 1 9 14 was not an occasion of revenge and redress, as it 
 might have been, for the wrongs suffered in 1870, but 
 exclusively the contest of civilization with overbearing 
 barbarism; England was regarded in this struggle as 
 the historical representative of justice and kindliness, 
 and the declaration of the Czar announcing the 
 resurrection of Poland, which a few months before 
 would have had the appearance of a passage from 
 an impossible epic, seemed a matter of course. The 
 whole background of the war was intellectual and 
 moral. 
 
 With such an environment it was impossible that 
 the courage of the soldiers and even of the non-com- 
 batants should be much affected by the vicissitudes of 
 the warfare. The present writer saw the French Army 
 retreating from Belgium after the Battle of Charleroi, 
 and he saw Paris on the eve of the probable siege in the 
 last days of August; exhausted and battered as the 
 soldiers were by four days' continuous fighting they 
 were smiling and reassuring, and with the German 
 35 
 
386 Conclusion 
 
 aeroplanes over them, the Parisians, women as well as 
 men, showed extraordinary coolness. 
 
 Another feature of those early weeks of the war was 
 the evident satisfaction which the people took in feeling 
 themselves for the first time, for many years, really 
 governed. The Chamber and Senate had disappeared; 
 the Cabinet had become so intimately united with the 
 military authorities that the War Office seemed to be 
 the only seat of government; meanwhile the communi- 
 cations of the Ministers as well as those of the Generals 
 became so laconic that it required all the self-discipline 
 latent in the national spirit to be satisfied with them, 
 yet there was no sign of impatience, no expression of 
 scepticism, and a questioning attitude on the part of 
 M. Clemenceau was reproved as an attempt at dicta- 
 torialness. 
 
 So in these weeks during which all her vital qualities 
 were one after the other tested, France proved that far 
 from being in decadence, as superficial observers had 
 imagined her, she was capable of self-possession resting 
 on the clearest understanding of a situation, of endur- 
 ing courage, of a slowly gathered capacity for discipline, 
 in short, of all the manly virtues which, since her 
 awakening from dreams and theories, have made her a 
 nation again instead of the home of millions of indi- 
 viduals, each one apparently engaged in the pursuit 
 of his own ideal or pleasure. In this much, then, the 
 war has demonstrated that the transformation de- 
 scribed in this volume is a reality. 
 
 The consequences in the near future are obvious. 
 Even supposing that which at present seems unthink- 
 able, that is to say, an ultimate success of Prussia re- 
 sulting as in 1870 in a territorial diminution and a loss 
 of political influence for France, the national spirit 
 
France and the War of 1 914 387 
 
 which I have described, helped by a strong government, 
 would even under such unfavourable conditions make 
 France a formidable danger for her enemies. In fact, 
 the danger which Bismarck dreaded for years, and 
 which he only ceased to fear when he saw the Constitu- 
 tion of 1875 firmly established and productive of its 
 worst effects, would become everlasting, and the com- 
 bination of such a power with European opinion and 
 the resolve of England and Russia would be sure in due 
 time to restore to France the possessions she might have 
 lost. 
 
 If, as is more probable, the European equilibrium 
 regain its stability, it appears impossible that France 
 should make an unwise use of her renewed influence. 
 There is no trace of imperialism or militarism in her 
 attitude, her patriotism is free from all taint of over- 
 weening pride, her wish for expansion is conditioned 
 by that of her neighbours and will never become an 
 overruling impulse; the days of Napoleon the First 
 with his greed for conquest are as forgotten as those of 
 Napoleon the Third with his taste for idle speculation. 
 
 But whether immediate success or transient failure 
 must be the conclusion of the gigantic struggle which 
 France v/ith her Allies entered in August, 19 14, it 
 remains all-important that the obstacle which through- 
 out this volume has been pointed out as being in the 
 way of her restoration — I mean the danger arising from 
 a bad government or a bad constitution, should be per- 
 manently removed. I have repeated several times in 
 the third part of this volume that the sentimental or 
 emotional impulse of a nation, however irresistible 
 it may appear in its first effects, is essentially ephemeral. 
 In spite of her transformation, if France should happen 
 to be led once more, after the peace is settled, by gov- 
 
388 Conclusion 
 
 ernments intimately connected with a party looking 
 for its success in disorder, lack of continuity, and ulti- 
 mately such inferior tendencies as envy, greed, abhor- 
 rence of effort and corresponding indulgence, what had 
 been gained by years of slow reclamation would 
 promptly be forfeited once more. Peace has always 
 been a more difficult trial for the French than war, and 
 Radicalism is a more dangerous enemy for their na- 
 tional qualities than German miHtarism. 
 
 So the real conclusion of this book must be that what 
 France needs is not a conversion of her mind and soul 
 which is at present an indisputable fact, but a trans- 
 formation of her regulating system. This volume has 
 been written for English readers with a desire under- 
 lying every page that England may see clearly where 
 are the true interests of France, because they are her 
 own interests and after all the interests of mankind as 
 well. Each nation must stand for an ideal for which it 
 is particularly fitted. The ideal of England is to feel 
 kindly and to govern justly ; the ideal of France is to 
 think rightly and to express her thoughts with the 
 brilliance which seems her special gift. But this cannot 
 be done, at any rate cannot be done with the spontane- 
 ousness characteristic of happy periods, under poHtical 
 conditions making deception and intrigue a necessity. 
 France cannot be representative of intellectual truth 
 and of the order which invariably attends truth with a 
 constitution amounting to anarchy. 
 
