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EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 BY 
 
 GUGLIELMO FERRERO 
 
 Author of "Greatness and Decline of Rome,' 
 Ancient Rome and Modern America," etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 

 COPTEIOHT, 1918 
 
 By DODD, mead AND COMPANY, iNC, 
 
 APR 30 1918 
 
 4i)CI,A494898 
 
PREFACE 
 
 When the war broke out in August, 19 14, it was gener- 
 ally supposed that it would be on much the same scale as 
 the various struggles for the balance of power or the wars 
 of aggression which had rent Europe asunder since the 
 French Revolution ; an opinion which prevailed so long as 
 to exercise no small influence on the conduct of the war. 
 It is only indeed comparatively recently that governments 
 and peoples alike seem to have realized that the present 
 conflict is more far-reaching and more complex than a 
 repetition of even the Franco-Prussian War on a vaster 
 scale. 
 
 The essays collected in this volume were all written to 
 show the erroneousness of this idea and to prove that this 
 struggle is not merely the continuation of the national and 
 political wars of the nineteenth century, but rather a great 
 crisis in what is commonly called western civilization — a 
 crisis whose development will be far more extensive than 
 was ever contemplated and whose consequences will far 
 transcend the territorial ambitions of the various bellig- 
 erent states. In order to prove this assertion, I have 
 endeavoured to trace the component elements of this crisis 
 with the help of what is generally known as the compara- 
 tive method, studying modern civilization in the light of 
 the civilizations of ancient times, trying by this means to 
 discover their strong and weak points, and making use for 
 this purpose of the comparative studies along these lines 
 which I had made before the outbreak of war.* 
 
 1 Cf r. Ferrero, " Ancient Rome and Modern America," Putnam. 
 New York. "Between the Old World and the New." Idem. 
 
 V 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 These essential elements of the crisis appear to me to 
 be three in number. The first is of a military order — i. e., 
 the rivalry between the Great Powers of Europe in the 
 matter of armaments which began after the Franco-Prus- 
 sian War, when for the first time in history the greatest 
 nations of the world based their military policy not on the 
 greatest possible limitation of armaments, as had hitherto 
 been the case, but on the principle of the indefinite increase 
 of men and weapons. 
 
 The second element is the development of industry, more 
 especially in its metallurgical and mechanical branches. 
 These industries, which have become so powerful during 
 the last century, have not only supplied European militarism 
 with the means of indefinitely increasing their armaments, 
 but, by providing incredibly complicated, rapid and power- 
 ful weapons, have transformed the art of war into a kind 
 of diabolical instrument of extermination. Until the nine- 
 teenth century armies were light, easily handled swords 
 with which duels were fought between states according 
 to certain recognized rules in order to settle their disputes 
 with the minimum expenditure of blood and money. In 
 the century of metallurgy and mechanics they have become 
 gigantic machines for the destruction of nations. 
 
 The third element is of a moral and intellectual nature: 
 i. e., that unshakable optimism, that blind faith in the 
 progress and strength of man, that unbridled ambition and 
 covetousness which has effaced or at all events dimmed 
 the sense of limitation, of proportion, of the humanly possi- 
 ble and the reasonable in the whole western civilization, in 
 the realms of philosophy, religion, art, science, politics, 
 finance, industry and commerce alike. Western civiliza- 
 tion was on the way to thinking itself omnipotent. This 
 malady had attacked all the nations of Europe to a greater 
 
PREFACE 
 
 vu 
 
 or less extent, but its ravages were greatest in Germany 
 which had fallen victim to that megalomania, that insen- 
 sate pride, that unbounded ambition, that deterioration in 
 the morals of the masses which made a country, which for 
 long had been regarded as the model of the world, become 
 in a few short months its terror and detestation. 
 
 These three elements gave birth to this war which 
 knows no limits of time, space, destruction of life and 
 property — an appalling phenomenon in the history of the 
 world — a war which in its turn gave birth to a crisis in 
 the whole of western civilization, owing to the overwhelm- 
 ing shock to its political and moral order. 
 
 I was specially pleased that an English translation of 
 4:h'is book should be published in America, because the 
 Americans occupy a peculiar position which makes it easier 
 for them than for Europeans to follow these ideas. Is 
 not the United States the living proof of their truth? If 
 the European war were the last and greatest of the political 
 and national wars of the Old World, it would not be easy 
 to understand why the United States could not have re- 
 mained neutral as it did in all preceding conflicts; if, on 
 the other hand, it is a crisis in western civilization, it is 
 easy enough to see why it could not be a mere looker on, 
 since America forms part of that civilization. 
 
 The Americans are not only in a position to understand 
 this universal character of this crisis, but are also better 
 able to profit by this truth in the work of reconstruction 
 which must follow the present cataclysm. The position 
 of America in relation to the great events of the last three 
 years differs from that of the European Powers in so far 
 as only two of the elements which have contributed to this 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 crisis are present in America : the industrial and the moral 
 and intellectual. The first and most important — the mili- 
 tarism which impelled Europe to the unlimited increase 
 of armaments — is altogether lacking. 
 
 This circumstance has had and will have various conse- 
 quences. The fact that she had not taken part in the rival- 
 ries of militarism was one of the causes which both obliged 
 America to intervene and made that intervention more diffi- 
 cult. It forced America to intervene because had she not 
 done so, she would have been unable to create a great 
 army, and had she not created this army, she would have 
 found herself at the end of the war the only wealthy na- 
 tion in the world, but at the same time wholly defenceless 
 against Europe, which, while possessing numberless great 
 armies, would be bankrupt owing to the expenditures of 
 her whole capital on armaments. The vastest accumula- 
 tion of wealth which the world has ever seen would have 
 existed on one side of the Atlantic and the most formida- 
 ble accumulation of armaments on the other side. It is 
 difficult to say what would have been the outcome of this 
 disproportion, but no one can fail to see the danger latent 
 in it to the political and moral equilibrium of the world. 
 It will be one of the chief glories of American democracy 
 that it realized this supreme necessity and the other na- 
 tions will give it credit for the great service it has ren- 
 dered to civilization by improvising a great army at this 
 critical moment in the history of the world in order to re- 
 establish the equilibrium of power on the two sides of the 
 Atlantic. This service will be still greater if, as is hoped 
 by all enlightened minds, the new American army acts as 
 the army of universal disarmament; if America itses her 
 power, her wealth and the sacrifices she is making in the 
 common cause to induce the European Powers to accept 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IX 
 
 loyally a military organization based on the principle of 
 reduction of armaments to the lowest possible limit. 
 
 Of the three elements which have contributed to this 
 crisis, militarism has been the most active. Without it, 
 as is proved by America, the other two would have been 
 almost innocuous and it may fairly be said that this tre- 
 mendous crisis of western civilization is the offspring of 
 European militarism, as developed during the latter half 
 of the nineteenth century. It is therefore obvious that 
 this evil must be abolished if civilization is to be regenerated 
 and no State can effect so much towards this end as that 
 Power which was fortunate enough to be almost immune 
 from it, namely, the United States, which has it therefore 
 in its power to save our civilization. I do not think that 
 I can better close this preface to a book whose aim it is to 
 discover the means of this salvation than by expressing the 
 hope that it may rise to its lofty task. 
 
 GUGLIELMO FeRRERO. 
 
 Florence, December 9th, 1917' 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface v 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I The Underlying Causes of the War i 
 
 1 Quantity and Quality 3 
 
 2 Anarchy, Liberty and Discipline .... 23 
 
 3 The Great and the Colossal 40 
 
 II Teutonism and Latinism 51 
 
 III Ancient Rome and Modern Culture 85 
 
 IV Italy's Foreign Policy 115 
 
 V The Genius of the Latin Peoples 171 
 
 VI The Intellectual Problems of the New World . . 193 
 VII The Great Contradiction 215 
 
 1 Patriotism and Progress 215 
 
 2 The Two Sides of Progress 222 
 
 3 A Ruthless War 225 
 
 4 New Strength and Ancient Wisdom . . . 229 
 
 5 Bacchus in Bonds 237 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 The Underlying Causes of the War 
 
 i. quantity and quality 
 
 2. anarchy^ liberty and discipline 
 
 3. the great and the colossal 
 
EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 QUANTITY AND QUALITY 
 
 The first impression made by America on the European who 
 sees it from the windows of a railway carriage is that of an 
 immense desert. In the Argentine he sees boundless green 
 plains, whose monotony is broken only by an occasional 
 group of three or four one-storied houses behind a railway 
 station — groups almost too few and far between to make 
 him realize that the desert is inhabited by man. In Brazil 
 he sees range after range of gloomy mountains with here 
 and there a lighter patch, where the forest has been cleared 
 to make room for coffee plantations. But on plain and 
 mountain alike he seeks in vain for signs of the presence of 
 man. The train runs for hours without passing through 
 so much as a village. It is the same in North America, at 
 all events in the Western States, where vast, dreary stretches 
 of country meet the eye. True, villages are more numer- 
 ous and less scattered, and suddenly the traveller sees that 
 the train is passing houses, more and more houses, great 
 factory chimneys bristle on either hand, lofty buildings 
 tower over the ordinary buildings like giants over a multi- 
 tude of dwarfs and he catches glimpses of streets with 
 hurrying motor cars and trams. He is passing through 
 an important town, where half a million, a million or even 
 two million of his fellow men live crowded together under 
 
 the shadows of the myriad chimneys surrounded by an al- 
 
 3 
 
4 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 most deserted countryside. Soon the train leaves the 
 haunts of men once more and rushes into the melancholy 
 solitude of the desert plains. 
 
 A strange sight, this boundless void, to the European, who 
 has lived all his life in one of the most densely populated 
 countries of the world, where dwellings of man are to be 
 found everywhere from the sea shore to the loftiest inhab- 
 itable mountain peaks. Desolate as these plains and moun- 
 tains may appear, they are however not unknown to man, 
 whose unremitting toil forces them to yield every year im- 
 mense quantities of grain, cotton, tobacco, coffee, wool, 
 meat, gold, silver, copper, iron and coal — a boundless stream 
 of wealth which flows over the whole world. These raw 
 materials are worked up in the great manufacturing centres 
 of the United States with almost incredible rapidity. 
 Even if Europeans tend to exaggerate everything concern- 
 ing America, its marvels and its horrors alike, there is one 
 thing which exceeds their estimate of it, namely, its riches. 
 In no place or period has man succeeded in producing such 
 boundless wealth in so short a space of time as he has done 
 in the United States and in the great republics of South 
 America, such as the Argentine and Brazil, since the middle 
 of the nineteenth century. We might well believe that he 
 had discovered beyond the shores of the Atlantic the fabu- 
 lous garden of the Hesperides for which he had so long 
 sought in vain, the promised land which for centuries to 
 come will provide mankind with food, clothing, metals and 
 fuel enough to satisfy the wildest dreams of avarice; the 
 land of plenty which is one day to banish from the world the 
 scourge of famine, before which it trembled for so many 
 centuries. If we bear this in mind, we shall realize the im- 
 portance of all that has taken place during the last fifty 
 years in the plains, mountains and cities of America and the 
 
QUANTITY AND QUALITY 6 
 
 great role which the countries of the New World now play. 
 The riches of America would not, however, be one of the 
 most remarkable historical phenomena of our age, if they 
 merely furnished man with powers of action and enjoyment 
 such as he has never before possessed. Their effect is at 
 once wider and deeper, for they are hastening the end of a 
 movement which began more than a century ago — one which 
 threatens to overwhelm the very foundations of our civiliza- 
 tion; they place before us a formidable problem, the most 
 serious, in my opinion, which we have to face ; the problem, 
 which together with the influence, hatred or admiration of 
 the riches of America, lies at the bottom of almost all the 
 moral and social difficulties surrounding us : the problem of 
 progress. This statement may appear perhaps obscure: I 
 will now endeavour to explain it. 
 
 II 
 
 The wealth of America ! We constantly hear this spoken 
 of in Europe, frequently with envy, as if it were the riches 
 of some uncivilized people which, in order to acquire the 
 treasures of the earth, looks with contempt on the things 
 of the intellect. One does not, however, need to travel in 
 America in order to realize that the Americans are 
 no mere barbarians, wholly given over to money grub- 
 bing. I can only here give a few instances from North 
 America, but they would almost all apply on a smaller scale 
 to the great States of Southern America. The effort made 
 by the Americans to establish schools all over the country 
 would in itself be sufficient to refute such an accusation. 
 You have all heard of the great American universities, such 
 as Harvard and Columbia. These institutions are real 
 cities of learning, with splendid buildings, gardens, laborato- 
 
6 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 ries, museums, libraries, playing fields and swimming baths. 
 The beauty and comfort of the buildings are in themselves 
 a proof of the esteem accorded to learning, but of this the 
 scholastic program affords even more striking evidence. It 
 may safely be said that everything which can be taught is 
 taught : all languages, living and dead ; the histories and lit- 
 eratures of every land, both ancient and modern, which have 
 influenced the development of civilization ; all sciences, both 
 theoretical and practical. Millions are required annually 
 for the upkeep of these buildings and the support of the 
 professors, yet nearly all these great universities are wholly 
 independent of the State. They are maintained by the fees 
 paid by the students and by the generosity of the rich. 
 Bankers, manufacturers and business men contribute a large 
 proportion of the sum required for the salaries of all these 
 professors of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, philosophy, mathe- 
 matics, etc. Nor do the universities absorb all the money 
 spent by public bodies and the wealthy classes on education. 
 Everywhere we find museums, libraries and Schools of every 
 kind for both men and women of every class set up by 
 cities, states and millionaires for the spread of general 
 education and professional training. Face to face with 
 these facts, it is difficult to say that the upper classes in 
 America care about nothing but money. It may be asserted 
 that they are lacking in taste, that their towns are hideous. 
 It would undoubtedly require some courage to say that 
 American cities are beautiful, but it would none the less be 
 unjust to say that the American is indifferent to beauty or 
 to deny that he makes great efforts to beautify his country. 
 All the architectural schools of Europe, those of Paris 
 above all, are full of enthusiastic American students. 
 Fabulous sums are spent on fine public buildings by towns, 
 states, banks, insurance companies, universities and railways. 
 
QUANTITY AND QUALITY 7 
 
 These edifices may not be masterpieces, but it can hardly 
 be denied that some of them are very handsome and that 
 America possesses many talented architects. We con- 
 stantly hear it asserted in Europe that Americans give high 
 prices for antiques or so-called antiques and are incapable 
 of distinguishing between the really beautiful and the medi- 
 ocre, the genuine and the faked. But those who have vis- 
 ited rich Americans in their homes know that while the 
 pretentious and the dupe are to be found in America as in 
 every other country, there are also many Americans who 
 are real connoisseurs. 
 
 A writer given to paradox might even assert that Amer- 
 icans are more idealistic than Europeans, if the desire to 
 understand, admire and assimilate everything — art, ideas 
 and religions alike — is to be regarded as a proof of ideal- 
 ism. Go to New York : you will see in the streets speci- 
 mens of every kind of architecture; every religion is repre- 
 sented in its churches; every school of music in its theatres; 
 every style of decorative art in its houses. Now New York 
 is typical of that spirit of universal reconciliation, somewhat 
 vague and superficial perhaps, but vigorous and sincere, 
 characteristic of contemporary America, of which prag- 
 matism is the philosophic expression. When pragmatism 
 affirmed that all useful ideas are true, did it really intend, 
 as has been alleged, to subordinate the ideal to the practical ? 
 I hardly think it is possible to believe this when one has 
 once breathed American air. No, pragmatism is essentially 
 a doctrine of conciliation. Its aim is to afford man the 
 means of reconciling opposing ideas and doctrines by prov- 
 ing that all ideas, even those which appear mutually ex- 
 clusive, may help to become wiser, stronger and better. 
 Why then struggle for the triumph of one to the detriment 
 of the other instead of allowing man to take from each all 
 
8 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 the good that each has to offer? Those who know North 
 America will say that if there be a distinctively American 
 doctrine, it is this. Many philosophic objections might of 
 course be made to such a doctrine, but, whether it be true 
 or false, it proves that the people which conceived it, far 
 from despising the ideal, has such a respect for all ideas, 
 that it has not the courage to reject any one of them. 
 
 But for the Hmitations of space, many analogous in- 
 stances might be cited. There are rich, uneducated people 
 in America as elsewhere, but the boor rolling in money is 
 a mythical being. Nor is this surprising. Modern society 
 is so constituted that it is impossible to conceive of a nation 
 which is both wealthy and ignorant. Modern industry, 
 commerce and agriculture demand special technical knowl- 
 edge and a highly perfected social organization; in other 
 words, a high degree of scientific and judicial culture. 
 America cannot therefore be said to be indifferent to the 
 things of the intellect; it would be more correct to say that 
 she is less interested in them as a people than in industry, 
 commerce and agriculture. But is not this the case also in 
 Europe? Who would venture to assert that the progress 
 of literature, art and science is the dominant interest of 
 the governments and upper classes of the Old World? 
 Listen to the conversation of those around us. What are 
 its topics? The perfecting of industrial machinery, the 
 development of coal and iron mines, the utilization of 
 waterfalls, and the expansion of industries and commerce. 
 Kings who reign by the grace of God declare publicly that 
 they have nothing so much at heart as the commerce o.f their 
 countries! If this be American barbarism, it must be ad- 
 mitted that Europe is being Americanized with alarming 
 rapidity. This economic effort of Europe is not, however, 
 in the least surprising: it is but the dizzy speeding up of a 
 
QUANTITY AND QUALITY 9 
 
 great historical movement which began in the far-away days 
 when an obscure and tenacious Genoese spread his canvas 
 and set sail across the ocean for the unknown West. 
 Europe had, indeed, given birth to miracles of art and liter- 
 ature, to profound systems of philosophy, lofty moral stand- 
 ards and learned codes of law — but she was poor; she pro- 
 duced but little and that little slowly. She had made gods 
 of tradition and authority; she had set bounds to the energy 
 of man by means of laws, prejudices and precepts ; she bent 
 the pride of man by telling him unceasingly that he was 
 weak, unstable, corrupt and — to quote Virgil's metaphor 
 — like the boatman rowing slowly against the stream. 
 Woe to him if for a single moment he relaxes his efforts 
 to make headway against the current which is ever ready 
 to carry him away with his frail bark! Then, suddenly, 
 she discovered an immense continent in the midst of the 
 ocean and realized that Prometheus, who had only stolen a 
 single spark, was but a clumsy thief. She discovered elec- 
 tricity and coal mines ; she learned how to make the steam- 
 engine and consequently how to multiply her wealth with 
 a rapidity unknown to our ancestors. From that moment 
 man was no longer content merely to dream of the prom- 
 ised land; he wished to see it for himself. He demolished 
 all those traditions, laws and institutions which hampered 
 the flight of human energy; he learned to work both hard 
 and quickly; he won both liberty and riches and he con- 
 ceived the idea of progress. 
 
 The idea of progress was born during the closing years 
 of the seventeenth century, at which time man began to 
 realize that he was able to conquer the earth and its treas- 
 ures. It developed and spread during the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, and overcame both the objections of philosophers and 
 the misoneism of the masses, the scruples of religion and 
 
10 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 the spirit of tradition, in proportion as man extended his 
 dominion over nature, seized her treasures and shook off 
 the yoke of obsolete teaching. The tremendous develop- 
 ment of the great American States ensured its final triumph 
 and it is today the dominating principle of our civilization 
 — one which obliges us to make efforts, to run risks and 
 endure privation. And yet ... if you ask people who 
 have the word " progress " constantly on their lips what 
 they understand by it, how many can give you an exact 
 definition? You have only to read the books and articles 
 on the subject or to study the proceedings of sociological 
 congresses to see how confused and discordant are the 
 ideas even of experts. The idea of progress appears to be 
 as popular and all powerful as it is vague and incoherent. 
 It is on every one's lips, but no one knows exactly what it 
 is. Stranger still, in the century of progress you hear 
 constant complaints of universal decadence. Workmen, 
 employes, soldiers, students, children, parents and servants 
 are no better than before ; good cooking is as much a thing 
 of the past as good literature, beautiful furniture, and art, 
 and courteous manners. How is it that so many things are 
 deteriorating in this age of progress ? Are we making prog- 
 ress or not? Is the progress of which we are so proud 
 and to which we daily sacrifice our leisure and our peace of 
 mind, sometimes even our very life, but an illusion after 
 all? 
 
