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THE IDEALS 
 OF FRANCE: A 
 LETTER ON 
 THE GREAT WAR 
 
 By PAUL SABAT It^ 
 
 Author of; "Th 
 
 i . FISHER UN 
 
 LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE 
 
 Price One Penny ; 6\6 per 100 post /» 
 
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 THE IDEALS OF FRANCE 
 M. PAUL SABATIER'S LETTER 
 
 Reprinted by permission from The Times, 
 January 22, 1915 
 
 M. Paul Sabatier, author of the "Life of St. 
 Francis of Assisi," has addressed the following 
 eloquent letter to Professor Falcinelli, the 
 president of the International Society for Fran- 
 ciscan Studies at Assisi, of which M. Paul 
 Sabatier is honorary president. It was written 
 in reply to a letter in which Professor Falcinelli 
 enclosed a resolution in favour of peace which 
 the council of the Society had passed shortly 
 before Christmas. 
 
 M. Paul Sabatier, one of whose brothers fell 
 at Gravelotte in 1870, and whose only son is 
 fighting in the Argonne, was for many years 
 
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.pastop at Strassburg after the German occu- 
 "patibh.- 'Tile' l^r eat influence which he acquired 
 in Strassburg rendered him obnoxious to the 
 German authorities, who, after having failed 
 to silence him, expelled him from Alsace. 
 One of his books, " L'Orientation Religieuse 
 de la France Actuelle," first revealed, some 
 years ago, the moral strength of France. In 
 his present letter he defines, for the benefit 
 of his Italian friends and fellow-students of 
 St. Francis, the spirit in which the people of 
 France regard the war. 
 
 Dec, 26. — My dear President, — My hearty 
 thanks for your cordial letter. I hasten to 
 reply ; excuse me if I do so more briefly than 
 I should wish. 
 
 First let me express my delight that your 
 friend and mine, Luzzatti, should have ac- 
 cepted the presidency of the committee Pro 
 Belgio. The noble Belgian nation is doubtless 
 to be pitied, but it is still more to be admired. 
 Its tribulations will pass, but its laurels will 
 not fade. 
 
 The Belgians went to certain destruction. 
 
with a firmness unexampled in history, in 
 honour of a principle, whereas they might 
 easily have secured handsome payment for 
 granting a right of way through their country, 
 and might also have made millions out of the 
 German troops. W^ithout a moment's hesi- 
 tation, without giving a thought to these profits, 
 they replied with a non possumus of which 
 other nations have not, perhaps, understood 
 the lofty heroism. 
 
 Dec, 29. — I was interrupted the other day, 
 and have not been able to continue before. I 
 took advantage of the Christmas holidays to 
 go and speak in the neighbouring villages and 
 to admire the quiet courage of our country- 
 side. It is as though the words "In your 
 patience possess ye your souls " had been 
 spoken for our people. 
 
 As to my feeling about your manifestation in 
 favour of peace, you understand, do you not, 
 that, as a belligerent, and a belligerent the more 
 determined in that I was before firmly pacific, 
 I look upon it all with an eye very different 
 from yours ? A Frenchman cannot now utter 
 the word "peace." To use it would be akin 
 
to treason. When a quarrel is for money, or 
 for a strip of territory, one can make peace 
 without moral loss. To make peace when an 
 ideal is at stake is an abdication ; even to think 
 of it is to be false to the voice which tells us 
 that man is born for other things than to enjoy 
 the moral and material heritage of his fathers. 
 