 The hope and prayer of the present writer, therefore, 
 is that England may see the necessity for France of 
 stronger institutions. This is a favourable time indeed 
 for a remodelling which even before the war seemed the 
 only way open to the universal craving after stability. 
 Wars have always been followed by efforts at improve- 
 
France and the War of 191 4 389 
 
 ment which the light thrown upon every object by the 
 presence of danger renders easy and even instinctive. 
 All that is needed is that what we saw in the days im- 
 mediately preceding the war, that is, a Parliament 
 content with its role and a Government equal to its 
 responsibilities, should become the rule and no longer 
 be the rare exception. England is not expected to 
 assume a part which her national temperament abhors 
 and which nobody can imagine her assuming; there is 
 no question of an impossible interference in the affairs 
 of France ; but it is all-important that the sane opinions 
 concerning the relations of the legislative and the 
 executive powers now prevalent in the French Press 
 should be known, examined, and appreciated in Eng- 
 land. It is not amiss that the passionate attention with 
 which Bismarck, towards 1875, followed the framing by 
 the Assemblee Nationale of constitutional laws which 
 he knew would work for him better than ten armies, 
 should be the attitude of the friends of France at a 
 time when the same laws appear at last in their true 
 light and when the least effort may replace them by 
 reasonable institutions. The interest in social improve- 
 ments natural to every healthy mind is no interference, 
 and it is often the condition of progress. 
 
 I demand nothing more from the readers of this 
 book. If our common wish be fulfilled, if with better 
 institutions France be given the leaders she deserves, 
 the beginning of the twentieth century will soon appear 
 as one of the great turning-points in her history. With 
 a distinct consciousness of the difference between real 
 progress and mere dreams, between liberty and dema- 
 gogism, the era opened a hundred and fifty years ago by 
 the Encyclopaedists will be closed, and another opened. 
 What this new era may be it is futile to predict, but 
 
390 Conclusion 
 
 of one thing at least we can be certain, viz., that the 
 propagandism natural to the French nation will be 
 more active than ever, and that its expression, philo- 
 sophic, political, or literary, will be immeasurably 
 superior to what it has been since the end of the classical 
 ages. 
 
INDEX 
 
 About, 24, 32 
 
 Academy, the French, 313, 333 
 
 Acker, P., 321 
 
 Adam, Madame, 66 
 
 Adam, Paul, 315, 316 
 
 Africa, 75, 79 
 
 Agadir, 152 seq., 204, passim 
 
 Algeria, 48, 76 
 
 Alsace-Lorraine, 45, 50, 70 seq., 
 
 76, 79, 80, 83, 134 
 d'Amade, General, 161, 352 
 d'Annunzio, 236 
 Amyot, 140 
 Ancey, 226 
 Andler, 135, 252 
 Andr6, General, 59, 128, 130, 132, 
 
 155. 162 
 Angellier, 308, 309 
 Anti-Christianity, 21, 39 seq., 
 
 64 seq., 90 seq., 185, 210 seq. 
 
 — and education, 92 seq. 
 Anti-Clericalism, 90 seq. See pp. 
 
 30.91,96 
 
 Antoine, 237 
 
 Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 182 
 
 Armee et Democratie, 132 
 
 VArt pour Vart, 26 
 
 Asia Minor, 126 
 
 Association Law, the, iii, 119 
 
 Assumptionists, iii, 112, 118 
 
 Audoux, Marguerite, 315 
 
 Augier, 103 
 
 Aulard, 178, 181, 252, 274 
 
 Austria, past and present diffi- 
 culties of, 7, 8, 47 
 
 — and Prussia, 23, 24, 44 
 Aviation, 161, 259 
 
 B 
 
 Baden, 23 
 Baltic, the, 146 
 
 Balzac, 300, 310, 313, 322, 325 
 
 Barbusse, 309 
 
 Barrfes, Maurice, 74, 169, 182, 
 
 190 seq.,20^, 243, 245, 246, 274, 
 
 285, 304, 306, 321, 322, 325, 
 
 368 
 Barthou, 168, 169, 204, 207, 208, 
 
 217, 282, 343, 344, 346, 361, 383 
 Bataille, 219, 229, 231 
 Batiffol, Abb^, 285 
 Baudelaire, 64 
 Baumann, A., 321 
 Bazalgette, 134 
 Bazin, Ren4, 120, 285, 321 
 Beaunier, Andre, 320 
 Bebel, 136 
 Belgium, 44, 84, 194, 355, 366, 
 
 385 
 Bellomayre, de, 294 
 Benda, 320 
 Benedictines, 112 
 Benoist, Charles, 362 
 B^renger, 202 
 Bergson, Henri, 14, 249, 280, 325 
 
 seq. 
 Berkeley, 328, 329 
 Berlin, 146 
 Bernard, Tristan, 320 
 Bernstein, 229, 231, 234, 254 
 Bert, Paul, 91, 277 
 Berteaux, 162 
 Berthelot, 183, 202 
 Bertrand, L., 315 
 Beyrout, 122, 211 
 Beyrout University, 282 
 Biarritz, 23 
 Binet-Valmer, 315 
 Bismarck, 10, 23, 24, 49, 50, 54, 
 