 Ill 
 
 It is hardly necessary to point out the seriousness of this 
 question, which may be regarded as fundamental, since on 
 it depends the final sentence passed upon our civilization: 
 whether it is a serious matter or a great delusion. And 
 yet our age cannot answer it. Why is this? How is this 
 
QUANTITY AND QUALITY 11 
 
 apparent contradiction to be explained? This is the great 
 problem which all I saw, learned and observed in North 
 and South America forced me to face. Has the problem 
 of the New World struck me in this light because my start- 
 ing point was not only Europe but also the dead and gone 
 ages of ancient history? It may be so. At all events this 
 obscure problem has always seemed somewhat clearer when 
 I compared American, and more especially North Amer- 
 ican, society with the ancient civilizations to which I had 
 devoted so much study. True, the civilizations from which 
 our own is descended were poor: their desires, ambitions, 
 their initiative, enterprise and originality were all limited; 
 they produced but little and, while they suffered much from 
 lack of material resources, they only looked upon the in- 
 crease of riches as a painful necessity. They did, however, 
 strive after a high standard of perfection in art, literature, 
 morals and religion, as is proved by the artistic character of 
 almost all the industries of the past, the importance attrib- 
 uted to the decorative arts, to questions of personal morals, 
 ceremonial and forms. Quality was more highly esteemed 
 than quantity, and all the limitations to which these civiliza- 
 tions were subject — limitations which seem so strange to 
 us today — were but the necessary price of this ardently 
 desired perfection. We have made the accumulation of 
 riches our aim; we have won liberty and destroyed almost 
 all the limitations of the past ; but we have had to abandon 
 nearly all the ideals of artistic, religious and moral perfec- 
 tion venerated by our ancestors and sacrifice quality to quan- 
 tity. 
 
 Take, for example, the dispute as to the study of the 
 classics. Why did men study Homer and Cicero with so 
 much enthusiasm in times past? Because the great Greek 
 and Latin writers were then considered the models of a 
 
12 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 literary perfection greatly admired by the ruling classes, 
 which was not merely an intellectual adornment. It could 
 confer public esteem, celebrity, even glory and lofty posi- 
 tions. During the last century these models have, how- 
 ever, lost much of their prestige, either because many people 
 have learnt to appreciate the literature of other ages or 
 because they are no longer in touch with a period which 
 speaks too much and writes too fast. How can a candidate 
 for the Presidency of the United States, who has to make 
 ten or fifteen speeches a day, aim at the perfection of ora- 
 tory of Cicero or Quintilian? But the day when classic 
 learning ceased to be a school of literary taste pronounced 
 its doom ; once the ancient writers ceased to be models, their 
 works became books like any others, and less interesting to 
 many readers than much modern literature. We hear much 
 of an artistic crisis. Here we must, however, draw a dis- 
 tinction. The arts may be divided into two categories: 
 those which merely serve to amuse man and to offer him 
 an agreeable pastime, such as music, the drama and, to a 
 certain extent, literature; and those which beautify the 
 world, such as architecture, sculpture, painting and all the 
 decorative arts. Now it is obvious that if there is a crisis 
 in every branch of art at the present time, the crisis is far 
 more acute in the arts belonging to the latter category. No 
 age has spent so much on beautifying the world as our own 
 has done; no epoch has given birth to such hosts of archi- 
 tects, sculptors, painters and decorators, built so many 
 towns, palaces and bridges, or laid out so many parks and 
 gardens. Why are we so dissatisfied with the results? 
 Why have the Americans, who spent such fabulous sums on 
 beautifying their towns, never succeeded in building a S. 
 Mark or a Notre Dame ? We have everything : money, art- 
 ists and the desire to create the beautiful; what is lacking? 
 
QUANTITY AND QUALITY 13 
 
 Only one thing : time. One day at New York I was speaking 
 in appreciative terms of American architecture to a very tal- 
 ented architect. " Yes, yes," he answered sarcastically, " my 
 compatriots are quite ready to spend one hundred million 
 dollars on building a church as beautiful as S. Mark's in 
 Venice, but they would insist on its being finished in 
 eighteen months." The reply was suggestive. How is it 
 possible to beautify a world which is perpetually being 
 transformed, where nothing is stable and where everything, 
 from furniture to buildings, must be turned out in quanti- 
 ties? Time, reasonable leisure, a wise moderation in the 
 demand for quantity and a certain stability of taste are 
 indispensable in the construction of beautiful buildings and 
 beautiful furniture alike if even a fairly high standard of 
 perfection is to be attained. S. Mark and Notre Dame 
 cannot be built in eighteen months and France could never 
 have produced her great decorative styles if public taste 
 had been as changeable as it is now and people had expected 
 to refurnish every ten years. 
 
 IV 
 
 How many other instances could be given! If we look 
 around us we see on all hands this struggle between quality 
 and quantity, which is the very essence of modern civiliza- 
 tion. Two worlds are at war in our day ; not, as is so often 
 thought, Europe and America, but quantity and quality, and 
 their conflicts disturb and rend asunder America just as 
 much Europe. The impossibility of defining progress, the 
 contradiction between our constant complaints of general 
 decadence and our equally constant assertions that the world 
 is progressing, are another effect of this struggle. Our age 
 has increased the output of certain commodities while lower- 
 ing the standard of quality so that it appears to be progress- 
 
14) EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 ing If we judge it from the standpoint of quantity, and to be 
 deteriorating if we judge it from that of quahty. We are 
 bewildered, because we are constantly confusing these two 
 standards by using sometimes one and sometimes the other. 
 Set an architect and a builder in concrete to discuss our 
 age: the former will tell you that the multipHcation of 
 hideous, jerry built towns and villages is a sign of deca- 
 dence and barbarism, because they prove that we have lost 
 the power of raising the marvellous monuments which are 
 the glory of the Middle Ages; while the latter will main- 
 tain with equal sincerity that no epoch has been so progres- 
 sive as ours which sees the birth of so many new towns and 
 the extension of those already existing. The former 
 judges from the standpoint of quality and is right in assert- 
 ing that Notre Dame or S. Mark's, Venice, are of greater 
 value than a whole American city; the other, who judges 
 from the standpoint of quantity, is equally justified in draw- 
 ing a directly opposite conclusion. In America I have seen 
 an even more striking instance of this tragic misunder- 
 standing, which is latent in nearly all our judgments on 
 good and evil. When I arrived the campaign which had 
 been going on for some years against the trusts, the great 
 banks, the railway and insurance companies, was at its 
 fiercest. Speeches, articles and books by men of weight 
 accused the great financial magnates of being propagators of 
 corruption and tools of a modern despotism no less detest- 
 able than the despotisms of ancient times, and of forming 
 disgraceful organizations to rob honest men of the fruit of 
 their toil. This campaign was so widespread among the 
 middle and lower classes as to contribute in no small degree 
 to the fall of the Republican Party. This wave of popular 
 indignation was, however, met in America, as it had been in 
 Europe, with absolute composure by economists and busi- 
 
QUANTITY AND QUALITY 15 
 
 ness men who accused the whole movement of being a 
 return to the ideas of the Middle Ages and sang the praises 
 of modern finance, its immense enterprises, great successes 
 and formidable organizations. How is such a marked dif- 
 ference of opinion on a question of such importance to be 
 explained in an epoch so enlightened and educated as our 
 own? Has part of the world been struck blind and only 
 the remainder been gifted with clear vision? Not at all. It 
 is not a question of sight or blindness, but of two sets of men 
 having different aims and employing different standards of 
 measurement How can they possibly come to an under- 
 standing? If the quantitative standard be adopted, if it be 
 admitted that the aim and object of life is to produce the 
 greatest possible quantity of wealth in the shortest possible 
 time, the economists are right. The injustices and corrup- 
 tions denounced by the adversaries of modern finance are 
 but the trifling drawbacks of the economic liberty to which 
 the modern world owes its wealth. The idea that the earn- 
 ings of the individual should be determined by the blind play 
 of economic forces was, however, unknown to all the civil- 
 izations preceding our own. They always strove to adjust 
 this play of forces, so as to bring it into agreement with 
 the principles of charity and justice. In order to attain 
 this end, they did not even hesitate to limit the developments 
 of industry and commerce, as, for instance, by forbidding 
 usury. They subordinated economic development to an 
 ideal of moral perfection; quantity to quality. Now, if this 
 standard be applied to the modern world, those who disap- 
 prove of modern finance are right; certain methods em- 
 ployed by modern finance and, in certain cases, even cor- 
 ruption, may further the production of riches, but are none 
 the less distasteful to a sensitive moral conscience. The 
 partisans and opponents of finance may talk for ever, they 
 
16 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 will never agree, for they start from different standpoints, 
 which can never be reconciled. 
 
 We now see why the comparisons made between Europe 
 and America, all the discussions as to which of the two 
 worlds is the best, can never lead to any definitive con- 
 clusion. The weak point of all these comparisons is always 
 the confusion of the two standards. America is neither the 
 egregious country where no one has an idea beyond money 
 making, nor the fabulous land of marvels its admirers would 
 have us believe it. It is the country in which the principle 
 of quantity, which has become so powerful during the last 
 century and a half, has won its most signal triumph. An 
 active, energetic, vigorous people found itself in possession 
 of an immense territory, of which part was extremely fertile 
 and other districts rich in mines and forests, just at the time 
 when civilization had discovered the means which rendered 
 possible the development of immense tracts of country and 
 the rapid production of wealth: the steam engine. This 
 people had in its hands a country unhampered by tradition 
 and was therefore able to march along the new paths of his- 
 tory with unexampled rapidity and energy. In the course of 
 a single century it has multiplied its population, its towns 
 and its wealth ten, fifteen and even thirty fold. It created 
 in hot haste a social order which has subordinated the ideals 
 of perfection prevalent hitherto to a new ideal : the ideal of 
 increasing size and increasing rapidity. It is not true that 
 America is indifferent to intellectual things, but her efforts 
 in the field of art and science neither are nor can be subor- 
 dinated to the other and higher ideal of the rapid and in- 
 tensive development of the continent by means of machinery. 
 At the same time it is not correct to assert that Europe 
 stands for the essence of civilization, as against American 
 barbarism, or that the Old World has seen its day and is 
 
QUANTITY AND QUALITY 17 
 
 powerless and paralysed by the trammels of routine. The 
 ancient societies of Europe have also entered upon what 
 might be called the quantitative phase of history ; in Europe, 
 too, the masses demand a higher standard of living; public 
 and private expenditure is increasing with alarming rapidity 
 and it has become absolutely necessary to further the produc- 
 tion of wealth. This is, however, a far more difficult matter 
 in Europe than in America. Europe is far more densely 
 populated; part of the land is exhausted; the many political 
 divisions and the multiplicity of tongues greatly increase the 
 difficulties of development on a large scale ; the traditions of 
 the days when men produced a small number of articles 
 which attained a high standard of perfection are more pow- 
 erful. Europe is superior to America in the higher things 
 of the mind, but in economic enterprises she is slower, more 
 timid, less prodigal; in short, more limited, nor could it be 
 otherwise. She cannot produce the same quantity at the 
 same rate. Europe may thus seem superior to America or 
 America to Europe, according to whether we make use of 
 the standard of quantity or quality. If the perfection of a 
 civilization is to be gauged by its output of riches America 
 must be considered the model; if, on the other hand, per- 
 pection is to be judged by intellectual activity Europe bears 
 off the palm. 
 
 V 
 
 The objection might be urged : " But we cannot live for 
 ever in a state of indecision. What standard ought we to 
 choose? Is the world, as we see it today, a marvellous 
 epic of progress or a gloomy tragedy of decay? Which of 
 the two worlds, Europe or America, is the better? Which 
 is to be regarded as the model ? You have no right to set 
 such problems if you cannot solve them, and if you cannot 
 
18 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 solve them, you might have saved yourself your journeys 
 to America or at all events have spent your time on these 
 journeys on other things and refrained from writing a 
 lengthy volume on the conflict between the two worlds. " 
 Such an objection would be both natural and reasonable. 
 It is, however, unlikely that man will ever succeed in solv- 
 ing the problem with any degree of certainty during the 
 present phase of civilization, for this very uncertainty is the 
 price of man's conquest of the earth and of the enormous 
 development of America which we ourselves have wit- 
 nessed. In order to conquer the earth and its treasures we 
 have sacrificed many of the ideals of perfection — artistic, 
 moral and religious — bequeathed to us by our ancestors ; 
 are we, however, ready to give them up altogether? Can 
 we even imagine a world of pure quantity without either 
 morals, beauty or justice? The question is its own answer. 
 But the pride and cupidity of man have been excited to 
 such a pitch by his conquests, that the modern world seems 
 to have made up its mind to go on with the great adventure 
 to the bitter end. A religious, moral or political movement 
 placing reasonable limits to needs and luxury in every class 
 seems very unlikely to take place in our day and, so long 
 as the population, the demands of all classes, and public 
 and private expenditure continue to increase, quantity will 
 continue to extend its sway. We shall be forced to subor- 
 dinate art and morals to the necessity of manufacturing 
 more rapid machinery, bringing more and more land under 
 cultivation and discovering mines. The production of 
 wealth will tend more and more to become the standard of 
 progress and our day will become increasingly the day of 
 those who possess vast tracts of territory, great empires, 
 and rich coal and iron mines. Fire will once more become, 
 as at the dawn of history, the supreme deity, and the intel- 
 
QUANTITY AND QUALITY 19 
 
 lectual and moral uncertainty in which we live will continue. 
 No system of philosophy, no science, will be able to replace 
 this uncertainty by a clear and exact knowledge of good and 
 evil, beauty and ugliness, truth and error. All the qualita- 
 tive differences between things will tend to become confused 
 in our minds. We shall not be able to give an exact defini- 
 tion of progress, just as we shall find it difficult to dis- 
 tinguish between legitimate needs and vices, between reason- 
 able expenditure and extravagance. We shall change our 
 aesthetic principles every year; we shall consider a thing 
 ugly today which we admired yesterday and vice versa, and 
 after probing into the mystery of those things before which 
 our fathers bowed their heads, we shall end by asking at the 
 very moment when science is celebrating its greatest tri- 
 umphs whether it is true or false, whether it teaches to know 
 reality or merely deludes us; whether we know or are but 
 dreaming! Here we have the great problem with which 
 contemporary philosophy is confronted. Everything seems 
 to totter to its fall around man who, by transcending every 
 limit, even the reality of the world, has become too 
 powerful ! 
 
 VI 
 
 If there be no way out of the situation, why face it at all, 
 you will say? Why recognize the existence of an incurable 
 malady? I am of the opinion, however, that it is well to 
 analyse our present strange position, one which is unique 
 in the history of the world, and that a thorough under- 
 standing of it cannot fail to be of service to those men — 
 scholars, artists, men of letters, jurists, and the religious 
 — who represent the world of quality. With the exception 
 of medicine, whose aim is to cure our maladies, of those 
 sciences which make discoveries of service to industry, and 
 
20 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 of the arts which minister to public amusement, the world 
 of intellect of today seems out of touch with the world. Is 
 there a single earnest priest who has not asked himself in 
 moments of discouragement of what use it is to preach the 
 Christian virtues to a century whose power lies in overween- 
 ing pride and an almost delirious greed of possession? 
 What intelligent historian has not wondered from time to 
 time to what purpose he persists in recording the events of 
 the past to a generation which only looks to the future? 
 What philosopher has not felt in this age, so wholly absorbed 
 in economic realities, as if he had strayed into this world 
 from some other planet? What artist, whose ambition is 
 not confined to money making but who strives after a high 
 standard of perfection, has not often cursed the frenzied 
 whirl in which we all live today? From time to time an 
 apparent reversion to the old order takes place; a sudden 
 interest is manifested in the progress of religion, the future 
 of morals, the history of the past, the problems of meta- 
 physics, and the artistic remains of dead civilizations. 
 These passing enthusiasms are, however, too transitory to 
 convince artists and scholars that they have a definite and 
 useful task to accomplish. One reason why all forms of 
 intellectual activity tend at the present time to become either 
 lucrative professions or bureaucratic careers is that they are 
 forced to seek outside — in money or in social position — 
 the object which they can no longer find in themselves. 
 How many times, during my long journeys across the great, 
 lonely tracks of America, have I thought, as I gazed on the 
 wheat fields or coffee plantations stretching as far as the 
 eye could reach, of the little bits of marble so delicately 
 carved by the artists of ancient Greece which are the treas- 
 ures of our museums. Was not the marvellous perfection 
 of Greek art due to the fact that at a certain period in their 
 
QUANTITY AND QUALITY 21 
 
 history they ceased to try to extend their dominion over the 
 earth and its treasures? Have we not succeeded in con- 
 quering these immense stretches of country because we have 
 given up striving after the artistic and moral perfection 
 which was the glory of the ancients? This idea seemed to 
 me to shed fresh light upon the ancient civilizations and our 
 own day alike. If the civilizations which carried their de- 
 sire for perfection too far ended by exhausting their energies 
 in the pursuit of a goal at once too circumscribed and too 
 difficult of attainment, are not the civilizations which give 
 themselves over to the passion for immensity, speed and 
 quantity fated to end in a new, coarse and violent barbarism ? 
 If a people is to live happily and work profitably, there must 
 be a certain balance between quantity and quality, and this 
 balance is only possible if the ideals of perfection, whether 
 artistic, moral or religious — are capable of setting a bound 
 to the desire for the increase of wealth. How many forms 
 of intellectual activity, which are at present neglected or 
 despised, or else completely transformed into careers or 
 professions, would once more become noble missions if 
 artists, historians, philosophers, priests, men of letters and 
 the upper classes by whom they are surrounded realized of 
 what supreme importance it is to keep intact some sort of 
 breakwater against the violent flood of modern progress! 
 What renewed energy would these forms of intellectual life 
 draw from their consciousness of this task and its impor- 
 tance! Take classical studies, for instance, I touch upon 
 this point once more, as I draw to a close, because it is one 
 about which I thought much during my travels in America 
 — classical studies will never flourish again unless, after 
 moderating their scientific claims, we restore to them their 
 original artistic and literary character. They must, that is 
 to say, have as their object the preservation of an ideal of 
 
n EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 aesthetic perfection. We cannot, however, simply return to 
 the humanism of times past. Greece and Rome can no' 
 longer be regarded as the one and only standard of beauty. 
 Times have changed, the world would no longer tolerate the 
 confinement of taste within such narrow bounds. Greece 
 and Rome may and should be one of our models, the most 
 ancient and the most glorious. The models created by 
 Greece and Rome have exercised such immense influence on 
 the history of the world, they have so often aided nations 
 to emerge from barbarism and to find in limitation the con- 
 sciousness of beauty, truth and justice, that it is our duty to 
 keep them alive in our minds and ready to come once more 
 to our assistance. In order to keep them alive, we must 
 have schools where we can learn to know and feel them. 
 No ideal of perfection is either absolute, eternal or neces- 
 sary; they are one and all born of an arbitrary and hence 
 transitory limitation ; they are like so many sparks from the 
 infinite light surrounding us. They pass away in an instant 
 if man makes no effort to retain them. There have been 
 periods which shattered statues and burned books whose 
 fragments we treasure as relics and this destruction of an- 
 tiquity might conceivably take place again, though under 
 less violent forms. What will be the use of filling our 
 museums with Greek statues when the world no longer ap- 
 preciates their beauty, or of publishing perfect editions of 
 the classics when only a handful of specialists can read 
 them? Just because in the great continents of America fire 
 is once more about to become the lord of the earth and the 
 supreme deity of man, as it was at the dawn of history, the 
 law of equilibrium demands that in both Europe and Amer- 
 ica there should be a select few devoted to the worship of 
 the Muses and capable of appreciating the harmonies of 
 Virgil even amid the deafening whirl of modern machinery. 
 
