With Americans of Past and Present Days - Jusserand Jean Jules. Страница 57

No less dangerous is it to load war with all the sins in Israel, thus running the same risk of making people rebel not only against the preacher but against his very creed. When we are told by the pacifist that, owing to the wars of the early nineteenth century, only inferior people were left in France to perpetuate the race, we wonder how it is that she got a Victor Hugo, an Alexandre Dumas, a Louis Pasteur, sons of soldiers of Napoleon, all three. We wonder how, in spite of this supposed survival of "the weakest," that country got so many thinkers, philosophers, poets, artists, soldiers, explorers; how the venturous spirit of the former "coureurs de bois" awoke again in our days with such notable results in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere; how birth was given in our land to the inventors of the dirigible, the automobile, the submarine, photography, and radium; how the love of sport in the race has reappeared of late, as active as it had ever been in the remote times when football and cricket found in France their rough-hewn cradle.

Exaggeration will not help, but on the contrary surely hurt. Truth, if we follow her, is certain to lead to better times. She has already. Wars in former centuries lasted a hundred years, then they lasted thirty years, then seven years; and now, as disastrous as ever, it is true, but separated by longer intervals, they last one year.[259] You are about to celebrate a hundred years' peace with England; so are we.

That move toward truer, longer, perhaps one day definitive peace, has been prophesied long before our time, not merely by a dreamer like Abbe de Saint-Pierre, but by one who had a rare experience of men, of war, and of peace, and who, considering especially the influence of trade on nations, once said:

"Although I pretend to no peculiar information respecting commercial affairs, nor any foresight into the scenes of futurity, yet as the member of an infant empire, as a philanthropist by character, and (if I may be allowed the expression) as a citizen of the great republic of humanity at large, I cannot help turning my attention sometimes to this subject. I would be understood to mean that I cannot help reflecting with pleasure on the probable influence that commerce may hereafter have on human manners and society in general. On these occasions I consider how mankind may be connected like one great family in fraternal ties. I indulge a fond, perhaps an enthusiastic idea that, as the world is evidently less barbarous than it has been, its amelioration must still be progressive; that nations are becoming more humanized in their policy, that the subjects of ambition and causes for hostility are daily diminishing; and in fine that the period is not very remote when the benefits of a liberal and free commerce will pretty generally succeed to the devastations and horrors of war."

Thus wrote to Lafayette, on the 15th of August, 1786, that "citizen of the great republic of humanity," George Washington.[260]

That practical results have been secured is certain; that better ones are in store, if we act wisely, is no less certain. Mankind longs for less troubled days, and moves toward this not inaccessible goal. Such is the truth; and we may feel confident that, according to the oft-quoted word of dying Wyclif, "Truth shall conquer."

A POSTSCRIPT

A few years after this address had been delivered threatening clouds began to gather. Germany, who had prevented, at the first conference of The Hague, anything being done toward a limitation of armaments as proposed by Russia,[261] suddenly, in full peace, when other nations were inclined to think that they were rather too much armed than not enough, passed a law increasing, in a prodigious degree, her military forces.

On this move of hers, on what peace-loving democracies ought to do in the presence of such an unexpected event, on the future of the peace and arbitration ideas, after such a blow, the former president of the French delegation at The Hague, Mr. Leon Bourgeois, wrote in May, 1913, little more than a year before the present war, a noteworthy letter,[262] in which we read:

"One fact strikes us most painfully and might at first disturb our minds. The bills presently submitted to the Reichstag are going to increase in a formidable manner the armaments of Germany, and to necessitate on the part of France an extraordinary effort, and sacrifices to which we must manfully and promptly consent....

"No one more than myself deplores that folly of armaments to which Europe is yielding, and I do not forget that it was I who, in 1899, at the first Hague Conference, drew up and defended the resolution in favor of a limitation of the military load weighing on the world. But I do not forget either what I said before the Senate, in 1907, after the second conference: 'As for us, confirmed partisans of arbitration and peace, disarmament is a consequence, not a preparation. For disarmament to be possible, one must first feel that one's right is secure. The security of right is what must be organized first of all. Behind that rampart alone, nations will be able to lay down their arms....

"Let us be pacific, but let us be strong. And let us know how to wait. The very excess of the load weighing on Europe will originate, sooner than is sometimes believed, that irresistible movement of opinion which will cause a policy of wisdom, mutual respect, and real security, to become an unavoidable necessity."

The chief factor will be public opinion. Present events will, one may hope, have served to educate public opinion throughout the world.

FOOTNOTES

[252] The text of this address is reproduced exactly as it was delivered, December 17, 1910, only a few notes and references being added.

[253] On this he is very insistent. He speaks of "cette disposition a la pitie que l'egalite inspire." According to him, "les passions guerrieres deviendront plus rares et moins vives, a mesure que les conditions seront plus egales," and elsewhere: "Lorsque le principe de l'egalite ne se developpe pas seulement chez une nation, mais en meme temps chez plusieurs peuples voisins ... ils concoivent pour la paix un meme amour ... et finissent par considerer la guerre comme une calamite presque aussi grande pour le vainqueur que pour le vaincu." But this goal has not yet been reached, and in the meantime, "quel que soit le gout que ces nations aient pour la paix, il faut bien qu'elles se tiennent pretes a repousser la guerre ou, en d'autres termes, qu'elles aient une armee." Democratie en Amerique, 14th ed., 1865, III, 444, 445, 473, 474.

[254] Les six livres de la Republique de Jean Bodin, Angevin, Paris, 1576; innumerable editions, so great was the success. The work is expressly written in opposition to that of Machiavelli, "this procurer of tyrants." Kings may be a necessity, yet the thing of the state is not theirs, but is the common property of the citizens, res publica. No one on board the ship can play the part of an onlooker, especially in stormy weather; all on board must bestir themselves and bring such help as they can: "Depuis que l'orage impetueux a tourmente le vaisseau de nostre Republique avec telle violence que le Patron mesme et les pilotes sont comme las et recreus (worn out) d'un travail continuel, il faut bien que les passagers y prestent la main, qui aux voiles, qui aux cordages, qui a l'ancre, et ceux a qui la force manquera, qu'ils donnent quelque bon advertissement, ou qu'ils presentent leurs v?ux et prieres a Celuy qui peut commander aux vents et appaiser les tempestes, puisque tous ensemble courent un mesme danger." (Preface, to the magistrate and poet, the friend of Ronsard, Guy du Faur de Pibrac.) For Bodin, peace is the ideal; yet "war must be waged to repel violence, in case of necessity.... The frontier of a well-ordered republic is justice, and not the point of the lance." ("La frontiere d'une republique bien ordonnee est la justice ... et non pas la pointe de la lance.") Such is the ideal, but since it has not been reached yet, the keeping up of a permanent military force is a necessity, "and to bestow on it a third of the revenue is not too much," especially when you have warlike neighbors, which is the case of "peoples living in fertile and temperate regions, like France." Bk. V, chap. 5.