 55, 64, 70, 72, 73, 75, 85, 168, 
 
 261, 387. 389 
 Bjomson, 305 
 
 Blanc, Louis, 20, 87, 194, 195 
 Blondel, Dr. Raoul, 331 
 Bocquet, 309 
 
 391 
 
392 
 
 Index 
 
 Bodley, J. E. C: France, 104; 
 
 Cardinal Manning and Other 
 
 Essays, 260 
 Bois, Jules, 309 
 Bolingbroke, 263 
 Bonald, de, 53, 176 
 Bonnard, 309 
 Bordeaux, 7 
 
 Bordeaux, Henri, 285, 321 
 Bornier, Gaston de, 235 
 Bossuet, 280, 299, 300 
 Bouh^lier, Saint Georges de, 311 
 Boulanger, 72, 85, 352 
 Boulenger, Marcel, 319 
 Bourgeois, Ldon, 96, 109, 144, 154 
 Bourges, 313 
 Bourget, Paul, 13, 17, 182, 187, 
 
 226, 244, 246, 247, 250, 253, 
 
 274, 282, 304, 305, 306, 321, 
 
 322, 325 
 Bourse du Travail, 216, 217, 357 
 Boylesve, Rene, 320 
 Boy Scouts, the, 264, 265 
 Briand, 165, 168, 169, 204, 216, 
 
 343, 346 
 Brieux, 224-225, 228 
 Brisson, 91 
 Brittany, 263 
 Broglie, Due de, 56, 170, 177, 181, 
 
 536 
 Bronte, Charlotte, 307 
 Bronte, Emily, 17 
 Bruneti^re, 184, 186, 187, 275, 
 
 280, 304 
 Brunot, Ferdinand, 141 
 Buddhism, 245, 246 
 Budget, the, 61 
 Bugeaud, 352 
 Buisson, 164 
 Buloz, 275 
 
 Cabinet, the, 59 seq., 115 
 
 Caesar, Julius, 153 
 
 Caillard, 309 
 
 Caillaux, 207, 344, 345, 357, 384 
 
 Caillaux, Madame, 384 
 
 Capus, 235, 274 
 
 Carlyle, 272 
 
 Camot, Sadi, 59 
 
 Catholicism, under the Second 
 Empire, 12, 13, 30 seq., 288; 
 and Humanitarianism, 19; un- 
 der the Third Republic, 63 seq.^ 
 
 90 seq., 108 seq., 1 18 seq., 255, 
 273 seq., 288 seq.; and Theism, 
 93 seq.; and Dreyfusism, 108 
 seq.', and Combism, 118 seq.; and 
 Liberalism, 177 seq., 293; and 
 the new France, 273 seq.; dis- 
 appearance of hostility to, 273 
 seq., 285 seq.; activities of the 
 Church, 283 seq., 287 seq.; 293 
 seq.', present status of the 
 Church, 287 seq.', difficulties of, 
 294 seq. ; prospects of, 296 
 
 Cavallera, Abb6, 285 
 
 Cavour, 9 
 
 Celsus, 32 
 
 Challemel-Lacour, 91 
 
 ChMons, 39 
 
 Chamber of Deputies, 55 seq., 70, 
 86, 87, 88, 89, 115, 163 seq., 
 213 seq., 346 seq.; Speaker of , 60; 
 dangers from, 63 seq., 349 seq. 
 
 Chambord, Comte de, 90 
 
 Champagne, 263 
 
 Charleroi, battle of, 385 
 
 Charies V, 48 
 
 Charles X, 19, 353 
 
 Chateaubriand, A. de, 320 
 
 Chateaubriand, Le Vte. F. R. de, 
 
 19, 33, 175 
 Chebli, Monsignor, 282 
 Chesterfield, 299 
 Chislehurst, 13 
 Christian Brothers, the, 112 
 Christianity, Renan and validity 
 
 of, 17; and Humanitarianism, 
 
 20,64 
 Clam, du Paty de, 342 
 Claudel, 282, 285, 308, 310 
 Clemenceau, 60, 91, 123, 144, 147, 
 
 164, 167, 168, 181, 202, 207, 
 
 216, 275,,350, 352, 357, 386 
 Clermont, Emile, 320 
 Cochin, Denys, 96, 122 
 Colbert, 37 
 Colette, Mme., 315 
 College de France, the, 34 
 Colonial policy, 63, 75 seq., 100 
 Combes. See Combism. 
 Combism, 62, 81, 95, 96, 98, 105, 
 