ANARCHY, LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 
 
 The European war, which has already devastated so much 
 of the world we knew, this war which has been spoken of 
 for years, though often without any more real belief in its 
 possibihty than in that of the sun being extinguished or the 
 earth colliding with some wandering comet, this war took 
 but a week to become a grim reality. On the evening of 
 July 24th, 1 9 14, Europe from the Baltic to the Ionian, from 
 the Pyrenees to the Ural Mountains, went to rest never 
 dreaming but that the next day would dawn as usual, bring- 
 ing to the world, like its predecessors and successors, its 
 wonted burden of good and evil and then vanishing into the 
 abyss of time with nought to mark it from its fellows. The 
 German Emperor was on his usual summer cruise in the 
 North Sea, the Emperor of Austria was taking the waters 
 at Ischl, the President of the French Republic was about 
 to leave Russia on a visit to the Scandinavian sovereigns. 
 But on Saturday, July 25th, all Europe read with dismay 
 the threatening words addressed to the Serbian government 
 by the Austrian Minister at Belgrade and the following Sat- 
 urday, August 1st, Count Pourtales, the German ambassador 
 at Petrograd, handed the declaration of war to the Russian 
 government. How did this come about ? Whose fault was 
 it? What was its object? Even now after three years the 
 rapidity with which in one short week the imaginary comet 
 appeared, grew and collided with us, the paralysed stupefac- 
 tion with which we watched its approach, seem like some 
 hideous dream. 
 
 When the time comes, history will investigate and relate 
 
 23 
 
^ 
 
 24 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 everything that was said, thought and done day by day and 
 hour by hour at the courts and in the chancelleries of Europe 
 during that fatal week. At present each government 
 strives to divulge only that which tends to throw the re- 
 sponsibility for this appalling catastrophe on to the shoulders 
 of other governments. There is, however, one point as to 
 which no impartial observer can be in doubt. The European 
 war broke out because and solely because Germany, both 
 her people and her government, willed it. The respective 
 parts played by people and government matter little. What 
 does matter is the fact that at the critical moment people 
 and government agreed to fall upon their two powerful 
 eastern and western neighbours who asked nothing better 
 than to be left in peace. Hence we are faced with the ques- 
 tion, why should such an industrious people, professing to 
 be actuated by the same moral and political principles as its 
 neighbours, a people which therefore had every reason to de- 
 sire peace as much as the other peoples of Europe, have 
 suddenly been seized by such an overwhelming desire to go 
 to war without provocation and in a cause that only con- 
 cerned them indirectly? Does this people despite appear- 
 ances differ from its neighbours ? Is it in reality a stranger 
 in that Europe in the very heart of which it dwells and 
 multiplies ? 
 
 If we are to answer this question aright we must bear in 
 mind that this war is not merely a war but, like the fall of 
 the Western Empire, the advent of Christianity, and the 
 French Revolution, an historic cataclysm. Hence if the 
 accidents which immediately brought it about are of recent 
 origin, its real underlying causes must be sought in the re- 
 mote past; they date back to that immense upheaval of which 
 the French Revolution itself was but an episode, that up- 
 heaval which for two centuries has been undermining the 
 
ANARCHY, LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 25 
 
 principles on which the social order had rested since the 
 beginning of history. 
 
 Bygone centuries had said to Man, every new thing, just 
 because it is new, must be regarded as worse than its prede- 
 cessors, and consequently every old thing must be held 
 sacred. One century, the nineteenth, ventured to reverse 
 this principle and to proclaim in the name of progress that 
 the new, just because it was new, should be preferred to 
 that which was already in existence and that it was the duty 
 of each generation to give new lamps for old as frequently 
 as possible. The bygone centuries had told Man that mod- 
 eration of desire, simplicity of life and frugality were the 
 supreme virtues. The nineteenth century reversed this be- 
 lief also, deeming it a virtue to earn and spend lavishly and 
 to multiply its desires, needs and aspirations. For cen- 
 turies and centuries Man had been told that he was bom into 
 the world in order to submit to authority both human and 
 divine ; the nineteenth century proclaimed, on the contrary, 
 that he was born in order to live in liberty and to exercise 
 his faculties freely and that, in consequence, it was his duty 
 to inquire into the reasons for the authority to which he 
 was asked to submit. This was perforce the result of that 
 great movement of peoples, classes, ideas and aspirations 
 which after the discovery of America impelled Europe first, 
 and then both Europe and America to conquer the earth, 
 that reversal of principles by which what was bad has either 
 become or was in process of becoming good, and what was 
 good either has become or is in process of becoming bad, 
 inevitably engendering universal unrest in the life of the 
 world, an unrest far more widespread than that caused by 
 Christianity, which had also, though by another process, re- 
 versed so many of the social principles of the ancients, an 
 unrest whose causes escape most observers, but is none the 
 
26 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 less making itself felt everywhere in the world today. 
 Whether the new principles of liberty and progress can 
 ever succeed in uprooting and suppressing wholly and for 
 ever the ancient principle of authority and tradition, or 
 whether a longer time than has yet elapsed is requisite for 
 its uprooting and annihilation, the fact remains that in 
 nearly every European country the new principle has only 
 achieved a partial triumph and the old principle still holds 
 partial sway. Consequently in all modern European coun- 
 tries we find a lack of internal harmony which is both 
 disturbing and constant, but varies in degree, since authority 
 and tradition have not yet yielded or been forced to yield 
 to the same extent all over Europe. One nation is con- 
 servative and clings to tradition in those very things in 
 which another is striving eagerly after progress, innovation 
 and vice versa. 
 
 II 
 
 If from this point of view we compare the three principal 
 European Powers we shall perhaps understand why France 
 and England desired peace and why Germany on the con- 
 trary forced war upon them as she has forced it on the whole 
 world. To the great upheaval of ideas and principles which 
 brought forth modern civilization France contributed her 
 share, and what a share! the Revolution. To the prin- 
 ciple of authority, which for so many centuries held sway 
 in every State, the French Revolution opposed the principle 
 of liberty. For this reason France is undoubtedly the 
 European nation in which the new principle of liberty has 
 succeeded in establishing its ascendancy in politics to a 
 greater extent than in any other country and is perhaps the 
 only one in which the State, stripped of its outward show, 
 the mystic pomp and ceremony of bygone ages, is revealed 
 
ANARCHY, LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 9.1 
 
 to man in its naked reality as a creation of reason pure and 
 simple, intended for the service of those who are subject 
 to it and in which authority instead of coming from above 
 emanates from those who are bound to obey it. Thus un- 
 trammelled public opinion holds absolute sway over the Re- 
 public, a state of things of w^hich the bare suggestion would 
 have seemed mad or impious three centuries ago. But 
 apart from the State and political doctrines there is perhaps 
 no nation in Europe in which the ancient spirit, respect for 
 tradition, sense of moderation and recognition of authority 
 is as strong as in France. Many look on France as behind 
 the times because in that country old traditions hold their 
 own more successfully against the encroachments of mod- 
 ernism than they succeed in doing elsewhere, always pro- 
 vided that it is not a question of political theories. Even 
 the rich live modestly and simply, at least in proportion to 
 their ample means; they practise economy, a virtue which 
 has fallen into disuse; they are slow to change the sacred 
 habits of everyday life, and family feehng is very strong in 
 them. The mania for novelty in philosophy, art and science 
 is not widespread, as among the cultured classes of other 
 countries. After the Revolution France, and this is by no 
 means the least of her merits, did not give birth to many 
 fresh systems of philosophy or wax enthusiastic over those 
 brought forth in such numbers by Germany. Today France 
 is perhaps the only nation which does not demand novelty 
 in art at any cost or refuse to recognize the authority of 
 the old criteria. 
 
 It is not difficult to understand that a rich, powerful, and 
 highly educated people endowed with a sense of moderation, 
 and not easily deceived by specious theories into a craving 
 after the impossible, a nation in which pubic opinion rules 
 the State, would naturally desire peace. France was con- 
 
28 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 tented with her lot and did not hanker for the impossible. 
 Why should she expose her fertile fields to the terrible 
 scourge of war? The masses when they can follow their 
 natural inclinations prefer peace to war. France has so 
 earnestly desired peace that more than one of her neigh- 
 bours, perhaps the enemy himself, had concluded that she 
 had become effeminate. 
 
 When we pass to England we find another contradiction. 
 England too had played her part in the recent upheaval of 
 the world. The industrial revolution, without which the 
 political revolution would have had much less effect on the 
 old order of things, was pre-eminently her work. When 
 man possessed only such instruments, mostly of wood, as 
 could be set in motion by his own hand, or by the muscles 
 of some domestic animal, he was able, it is true, to make 
 beautiful objects, but only in limited numbers, and was 
 therefore forced to look upon parsimony as a virtue and on 
 prodigality as a vice. When, however, man succeeded in 
 inventing machinery set in motion by steam, and in manu- 
 facturing an unlimited number of objects, though possibly 
 of inferior quality, he no longer sought after beauty and 
 good workmanship, but after quantity and variety. Other- 
 wise what was the use of turning out so many? The more 
 rapidly man worked, the more he multiplied his needs, the 
 more perfect was he considered. 
 
 England, having inaugurated the industrial revolution, 
 was bound to do as she has done and bring into discredit 
 patriarchal habits, family traditions, simplicity and economy 
 more than any other nation. It is a well known fact that in 
 private life the Englishman, who is a sort of Bohemian, 
 bound by no close ties to his environment, will leave his 
 home, his family and change his whole manner of living 
 in obedience to the exigencies of his work. But this ap- 
 
ANARCHY, LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 29 
 
 parent instability rests on an unshakable foundation of po- 
 litical and intellectual traditions. There are no people more 
 slow to change its opinions, methods, principles, tastes and 
 convictions in matters of art, science, religion, philosophy 
 and, even to a certain extent, in politics. The Germans 
 accuse England of having desired and provoked the war, 
 wherein they show great ingratitude towards the nation 
 which has done everything in its power to make it easy for 
 them to make a surprise attack on Europe. Not only did 
 England not desire the war, but she did not even believe it 
 to be a possibility, in spite of the repeated warnings of far- 
 sighted men, for she had never beheld such a cyclone and 
 war would have been too disturbing to both her business 
 and her pleasure. Consequently she had made no prepara- 
 tions for war; she had neither Alhes, army nor funds; she 
 hesitated up to the last moment, up to the moment when 
 the German soldiers had crossed the Belgian frontier, and 
 for many months after the outbreak of the conflict she 
 failed to realize the magnitude of the ordeal before her. 
 
 In Germany too we find a contradiction, different again 
 from that observed in France and England. Every one 
 knows the power still possessed by the mystic principle of 
 authority in Germany even in the twentieth century. God 
 still governs the Germans, who are consequently under the 
 impression that they are the apple of His eye. We con- 
 stantly hear it said that Germany is a survival of the Middle 
 Ages. This is false if we judge by the forms of govern- 
 ment which wear a modern dress, but true if we judge by 
 their spirit. Where except in Germany could we find wor- 
 ship of royal power and of all authority emanating from the 
 State, the spirit of the seventeenth century transported to 
 the twentieth, become more fervid and sincere because 
 it is tempered by a certain spirit of liberty and criti- 
 
aO EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 cism, more universal and imperative because it is taught and 
 inculcated by an admirably organized and omnipresent 
 State? The absolute monarchies which existed before the 
 Revolution were much more venerated than actually obeyed, 
 as is the case today with the authority of the State in Russia 
 and Turkey. In Germany, by applying forcibly and with 
 modern methods the old principles of monarchial rule, the 
 State has succeeded in making itself respected and obeyed 
 to such an extent that at the outbreak of war the German 
 State was undoubtedly the strongest in Europe, the one that 
 had least reason to fear the opposition, ill will and indiffer- 
 ence of its subjects. 
 
 But what anarchy in customs, tastes, aspirations, criteria 
 and ideas counterbalance this power of the State in modern 
 Germany ! There is no people among whom the old tradi- 
 tions of simplicity and frugality have given place to a 
 more frantic craving for riches and luxury. No other 
 nation has placed the duty of earning and spending, working 
 and enjoying up to the very last moment, on a level with the 
 heroic virtues. No other nation has prided itself to such a 
 degree on setting aside, both in theory and practice, the 
 bounds respected by man throughout the ages, and this ap- 
 plies not merely to the bounds set by tradition and authority 
 but also to those dictated by common sense, ethical law and 
 decency. We have all heard ad nauseam of German kultur, 
 that system of science and philosophy which since the French 
 Revolution has found so many followers among both 
 adolescent and decadent nations, and of which unfortunately 
 the Italian universities of the present day are the most ser- 
 vile worshippers in Europe. But wherein does this kultur 
 differ from earlier or co-existent systems of learning? 
 Herein, that too often through arrogance, lack of experi- 
 ence, or some similar defect, it wholly fails to ciistinguish 
 
ANARCHY, LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 31 
 
 the point at which it must stop short in research, because if 
 it attempts to transcend that point it is thrown back upon 
 itself and hurled into the sophistic void. Many even now 
 raise their eyes to Heaven and exclaim, " Who would have 
 thought it of Germany? Who would have imagined that 
 she was capable of such deeds, that she could set such an 
 example ? A country with so many philosophers and schol^ 
 ars, a country so full of education and learning. " But do 
 you really believe, with scholars and philosophers, that wis- 
 dom and science are incorruptible possessions, the very es- 
 sence of progress, a ray of that divine light which purifies, 
 revivifies and sheds joy wherever it shines? No, even sci- 
 ence and wisdom, the works of man, are subject to all the 
 perversions and corruptions of humanity ; they too may err 
 and lose their way, more especially if they claim to transcend 
 certain bounds of knowledge, which are never laid down by 
 science herself but by humility, common sense, and by what 
 I might term a certain " human instinct " which the scholar 
 ought to possess both with regard to himself and exterior 
 things. This " human instinct " is, however, just what is 
 lacking in German kiiltur. Impelled by frenzied pride to 
 seek its starting point in itself alone, eager to set up fresh 
 systems of morals, art, religion and philosophy, the German 
 intellect has for the last century been accomplishing Her- 
 culean labours, with the result that it has too often succeeded 
 but only in complicating simple questions, obscuring simple 
 issues, setting insoluble problems, clouding the moral con- 
 science and ruining the artistic taste of the world. 
 
 Ill 
 
 How many examples I could give ! I will, however, name 
 but one, taken from the branch of study with which I am 
 
32 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 most familiar — an example which will hardly appear cred- 
 ible when man has succeeded in freeing himself from this 
 malady — the Homeric problem. The Iliad and the Odys- 
 sey are, as every one knows, the two great monuments of 
 poetry which stand on either side of the portals of history. 
 They mark the starting point of European literature. It 
 is therefore not surprising that in every age they have been 
 subjects for diligent study and research. But however 
 great the liberties critics have been in the habit of taking 
 in their interpretation and comments upon the masterpieces 
 of long dead writers, they had for centuries respected at 
 least two boundary lines when treating of these two vener- 
 able pillars of literature. One of these lines of demarcation 
 was the tradition according to which in the eighth century 
 B. C. a poet had flourished, named Homer, who had written 
 two poems and of whose life a more or less accurate ac- 
 count was given. Although this tradition was defective 
 and incomplete and its details did not agree, it had been 
 respected for centuries, simply because it was recognized 
 that the ancients were more likely than ourselves to know 
 when and by whom the Iliad and the Odyssey were written, 
 and that even if they had forgotten the name of the real 
 author it was hardly likely that we should succeed in re- 
 calling it. The other limit was still more modest, since it 
 was set up by the common sense which says that, just as 
 every son must of necessity have a father, every book must 
 have an author, and that if every book we possess was 
 wTitten by some poor devil who one fine day took it into his 
 head to dip his pen into ink and sit down to write the first 
 word of his book, not giving up his task until he had written 
 Finis on the last page, the Iliad and the Odyssey must have 
 been written in the same way. While tradition and these 
 considerations of common sense did not of course satisfy 
 
ANARCHY, LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 33 
 
 our thirst for knowledge, they were for centuries regarded 
 as the pillars of Hercules, beyond which curiosity did not 
 venture to pass until German learning appeared upon the 
 scenes. German scholarship knew no such hesitation, and 
 the inevitable punishment followed, for instead of drawing 
 fresh vigour from this living source of poetry German 
 savants racked their brains over the impossible task of trying 
 to reconstruct the history of a work about which we possess 
 no data. They discussed and waxed hot over the wildest of 
 theories ; they studied and wrote much without reaching any 
 conclusion, until one fine day some wiseacre laid his clumsy 
 hands on the immortal masterpiece and pulled it to pieces 
 in order to reconstruct out of the fragments the Ur-Ilias, 
 the true Iliad, " made in Germany. " 
 
 IV 
 
 We might cite other examples from Roman history in 
 which the extraordinary theories of German critics have 
 even been improved upon by admiring Italians, as also from 
 other branches of learning, had we time to go thoroughly 
 into all departments of German kultur. In short, this kultur 
 fails to recognize legitimate bounds and is consequently lack- 
 ing in order and discipline; it cannot distinguish degrees of 
 importance and consequently makes the most grotesque mis- 
 takes. It is at the same time arrogant and absurdly naif, 
 and has in consequence brought about untold confusion in 
 every country, and more particularly in Italy, which failed 
 to distinguish between sound and harmful principles. The 
 real cause of the war must be sought in the want of balance 
 which makes it possible for the strictest political discipline 
 to exist side by side with an utter lack of intellectual dis- 
 cipline in the same mid-European nation. This disparity 
 
34 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 between the intellectual anarchy and the political discipline 
 of Germany has given birth to the cyclone which is devas- 
 tating Europe. How and why it is not difficult to under- 
 stand. Theories are powerless to hold the passions in 
 check, unless they are fused into a system and rest upon 
 some solid foundation, some tradition, authority or recog- 
 nized principle, of which the truth is felt and respected by 
 the world at large. If these bases and supports are lacking, 
 if thought insists upon being, as it were, its own jumping 
 off place and on formulating afresh each day the axioms 
 from which it proposes to start on its task of reconstructing 
 the world from top to bottom, beauty, truth and morals will 
 necessarily cease to be anything but a noisy game of soph- 
 isms in which each player, by an arbitrary change of prin- 
 ciples, is at liberty to uphold the most contradictory theories 
 — a game in which the final victory is won by those theories 
 which are most flattering to the dominant passions. Ideas 
 will not act as brakes, but rather as spurs to the ruling 
 passions. This has been the work of literature and philos- 
 ophy in every epoch of intellectual anarchy; this is what has 
 been accomplished in Germany during the last four decades 
 by history, philosophy and literature — the so-called political 
 sciences — in proportion as pride in victory and power was 
 fostered by the growth of the population and by the new 
 wealth so easily obtained from a soil rich in coal and iron. 
 German kultur, science, philosophy and literature, which 
 were weak because they were unfettered, and regulated 
 neither by principles, traditions or authority of any kind 
 and, therefore, in their turn powerless to exercise any intel- 
 lectual authority, had placed themselves at the service of 
 those passions, whether good or bad, which they were un- 
 able to correct or hold in check, such as patriotism, the spirit 
 of discipline and unity, respect for the sovereign and the 
 
ANARCHY, LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 35 
 
 State, cupidity, national vanity and arrogance and what is 
 barbarously called " arrivisme. " These sciences thus en- 
 couraged and accentuated all the tendencies of public opin- 
 ion, entirely failing to distinguish between the good and 
 the bad, the beneficial and the dangerous. Above all, they 
 stimulated the mania for confounding the great with the 
 merely colossal, quantity with quality, and for regarding the 
 German people as the salt of the earth and the model for 
 all the world to copy. They inflamed the pride of the 
 masses and added fuel to that craze for persecution which 
 is always the inseparable companion and the immediate 
 chastisement of overbearing pride, with the result that we 
 have seen re-enacted in central Europe the terrible tragedy of 
 Nineveh and Babylon. We behold the appalling phenome- 
 non of not merely a king but a whole nation growing in 
 wealth, power and prestige to such a degree as to call forth 
 the half fearful admiration of all Europe and America, but 
 becoming at the same time more and more restless, discon- 
 tented, suspicious and querulously complaining that the 
 other nations fail to pay it due respect, that its power is not 
 feared as it should be, that its merits are unrecognized and 
 its possessions threatened on every hand by disloyal and 
 envious enemies. Then one fine day this strange people, 
 at the zenith of its power and riches, this people living in 
 a Europe which shudders at the very idea of seeing the 
 sword of 1870 once more unsheathed, this people which 
 alone in Europe could have enjoyed the blessings of peace 
 in perfect safety, since it was feared by all while fearing 
 none, this people suddenly threw down its gauntlet to the 
 world apropos of a question which in no way concerned it 
 and challenged five countries, including the three greatest 
 Powers, to a life and death combat, and after this mad 
 challenge set forth to battle and death at its Emperor's com- 
 
36 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 mand, as one man, in meek submission to a State which, 
 unfortunately for the world, exercises far too much author- 
 ity over its subjects. The European war would not have 
 broken out had the German people been wiser or the govern- 
 ment weaker. The catastrophe was brought about by polit- 
 ical discipline and intellectual disorder. Thus a govern- 
 ment which was strong, respected and well tempered against 
 the blows of fate, served by intelligent men and provided 
 with both money and means, has become the tool of the most 
 unbridled imagination and ambition in an enterprise in which 
 the most the German people can hope is that it may make its 
 fall memorable throughout the ages by dragging down the 
 whole world with it into the abyss and by burying the 
 power, which it had sacrificed in a moment of madness, 
 beneath the debris of a civilization which was prosperous 
 and flourishing only three short years ago, but whose state 
 in another year or two no man can foretell. 
 