 NATURE OF THE STRUGGLE 
 
 It is the honour of Belgium, France, and 
 their Allies to have seen at once the spiritual 
 nature of this war. No doubt we are fighting 
 for ourselves, but we are fighting, too, for all 
 peoples. The idea of stopping before the goal 
 is reached cannot occur to us — and we find 
 some difficulty in understanding how it can 
 occur to lookers-on. We are grateful to them 
 for the excellence of their intentions, but we 
 are somewhat embarrassed by the thought 
 that they are more careful of our physical 
 than of our moral life. Our soldiers are 
 martyrs ; they bear witness to a new truth. 
 Their defeat would mean the triumph in 
 Europe of brute force, supported by the two 
 
spiritual forces which it has mobilized — science 
 and religion. Before permitting that, it is our 
 duty to fight, without even thinking of what 
 may befall. And if our soldiers go down to 
 the last man, everybody who has not yet taken 
 up arms will fight to the last cartridge, to the 
 last stone of our mountains that we can hurl 
 against a "Kultur" which is naught save 
 worship of the sword and of the golden calf. 
 
 The France of to-day is fighting religiously. 
 Catholics, Protestants, men of Free Thought, 
 we all feel that our sorrows renew, continue, 
 and fulfil those of the Innocent Victim of 
 Calvary. But they are birth-pangs ; we may 
 die of them, but we have not the right not to 
 bless the present hour and to take up with 
 rejoicing the task before us. 
 
 The peace which St. Francis preached was 
 not peace at any price, peace as an end in 
 itself. Like many others before him, he re- 
 peated " Righteousness and Peace have kissed 
 each other" — righteousness first and then 
 peace. There is no true or lasting peace that 
 is not based on justice. He did not beg the 
 people of Perugia no longer to make war on 
 
Assisi. He began by fighting them ; and later 
 on, at the end of his life, he did not preach 
 peace to these same people, but told them 
 that the wrongs they had committed would be 
 avenged. 
 
 Besides, unless I am mistaken, you will 
 soon feel what I am saying. It seems to me 
 that Italy is preparing soon to enter the lists. 
 She will come in at her own time for practical 
 reasons, and also, I am sure, for reasons of 
 ideal. And in the thrill of enthusiasm that 
 will run through you all, from farthest Sicily 
 I to the Alpine peaks, you will feel the mysteri- 
 ' ous workings of spiritual creation, as yet 
 incomplete, but which strives to realize itself 
 in and by us. You will then see how neces- 
 sary it is for a nation, as for a man, to take 
 the rare chances that are offered him to fulfil 
 his destiny and realize his ideal. 
 
 THE FAITH OF FRANCE 
 
 This is what our soldiers — I see it by their 
 letters — and what our peasants — I hear it in 
 their talk — feel and understand better than I 
 
can express it. What France of the Crusades 
 stammered, what France of the Revolution saw 
 dimly, France to-day desires to accomplish. 
 She believes with all her strength in victory 
 because she has indomitable faith in the ideal 
 of justice and truth that is in her heart. But 
 she does not need to believe in victory in order 
 to fight, for to give up fighting would be to 
 betray her past, her ideal, her vocation. What 
 matter that she die at her task if she has done 
 her work ? 
 
 The other day I read in a Swiss newspaper 
 that one must go to France to see a people 
 whom the war has not perturbed. It seems 
 that in neutral Switzerland there is greater 
 moral distress than in France. This is quite 
 natural. In the ideal work we are now doing 
 we have again found the secret of the life of 
 nations — to labour together at a hard task and 
 to be faithful to the Spirit of Life that is em- 
 bodied in the Creation. This is why I have j 
 found no trace of hatred of the enemy or wish 
 for reprisals in the letters of our soldiers, who 
 are enduring what they endure. 
 
 My son Jacques is grateful for your thought 
 
8 
 
 of him. He is still in the first line in the 
 Argonne. His last letter is dated December 23. 
 Au revoir, my dear President. In these last 
 days of 1914 I embrace you and wish I could 
 embrace all the people of Assisi, the "black," 
 the "red," and the "white"; for I shall never 
 be able to tell you how fond I am of you all. 
 Long live Italy ! and may 1915 bring to the eldest 
 of the Latin nations those victories, material 
 and spiritual, that will reform Europe and 
 place civilization itself on new foundations. 
 
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