 106, 113 seq., 155, 277, 281, 
 
 passim 
 Commune, the, 50, 64, 177, 178, 
 
 183, 347, 381 
 Compifegne, 23, 268 
 Comte, II, 32 
 
Index 
 
 393 
 
 Concordat, the, 98, 123 seq., 288 
 
 Condamin, Abb^, 285 
 
 Condillac, 14 
 
 Condorcet, 185 
 
 Congo, 76, 171 
 
 Conseil de revision, 87 
 
 Constantinople, 122 
 
 Council of State, 61 
 
 Cour d'Appel, 87 
 
 Courier, Paul-Louis, 32 
 
 Courteline, 232 
 
 Cousin, II, 14, 93, 94 
 
 Craven, Mrs., 87 
 
 Crimea, 10, 39 
 
 Croiset, 333 
 
 Curel, Francois de, 237 seq.y 242 
 
 D 
 
 Dante, 301, 308 
 
 Danton, 181 
 
 Darwin, 14 
 
 Daudet, L4on, 189, 313 
 
 Dauphin^, 263 
 
 Decadents, the, 306 seq., 310, 317, 
 
 319 
 
 Delcass^, 59, 78, 80-81, 89, 124, 
 
 136, 144 seq., 154, 163 
 Deloncle, Frangois, 210 
 Democracy, meaning of, 364 seq. 
 Demolins, 139 
 Denmark, 44, 46 
 DeroulMe, Paul, 74, 188, 252 
 Descartes, 185, 327 
 Descaves, 226, 3i3» 3i5 
 Desjardins, Paul, 205, 246 
 Dhorme, Abb6, 285 
 Dickens, 15, 310, 320 
 Diderot, 26, 140, 301 
 Donnay, 103, 232 seq., 257 
 Donnersmarck, Henckel von, 73 
 Dostoievsky, 305, 315 
 Doumergue, 167, 169, 205, 281, 
 
 344 
 Dreyfus. See Dreyfusism 
 Dreyfusism, 81, 95, 105 seq., 114 
 
 seq., 127-129, 162, 183, 248, 
 
 263, 323, passim 
 Drumont, Edouard, 106, 107, 188, 
 
 189, 245 
 Duchesne, Monseigneur, 33 
 Dumas, Alexandre, the Younger, 
 
 222, 241, 305 
 Dupanloup, Bishop, 177, 28J. 
 Dupuy, 105, 108, 109 
 
 E 
 
 5^BRAY, A., 81 
 
 5^cole Centrale, 139, 331 
 Ecole Poly technique, 139, 196, 
 
 331 
 Elder, 315 
 Eliot, George, 310 
 Encyclopaedists, 11, 36, 41, 261, 
 
 277, 389 
 England, 84, 92, 97, 167, 206, 217, 
 
 258, 365, 366; change in, i., 
 
 former rival to France, 7; and 
 
 Denmark, 44; and Prussia, 44; 
 
 relations with Third Republic, 
 
 82, 146, 385, 387 
 
 — literature, 299, 300, 307 
 Entente Cordiale, 168 
 d'Esparb^s, 316 
 
 d'Estournelles de Constant, 154 
 Ethics, indifference to significance 
 
 of, 16-19, 186 
 Ethics, connection with the 
 
 Church, 96, 97, 98, 295, 377 
 Evremond, 277 
 Exhibition of 1867, 10 
 
 Faguet, 60, 182, 183, 247 
 
 Falli^res, 59, 166, 344 
 
 Farrfere, Claude, 316 
 
 Fashoda, 80, 105 
 
 Faure, F^lix, 58 
 
 Favre, Jules, 83 
 
 Fenelon, 269 
 
 Ferry, 66, 75, 77, 91, 93, 94, 95, 
 
 100, 277 
 Fez, 154 
 
 Finance, Ministry of, 60 
 First Empire, 19, 157 
 Flanders, 263 
 
 Flaubert, 28, 29, 64, 302, 313 
 Floquet, 85 
 Fontenelle, 277 
 Foreign Affairs, Ministry of, 59, 
 
 60, 78, 81-83, 136 
 Foreign Alliances, 78 seq. 
 Fort, Paul, 308, 309 
 Fouill^e, 94 
 France, Anatole, 32, 137, 173, 213, 
 
 261,274,304,305,306, 318,319. 
 
 321, 322, 325. 333 
 France, La, qui Meurt, 81 
 France, present, i, 3, 8, 158 seq. 
 
394 
 
 Index 
 
 France — Continued 
 
 298 seq., 334 seq., 373 seq., 381 
 seq., in 1852,1, 8; 1870, 21, 49- 
 5i» 137. 381; demoralization of 
 ideas, 11, 381, passim; depopu- 
 lation of, 37, 76, 103, 218; 
 Prussia, 1868, 43 seq.; constitu- 
 tion, 52 seq., 82, 86, 100, 147, 
 347 seq., 363 seq., 383; incoher- 
 ence, 60; President, the, 54 seq., 
 166, 345 ; commerce, 75, 100,206; 
 education, 84, 91 seq., iii, 129, 
 135. 137 ^^?M 249 seq.; education 
 and the Classics, 230 seq.; news- 
 papers, 170 seq., -202, 206, 275, 
 310; European view of, 260 
 seq.; national French character, 
 262 seq., 298 seq., 306; influence 
 of modem civilization on, 266 
 seq.; foreign fashions, 267 seq.; 
 need of strong man for future 
 of, 348 seq.; need of stronger 
 institutions, 3885^3.; Coup d'etat, 
 likelihood of, 356 seq.; the war of 
 1914, 381 seq.; present temperof , 
 384 seq. 
 