 V 
 
 No other end to the tragedy seems within the bounds of 
 possibility. The future is of course on the knees of the 
 gods and no one would venture to predict how or when a 
 settlement will be reached; on the other hand, no one en- 
 dowed with any historic sense can fail to see that the Ger- 
 mans, at all events at this stage of their history, are lacking 
 in the spiritual and intellectual qualities requisite for the 
 foundation of great and powerful Empires. A durable 
 Empire cannot be built up upon valour, unity, passionate 
 or even fanatic love of country alone; common sense, a 
 clear intuition of what is or what is not possible, and a sense 
 of proportion are equally essential, and in these qualities the 
 modern German is conspicuously lacking. Indeed, unless 
 
ANARCHY, LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 37 
 
 some unforeseen miracle were to take place, there can be 
 no doubt as to the issue. Both sides being equally tenacious, 
 the victory will fall to the one who has the largest means 
 at his disposal and knows how to make the best use of them. 
 Hence the war will be won by that coalition which can put 
 the largest number of men into the field, whose purse is 
 longest, which rules the seas and numbers among its mem- 
 bers two peoples at least, the French and the British, en- 
 dowed with that political sense, that sense of proportion, 
 which alone in a war like the present conflict is worth an 
 army corps. Do not let us lay too much stress upon the 
 fact that the Germans are fighting on foreign soil. Na- 
 poleon was in the habit of saying that in war nothing has 
 been accomplished until everything has been accomplished, 
 a fact proved by his own experience in 1812. The disaster 
 of 1 81 2 did not take place at Lodz or on the Narev, but 
 when he had reached Moscow itself. 
 
 VI 
 
 Moreover, even were the military situation less favourable 
 than is actually the case, we should be forced to believe that 
 the war could have no other end. It might even be said 
 that it is essential that it should end thus, if Europe is one 
 day to enjoy a long peace, untroubled by continual panics 
 and unmenaced by obscure ambitions. Do not let us deceive 
 ourselves — Europe will never enjoy such a peace if the 
 German spirit is permitted to continue to play, what for the 
 last century has appeared to be its special role in the world 
 — to play it, moreover, more brutally, intoxicated as it 
 would be with the fumes of victory. It cannot be denied 
 that the German people possesses various great qualities; 
 neither, however, can we deny that it has frequently made 
 
38 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 use of these qualities in a way most dangerous to its neigh- 
 bours by borrowing from its neighbours certain principles 
 of civilization originated by them and then exaggerating 
 them to such a degree as to turn them into perils. Take mili- 
 tary service, for instance. The duty of each citizen to bear 
 arms for his country was a principle of the ancients which 
 the French Revolution had revived and applied with wisdom 
 and discretion. But the Germans, by reducing the term of 
 service and increasing the number of soldiers as much as 
 possible, created and forced upon Europe the modern army, 
 which is nothing more or less than the nation in arms, the 
 enormous, slow and costly army which has made war a 
 calamity in comparison with which all the other scourges 
 which have afflicted mankind have been nothing more than 
 trifling annoyances. Modern industry, as we have already 
 seen, aims at increasing quantity to the detriment of quality. 
 At the same time France and Great Britain had applied this 
 principle in moderation. Germany arrives upon the scenes 
 and what does she proceed to do? What are the shoddy 
 goods made in Germany of which we hear so much but the 
 exaggeration of this principle? Germany put it into prac- 
 tice to such an extent as to flood the world with all sorts of 
 inferior imitations. No social order can exist without the 
 use of a certain amount of force. Force is therefore up to 
 a certain point a factor for good and an element making for 
 progress. Every nation and every era has recognized this 
 principle, which has only been rejected by a few dreamers. 
 But from this elementary, simple and vital truth, the Ger- 
 mans have contrived to extract the theories of Clausewitz, 
 Nietzsche, and Bernhardi, and the arbitrary maxims of Bis- 
 marck, the evil genius of European statesmen for the last 
 forty years, and even the European war with its carnage, 
 destruction by fire, devastation and deliberate purpose of 
 
ANARCHY, LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 39 
 
 recognizing no law or criteria of conduct in war. Things 
 have gone too far. Europe must once more be ruled by 
 more mature, older and better balanced peoples. Many are 
 of opinion that the war will continue some time longer, that 
 a Peace Congress will then be held and a treaty signed, after 
 which we shall take up life where we left it that fatal morn- 
 ing of July 25, 1914, on which we read Austria's threat to 
 Serbia. This is, alas, an illusion. When peace has been 
 restored and we try to take up once more the life we led 
 before the war, we shall see that the river of history disap- 
 peared that day into an abyss, to reappear changed in both 
 appearance and direction. We shall not be able to go back. 
 Too many things will have changed irrevocably or will have 
 to be reconstructed on a new plan if all these rivers of blood 
 are not to have flowed in vain and this catastrophe is not 
 to be the beginning of a new and better order of things but 
 rather of a ruin still more terrible than that on which we 
 are gazing today. These things cannot be reconstructed, 
 this ruin cannot be avoided, unless Europe returns in thought 
 and deed to that moderation which she had lost during the 
 last fifty years. This is the test awaiting our generation — 
 the test which will show us what we are capable of doing 
 for the true progress of the world. 
 
THE GREAT AND THE COLOSSAL 
 
 At the present time, when the future looms before us like 
 some unknown pathless wilderness, it is well to glance from 
 time to time at the past and to recall the links of language, 
 culture, manners and customs binding us to that brilliant 
 civilization which migrated from its Greek birthplace into 
 Italy and thence in a Latinized form spread over the greater 
 part of Europe, where it still holds sway. If we would 
 draw strength from the past to enable us to fulfil our pres- 
 ent duties the time has come for us to recall the most striking 
 characteristics of the golden age of Latin civilization, its 
 heroic striving after the great and its detestation of the 
 merely colossal. 
 
 If we wander among the columns of an Egyptian temple, 
 or the ruins of the immense Persian, Babylonian or As- 
 syrian buildings, the Parthenon, the Temple of Concord at 
 Girgenti and the other masterpieces of Greek architecture 
 will seem small and insignificant compared to the colossal 
 edifices, gigantic columns, and enormous blocks of stone in 
 which Oriental pride delighted. Look at the Iliad and the 
 Odyssey, they are but small volumes compared with the 
 Epics of the East, interminable poems, such as the Ram- 
 mayana and the Shah Nameh. Each of the four Gospels 
 contains a collection of the words and deeds of Jesus, but 
 compare one of them with the discourses of Buddha. A 
 few pages were enough to set forth a doctrine destined to 
 revolutionize the world, whilst volumes of perfectly ap- 
 palling dimensions were needed in the far East to found a 
 new religion. The East stands for bulk, weight, repetition 
 and prolixity; Greeks for proportion, harmony, grace, 
 
 40 
 
THE GREAT AND THE COLOSSAL 41 
 
 lucidity and concision. The East strove after the colossal, 
 Greece after the great. 
 
 The difference between the colossal and the great is both 
 intellectual and moral. The great is an effort to attain an 
 ideal creation by the mind of man and to conquer an essen- 
 tially spiritual difficulty whose law is within ourselves. The 
 colossal is an effort to triumph over matter and over the 
 difficulties presented by matter to our will or our caprices 
 — or, in other words — over exterior obstacles. To quote 
 a great French philosopher, the great is pure quality, where- 
 as the colossal is quality with a large admixture of quantity. 
 Stern intellectual discipline and humility are absolutely es- 
 sential, not only for the creation of the great in every 
 sphere, but also for its right understanding and apprecia- 
 tion, since an ideal of perfection must be accepted as law. 
 The colossal, on the contrary, is one of the myriad forms 
 of human vanity and is readily understood and admired even 
 by minds of coarser fibre, wholly devoid of education. 
 
 Hence it is not surprising that even Greece and Rome 
 after having achieved the truly great, during the most bril- 
 liant periods of their history, relapsed into the craze for the 
 colossal. Go to Girgenti and close to the Temple of Con- 
 cord, which is at once so small and so great, whose incom- 
 parable beauty may be called pure quality, you will see the 
 remains of a colossal Temple, the ruins of columns which 
 still evoke cries of amazement from barbarians from every 
 part of the world. The same thing is even more noticeable 
 in Rome. Compare the remains of the Mausoleum of 
 Augustus and the Mausoleum of Hadrian, the Pantheon of 
 Agrippa and the Baths of Caracalla, the latter again with 
 the Baths of Diocletian, and you will see that the proportions 
 of the buildings increase and become more and more gigantic 
 with the march of the centuries. Here too the buildings 
 
42 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 teach us, in letters of brick and stone, the history of thought 
 and feeling. For many a long day Rome had been but a 
 modest power, she distrusted fortune, she dreaded wealth 
 and luxury and often shrank from circumstances which 
 urged her to extend her Empire. Her aim was to found a 
 great Empire, not a colossal one like those of which the con- 
 querors of the East were so proud. Ruled as she was by 
 a chosen few possessed of sufficient authority to direct, not 
 merely her policy, but also her public taste, Rome during 
 this period succeeded in understanding and sometimes even 
 in copying in both art and literature those epochs in which 
 Greece had attained true greatness. Wealth, success and 
 security gradually changed the Roman soul; those who for 
 centuries had guided public taste passed away, Oriental 
 civilizations took possession of the mind of the masses when 
 they were left to their own devices. The Empire fell a prey 
 to unbridled vanity and to a craving for pleasure and ex- 
 citement, and with this vanity and craving there set in the 
 mania for the colossal. 
 
 How many similar examples are to be seen in the history 
 of all the Latin nations, in Spain, France and Italy. 
 
 Take Venice, go down to the Grand Canal and compare 
 the modest dimensions of the palaces built by the makers 
 of the Republic with those of more recent date, constructed 
 by the generations who light-heartedly contributed to her 
 decay. Since the days of ancient Greece, life has been one 
 perpetual struggle between the principles of the great and 
 the colossal. It is most obvious in the decorative arts in 
 which it is of symbolic value, but may also be traced in 
 literature, war and politics, commerce and industry. Al- 
 ways and everywhere there have been and will be men, 
 peoples and epochs which have chosen or will choose to 
 create the great, and others which have chosen or will choose 
 
THE GREAT AND THE COLOSSAL 43 
 
 the colossal. Let us look around ; is not this the key to the 
 present tremendous crisis in the history of the world? 
 
 When the present generation has passed away and with 
 it the passion of feeling that now runs so high, when his- 
 torians come to study the history of the European war from 
 the archives of the past, just as geologists study the phenom- 
 ena of a volcanic eruption by driving their pickaxes into 
 the cold lava, they will find the whole cataclysm difficult 
 to understand. " Why, " they will ask, " should a rich, 
 prosperous people, at the zenith of its power have risked 
 everything by provoking a wholly needless war with the 
 three greatest European powers? A war which ended by 
 arraying practically the whole civilized world against it." 
 
 Here in a few words we have the riddle which is per- 
 plexing many troubled minds today. Greece and Rome 
 however should be able to supply the answer and enable us 
 to read aright the mystery of this people and of its challenge 
 to the world. 
 
 This nation, more than any other European nation, has 
 been carried away by its passion for the colossal — a passion 
 which it must be remembered is but a somewhat coarse form 
 of vanity, for the ultimate cause of this appalling catas- 
 trophe is to be found in the overweening vanity of a 
 nation — a vanity which is characteristic of our century. 
 Paris, that intellectual capital of the world, whose finger is 
 on the pulse of civilization and its supreme problems, asked 
 herself, when confronted by the terrible outbreak of violence 
 which is devastating Europe, whether man, as he grows 
 richer, more learned and more powerful, does not also tend 
 to deteriorate morally. 
 
 It cannot, however, be questioned that our epoch has 
 made great strides in moral education. Our civilization, 
 which for two centuries has been engaged in a great strug- 
 
44? EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 gle with nature for the possession of her treasures and 
 forces, has been successful in vanquishing the vices and 
 inculcating the virtues v^^hich could hamper further these 
 efforts. It has, above all, fought against idleness and taught 
 men that accuracy, punctuality, zeal in the discharge of 
 duty, the spirit of solidarity in groups great and small which 
 have to work together. That cohesion of which the bel- 
 ligerent nations afford such striking examples today show 
 to how great an extent this spirit has spread among the 
 masses. No such phenomenon has been seen in any other 
 age — a proof that our epoch has made for moral progress. 
 How, then, does it come about that this very epoch has been 
 overwhelmed by this barbarous mania for destruction and 
 violence? The explanation is that in its absorption in the 
 task of turning out disciplined workers it has forgotten that 
 other passions left unchecked may modify the moral sense 
 of the masses; this applies especially to vanity, of which 
 the mania for the colossal is one of the most monstrous 
 forms. In the early days of the struggle between nature 
 and civilization, civilization created great things in great 
 humility. With the increase of wealth, success and power, 
 however, civilization fell a prey to vanity and aimed at 
 creating the colossal for which the necessary means were 
 unfortunately forthcoming. The Empires of antiquity were 
 filled with pride when they succeeded in raising some monu- 
 ment of brick or stone or proportions hitherto unheard of. 
 But what were their cities, armies, fleets and buildings in 
 comparison to those of the present day? What were their 
 industry and commerce in comparison to ours? During 
 the last fifty years the mania for the colossal has infected 
 all the nations of Europe and America to a greater or lesser 
 extent and, unfortunately, one of these nations has been 
 completely carried away by it. Nature seems to have en- 
 
THE GREAT AND THE COLOSSAL 45 
 
 dowed this people with an unbounded energy which makes 
 it readily lean to excess. Although during the last century 
 it has produced many philologists and archeologists, it has 
 never really come under the influence of Latin culture. 
 That sense of proportion, that sense of moderation and 
 that lucidity, which are the essential characteristics of Latin 
 culture, have always repelled it; it has at bottom a sort 
 of spurious and apparently invincible mysticism which 
 drives it to seek the infinite in the vague, the confused and 
 the indefinite. It has been victorious in two wars, it was 
 rich in iron and coal, an inestimable advantage in a century 
 in which iron has ceased to be the servant of man and has 
 become the master of the world. In short, this nation ended 
 by regarding itself as the chosen people, the salt of the 
 earth, the model for the whole world, and by using the word 
 " colossal " to express the highest degree of perfection. It 
 was, however, not long before it became as insatiable, rest- 
 less, suspicious and jealous as all those eaten up by vanity 
 who cherish dreams of the colossal. How, indeed, could 
 a people or a period, whose one and only aim was to " go 
 one better " in everything than any other people or period, 
 be either happy or content? One can only hope for happi- 
 ness when one is making for a definite goal which may be 
 attained. A people and a period which aim at the creation 
 of the colossal are doomed to overshoot the mark, to wander 
 aimlessly until they commit some irreparable folly. Hence 
 all civilizations, which have striven after the colossal, after 
 living in a perpetual state of restlessness, have been over- 
 whelmed by some sudden catastrophe — a fact which makes 
 us wonder whether we are destined to be the spectators of 
 another such tragedy. 
 
