All that is not Prussian in Germany remains prostrate--
especially in ideas--under the effect of the Prussian victory over it. The
French but barely escaped a similarly permanent dissolution of national
character: but they did escape it; and the national mark, the power of
spontaneous and collective action, after a few years' check, began to
emerge.
Upon two occasions an attempt was made towards such action. The first was
in the time of Boulanger, the second during the Dreyfus business. In both
cases the nation instinctively saw, or rather felt, its enemy. In both
there was a moment when the cosmopolitan financier stood in physical peril
of his life. Neither, however, matured; in neither did the people finally
move.
Latterly several partial risings have marked French life. Why none of them
should have culminated I will consider in a moment. Meanwhile, the foreign
observer will do well to note the character of these movements, abortive
though they were. It is like standing upon the edge of a crater and
watching the heave and swell of the vast energies below. There may have
been no actual eruption for some time, but the activities of the volcano
and its nature are certain to you as you gaze. The few days that passed
two years ago in Herault are an example.
No one who is concerned for the immediate future of Europe should neglect
the omen: half a million men, with leaders chosen rapidly by themselves,
converging without disaster, with ample commissariat, with precision and
rapidity upon one spot: a common action decided upon, and that action most
calculated to defeat the enemy; decided upon by men of no exceptional
power, mere mouthpieces of this vast concourse: similar and exactly
parallel decisions over the whole countryside from the great towns to the
tiny mountain villages.
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