 Frankfort Treaty, the, 50, 76, 79 
 
 Frapi6, 315 
 
 Freemasons, 92 seq., 99, 113, 123, 
 131, 277 
 
 Freppel, Bishop, 85 
 
 Fresnois, Andr^ du, 318 
 
 Freycinet, de, 89, 105, 128 
 
 Fromentin, 320 
 
 Fustel de Coulanges, 193 
 
 Gachons, J. des, 320 
 
 Gallicans, the, 124 
 
 Gallieni, 128 
 
 Gallifet, General de, 127, 128 
 
 Gambetta, 55, 56, 64, 66, 69 seq., 
 
 79, 83, 88, 90, 91, 126, 168, 210, 
 
 251,277 
 Gamier, Ch. M., 315 
 Gautier, Madame Judith, 313 
 Gautier, Th^ophile, 26, 27 
 Gaulois, Le, 84 
 Gay, Monseigneur, 284 
 Geffroy, 313. 3i5 
 German professors, 157 
 Germany, 97, 103, 104, 126, 136, 
 
 145, 194, 217, 355, 365; present 
 
 change in, i, 2; formerly an 
 
 idea, 7, 8, 50; and Napoleon 
 III, 10; defeats France, 1870, 
 
 21, 50; civilization of, its appeal, 
 
 22, 23, 40, 41, 80, 135, 212; sup- 
 posed peacefulness of, 22, 23, 
 24, 40, 46; deference to, 24, 
 268; commercial expansion of, 
 75. 350; relations with Third 
 Republic, 79 seq., 136 seq., 146 
 ^^9-» 350; the present war, 385 
 seq. 
 
 Gide, A., 320 
 
 Giraudoux, Jean, 320 
 
 Gobineau, 253 
 
 Goblet, Ren^, 85 
 
 Goethe, 308 
 
 Gohier, Urbain, 276 
 
 Goncourts, the, 15, 26, 27, 29, 302, 
 
 ^ 305, 313, 314 
 Gourmont, Rdmy de, 134 
 Grandmaison, Abb^ de, 285 
 Gr^vy, 70, 88, 342, 349, 350 
 Grey, Sir Edward, 264 
 Gu^rin, Charles, 308, 309 
 Guesde, 197 
 Guillain, 331 
 Guizot, 36 
 Guyau, 14 
 
 Gyp (Madame de Martel), 103, 
 232, 257 
 
 H 
 
 Haeckel, 14, 275 
 
 Hal^vy, Daniel, 36, 117 
 
 Hamp, 315 
 
 Hanotaux, 59, 78-81, 89, 100, 275 
 
 Harduin, 276 
 
 Haussmann, 10 
 
 Hegel, 23 
 
 Hennique, 313, 3^5 
 
 Henry, Lieutenant-Colonel, 108, 
 
 127 
 Herder, 22 
 H^redia, 26 
 Hermant, Abel, 232 
 Harold, 134 
 Herriot, 203 
 Hervieu, 223, 224, 275 
 Hirsch,3i5 
 Holland, 47 
 Homer, 308 
 Hugo, Victor, 19, 20, 21, 159, 300, 
 
 303, 305. 307, 309-31 1, 3 1 7, 322, 
 
 324» 325, 354 
 
Index 
 
 395 
 
 Huguenots, the, 37 
 Humanitarianism, 19 seq., 64 seq. 
 207, 212 
 
 Ibsen, 222, 241, 305 
 
 Idealism, 28; revival of, 187, 199, 
 304 seq. 
 
 Imperialists, 54, 90 
 
 Income Tax, 61, 67 
 
 Indo-China, 76 
 
 Internationalists, 21, 135, 252; re- 
 action against, 187 seq. 
 
 Italy, 84, 97, 103, 126, 176, 350, 
 365; change in, 2; former posi- 
 tion, 8; and Napoleon III, 9, 
 12, 39, 78; and the Third Re- 
 public, 75, 104 
 
 JACLARD, 34 
 
 Jacquier, Abb6, 285 
 
 Jaloux, 320 
 
 James, William, 256, 280 
 
 Jammes, Francis, 282, 285, 308- 
 
 310 
 Jansenists, the, 198 
 Japan, 77 
 Jur^s, Jean, 88, 109, 113 seq., 123, 
 
 127 seq., 136, 140, 144, 155, 159, 
 
 161, 166, 169, 194, 195, 197, 203, 
 
 208, 246, 249 
 Jeanne d'Arc, 137, 193, 377; feast 
 
 of, 282 
 Jerusalem, 211 
 Jesuits, 91, no. III, 112, 118, 
 
 278, 282, 293 
 Jews, the, 103, 106 seq., 188 seq. 
 Joubert, 233 
 Joufifroy, 12, 32 
 
 Kaiser, the, 145, 146, 153, 158 
 Kant, 14, 328 
 Keller, Colonel, 294 
 Kiel, Canal, 79 
 Kipling, 261 
 