 If this indeed be the obscure purpose of history, what 
 light is shed upon the sacrifice which fate is exacting from 
 
46 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 the Allied peoples? Let us never forget that only ordeals 
 which put its vitality to a test can enable a nation to keep 
 alive the principles of civihzation which it has created or 
 inherited. Our ancestors created many great things. They 
 built the Pantheon, the Parthenon, Venice and Versailles; 
 they created the Empire and the Church, the law, the philos- 
 ophy and the decorative arts of the eighteenth century; they 
 brought about the Revolution. What value did we place 
 upon these things? The sense of greatness, which is the very 
 essence of Latin culture, was choked by the Asiatic mania 
 for the colossal; quantity triumphed over quality; progress 
 — the worth of nations — was gauged solely by the growing 
 figures of statistics. France offered more resistance to this 
 current of thought than any other country, but for that very 
 reason it was too often said that she was aging. Because 
 her commerce and population was not increasing at the 
 same rate as the population and commerce of Germany she 
 ought to have vanished off the face of the earth. How 
 could any system of philosophy, any doctrine, any argu- 
 ment, go against this formidable current of opinions, senti- 
 ments and interests (for many powerful interests were 
 mingled in this current) which was carrying every nation 
 and every class towards the hideous enormities of a purely 
 quantitative civilization? The task could only be accom- 
 plished by one of those great historic events which can 
 change public opinion; one of those ordeals which suddenly 
 reveal the respective value of the principles held by two 
 different communities. The ordeal on this occasion is so 
 terrible that no man with any heart would ever have dared 
 to predict it. But since fate has so willed it. . . . Well, 
 let us try to rise above death and ruins to the height of the 
 great events which are taking place before our eyes and to 
 draw thence the courage, firmness and resignation of which 
 
THE GREAT AND THE COLOSSAL 47 
 
 we stand in need. A shudder of anguish ran through the 
 civiHzed world during the early weeks of the war. It would 
 be idle to deny that there were many doubters, many to 
 whom it seemed that nothing could check and turn back the 
 colossal mass of men and iron which, carrying all before it, 
 was marching upon France — that country whose frail and 
 ancient civilization seemed on the point of dying out. And 
 in this hour of supreme anxiety the whole world turned its 
 eyes towards the distant north in the hope of salvation. 
 Then suddenly, just when the world was beginning to de- 
 spair, this colossal mass hurled itself against some invisible 
 obstacle which arose as if by miracle, is checked and re- 
 treats. We probably lived through one of the great mo- 
 ments of history, for it was then that our generation, in its 
 amazement, began to ask itself whether perhaps after all 
 mass and numbers were not everything. And from that 
 moment the half-conscious travail of our souls began. We 
 cannot yet say what this travail will bring forth. The great 
 ordeal is not yet over. But just as we cannot doubt that 
 the world in which we shall spend the rest of our lives will 
 be very different from the world we have hitherto known, 
 so we may hope that civilization may once again avert a ca- 
 tastrophe which seemed inevitable. The cruel bloodshed and 
 anguish of the past years must not have been endured in vain. 
 This war must be the final victory of true intellectual and 
 moral greatness over the mania for the colossal which had 
 hardened and blinded the mind of man; it must restore to 
 the world the power to appreciate in every sphere that which 
 is great solely by reason of the smallness of its proportions 
 and its humility, a greatness which is wholly from within ; 
 it must once more raise up generations which can accom- 
 plish great things simply and humbly and a world which 
 shall recover its moral equilibrium in the sense of true great- 
 
48 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 ness. It would be rash to assert that there will never be 
 another war, but if other great wars should take place it is 
 our duty towards the world and ourselves to do everything 
 in our power to ensure that never again shall mankind have 
 to face another war such as that forced on us by the vota- 
 ries of the colossal. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 Teutonism and Latinism 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 
 
 I 
 
 Almost the whole civilization of Europe and of America, 
 in its essential elements, has been created, on the shore of 
 the Mediterranean, by the Greeks, the Latins and the Jews 
 in the ancient world ; by the nations that we call Latin in 
 the middle ages and in modern times. The religion, the 
 political institutions and doctrines, the organization of ar- 
 mies, the law, the art, the literature, the philosophy which 
 today form the basis of European- American civilization, 
 are, taken as a whole, the work of those nations which one 
 can, from their position, describe as Mediterranean. Far 
 less numerous, although more recent, are the contributions 
 of the peoples which have not had the privilege of being 
 able to bathe themselved in the sacred waters of that his- 
 toric sea. Their enumeration is not a long one. There is 
 the Reformation Lutherism, so different from Calvinism; 
 that is to say, from the Reformation conceived in Latin 
 countries: there is the great industrialism which makes use 
 of the motor force of steam and of iron machinery, created 
 by England : there is the parliamentarism, which is also an 
 English creation: there is the English and German philoso- 
 phy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries : and, in lit- 
 erature, romanticism. To this we must add, to the score 
 of the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples, some literary, 
 aesthetic and juridical contributions of varying worth in the 
 lines traced by the Greco-Latin genius, and the creation of 
 modern science, at which the English and Germans have 
 
 61 
 
52 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 worked together with the French and the Italians. Modem 
 science has been created by a common effort of the peoples 
 of Europe, and it would be difficult to compare each nation's 
 merit. 
 
 Creation and application are two distinct things. The 
 Mediterranean peoples have created, in their long history, 
 a greater number of principles of civilization than the Ger- 
 manic or Anglo-Saxon peoples; this does not prevent sev- 
 eral of these principles having been adopted, applied, per- 
 fected, and even employed as arms against the peoples who 
 had created them, by other groups. 
 
 But, having made this reservation, one may affirm that 
 modern civilization is, taken as a whole, far more the work 
 of the Mediterranean peoples than of the extra-Mediter- 
 ranean peoples; that it has been created in part by the 
 Greeks and the Hellenized Orientals of the ancient world; 
 in part by the Semitic spirit; in part by, first the Romans, 
 and afterwards by the peoples we call Latin because they 
 speak languages derived from Latin ; Italians, French, Span- 
 iards, Portuguese. To speak only of modern Europe, it 
 is the Latin peoples who achieved, in the fifteenth and six- 
 teenth centuries, the greater part of that work of geographic 
 exploration which was to give over the whole planet to the 
 white race; it is to them above all that we owe the Renais- 
 sance, that great intellectual movement of which the mod- 
 ern age has been bom. It is also among these peoples that 
 we must seek those who have taken the initiative in re- 
 organizing great States and powerful armies in Europe after 
 the poHtical parcelling-out and the disarmed cosmopolitism 
 of the middle ages. The French Revolution, its intellectual 
 preparation, its military epopee, the immense political, ju- 
 ridical and social transformations that it brought about in 
 all Europe, are Latin works. The Revolution of 1848 is 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 53 
 
 another movement, at once intellectual, political and social, 
 receiving its impetus from the Latin world. 
 
 This brief enumeration should suffice to prove that these 
 peoples ought not to be adjudged inferior in importance to 
 any other group in Europe. They are nothing of the kind. 
 For the last half century the decadence of the Latin peoples 
 has been a favourite theme of the meditations of the savants, 
 or of those who believe themselves such. It is spoken of 
 under a thousand different forms. Spain and Portugal 
 hold themselves so much aloof that their existence would be 
 almost unknown had not their ancient American colonies 
 become so important a part of the contemporary economic 
 system. Italy, in taking part since 1859 in the politics of 
 Europe, has attracted to herself the attention of the world 
 more than the Iberian peninsula ; but the attention given to 
 her present efforts is very small compared with the admira- 
 tion bestowed on her past. Contemporary Italy still dis- 
 appears almost entirely in the eyes of the world in her 
 immense history. As to France, above all in the ten years 
 which preceded the war, the opinion that she was a country 
 fallen into decline, destined to imminent decease, was be- 
 coming general. At the moment when the war broke out 
 the world was already convinced, or very near convincing 
 herself, that the group of peoples that are called in Europe 
 Latins, had, after having achieved so many things up to the 
 end of the nineteenth century, allowed itself to be rapidly 
 distanced by other more energetic groups. One had, ac- 
 cordingl> , the right to consider it as fallen into the rear. 
 
 This belief had ended by penetrating even the spirit of 
 the Latin peoples themselves. Under different forms and 
 in different degrees these peoples have, during the last thirty 
 years, alternated between continual ups and downs. At 
 times they have proclaimed themselves the foremost peoples 
 
54 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 of the world; at times they have abandoned themselves to 
 the gloomiest pessimism as to their future. It is, more- 
 over, indisputable that, since 1787, the group of Latin peo- 
 ples has been the most agitated, from the political stand- 
 point, among the European groups. The political crises 
 which have disturbed them have been far more numerous 
 and more serious than those which have disturbed the 
 Anglo-Saxon and the Germanic world. These crises have 
 greatly contributed toward giving the world at large, and 
 the Latin peoples themselves, an impression of inward weak- 
 ness. And, in proportion as the consciousness of this weak- 
 ness increased among these peoples, the nations benefited by 
 their decadence, real or assumed, by waxing in the admira- 
 tion of the world, England first, then Germany. 
 
 England had been in Europe, between 1870 and 1900, the 
 model most admired in industry, in commerce, in finance, 
 in politics, in diplomacy, in social life. Germany was, up 
 to that time, the model only for the army, for science, and 
 for certain social institutions. But after 1900 Germany 
 seemed rapidly to become the universal model, beating Eng- 
 land in almost all the provinces wherein she had preserved 
 until then an uncontested superiority. 
 
 People did not continue merely to admire the German 
 army and science as the foremost of the world : they began 
 also to admire its industrial organization, its commercial 
 methods, its system of banks, as more modern and more 
 perfect models than those which England yet afforded. 
 The world told itself that England was growing old, and 
 more and more men's minds turned towards Berlin. It 
 was Germany, by its doctrines and its example, which gave 
 the final blow to the English doctrines of free trade and to 
 the laisser faire of the Manchester school. It was Germany 
 which alone succeeded in disputing the empire of the seas 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 55 
 
 with England, by creating, in a few years, the second mer- 
 chant marine and the second fleet of the world. When the 
 war broke out, von Balhn was on the point of taking his 
 place among the glories of Germany, by the side of Kant, 
 of Goethe and of Wagner. The admiration for Germany 
 had become so great that even the repugnance for its polit- 
 ical institutions had diminished. The almost incredible 
 indulgence of the Socialist party of all the European coun- 
 tries towards the empire of the Hohenzollerns is the most 
 singular proof of this. It is also no exaggeration to say 
 that every one, in all the countries of Europe and America, 
 had become Germanophile since 1900. The prestige of 
 Germany has often been attributed to her victories of 1866 
 and 1870. But the generation which had witnessed the 
 military triumphs of Germany had admired Germanism far 
 less than did the succeeding generation. After 1900 the 
 world had no longer seen anything in Europe save Germany 
 and her power, growing with a prodigious rapidity, in the 
 midst of amazed or dazzled nations. 
 
 These facts are too well known for there to be any neces- 
 sity to insist upon them at length. If one relied on appear- 
 ances one would have to conclude that some countries, which 
 had been, for so many centuries, active and capable, had 
 been all at once struck by an incurable paralysis. Almost 
 all the virtues which render a people strong and a nation 
 flourishing would seem to have emigrated, within a few 
 years, to Germany. There have been, among the nations, 
 some parvenus of power and wealth; but one had not hith- 
 erto seen the parvenu of civilization : a people become, in a 
 few dozen years, capable of teaching everything to every 
 one, even to its former masters. Our age has witnessed 
 this extraordinary phenomenon. 
 
 It is, moreover, the explanation which, previous to the 
 
56 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 war, tended to become universal. The European war has 
 rapidly changed that state of mind; it has even entirely re- 
 versed it with many people. History has rarely witnessed 
 a change so radical and so sudden. From one end of the 
 world to the other millions of men have stigmatized the 
 German nation as the shame of our age, as the representa- 
 tive of barbarism, without any longer remembering that 
 they admired it, three years ago, as the teacher and the 
 model of the universe. But just because this reaction has 
 been so violent and so sudden it seems profitable to pause 
 and study its causes and its significance. If the world has 
 forgotten that it considered as the model par excellence, only 
 three years since, the people whom it regards today as bar- 
 barians, the fact is not the less true, and a moment's reflec- 
 tion suffices to seize at once its full import. We live in the 
 most learned civilization that has ever existed. The choice 
 of a master and of a model is the most serious action that 
 a man or a nation can accomplish. How then has the most 
 learned epoch in history been able to deceive itself in so 
 gross a manner upon the most serious question in life, and 
 take as model the people that it should suddenly have to 
 repudiate as barbarous? Such an error must have pro- 
 found causes. The search after these causes is, then, the 
 most important problem which, at this moment, presents it- 
 self to minds which reflect and strive to understand. 
 
 II 
 
 This book is devoted to the study of this great problem. 
 A somewhat rapid survey suffices to reveal in contemporary 
 civilization two ideals: an ideal of perfection and an ideal 
 of power. The ideal of perfection is a legacy of the past 
 and is composed of different elements, of which the most 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 67 
 
 important are the Greco-Latin tradition, intellectual, lit- 
 erar}^ artistic, juridic and political; Christian morality un- 
 der its various forms; the new moral and political aspira- 
 tions born during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 
 It is the ideal which imposes on us beauty, truth, justice, 
 the moral perfection of individuals and of institutions as the 
 aim of life; which preserves in the modern world the relig- 
 ious life, artistic and scientific activity, the spirit of solidar- 
 ity; which improves political and social institutions, the 
 works of charity and foresight. The other ideal is more 
 recent: it was born in the last two centuries, in proportion 
 as men perceived that they could dominate and bring into 
 subjection the forces of nature in degrees formerly un- 
 dreamed of. Intoxicated by their success; by the riches 
 which they succeeded in producing very rapidly and in enor- 
 mous quantities, thanks to a certain number of ingenious 
 inventions ; by the treasures that they have discovered in the 
 earth, ransacked in all directions; by their victories over 
 space and over time, modern men have considered as an 
 ideal of life, at once beautiful, lofty and almost heroic, the 
 indefinite and unlimited increase of human power. 
 
 The former of these ideals, the ideal of perfection, can 
 be considered, in Europe, as the Latin ideal. The Latin 
 genius has shown its originality and its power, and has won 
 its highest glory, in striving to realize certain ideals of 
 perfection; that is to say, in creating arts, literatures, re- 
 ligions, laws, well-organized states. That does not at all 
 mean that the Latin peoples have not also contributed to- 
 wards creating the ideal of power. The history of France 
 during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would suffice 
 to ensure to this group of peoples an important place in the 
 great change in the history of the world which is repre- 
 sented by the advent of this new ideal. But the Latin peo- 
 
58 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 pies, who are the peoples of Europe whose civilization is the 
 oldest, have achieved things too great in the periods in 
 which the ideals of perfection dominated alone, or almost 
 alone, for their life not to be still charged with the spirit 
 of those periods. If, however, in that w^hich relates to the 
 ideals of perfection, the Latin peoples can claim a well- 
 defined and characterized historic role, it is not the same 
 in regard to the new ideal of power. They have developed 
 this in conjunction with other peoples of different race. 
 One cannot then attribute a very precise significance to these 
 words, " the Latin genius," without identifying this genius 
 with the irresistible tendency which causes peoples and in- 
 dividuals to desire all the forms of perfection of which the 
 human spirit is capable. 
 
 The ideal of power can, on the contrary, be considered 
 at this moment as a Germanic ideal. Here also, one must 
 not fall into the error of believing that this ideal has been 
 created by the Germans. Germany has contributed less 
 than France to the long and painful work which was to end 
 in the unfolding of this ideal in the world. But it is also 
 unquestionable that, if it has been slow to understand the 
 new ideal, Germany has ended by becoming, during the 
 last thirty years, its most ardent champion in Europe. The 
 immense development of Germany, which had astounded 
 the world, is nothing else than this new ideal of power trans- 
 formed by the Germans into a kind of national religion, 
 become a sort of Messiahism, and applied with an implaca- 
 ble logic and an ardent passion to carry it out to its extreme 
 consequences in all departments; no longer only in manu- 
 factures and business, as with the Americans, but in the 
 world of ideas, and, an application more dangerous, in war 
 and the army. 
 
 But, this distinction between the two ideals once made. 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 59 
 
 it is possible to understand the immense tragedy of which 
 we are at once the actors, the spectators and the victims; 
 to explain the unsettlement of ideas which it has produced, 
 and to cast a glance into the future and at the duties which 
 await us. It suffices for the understanding of why and how 
 our age had associated these two ideals, believing that they 
 could develop limitlessly and peaceably side by side, whereas 
 at a certain point they were bound to enter into a violent 
 conflict. That is what we are going to try to do. 
 
 Ill 
 
 No profound analysis is required to discover that one of 
 the characteristic phenomena of the last thirty years has 
 been, in Europe, the decline of the ancient ideals of perfec- 
 tion and the growing prestige of the ideal of power. It is 
 the universal fact that had been masked under the most 
 diverse names, such as '* triumph of the practical spirit," 
 " the economic progress of the age," ** the realist policy," 
 " the modem tendencies." This triumph of the ideal of 
 power is, moreover, as will be seen in this book, the gather- 
 ing to a head of a very complex historic movement whose 
 origins date back very far. It has been, however, accel- 
 erated, during the last hundred years, by some immediate 
 causes. I will cite the principal of them: the immense 
 growth of the English power, the wealth accumulated by 
 England and France, the victories of Germany, the develop- 
 ment of the two Americas, the exploration and conquest of 
 Africa, the increase of the population and of public, civil 
 and military expenses which demanded an increase of pro- 
 duction; the improvement of industrial plant, the progress 
 of the sciences, the decline of the aristocracies, monarchies 
 and Churches which represented in Europe the spirit of 
 
60 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 quality or the ideals of perfection; the exhaustion of several 
 of these ideals, which rendered necessary a revival; the 
 weakening of the governments; the accession to power of 
 the middle classes; the growing importance acquired by the 
 masses and by number in everything, in the armies, in 
 politics, in industry. Left to themselves, freed from the 
 old restraints, the masses, having but little culture, were 
 bound to lean rather towards the ideal of power which satis- 
 fies the primordial instincts, such as pride, cupidity, ambi- 
 tion, than towards the ideals of perfection which always 
 demand the spirit of sacrifice and a certain power of renun- 
 ciation. 
 
 It was in the immense refulgence of this ideal of power 
 that Germany increased to so great an extent in the world's 
 estimate during the first fourteen years of the century. If 
 it were, in truth, the supreme duty of humanity to unite 
 all its forces towards augmenting its power, Germany would 
 have been the true model for the world. The ideal of 
 power, grown into a national religion, together with a com- 
 bination of favourable circumstances, such as its central 
 position, the neighbourhood of Russia, the abundance of oil, 
 the rapid increase of population, the general economic 
 development of all countries, had produced in Germany an 
 unparalleled explosion of energy. Supported by a strong 
 government endowed with indisputable capacity, the Ger- 
 man race, industry, commerce, science and diplomacy had 
 invaded the world, multiplied their enterprises, conceived 
 the most audacious plans. Success had not always smiled 
 upon these enterprises; but the checks had never discour- 
 aged either the people or the government. Everywhere the 
 German had penetrated or assayed to penetrate, disturbing 
 the calm tranquillity of established positions, introducing 
 a new spirit of activity, of novelty, of competition; aiming 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 61 
 
 to conquer the foremost place by a struggle as tenacious as 
 it was devoid of scruples. 
 
 History had not previously beheld an example of such 
 feverish activity. The United States themselves could not 
 sustain the comparison. They have achieved great things 
 in industry by exploiting a territory of nine million square 
 kilometres. The Germans had succeeded in drawing all the 
 goods with which they flooded the earth ; all the ideas, good 
 or bad, with which they filled the brains ; the strongest army 
 and the second fleet of the world, from a territory of six 
 hundred thousand kilometres. Increasingly hypnotized by 
 the one ideal of power, the world had been dazzled by that 
 amazing activity and no longer attached any importance 
 to the question of the methods by which Germany achieved 
 her success. What did it matter if, so far back as 1870, 
 she had resuscitated the old barbarous soul of war and pro- 
 claimed, the sovereign rights of force? What did it matter 
 if she had developed her industry and commerce by means 
 of artificial methods of procedure such as dumping; by a 
 systematic deterioration of the quality of all the goods 
 manufactured, and by making use without any scruple of 
 all the means of falsification that the human mind can in- 
 vent ? To blame these practices would have required ideals 
 of perfection, or qualifying standards of appraisement. 
 But these were growing confused, losing their prestige and 
 their force. . . . The result alone counted. In the crum- 
 bling to pieces of all the ideals of perfection there remained 
 standing, in the centre of Europe, gigantic, triumphant, only 
 Germany. It is now possible for us to explain why the 
 idea of the decadence of the Latin peoples had ended by 
 forcing itself upon all, the Latin peoples themselves in- 
 cluded. The Latin countries, even the two strongest, 
 France and Italy, were incapable of rivalling Germany in 
 
62 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 this endeavour for power. France had not a sufficient 
 population. The increase of population is a necessary con- 
 dition of increase of power. Italy had the population; but 
 coal was lacking to her. To these material causes were 
 added some psychological causes; that is to say, a certain 
 persistence of sentiments which dated back to the periods 
 of qualitative civilization; the habit of economy; the repug- 
 nance to continual agitation, to incessant innovation, to the 
 spirit of modernism carried to excess, to the mania of speed. 
 In conclusion, the political situation of these countries ren- 
 dered it impossible for their governments to support the 
 effort of the nation with as much energy and intelligence as 
 the German government was able to do. 
 