 Labiche, 36 
 La Bruy^re, 269 
 
 Lacordaire, P^re, 177 
 
 Lafon, 320 
 
 La Fontaine, 134 
 
 La Ferronnays, Mile., 87 
 
 Lagrange, Abb^, 285 
 
 Lajeunesse, Ernest, 246 
 
 Lamartine, 19, 20, 87, 176, 307, 
 309, 310 
 
 Lamennais, 19, 20, 21 
 
 Lamorici^re, 352 
 
 Lanessan, de, 347 
 
 Langlois, 135 
 
 Lanson, 141, 333 
 
 Larbaud, 320 
 
 Larroque, Patrice, 32 
 
 Lasies, 128 
 
 Latini, Brunetto, 137 
 
 Lavedan, 103, 232 seq.^ 241, 243, 
 257, 274 
 
 Lavisse, 275 
 
 Lebel, 85 
 
 Leblond Brothers, the, 315 
 
 Le Bon, Gustave, 256 
 
 Lebreton, Ahh6, 285 
 
 Lechevallier, 331 
 
 Leconte de Lisle, 25 
 
 Lee, Vernon, 205 
 
 Lef4vre, Andr6, 132, 202, 346 
 
 Legitimists, 54 
 
 Lemaitre, Jules, 139, 182, 183, 
 184, 243, 247, 274, 305, 318 
 
 Lemire, Abbe, 279 
 
 Leo XIII, Pope, 91, 96, lOO, 177, 
 194, 245, 279, 294 
 
 Len^ru, Mademoiselle, 236 
 
 Lendtre, 181, 236 
 
 Leroy-Beaulieu, 194 
 
 Lesage, 316 
 
 Leygues, 210 
 
 Lhomond, 94 
 
 Liberalism, 177 
 
 Libermann, P^re, 284 
 
 Literature, under Second Empire, 
 24 seq., 38; under the Third 
 Republic, 103, 190 seq., 212 
 seq., 220 seq.; present transfor- 
 mation of, 298 seq.; foreign 
 influences, 304 seq.; poetry, 
 307 seq. 
 
 Littr^, 14 
 
 Loire, the, 69 
 
 Lorin, 194 
 
 Lorraine, 263 
 
 Loti, 198, 253, 301, 306, 321, 322 
 
 Loubet, 59, 113 
 
396 
 
 Index 
 
 Louis XII, 206 
 
 Louis XIV, 7, 48, 133, 262, 288 
 
 Louis XV, 170, 206, 268 
 
 Louis XVI, 12 
 
 Louis XVIII, 19, 353 
 
 Louis Philippe, 12, 19, 36, 50, 
 
 88, 206, 277, 288, 352 
 Louys, Pierre, 319 
 Lucretius, 32 
 Lun^ville, 160 
 Lyautey, General, 161, 352 
 Lycees, the, 12, 30, 142 
 
 M 
 
 MacMahon, 55, 59, 70, 89, 90, 
 
 163, 170 
 Madagascar, 76 
 Madame Bovary, 28 
 Madelin, 181 
 Maeterlinck, 222 
 Maistre, Joseph de, 21, 43, 176 
 Mallarm6, 307 
 Marat, 181 
 Marivaux, 233 
 Marrast, Armand, 87 
 Marryat, Captain, 223 
 Marchand, 72, 79, 352 
 Mardrus, Lucie, 309 
 Margueritte, Paul, 313, 315 
 Massis, 255, 256 
 Materialism, 14 seq.; reaction 
 
 against, 186 seq. 
 Maupassant, 233 
 Mauriac, 309, 320 
 Maurras, 53, 366-369 
 Mediterranean, the, 48 
 Meilhac, 36 
 
 M^line, 100, 105, 109, 169, 343 
 Merc^dfes, Sister, 292 
 Mercier, 309 
 
 Mercure de France, The, 134 
 M^rim^e, 32 
 
 Mesnil, Edmond du, 202, 347 
 Messimy, 162 
 Metz, 70, 146 
 Mexico, 10, 39 
 Michelet, Abb6, 285 
 Michelet, Jules, 11, 19, 20, 21, 22, 
 
 32, I37» 159, 213, 300, 324, 325, 
 
 354 
 Mill, John Stuart, 14 
 Millerand, 59. 92, 109, 114, 130, 
 
 162, 346 
 
 Miomandre, 320 
 Mirbeau, 226, 313, 315 
 Modernism, 280, 292, 293 
 Moli^re, 267, 313, 316 
 Moltke, von, 49, 72 
 Monarchism, present growth of, 
 
 352 seq., 366 seq. 
 Monod, 135, 252 
 Montaigne, 267 
 Montalembert, Comte de, 177 
 Montesquieu, 320 
 Montfort, 316 
 Morals, decadence of, 35-38, 52, 
 
 loi, 218, 219 
 
 — higher standard of, 217 seq., 
 255, 373 seq. 
 
 — and the stage, 220 seq. 
 Morocco, 76, 126, 145, 158, 161 
 
 — Sultan of, 146 
 Moselly, 315 
 Mozart, 327 
 
 Mun, Comte de, 84, 122, 194, 381 
 Musset, 307-308, 309, 310 
 
 N 
 
 Nancy, 146 
 
 Napoleon I, 7, 22, 48, 72, 93, 107, 
 175, 288, 306, 352, 387 
 
 Napoleon III, at Bordeaux, 7, 50; 
 and Italy, 9, 10, 78; an ideahst, 
 9, 37; and Prussia, 9, 10, 43 seq.; 
 character of reign of, see Second 
 Empire; religious attitude of, 
 12, 13, 30, 31, 93; and commerce, 
 36, 37. 38; his Court, 37; his 
 army, 10, 39; misgivings of, 42 
 
 Napoleon, Prince Jerome, 12 
 
 Napoleon, Prince Victor, 359, 360 
 
 National Assembly, 13, 53, 55, 56, 
 62, 63, 65, 68, 70, 347 
 
 Nationalism, 188 seq. 
 