 For all these reasons, these nations have by degrees come 
 to feel themselves inferior, in the struggle for power, to 
 the Germany which, though succeeding therein only in part, 
 they sought to imitate. Hence a very grave consequence. 
 The ideal of power, reacting on France and Italy, excited 
 there, in all classes, the appetite for facile gains, the desire 
 for rapid enrichment, all the forms of arrivisme. But, not 
 having been able fully to develop itself, it has not excited 
 in the same degree the correlative qualities and vices which 
 rendered the German life a system which, if not perfect 
 as superficial observers thought it, was at least complete 
 and coherent in its dangerous absurdity; audacity, pride, 
 the habit of doing everything, even follies, on a large scale ; 
 the spirit of co-operation: confidence in the future; disci- 
 pline; that kind of extravagant Messianic fervour by which 
 the German was convinced that he was regenerating the 
 world by inundating it with bad goods. Taking all in all 
 the two countries remained more attached than Germany 
 to the old ideals of perfection; remained, that is to say, . . . 
 and the war has proved it ... in a more elevated intel- 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 63 
 
 lectual and moral state. But at the same time they brought 
 into the economic life a timidity, a limitation, a spirit of 
 distrust, of isolation and of realism; an absence of all mys- 
 tic illusion, which, combining with the appetite for gains 
 and the desire for riches, engendered egoisms and corrup- 
 tions very harmful, whether to the economic system, or to 
 the whole social organization of the country. This state of 
 things provoked a great discontent and gave to one part of 
 public opinion, in the two countries, a very painful sense of 
 intellectual and moral incapacity in comparison with Ger- 
 many. 
 
 An effort which but half succeeds is always painful, to an 
 individual as to a people. To this sentiment of partial in- 
 capacity were added very well justified apprehensions of a 
 real danger. This people which was multiplying in the 
 centre of Europe, and developing its power with such ra- 
 pidity under the leadership of an energetic government, was 
 it not a danger for the surrounding nations ? But all these 
 anxieties and fears would not have become so agonizing, 
 in the years preceding the war, save for an illusion wherein 
 lies the profound cause of the immense present crisis. The 
 ideals of perfection, which could have limited to wiser pro- 
 portions our admiration for Germany, had grown dim in 
 the mind of the world; but they had not been officially 
 abjured. No one would have admitted, even before the 
 war, the wish to live in a world without beauty, without 
 justice, without truth. When one spoke of progress or of 
 civilization one always meant it to be understood, more or 
 less clearly, as moral and intellectual improvement. Our 
 age desired power, but it also desired, in all sincerity, char- 
 ity, equity, justice, truth, good. It was easily angered if 
 any one doubted of these virtues. Unfortunately, if it 
 wanted these blessings, it was not the less constrained, by 
 
64 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 dominating passions and interests, to sacrifice them daily 
 to its desire for riches and power. It was a question, then, 
 for our age, of increasing its riches and power inimitably, 
 while escaping the reproach of paying for these material 
 advantages by a moral deterioration of the whole of society. 
 The problem was difficult: how has it resolved it? It has 
 found a simple and convenient means of reconciling the 
 ideal of power and the ideal of perfection : it has mixed and 
 confused them. With the aid of a numerous army of 
 sophists, it has convinced itself that the world would im- 
 prove, would become wiser, more moral, more beautiful, in 
 short, more perfect, in proportion as it grew rich and de- 
 veloped its power. Quantity could increase and quality 
 improve indefinitely, side by side. 
 
 What a part in the intellectual life of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury has been played by this necessity, in which our age 
 found itself, of confusing ideas upon this vital point! 
 What theories have been admired because they arose from 
 this confusion, and assisted in producing it, in the minds 
 of men! That of the superman, for example. But Ger- 
 many was still the country which derived most benefit from 
 that confusion. The apparent order which reigned in the 
 country, and that almost perfect co-ordination of all the 
 efforts of the nation towards power, seemed the ideal of 
 intellectual and moral perfection. Germany became the 
 model of all the perfections. Because she was the most 
 powerful country, she was considered as the most intelli- 
 gent nation, the most learned, the wisest, the most moral, 
 the most serious in the world. She had solved, better than 
 the other nations, all the problems of the period and real- 
 ized the ideal of the most perfect life. Her law, her social 
 institutions, her sciences, her music, seemed unsurpassable: 
 she was even beginning to become a model in the arts. 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 65 
 
 Germany had transferred into the arts her mania for mod- 
 ernism, her capacity for imitation, and her spirit of organ- 
 ization ; that which, in the immense aesthetic anarchy of the 
 period, seemed, to a certain number of spirits discontented 
 with the present, the dawn of a new era. Even the Social- 
 ists were converted, in the Latin countries, to admiration 
 for Germany. In seeking a pretext for recriminations 
 against the bourgeois regime, they had forgotten that it 
 was to that regime that they owed the possibiHty of existing 
 as a party : they exalted the " social laws " enacted by the 
 military oligarchy which governs Germany as a grand prog- 
 ress of which their own countries were not capable; and the 
 German Socialist party which, without the liberties given 
 to the world by the French Revolution, would not have 
 been able even to exist, as the true liberator of the world ! 
 Which is tantamount to saying that the government of the 
 Junker was more just and more humane than the demo- 
 cratic governments of Western Europe. Europe was de- 
 luding herself with these absurd illusions, when all at once 
 the sky and earth trembled. Germany had just fired the 
 mine. 
 
 IV 
 
 Within a week the nation which had been the model of 
 all the virtues became the object of imiversal execration. 
 The dictionary no longer held adjectives adequate to stig- 
 matize it. It was banished from the society of civilized 
 nations. What had taken place in eight days? A thing 
 simple and tragic: the ideal of perfection and the ideal of 
 power, which the world had confused, as if they could de- 
 velop indefinitely side by side, were entered into conflict. 
 Therein lies the profound significance of the whole present 
 crisis. 
 
66 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 A philosopher would have been able to foresee a priori 
 that this conflict would break forth one day or another. 
 This prevision belonged to the number of certitudes that 
 one could call dialectique, because they can be arrived at by 
 reasoning; and which are the more sure if, to arrive at 
 them, the argument takes its start from a well-established 
 truth. A common-sense truth could in this case lead easily 
 to this prevision: which is, that the blessings of life are 
 mutually allied one to another in such a manner that they 
 mutually limit each other in different ways; and that if one 
 wishes to enjoy a blessing beyond a certain degree, one 
 must renounce the other which formed its limit. But then, 
 very often, even the blessing which one has too much de- 
 sired becomes an evil. " For a fortnight," ... so spoke, 
 some years before the war, an old man who had known 
 men and the world ..." we have argued to discover what 
 was of greater value, to produce riches, to create works of 
 art, or to discover truths ; and up to what point it was good 
 to desire wealth. . . . Now, in doing this, what have we 
 done save to seek the relations which exist between Art, 
 Truth, Morality, Utility, Pleasure, Duty, Equity ; that is to 
 say, between the blessings of hfe? These are questions 
 which greatly interest philosophers, who readily imagine 
 that the world is perpetually in trouble because they do not 
 succeed in resolving these grave problems. But does not 
 life take it upon herself to answer them each day? Is it 
 then so difficult to understand that these things are the lim- 
 its, the one of the other? Duty can put a bridle on Pleas- 
 ure and preserve it from perilous abuses : the sense of the 
 Beautiful can preserve Morality from certain excesses of 
 asceticism: Morality can turn Art aside from certain in- 
 decent subjects : Utility hold Truth a little in check, remind- 
 ing man that * all Truth is not good to utter ' ; or can pre- 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 67 
 
 vent Morality and Art from becoming dehumanized by- 
 becoming ends unto themselves; and so on. What is 
 history if not the perpetual effort of the will to discover new- 
 balances (equilibriums) and more perfect limitations be- 
 tween these elements of life? "^ 
 
 It is the same with justice, charity, reverence, equity, 
 loyalty, chivalric sentiment; with all those ideals of moral 
 perfection which the world had not renounced, and of 
 power. Power and these ideals do not necessarily exclude 
 each other, but they mutually limit each other. The 
 stronger the ideals are in a nation or an individual, so much 
 the more will power acquired by violating justice, charity, 
 equity and loyalty horrify them : they will want power only 
 within the limits traced by these ideals of moral perfection. 
 The stronger the ambition for power, the more easily and 
 indifferently will an individual and a nation overstep these 
 limits. If the ambition for power become, in a man or in 
 a nation, a kind of religion or Messianic mysticism, these 
 limits will end by being regarded as obstacles that the man 
 or the nation must overthrow, and with which they will 
 boast of being openly in conflict. That is what has hap- 
 pened to Germany, before the eyes of the terrified world. 
 Intoxicated by its success, by the flatteries of which it was 
 the object, by the idea of its strength, by the hope of an 
 immense triumph, Germany had ended by believing, as, 
 moreover, the greater number of its admirers believed, that 
 it was the best because it was the strongest : it was obvious, 
 then, that it would improve in proportion as it should 
 increase in strength : consequently, all that it did to augment 
 its power was good. The spirit of a whole people, power- 
 ful, strong, numerous, once set upon this declivity, and it 
 was bound to slide rapidly into the worst excesses. 
 
 * " Entre les Deux Mondes," Paris, 1913, p. 415. 
 
68 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 But if Germany, which was the strongest and which 
 hoped to win, had easily confused with the good all that 
 which favoured her immense ambitions, the peoples at- 
 tacked, who felt themselves the weaker and who saw them- 
 selves menaced by a fearful danger, took refuge by the 
 deserted altars of Justice, of Equity, of chivalrous Generos- 
 ity, of Loyalty; that is to say, they opposed to Germany 
 and its ideal of power the old ideals of perfection. From 
 that moment they have recommenced, in all the nations 
 which speak languages derived from the Latin, to exalt the 
 Latin genius, the Latin spirit, the Latin civilization, in 
 prose and verse. And with reason; for the Latin genius 
 sums up the ideals of perfection, which alone can limit the 
 aspirations of man after criminal power. But if the Latin 
 ideal is above all and before all an ideal of perfection, it is 
 necessary for all those who today exalt the Latin genius 
 and oppose it to Germanism, to bear well in mind that it 
 represents the opposite of what one had formed the habit 
 of most admiring in Germany: of that insatiable aspiration 
 after an unlimited growth of power; of that untiring and 
 unscrupulous activity; of that spirit of invasion; of that 
 taste for all which is enormous, colossal, extravagant, vio- 
 lent. We must not delude ourselves too much: the ideal 
 of a power which should grow indefinitely has seduced the 
 minds of many and has deeply penetrated into even the 
 Latin countries. Even today, after so much bloodshed, 
 many adversaries of Germany waver between the horror 
 and fear of the excesses committed by it, and the desire to 
 appropriate its methods and the secret of its successes. We 
 must not too far forget that powerful interests are bound 
 up, even in the Latin countries, with that ideal of boundless 
 power, whereas every ideal of perfection imposes limits, 
 restrictions and renunciations. 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 69 
 
 V 
 
 It is above all for this reason that the present war seems 
 bound to be the beginning of a very long and complicated 
 historical crisis. This immense catastrophe has shown the 
 world that it is not possible to want at one and the same 
 time an unlimited increase of power and a continual moral 
 progress ; that sooner or later the moment comes when the 
 choice must be made between justice, charity, loyalty, and 
 power, riches, success. But it is not so easy to make the 
 choice as to say that it must be made. A few examples will 
 show what transformations and responsibilities this choice 
 implies, should the world decide one day to limit afresh 
 the ideal of power and the ambitions which it engenders, 
 by ideals, old or new, of perfection. These examples will 
 at the same time give an idea of the practical conclusions 
 of which the ideas expounded in this book, and the concep- 
 tion of the European conflict which is there set forth, per- 
 mit; they will thus lead to a better understanding of that 
 which a renaissance of the Latin spirit will signify in mod- 
 em civilization on the day when it shall appear. 
 
 In many States there is a question of alcoholism. It is 
 serious above all in France, In what does this question 
 consist? It is only one of the consequences of the effort 
 for the imlimited increase of production of all things, use- 
 ful or harmful, which characterizes our age. Alone among 
 all the civilizations of history, our civilization has applied 
 itself with the same energy to manufacture ever greater 
 quantities of all products, from alcohol to explosives, from 
 cannons to aeroplanes, without ever troubling itself as to 
 the use that would be made of them. It is thus that enor- 
 mous quantities of alcohol have been distilled ; and after 
 having been distilled they have been given to the million 
 
70 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 to drink, even at the risk of destroying whole nations. The 
 primary sources of the vice are in the industry and not in 
 the men. It is not the thirst of men which obhges indus- 
 try and agriculture to produce drink in ever increasing 
 quantity : it is industry and agriculture which, swept along 
 by the tremendous economic on-rush of the world, augment 
 the production; and, to dispose of it all, teach the masses 
 to get drunk. The question of alcoholism is, in short, pri- 
 marily a question of over-production. Our ancestors were 
 much more sober, not because they were wiser or more 
 virtuous or more devout; but because they produced less 
 alcohol, and the little that they produced was of better qual- 
 ity. They could not drink the alcohol which did not exist. 
 The deduction is clear. To eradicate this plague the 
 State must claim the faculty of limiting certain productions 
 for moral and patriotic reasons; that is to say, set moral 
 limits to the ceaselessly growing productive power of mod- 
 ern industry. Neither propaganda committees, nor lec- 
 tures, nor sermons, nor pamphlets, nor even the reduction 
 of the number of public-houses, will cure the evil so long 
 as such great quantities of alcohol shall continue to be dis- 
 distilled. If we want to save the masses from this curse, 
 there is only one way : entirely to prohibit the distillation of 
 the alcohols of inferior quality destined for the making of 
 liqueurs, and rigorously to limit the production of the alco- 
 hols of superior quality. The people will be obliged to drink 
 less when they no longer have anything at their disposition 
 but wine, beer, and a few very expensive liqueurs. 
 
 Another serious question brought forward by the war is 
 that of the limits of commercial competition between the 
 different nations. Every one knows that the development 
 of the German industry and commerce has been in part 
 obtained with the aid of special methods of competition, 
 
TEUTONISM AND LxVTINISM 71 
 
 such as dumping, and innumerable ingenious adulterations 
 German chemistry has been the great accomplice of all these 
 adulterations. These are ways of acting which can only be 
 justified if one admits that quantity is everything in the 
 world; that each people ought to seek only to produce sell 
 and consume as much as it can; that the worth of nations 
 IS measured by the figures of its exports; and that, to in. 
 crease the raw total of commerce, all means are good. But 
 these are the principles which have led Germany to destroy 
 herself in destroying Europe for the satisfaction of its inor- 
 dmate ambition; and against which we have been protesting 
 for years past by opposing the Latin spirit, and its ideals of 
 moral perfection, to the unscrupulous lusts of Germanism' 
 If, then, we wish for the spirit of justice, loyalty, a certain 
 feehng of trust, to regulate in future the relations between 
 the civilized peoples of Europe, we must apply curbs and 
 limits to these equivocal procedures. It is so much the more 
 necessary in that, if we do not succeed in this, there is no 
 doubt that every one will set to after the war to imitate 
 the German system: with what result? It is easy to pre- 
 dict! It is therefore necessary to endeavour to impose 
 moral regulations upon international competition: but by 
 what means ? There seems only one : to revert, by modern- 
 izing it, to an old doctrine which was less an economic law 
 than a moral^ principle imposed on economics: the just price 
 of things. " Carius venders vel villus enter e rem quam va- 
 leat . . . injiistun/' ssiid Saint Thomas. The application of 
 this principle in this case can be made without hesitation, 
 for no one will question that he who buys a thing at a 
 price lower than the cost of its production buys it below 
 its^ worth. It must then be affirmed that dumping, while 
 being of service to the people who profit by it, weakens 
 m the mind the concept of the just price of things; accus- 
 
72 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 toming some, on the one hand, to consume products in a 
 quantity beyond what they ought to consume, granted their 
 wealth and the general wealth; obliging others to work at 
 too low a price; disturbing the whole system of retributions. 
 Consequently all the States ought to unite together to pro- 
 hibit dumping in all its forms; and each State ought to 
 reserve to itself the supreme faculty of quashing, by equiva- 
 lent taxes, the dumping that another State should not be 
 willing or able to repress. 
 
 Not less grave is the question of adulteration as a normal 
 procedure of modern industry. For the last century it has 
 enriched many manufacturers; it has benefited above all 
 the Germans, who have made use of it with their customary 
 energy and audacity; but it is one of the most dangerous 
 of the procedures of modern commerce and industry. As 
 dumping destroys in men's minds the conception of the just 
 price of things, these adulterations render men more and 
 more incapable of distinguishing what is good from what 
 is bad or mediocre ; that is to say, they stifle in our civiliza- 
 tion the sense of quality. Now, in proportion as one stifles 
 in men the sense of quality, the commercial and industrial 
 struggle must necessarily develop itself in the sense of quan- 
 tity. The business which will pour forth, and know how 
 to impose, upon the world, the greatest abundance of worse 
 products will be victorious. But when men exert them- 
 selves, not to make articles of a certain quality and have 
 them admired, but to produce and sell the largest number 
 of articles in the shortest time; it is a victory over matter, 
 over time and over space that they aspire to, and not a 
 refinement of their tastes and capacities. It is then an 
 ideal of power and not an ideal of perfection that they are 
 seeking after. It is thus possible to reconstitute the chain 
 which links these processes of adulteration, recognized as 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 73 
 
 legitimate by modern trade, to the present crisis. The pro- 
 cedures of falsification stifle the sense of quality; quality 
 is the only natural limit of quantity; the more the sense 
 of quality becomes obtuse in a period, the more industry and 
 commerce find themselves tmder the necessity of struggling 
 for quantity; that is to say, of indefinitely increasing pro- 
 duction. This struggle for quantity brings about of neces- 
 sity the triumph of an ideal of power over all the ideals 
 of perfection; and we see, since 1914, the possible conse- 
 quences of such a triumph in a people which was conscious 
 of possessing the strongest army in the world. 
 
 As to the procedures of adulteration, we can repeat what 
 has been already said of dumping: if a curb be not put upon 
 them they will generalize themselves after the war. Every 
 one will want to employ against Germany the arms which 
 it has forged and with which it has wounded us. But is 
 it possible to put a curb on this evil? Yes: if the States 
 again became, while adapting themselves to the exigencies 
 of a world so greatly enlarged, what they were formerly; 
 the guarantees of the quality of the goods. They ought 
 not, as they did once, to impose upon manufactures a cer- 
 tain standard of perfection ; they ought to continue to recog- 
 nize the right, granted by the industrial revolution of the 
 nineteenth century to manufactures and commerce, of de- 
 basing the quality to the advantage of the quantity, as much 
 as they want, and as they can; but they ought ruthlessly 
 to deny them the right of hiding this deterioration of quality 
 by all the deceptions which industry and commerce misuse 
 today. Very strong interior legislations and a whole well 
 supported system of international conventions ought to pre- 
 vent industry and commerce from deceiving the public as 
 to the origin, the composition, the solidity, as to the most 
 important qualities, in short, of the goods. Laws of this 
 
74s EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 kind were formerly very numerous, in the periods of quali- 
 tative civilization; quantity, triumphing with steam ma- 
 chinery, has swept them aside; but many much deplored 
 inconveniences of the present economic regime would 
 disappear if one returned to the inspiratory principle of 
 those old laws, adapting it to the requirements of the modern 
 world. One can even say that these inconveniences will 
 only disappear on the day when industry and commerce 
 shall accept these moral limits. 
 
 The commercial adulterations are, moreover, only a part 
 of a much greater problem; of the greatest moral problem 
 of our age: that of loyalty. For the last three years the 
 German lies and perfidies are the wonder of the world. 
 One asks oneself how our century can have engendered a 
 people which breaks its pledged word so easily and knows 
 how to lie with such audacity. Would it not be more 
 reasonable to ask oneself what good faith and regard for 
 truth could be found in a people which had enriched itself, 
 and succeeded in obtaining the admiration of the whole 
 world, through adulterating almost all the products of the 
 earth? In this defect also the Germans perhaps represent 
 our age better than one thinks. Our age has accomplished 
 great things and has many virtues; but it shows itself more 
 and more uncertain and weak in the conception of honour. 
 May I be allowed to quote a book written before the war? 
 " No century had ever so great a need as ours to set a limit 
 to the liberty to lie. For it is in vain that I try to preach 
 that man ought to advance towards the future without 
 turning his head; I do not deceive myself, you know. Pre- 
 cisely because there are limits, conventional and always 
 provisional limits, man is ceaselessly at war with the prin- 
 ciples upon which social and moral order rest. Interests 
 and passions continually seek either to overthrow these 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 75 
 
 limits by violent means, . . . wars, revolutions, seditions, 
 martial laws, bombs, outrages, crimes ; or, more frequently, 
 to elude them by sophistry, because that is less dangerous. 
 How is it that sophistry is never dead of the mortal wounds 
 which logic has inflicted upon it in so many memorable 
 duels? Why have all ages licenced and loaded with gold 
 an official body of sophists, ... the lawyers? How could 
 Socrates believe that he was accomplishing a great moral 
 reform by teaching men to argue well? Because sophistry 
 is the arsenal to which man resorts to seek the means of 
 observing principles when they accord him a right, and to 
 elude them, while feigning to respect them, when they im- 
 pose a duty upon him. Now, if man has already resorted 
 largely to this arsenal in the times when principles were 
 consecrated by religion, what will he not do today when, 
 having passed out of childhood, he has discovered the secret 
 of the game ? The critical spirit is too keen in our age, we 
 are too old, we know history too well and are henceforth 
 too much accustomed to enjoy the unbridled liberty in the 
 midst of which we live ! And you were right again, Caval- 
 canti, when you said that, if our civilization is to such a 
 point plastic, progressive, ardent, it is to these facts that it 
 owes it. The more, then, that a man ages, the more he 
 grows rich, learned, powerful, so much the more he ought 
 to repeat to himself, and profoundly to inculcate in his 
 spirit this supreme rule of wisdom: 'Go forward, without 
 ever turning thy head to see what arm compels thee; be- 
 lieve in the'principle that thou professest and observe it as 
 if it were imposed on thee by God, as if it represented the 
 sole truth, the sole beauty, the sole virtue, the health and 
 the salvation of the world; discuss not, argue not, com- 
 promise not; be faithful to thy conviction to the end, with- 
 out fearing to risk for it thy life and thy fortune; force 
 
76 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 thyself not to lie and not to betray, then no other person 
 can force thee to do so. But if thy principle breaks down, 
 resign thyself to its fall as if it had been but a human, con- 
 ventional and arbitrary limitation of that infinite Truth, 
 that infinite Beauty, that infinite Good which continues to 
 circulate in the world through the channel of the new prin- 
 ciple which has swept away thine own. ' Triumphant quan- 
 tity, on the contrary, teaches us from the cradle to lie to 
 others and to ourselves, to perfect ourselves in all the arts 
 of mystification. Why? Because if, in fact, quantity tri- 
 umphs in the world today, thanks to machinery, to fire, to 
 America, it cannot, in spite of all, assume openly and in its 
 own name the government of the world : for man always 
 and everywhere, in no matter what condition and at what 
 moment, requires to translate quantity into quality, and to 
 believe that the things he makes use of correspond to an 
 ideal of perfection. Even at a period when the world has 
 so sadly deteriorated and when almost all the standards of 
 measure have been impaired or confused in mediocrity ; even 
 today, I say, no one recognizes a thing as better merely be- 
 cause it costs more; that is to say, to make quantity the 
 criterion of quality. Quite the contrary, each wishes to 
 persuade himself that, if he pays a higher price, it is be- 
 cause the thing is better; if not it would seem to him that 
 he was admitting his own folly to himself. That is why 
 quantity has to take the mask of quality and use fraud to 
 deceive men and make them believe that, at the very mo- 
 ment when they are only procuring abundance for them- 
 selves, they are also seeking after beauty or excellence. 
 What are all these Smyrna carpets woven at Monza; all 
 these Japanese goods or all this Indian furniture manufac- 
 tured at Hamburg or in Bavaria ; all these Parisian novel- 
 ties made in a hundred places; all these rabbits whom a 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 77 
 
 few weeks suffice to change into otters; all these cham- 
 pagnes made in America, in Germany, in Italy, if not the 
 lies of quantity, which steals from ruined and proscribed 
 quality her last rags ? Who does not know with how many 
 processes and substances chemistry has furnished industry 
 for the deception of the public? It is not then surprising 
 that our society no longer possesses any instrument of 
 truth and faith which may act upon consciences as did 
 formerly the oath and honour by which religions and aris- 
 tocracies constrained man to be sincere when he might lie 
 with impunity, faithful when he might have been a traitor. 
 And from that time onwards we see many difficulties spring 
 up and grow serious in modern society for the solution of 
 which we tax our ingenuity to find theories, institutions, 
 preventive measures. But all such efforts remain unsuc- 
 cessful, because these difficulties are nothing but questions 
 of loyalty. If the sentiment of loyalty existed, it would 
 resolve them in an instant." ^ 
 
 VI 
 
 But I seem to see more than one reader smile, and to 
 hear repeated the objection which a justified scepticism sug- 
 gests to many persons. " All these ideas are excellent on 
 paper. But will it ever be possible to apply them? Will 
 the evil passions and the interests of men ever consent? " 
 
 I do not deceive myself, for example, as to the diffi- 
 culties that modern States, enfeebled as they are, will en- 
 counter upon the day when they shall wish to become once 
 more the guarantors of quality in an economic world so 
 much vaster and more encumbered than the old. And yet 
 industry and commerce are not even the field wherein the 
 
 1 Entre les deux mondes, p. 370 
 
78 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 ideal of power and the ideal of perfection are destined to 
 fight their sternest battles. The same principles can apply 
 to questions far more grave and vital, to which I shall 
 merely allude, just because they are too grave, and the mo- 
 ment to examine them thoroughly has not yet arrived. But 
 there is no doubt at all that the Latin ideal of life, for 
 instance, would on the day when it should be able to expend 
 itself afresh in all its strength and coherency, lead Europe 
 to the limitation of armaments under all their forms, from 
 the invention of new engines of war to the manufacture 
 of arms and effective forces. It is in war that the ideal 
 of power, represented by Germany, has most entirely de- 
 stroyed all the ancient ideals of moral perfection in which 
 we believed ; it is in war that a strong reaction will be most 
 necessary if we desire to save modern civilization from an 
 irreparable catastrophe. But the limitation of armaments 
 implies another change, the import of which is even more 
 tremendous; and which raises, under another form, the 
 problem of loyalty upon which we have already touched. 
 It is that the States of Europe consent to limit by treaties, 
 the one toward the others, and in equal ratio, their sovereign 
 rights, in view of a superior interest, common to all. It is 
 enough merely to state this for all its difficulties to be appre- 
 hended. 
 
 And yet it would be an error to consider all these ideas 
 as Utopias which cannot be realized. They are not, most 
 undoubtedly, necessities upon which one can count as upon 
 the accomplishment of a natural law ; but they are possibili- 
 ties which depend upon the human will. We find ourselves 
 in a sphere where all depends upon what men want. If one 
 had said to a man of the sixteenth century that the organ- 
 ization of the authority and tradition under which he lived 
 would one day fall, he would have shrugged his shoulders. 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 79 
 
 But man has certainly succeeded in the last two centuries 
 in overthrowing the principles upon which society was based 
 even to the point of letting loose on the earth this hurricane 
 of fire and sword; because he desired the unlimited aggran- 
 dizement of his power. Let us look at the world : millions 
 of men are butchering each other; empires are falling to 
 pieces; riches produced by two generations are melting 
 away; the fury of destruction rages on the land, on sea, in 
 the air; twenty centuries of moral progress seem anni- 
 hilated; sparks of the immense conflagration have been car- 
 ried by the wind across the Atlantic. If men have desired 
 all that which has rendered inevitable this chaotic explosion 
 of savage passions, is it rash to hope that they will some 
 day also desire that which would assure to the world a 
 little more true order, faith, justice, loyalty, charity? But 
 that which one might call the will of periods, that is to say, 
 the great currents of the civilizations which succeed one 
 another, is a very mysterious phenomenon. They seem to 
 be the work of the human spirit and yet to be superior to 
 the spirit of each man, as if a people, a nation, a series of 
 generations, were something more than the aggregate of 
 the human beings of which these human groups are made 
 up; as if they enjoyed to the full that liberty of choice 
 which individuals may avail themselves of in only a small 
 degree. It is for that reason impossible to say if, and when, 
 men will desire a more stable and just society than that 
 which is today struggling in this crisis of mad violence; 
 and after what endeavours and wanderings they will desire 
 it. But, whether that day be near or distant, the duty of 
 the historian, the moralist, the philosopher, does not change. 
 They ought to set before their contemporaries how, under the 
 surprises, the horrors and the ruins of this crisis; in all the 
 contradictions and uncertainties amid which our age strug- 
 
80 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 gles ; in the difficulties which present themselves on all sides ; 
 and in those, yet greater, which will present themselves; 
 is lurking this dilemma of perfection and of power from 
 which the world cannot escape. The struggle between the 
 Latin genius and the Germanic genius is nothing else than 
 this. The historian, the moralist, the philosopher, are not 
 authorized to essert that man ought to prefer perfection to 
 power. Man will be free in the future to resolve the prob- 
 lem, as he has been in the past, in deciding for one or other 
 of the alternatives. But what the historian, the moralist 
 and the philosopher can, and ought to, say is that it is im- 
 possible to want both the two at once; and to seek to in- 
 crease indefinitely, at the same time, these two good things. 
 Present events furnish conclusive proof of this. Have we 
 not, for the last two years, seen returning among us what 
 one considered as the phantoms of ages for ever dead; 
 sumptuary laws; restrictions upon international commerce 
 and on the consumption of goods; the taxation of prices and 
 wages? Have we not seen all at once thrift, economy, sim- 
 plicity, the limitation of needs, become once more civic vir- 
 tues, exalted, as at the time of Caesar and Augustus, by 
 even those who used to wish to banish them, in the name 
 of progress, from the world? Have we not been obliged 
 abruptly, from one day to the next, by the force of circum- 
 stances, to revert to methods and ideas created by periods 
 which had subordinated economic activity to ideals of moral 
 perfection? And what does this inspired volte face signify, 
 save that, whatever he may do, the moment will always 
 come when man, if he do not do it spontaneously, will be 
 obliged by the very laws of life to choose between the two 
 ideals? The whole question for him then reduces itself 
 into knowing whether he will choose by force, that is to say, 
 ill, by suffering, and without gain; or if he will choose 
 
TEUTONISM AND LATINISM 81 
 
 spontaneously according to an organic and exalted concept 
 of life and its aims. 
 
 All these truths are very simple. But it was perhaps not 
 profitless to expound them at a moment when the minds of 
 men are so disturbed. They will be able in any case to 
 assist some readers to profit by the experience of the author, 
 who has himself, at the outset, run the risk of losing himself 
 in the fog of this great intellectual and moral confusion; 
 and who, thanks to these simple truths, has at least suc- 
 ceeded in avoiding the misfortune of being an admirer of 
 the German system in the years which preceded the war. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 Ancient Rome and Modern Culture 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 
 
 I 
 
 Standing on the Capitol, the sacred hill of Rome, after a 
 long absence spent in foreign travel, I recall the time, 
 already far distant, when I finally took the resolution of 
 writing a new history of Rome! Perhaps none of these 
 memories is sweeter to me than that of the anxieties, the 
 uncertainties, the doubts which, at the moment of departure, 
 thronged about my path to hold me back. " Why write a 
 new history of Rome? Is it to be presumed that our age, 
 which rushes forward towards the future with such tre- 
 mendous impetus, should find, in the midst of this un- 
 bridled career, the necessary leisure to turn its head, were 
 it but for a moment, and contemplate a past so remote? 
 Is the moment really come to write this new history of 
 Rome? Has not history now entered upon its scientific 
 phase, and is it not consequently bound to prepare the new 
 synthesis by a long and minute analysis? " 
 
 At the moment of departure I was not in a position to 
 reply to these misgivings with precision and with assurance ; 
 which would have been serious if history were, indeed, as 
 some claim, a pure science, whose methods should be rigor- 
 ously controllable and strictly obligatory. But, luckily, his- 
 tory is, or can be, something more than a science ; it can be 
 an art capable of acting in various ways upon the spirit of 
 men, on their dispositions and on their tendencies. It can, 
 then, be a form of action ; and action, when it has a raison 
 d'etre, always ends by becoming conscious of this in propor- 
 tion as it attains its goal. It is thus that I found the answer 
 to these distressing questions along the worid-roads; and 
 
 85 
 
66 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 for that reason it seems to me I cannot better celebrate this 
 kind of symbolic return than in bringing from the world 
 which I have travelled, in all senses, to extol the glory of 
 Rome, a reply, which involves one of the most disputed 
 questions of modern culture. And it is this. Roman his- 
 tory is inexhaustible, immortal, privileged, and never can 
 it be too much rewritten, especially by those who are the 
 children of Rome; especially by Italy, her eldest daughter; 
 because it is complete and synthetic; because, when we em- 
 brace in a glance the events of the centuries from the Punic 
 wars to the final schism between the Orient and the Occi- 
 dent, we observe, distended upon this immense panorama 
 of two imposing social dissolutions and an imposing recom- 
 position, that which we could almost define as the woof of 
 universal history. 
 
 How, in reality, does the history of Rome commence? 
 Not by chaos, like the Biblical history of the universe, but 
 by order; that is to say, by interior peace; by political dis- 
 cipline ; by a well-established equilibrium of fortunes, all, 
 moreover, modest, and almost all rooted in the soil. In all 
 Italy, in the open country as in the towns, which have not 
 yet forgotten their origins ; in the midst of the rural popula- 
 tions as in the middle classes and the residue of the local 
 noblesse; this peace, this discipline, this equilibrium, are 
 maintained by means of laws, of religion, of munificence, 
 of the half-divine prestige of victories, of a high reputation 
 for wisdom, by the small aristocracy of Rome, which thence- 
 forth reigns over the peninsula. It is a hereditary but not 
 exclusive aristocracy; puritan and devout; avaricious and 
 uncouth ; preoccupied only with having in its hands the most 
 efficacious instruments of domination, . . . landed prop- 
 erty, law, diplomacy, religion, government and soldiery; 
 indifferent or defiant in regard to all else; to philosophy as 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 87 
 
 to art; to Greek culture as to Asiatic creeds; to luxury as 
 to enjoyment; resolved to seclude itself, with all the Italic 
 races, which venerate it as an Olympus of demigods, in the 
 ancient religion and the ancestral traditions; to confine 
 Itself within the limits of that Italy which it has conquered 
 with such severe toil, and, within those limits, to struggle 
 against the destiny which impels it toward the empire of the 
 world. The energy with which it resists destiny is great • 
 but the moment arrives when the force of circumstances 
 breaks down its resistance. What a change then ! From 
 the second Punic war onwards the equilibrium of the ancient 
 society changes under the action of the two most formidable 
 revolutionary powers which in all ages, modify the face 
 ot the world; new needs and new ideas. After the empire 
 has extended beyond the seas, after its riches are increased 
 after points of contact are multiplied with the refined civil- 
 ization of the Hellenized East, there grow up, in all the 
 social ranks, generations avid for facile gains; indocile 
 aspiring to a wider and more gladsome existence, desiring 
 a broader culture. Many ancient fortunes go down in the 
 current of the new prodigality, many new fortunes arise 
 f rom^ It. The aristocracy grows impoverished or depraved • 
 or, disgusted, isolates itself in regret for the good old times ' 
 or flings Itself into exoticism. And thus, Httle by little' 
 the ancient moral unity disappears; the very foundations of 
 the State are split. 
 
 Everywhere, in religion, in the family, in the Republic 
 discipline breaks down. The order of knights, puffed up 
 by riches; the middle classes, invigorated by ambitions and 
 embittered by poverty; revolt against the nobility revered 
 for so many centuries; interests, which the power of a class 
 sure of Its dominion no longer holds in check, engage in a 
 fierce struggle among themselves, in the very heart of the 
 
88 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 State, and rend it more; little by little gold corrupts all; 
 and, for the spoiling of that which gold has not the power 
 to corrupt, there is suspicion ; the sombre pessimism which 
 poisons souls ; so that there is nothing which is not, or which 
 does not appear to be, incurably rotten. To the ancient 
 social harmony there succeeds a furious scission of factions 
 and coteries animated by bitter hatreds, each of which up- 
 braids in the others its own vices. Greek culture pene- 
 trates and diffuses itself easily in this society, already so 
 disturbed by discords, distrust, and indiscipline ; but, at the 
 same time as it refines or strengthens the intellects, it in- 
 creases the disorder. Gusts of revolutionary fury pass over 
 Rome and Italy; and to such an extent that, during the first 
 twenty years of the century which precedes the Christian 
 era, the pious republic of Camillus and Fabricius seems to 
 dissolve into bankruptcy, anarchy, defeats; into the sense- 
 less rage of dissensions, and, finall}^ into civil war. How 
 many times, in these fatal years, did not even the most 
 intrepid spirits fear that over this sacred hill, in that Forum 
 where today, with a filial piety, we seek for the relics of 
 those ages, there should pass, as over the ground where 
 Carthage stood, the cukivators' plough, obliterating for ever 
 the last vestiges of the nefarious and blood-soaked city ! 
 
 A terrible man, Scylla, saves the Empire by recreating 
 for it an army by dint of money and pillage; and restoring, 
 with this army, by strength of terror, a rough social dis- 
 cipline. But, once he has gone, and in proportion as the 
 treasures of Mithridates, conquered by Lucullus, are trans- 
 ported to Italy, the fever for sudden gains, the frenzy of 
 luxury, the ambition for conquests, little by little breaks out 
 again. For a moment this aged State seems to recover a 
 fresh vigour. Pompey, following the example of Lucullus, 
 conquers Syria; the dominant oligarchy wishes to enrich 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 89 
 
 itself in the provinces and among foreign potentates; those 
 who are not able to conquer an Empire levy contributions 
 on the States and small principalities which tremble before 
 the shadow of Rome; the courts of the petty Eastern kings, 
 such as that of the Ptolemies at Alexandria, are invaded 
 by ravenous knights and senators, who, after extorting 
 money, return to spend it in Italy, where luxury makes rapid 
 progress ; and, with luxury, debts ; and, with debts, the hel- 
 lenistic and oriental cultures ; meanwhile, amid the incessant 
 agitations of this age, there grows up and pursues his way 
 the fatal man, Caesar. The day comes when finally this 
 predestined man crosses the Alps and invades Gaul, bristling 
 with forests and armies, to seek there glory and treasure. 
 The State then falls into the power of parties, greedy, auda- 
 cious, energetic, unscrupulous; but changeable as the inter- 
 ests which they serve and of which they make use; and 
 these parties, by their continual quick changes and restless, 
 underhand dealings, corrode in the aged State the scanty 
 discipline which Scylla had, with great difficulty, re-estab- 
 lished. 
 
 After thirty and more years of such a peace, barely toler- 
 able and laboriously maintained, there recommences a civil 
 war, or, to put it better, a frightful tempest which sweeps 
 away first the remains of Scylla's constitution, then the 
 dictatorship of Caesar, then the Senate and what survived 
 of the Roman aristocracy, then the revolutionary trium- 
 virate, as well as all other States, great and small, on the 
 confines of the Empire, among them the throne of the 
 Ptolemies. What remains standing? Ruins accumulate on 
 all sides, men ask themselves if Rome be the greatest or the 
 most wretched of cities. One of Rome's most lucid spirits, 
 matured in the midst of these vicissitudes, discerns every- 
 where a decadence which precipitates from bad to worse ; 
 
90 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit 
 Nos nequiores, mox laturos 
 Protem vitiosiorem. 
 