 Naturalism, 15, loi, 187, 199, 
 300, 302-304, 305, 316, 323 
 
 Nau, J. A., 315 
 
 Navy, Ministry of, 60, 61, 77, 80, 
 81 
 
 N^grier, General de, 145 
 
 Nesmy, 320 
 
 Nietzsche, 306 
 
 Nietzscheism, 246 
 
 Nineteenth Century, The; May, 
 1907, 167 
 
 Noailles, Comtesse de, 307-310 
 
 Normandy, 263 
 
Index 
 
 397 
 
 Olier, 284 
 
 Orleanists, 54, 90 
 Orleans, Duke of, 359-360 
 
 PaIva, La, 73 
 
 Pams, 342, 343, 357 
 
 Panama Affair, the, 88, 165, 188, 
 
 189 
 Paris, 21, 23, 37, 49, III, 164, 260, 
 
 263, 356, 385 
 Paris Medical School, 14 
 Parnassian School, the, 25, 26, 
 
 308, 309 
 Pascal, 299 
 Pasteur, 328 
 Pataud, 216 
 Paul-Boncour, 203 
 Pdguy, 117, 246, 282 
 Pelletan, Admiral, 132, 155 
 Pelloutier, Fernand, 195, 215 
 Pergaud, 315 
 P6rigueux, 344 
 Persigny, de, 24, 39 
 Philip II, 48 
 Philippe, Ch. M., 315 
 Picard, Hdfene, 309 
 Picquart, General, 252 
 Pius VI, 288 
 Pius IX, 176, 177 
 Pius X, 124, 177, 279, 289, 292, 
 
 293 
 
 Plato, 328 
 
 Poincar6, Henri, 196 
 
 Poincare, President, 54, 57, 89, 96, 
 
 109, 166, 168, 169, 204, 207, 
 
 214, 215, 341-348, 352i 357, 
 
 360, 361, 383 
 Poland, 385 
 Porch^, 309 
 Port-Royal, 32 
 Porto-Riche, de, 229-231 
 Portugal, 47 
 Posen, 44 
 Pottecher, 309 
 Prat, Abb^, 285 
 Prevost, Marcel, 387 
 Pr^vost-Paradol, La France Nou- 
 
 velle, 15, 42-49, 75 
 Prime Minister, 54, 58 seq., 165 
 Protestantism, 23, 31, 96, 189 
 Provence, 263 
 
 Prudhomme, Sully, 308 
 
 Prussia, former poverty of, 7; 
 militarism, 22, 24, 157; and 
 German unity, 44, 45, 50 
 
 Psichari, Lieutenant Ernest, 254 
 
 Psichari, J., 282, 321 
 
 Puvis de Chavannes, 187 
 
 Pyrenees, the, 48 
 
 Q 
 
 QuARR Abbey, 112 
 
 Quarterly Review, The; Oct. JQliy 
 
 73 
 Quinet, 11, 19, 22, 32 
 
 Rabelais, 137 
 
 Racine, 229, 230, 299, 307, 308 
 
 Railways, nationalization of, 68 
 
 Ranc, 91 
 
 Rauh, Fr^d^ric, 135 
 
 Realism, 28, 29, 186, 236, 313, 
 
 316 
 R6gnier, Henri de, 307, 309, 319 
 Reid, 16 
 Renan, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 31, 33, 
 
 34, 40, 41, 56, 64, 65, 91, 114, 
 
 133, 183, 185, 199, 246, 249, 
 
 254, 261, 272, 274, 330, 368, 
 
 381 ; Vie de Jesus, 33-35 
 Renard, Jules, 134 
 Rennes, iii, 127 
 Republicanism, 20-22, 40, 52 seq., 
 
 64, 71, 72, 83, 84, 96 
 Revanche, the, 69 seq., 75, 104, 247, 
 
 271 
 Revolution, the, 11, 19, 157, 174, 
 
 175, 176, 178; reaction against, 
 
 17$ seq. 
 Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, 
 
 the, 177 
 Rhine, the, 44 
 Ribot, 58, 207, 214 
 Richepin, 275 
 Rivoire, 309 
 Robespierre, 181, 212 
 Rolland, Romain, 213, 321-323 
 Rollin, 140 
 Romanticists, 19, 25, 300-302, 
 
 303, 316 seq. 
 Roon, von, 49 
 Rosny Brothers, the, 313, 315, 
 
 316 
 
398 
 
 Index 
 
 Rostand, 235 
 
 Roupnel, 315 
 
 Rousseau, 11, 41, 94, 179 seq.^ 
 I99» 269, 324 
 
 Rouvier, 144, 145, 154, 164, 167, 
 352 
 
 Royalists, 19 
 
 Royer-Collard, 16 
 
 Russia, past remoteness, 7; posi- 
 tion in 18^0, 45; alliance with, 
 ^^93, 79, 82, 100, 104, 387; 
 change in, 99; literary influence 
 of, 305, 306 
 
 S 
 
 Saint-Auban, de, 220 
 
 Saint-Front, Church of, 344 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, 12, 25, 32 
 
 St. Cyr, 252 
 
 Salon, the, 36 
 
 Saltet, Abbe, 285 
 
 Sand, George, 19, 300, 305 
 
 Sans-culottes, the, 87 
 
 Sardou, 235 
 
 Savignon, 315 
 
 Scandinavia, 84, 355; literary 
 
 influence of, 305, 306 
 Scheurer-Kestner, 70 
 Schleswig, 44 
 Schnoebele, 85 
 Science, 17, 25, 94, 97, loi, 126; 
 
 present reaction against, 184 
 
 seq., 305 
 Second Empire, characteristics of, 
 
 9, 10, II, 12, 13, 36-43, 268, 
 
 277, 299, 387; sources of weak- 
 ness, 48 
 Seignobos, 135, 252 
 Seine, the, 48 
 Sembat, 208-213, 347, 363 
 Senate, 57 seq. 
 Separation Law, the, 125 seq., 
 
 153, 210, 289, 292 
 Shakespeare, 301, 307, 308 
 Shelley, 299, 307 
 Sisters of Charity, the, 112 
 Steele, Le, 32 
 Simon, Jules, 83, 93, 204 
 Socialism, 19, 20, 21, 56, 109 seq., 
 
 130, 216, 369; reaction again::'., 
 
 193, 194, 248 
 Sorbonne, 24, 134, 135, 140, 141, 
 
 143 
 
 Sorel, Georges, 22, 181, 196 seq., 
 
 334 
 Soudan, 76 
 Spain, 126 
 
 Spinoza, 14, 328, 329 
 Spiritualism, 94, 95 
 Sports, popularity of, 258 seq. 
 Spuller, 105 
 
 Stael, Madame de, 22, 336 seq. 
 Stage, the, 220 seq. 
 Stendhal, 32, 253 
 Strasbourg, 23, 69, 76 
 Sulpitians, the, 112 
 Syndicalism, 21, 155, 157, 164, 
 
 195 seq., 215 seq., 248 
 Syveton, 128 
 
 Tagus, the, 47 
 
 Taine, 14, 15, 16, 17, 22, 25, 32, 40, 
 42, 56, 64, 65, 94, 114, 133, 178, 
 180 seq., 199, 247, 249, 272, 287, 
 
 294, 303, 329, 334. 381, 
 
 Tangier, ipo5, 3,65, 145, 151, seq., 
 passim 
 
 Tarde, 255, 256 
 
 Tennyson, 309 
 
 Tharaud brothers, the, 319, 320 
 
 Thiers, 13, 49, 53, 54, 55, 59, 89, 
 178, 336, 347, 363 
 
 Third Republic, influence of Sec- 
 ond Empire, 13, 35, 41, 52, 
 64; sources of deterioration of 
 France under, 52 seq., 97, 180, 
 262 seq.; before J8/S, 54-56; 
 1876-J8Q8, 56 seq.; pacificist 
 character of, 695^2., 82, 102, 129, 
 154; 1898-1905, 105 seq.; and 
 the army, 107 seq., 126 seq.; and 
 the navy, 132; its patriot- 
 ism, 133 seq., 252; the younger 
 generation, 244 seq.; is it less 
 French?, 260; after 1905, 151 
 seq.; military spirit, 159, seq., 
 352 seq.; sources of improve- 
 ment, 157, 171, 172, 175. 187; 
 patriotism widespread, 201 seq., 
 385 seq.; wider outlook, 205, 
 seq., 381 seq.; relations with 
 Germany, 79 seq., 350; degrada- 
 tion of politics, 83 seq., 98; de- 
 basement of public spirit, 97 seq. 
 
 Tinayre, Marcelle, 320 
 
Index 
 
 399 
 
 Tirard and Rouvier, 88 
 Tixeront, Ahh6, 285 
 Tocqueville, de, 53, 177 
 Tolstoi, 255, 305, 310 
 Tolstoism, 246 
 Tonkin, 76 
 Toul, 160 
 Toulouse, in 
 Touraine, 263 
 Touzard, Ahh6, 285 
 Tubingen School, the, 23 
 Tunis, 76, 171 
 Turkey, 45, 99 
 
 U 
 
 United States of America, the, 
 54. 57, 77, 91, 103, 366 
 
 Vallery-Radot, 309, 320 
 
 Variot, 321 
 
 Vatican, the, 122 seq., 210 
 Vaugeois, Henri, 189 
 Vautel, 276 
 V6drines, 161 
 Venezelos, 264 
 Verdun, 160 
 Verhaeren, 308 
 Verlaine, 306, 354 
 Versailles, 41, 64, 76, 268 
 
 Veuillot, Francois, 220, 285 
 
 Vi^l^-Griffin, 308, 309 
 
 Vigny, 307, 310 
 
 Villon, 300, 308 
 
 Vincent, Ahh6, 285 
 
 Viollis, 320 
 
 Viviani, 205, 208 
 
 Vogu6, Melchior de, 187, 304 
 
 Voltaire, 32, 33, 91, 133, 137, 185, 
 
 301, 317, 320, 324 
 Voltairianism, 31 
 Voisins, G. de, 320 
 
 W 
 
 Wagner, 23, 306 
 Waldeck-Rousseau, 105, 109 seg., 
 
 118 seq., 127 
 Wallace, Sir Richard, 299 
 Walpole, Horace, 268, 299 
 War Office, 59, 60, 81, 128 
 Washington, 43, 61 
 Weiss, J. J., 140, 220 
 Werth, 315 
 Whitman, 256 
 Wilson, 88, 349 
 Wilson, President Woodrow, 361 
 
 Zola, 15, 173, 187, 222, 302-303, 
 313, 314. 316, 321, 322 
 
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