 And yet it is the last step towards the apogee. After 
 this supreme ordeal the Greco-Oriental culture, which had 
 disaggregated the ancient Italic society, transforms itself 
 into a force of social reconstruction; it re-establishes little 
 by little, in the Mediterranean basin, whose conquest has 
 changed the situation, a fresh balance of interests, of aspira- 
 tions, of ideas, of sentiments. Thanks to the peace, the 
 barbarous West learns to till the land, to cultivate the woods, 
 to sink mines, to navigate the rivers, to speak and write 
 Latin both well and badly; it grows civilized, it purchases 
 the products manufactured in the old cities of the East. In 
 proportion as the new markets of the West afford it outlets, 
 the East reopens the workshops of its industrious artisans 
 and the busy shops of its traders; it once more sets in cir- 
 culation its former traffic upon the roads extended by the 
 sword of Rome. Thus the ancient oriental civilizations, 
 Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, rejuvenate by contact with the 
 young western barbarisms. Between them stands Italy, 
 excellently placed to dominate this empire around the Med- 
 iterranean, where the West balances the East; where Gaul, 
 admirably developed since the century which follows the 
 conquest, forms the counterpoise to Egypt, which has blos- 
 somed forth again. For the first time the Mediterranean 
 becomes as an immense and tranquil forum where, under 
 Roman supervision, Europe, Africa and Asia come into 
 contact, exchange their produce, their customs, their ideas. 
 From this an easy peace originates, in Gaul, in Asia Minor, 
 in Spain, in Northern Africa, — new middle classes, new 
 provincial aristocracies; while at Rome the last remains of 
 the old Roman aristocracy, of that aristocracy which, by 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 91 
 
 tradition, occupied itself only with war and politics, ends 
 by dying out. The new aristocratic families, recruited in 
 the provinces, replace it. They have received a vigorous 
 Roman education, they have sought to assimilate the ideas 
 and manners of the old aristocracy of the Urhs. But the 
 tendencies of the age make themselves felt; the military 
 and political spirit declines in this new aristocracy; pre- 
 occupations as to culture, administration, justice, urban civil- 
 ization, a keen inclination towards Hellenism, grow and 
 gather force. This is the reason why, by degrees, one fam- 
 ily, which seems to fear its own fortune, is obliged to assume 
 all the privileges and all the responsibilities shared during 
 many centuries among numbers of noble families. We 
 shall never understand the history of Rome if we do not 
 understand that the Julia-Claudian family was obliged to 
 assume and exercise, in spite of itself, a power which, in- 
 sensibly, became monarchical, in the same way as the Roman 
 nobility had been obliged to found, in spite of itself, the 
 Empire of which it was afraid. 
 
 There is summed up in this contradiction what might be 
 called the philosophical essence of Roman history; since it 
 was the destiny of Rome to perish through its conquests. 
 It is, in fact, soon annihilated by the Empire it has founded. 
 In proportion as the East flourishes once more and the West 
 expands; in proportion as the prosperity, the number and 
 the power of the middle classes and the provincial aristocra- 
 cies increase; the immense Empire assumes the form, no 
 longer cf a formidable engine of political and military do- 
 minion, but of one of those highly refined urban States that 
 Hellenism had produced in the East. Created by a puritan 
 and strictly national aristocracy of diplomatists and war- 
 riors, the Empire falls into the power of an aristocracy and 
 bureaucracy, cosmopolitan, pacifist, lettered, philosophical; 
 
92 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 whose amalgamation is effected throughout the Empire, not 
 any longer by a real or imaginary community of origins, 
 traditions and history, but by a brilliant, though superficial, 
 literary and philosophical culture, and by the political re- 
 ligion of the Empire and the emperor. The force of co- 
 hesion which internally binds together the enormous bulk of 
 the Empire is no longer merely warfare and law; it is, 
 above all, the urban civilization of the Hellenized East. 
 In the same way as the Emperor at Rome, so do the rich 
 families in the provinces dispense part of their wealth to 
 beautify the cities; to increase the profits, the comforts and 
 pleasures of the people; they build palaces, villas, theatres, 
 temples, baths, aqueducts; they are liberal of corn, oil, 
 amusements, money ; they endow public services or establish 
 charitable foundations. The Empire is covered with great 
 and small cities, which rival each other in splendour and 
 beauty; all expand through the constant influx of the poor 
 populations of the campaigns, of artisans, of peasants grown 
 rich. Schools are opened wherein the young of the middle 
 class, by learning rhetoric, literature, philosophy, and law, 
 prepare themselves for the bureaucratic functions which, 
 from generation to generation, increase and ramify. It is 
 this lettered and philosophical bureaucracy which introduces 
 into the Roman law, originally empiric, the philosophical 
 and systematic spirit; which introduces into the adminis- 
 tration, originally authoritative, the juridic spirit. And it 
 is thus that, during the second century, the Empire displays, 
 in the sunshine of the Pax Romana which illumines the 
 world, its innumerable cities all resplendent with marbles. 
 But, alas, for but a brief period ; for a fresh dissolution 
 commences. The urban and cosmopolitan civilization which 
 had linked, one with another, the various parts of this incon- 
 gruous empire, begins, in the course of the third century, 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 93 
 
 to act as a dissolvent force, which throws this briUiant 
 world back into the chaos from which it had drawn it. 
 Little by little, with the spontaneous growth of the cities 
 and of their luxury, that which the urban civilization con- 
 sumes, exceeds the fertility of the campaigns, and these 
 become depopulated; drained by the cities which absorb 
 their population and their wealth. What human force will 
 ever drive from the cities the rural populations after they 
 have once tasted the conveniences, the pleasures, and the 
 vices, of a refined civilization? Hereafter the Empire is 
 devoured alive by the cities which swarm upon its enormous 
 body. To nourish the populations which there crowd to- 
 gether; to amuse them and to dress them, the campaigns 
 are harassed by a terrible fiscal regimen; agriculture is 
 ruined; the material arts perish; finances break down; the 
 administration falls into disorder; and soon the day will 
 come when within the empire, by a monstrous inversion of 
 the natural relations of things, the craftsmen of pleasure 
 and luxury will multiply endlessly, while there will no 
 longer be any peasants to till the fields, any bakers to make 
 the bread, any sailors to plough the seas, any soldiers to 
 defend the frontiers. It is the beginning of a social dis- 
 solution, the history of which is not yet written; in the 
 midst of which there supervenes the greatest moral fer- 
 mentations the world has ever undergone for the mysticism, 
 the cosmopolitanism, the antimiHtarism, the conflict which 
 causes the old educated classes and the ancient Greco- 
 Roman culture to clash with the barbarians, who invade 
 the empire from without and from below, as well as the 
 innumerable religious aberrations in formation; culminates 
 in Christianity, which elaborates a superior morality, but 
 whose spirit denies the very essence of the Empire; and 
 destroys the vital substance of that ancient civilization. 
 
94 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 The Empire defends itself with the fury of despair, but 
 without success. East and West separate, and the West, 
 abandoned to itself, falls into decay. The greatest of the 
 works of Rome, its empire of the West, covers with its 
 ruins the immense territory which borders upon the Rhine 
 and Danube; enormous ruins of fallen monuments, peoples 
 returned to barbarism, arts abolished, languages forgotten, 
 laws torn to pieces or mutilated, roads, villages, cities, oblit- 
 erated from the face of the earth and reabsorbed by the 
 primeval forest which, slow and tenacious, puts forth its 
 shoots in this cemetery of a civilization, that covers the 
 colossal bones of Rome. 
 
 II 
 
 Such is the tree which sprang from the little seed sown 
 in this Roman soil. For centuries this tree has been felled. 
 Why, then, do men yet come, from all parts, to dig with 
 ardent curiosity in the place where it had its roots? Be- 
 cause in none of the States which, in turn, predominated 
 could the forces of dissolution and reconstruction, which 
 make and unmake civilizations, operate during so long a 
 series of centuries with so much liberty as at Rome, without 
 being either retarded or accelerated by exterior perils and 
 shocks. Because of this, Rome is truly a unique phenome- 
 non in the history of the world. From the destruction of 
 Carthage, until far on to the most calamitous period of its 
 decadence, Rome had doubtless some severe alarms: yet 
 she never experienced serious and lasting exterior dangers. 
 Therefore she could yield herself to the operation of the 
 internal forces which, from century to century, intervened 
 to modify her; and for this reason her history is, as I have 
 said, a complete history. It exemplifies how an empire is 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 95 
 
 constituted and disintegrated; how a historic aristocracy 
 is broken up, and how a democracy can perish of exhaus- 
 tion ; by what internal processes a republic is converted into 
 a monarchy; a military and national State transformed 
 into a state of lofty culture, and little by little exhausts 
 itself entirely in intellectuahsm, exoticism, humanitarianism, 
 cosmopolitanism. It shows how an authoritative regime 
 ends by gradually enchaining itself in a very complicated 
 juridical system; it produces many revolutions and reac- 
 tions; a great variety of repercussions of internal politics 
 upon external, and conversely; we can there study to per- 
 fection what is, perhaps, the most mysterious and the most 
 disturbing of all historical phenomena; the violent moral 
 repulsion which, especially at their first appearances, is 
 aroused by the civilizations which, later on, matured or 
 dead, are admired as the chefs d'oeuvres of the great 
 peoples. Lastly, we see how a political religion is de- 
 stroyed by a lofty literary and philosophical culture, and a 
 new mystic religion arises which shapes itself from the 
 debris of this same culture ; as well as all kinds of minglings, 
 contacts, encounters and conflicts between young and old 
 peoples; between ancient civilizations and barbarisms; be- 
 tween different States, religions and laws. It would take 
 too long were I to enumerate all the elements of universal 
 history which this history of Rome presents, gathered to- 
 gether as in a synthesis, and, for greater convenience, 
 grouped around one centre which is Rome itself; whence 
 it is sc easy to survey, in its ensemble, the immense pano- 
 rama. But I do not think I exaggerate in stating that the 
 history of Rome is complete and synthetic; and that, in 
 her, all ages can discover something of themselves and 
 behold themselves as in a mirror. 
 
 Moreover, the history of modern civilization proves this. 
 
96 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 It is a well-known fact that, above all during the last three 
 centuries, after powerful States had begun to reconstruct 
 themselves upon the political compartition of the Middle 
 Ages, Rome, its history, its literature, its military system, 
 its legislation, were regarded as an historical mirage, pro- 
 jected by the past in front of the generations which sought 
 the road to the future. It has furnished different models 
 to all generations for the resolution of the most opposite 
 political problems. In the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies Rome is the example which all the great monarchies 
 founded in Europe held before them ; in the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth centuries the history of the Roman Republic, by 
 the fervent cultus of Brutus, by the Scandalous romance of 
 the Julii Claudii which Suetonius and Tacitus transmitted, 
 fomented the opposition against absolute monarchy. After 
 the French Revolution Rome once more supplied to mon- 
 archy, as argument and means of persuasion, the Csesarean 
 vindications of Drumann, Duruy, and Mommsen, and the 
 panegyrics lavished on the imperial government. It may 
 even be said that the most celebrated histories of Rome 
 written in the nineteenth century were only written in view 
 of the conflict which had begun between the republic and 
 the monarchy. And it is precisely for this reason that, the 
 struggle between these two political principles having grown 
 weaker during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, 
 not only have the histories of Rome so conceived grown 
 antiquated, but many people are persuaded that the interest 
 manifested up to that time in Roman studies has no longer 
 any raison d'etre. " We live, they say, in the century of 
 electricity and steam. The task of our age is to satisfy 
 the middle and the popular classes, who want, not war and 
 revolutions, but a more secure and agreeable existence. We 
 ought to work indefatigably to create the prodigious riches 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 97 
 
 which, alone, can satisfy the new desires of such numerous 
 multitudes. An ancient history, wholly filled with military 
 expeditions and political enterprises, is inevitably destined 
 to become irrelevant to a century which needs machinery 
 more than laws, chemists and physicians more than warriors 
 and literary men. " To which they also add that Latin, 
 which until the last century remained a half living language, 
 finally died out in the nineteenth century, stifled by the 
 luxuriant growth of national tongues and cultures, buried 
 beneath the ruins of the political power of the Church which, 
 in idiom as in many other things, had prolonged the Roman 
 Empire. Is it not obvious that the death of the Latin 
 language marks, for Rome, the beginning of a new, supreme 
 and irreparable downfall? 
 
 And, yet, when it was practically demonstrated that, even 
 in the century of electricity and steam, it was an easy thing 
 to reawaken the interest which formerly attached to Roman 
 studies, many persons, to explain this phenomenon, attrib- 
 uted it to the somewhat violent remodernization of it, . . . 
 praiseworthy according to some, very reprehensible accord- 
 ing to others . . . which I had accomplished. But those 
 who are acquainted with Latin literature know that I have 
 modernized Roman history far less than is asserted ; on the 
 contrary, I have returned to an ancient point of view, the 
 point of view from which Livy set out, and which, more- 
 over, does not really belong to him, since it is common to 
 many other writers of the same period. That history of 
 Rome, which some have deemed so revolutionary, is already 
 quite complete in embryo in the short preface that Livy has 
 prefixed to his great work, regretting the simplicity and pur- 
 ity of the old manners, tainted by the corruption which, little 
 by little, invaded Rome. In analysing this doctrine of the 
 " corruption " which so long absorbed the Roman mind, 
 
98 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 it is easy to discern in the three capital vices, avaritia, 
 ambitio, luxuria, the continual increase of the needs and 
 ambitions which, at the dawn of the twentieth century, 
 condemn us all to work hard. The avaritia is the passion 
 for gain ; the ambitio is what we call " arrivisme," the in- 
 controllable pulsion by which all men strive to advance 
 themselves to a position superior to that in which they were 
 born ; the luxuria is the passion for ever increasing comfort, 
 luxury, enjoyment. But if we thus disentangle the old 
 doctrine of " corruption " from the moral and political 
 prejudices with which it was charged for its contemporaries, 
 the history of Rome, with all its revolutions, its wars and 
 its conquests, . . . that immense history which, for so many 
 centuries past, stands out before our civilization as a very 
 marvel, is easily reduced to a phenomenon which each of 
 us can understand without difficulty, since at this very 
 moment this phenomenon surrounds us on all sides. That 
 is why the century of electricity and steam, in looking 
 through the glass adjusted twenty centuries ago by Sallust 
 and Livy for less modem observers, is able not merely to 
 cast its glance into the midst of that terrible and confused 
 history, and discern its depth, but also to recognize itself 
 therein. 
 
 How many analogies, with its own existence, has not the 
 age of steam and electricity met with, dispersed throughout 
 that ancient history, which was believed to have become 
 incomprehensible! It has found, for instance, some of the 
 struggles to which parties give themselves up today in 
 France ; certain horoscopes drawn in England of the des- 
 tinies of the Empire and the fate of the debilitated aris- 
 tocracy; the conflict, so keen in America, between the puritan 
 tradition and the civilization of money. It has also, and 
 above all, discovered the supreme law of the doom which 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 99 
 
 hovers above its own head; that is to say, that implacable 
 and mysterious irony of life which annihilates in their 
 triumph all the supreme efforts of humanity; the tragic dis- 
 illusionment of all the generations which have had the 
 fortune or misfortune to live at a time when an historical 
 era approaches its zenith, when a foreboding seizes them 
 that the better their effort succeeds, the more useless it 
 becomes. In the same manner as Rome was destroyed 
 through her conquests, losing therein her military and politi- 
 cal virtues, her very essence; so our civilization, grown 
 capable of producing vast riches, thanks to a culture per- 
 fected by centuries of labour, now destroys that culture 
 little by little by burying its noblest features, its art, litera- 
 ture, philosophy, religion and politics, under the illusion of 
 new riches prematurely produced; by sacrificing, for the 
 benefit of quantity appreciable by the gross evidence of 
 number, the quality whose standards of measure can never 
 be defined in an indisputable manner, and which, for that 
 very reason, is a perpetual cause of discord at the same time 
 as it is the sole source of true greatness. It has found, in 
 short, in that ancient history, the subtle anguish that funda- 
 mental contradiction brings into all the historical periods 
 which approach their culminating point. Just as Rome 
 suffered from altering her nature in her triumph, and be- 
 lieved herself lost on the eve of her apogee, so do we always 
 deem our riches more inadequate in proportion as they in- 
 crease* by dint of wanting to make life pleasant and easy 
 we encumber it intolerably with complications, responsibili- 
 ties and duties ; by force of desiring to economize time and 
 toil we reduce ourselves, among the innumerable occupations 
 which encumber our life and spirit, to lacking even the time 
 to remind ourselves of ourselves, and almost forget that 
 we are men. 
 
100 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 III 
 
 This is the torment, and perhaps also the expiation, of 
 all the generations which flattered themselves that they had 
 succeeded in creating a novel and unique destiny, greater 
 and more beautiful than that of all the preceding genera- 
 tions. No generation w^ould deserve to undergo this tor- 
 ment more than our own. For this reason also, the history 
 of Rome presents to us a reflection of our own lives, in 
 spite of the centuries which separate us. This is the dis- 
 tinguishing feature of Roman history, and the reason why 
 all the children of Rome must not let it be banished. By 
 classical studies and, consequently, by Roman studies, we 
 have little by little set up an opposition to that practical 
 and positive spirit deemed to be the highest virtue of our 
 age. But upon what basis? For answer, it is sufficient to 
 ask one question. Is it possible to imagine that the progress 
 of the mechanical arts and chemical sciences may one day 
 result in rendering statesmen, administrators, diplomatists, 
 jurists, generals, educationalists, men of letters, philoso- 
 phers, ministers of religion, of no use in the world? It is 
 very clear that it does not suffice for men to dominate 
 nature; they must also know how to influence the minds 
 of their fellows. By the answer given to this question, the 
 much disputed problem of classical studies is also settled, 
 at least in principle. It is not the physical sciences, but 
 only literature, history and philosophy which can serve as 
 means of intellectual preparation for the elite whose func- 
 tion it is, not to act upon matter, but to influence minds; 
 not to exploit the forces of nature, but to regulate the inter- 
 course of men. Hence it is not possible to conceive our 
 civilization despoiled of its literary, historical and philo- 
 sophical culture any more than it is possible to conceive a 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 101 
 
 living being deprived of a vital organ. What is, indeed, 
 the essential difference between these two states of his- 
 torical development, which we call civilization and barbar- 
 ism, if not this, that, in a civilized society, those who govern, 
 who administer, who judge, are endowed with a lofty philo- 
 sophical and literary culture; while in barbarous countries 
 and epochs they accomplish their functions by conforming 
 to old undisputed traditions, by referring to the simple pre- 
 cepts of gross religions, supplementing what was lacking, 
 by rude natural instincts or by blind passions? 
 
 But if we admit this . . . and I do not see how we 
 can refuse to admit it ... it is absolutely necessary to 
 recogmze that, in the future as in the past, Rome will form 
 an mtegral part of that lofty culture; unless, indeed the 
 peoples who are its children, by an ill comprehended spirit 
 of false modernity or an access of unhealthy exoticism, 
 msist on razing to the very foundations the last remains 
 of Its great history. Complete and synthetic, easy to 
 adapt to all periods, as facts prove; agreeable to study ; vast, 
 but not to such a degree that it exceeds the comprehensive 
 forces of the human mind; this history is, in a way, a very 
 distmct miniature or a very lucid sketch of universal history. 
 It can thus serve, among modem peoples, as the crowning 
 touch to the education of the upper classes which, every- 
 where, ought to commence with the national literature and 
 history. Let us not be discouraged by the transitory deca- 
 dence of this intellectual tradition. If our century is pro- 
 foundly materialistic, if it goes on dividing and subdividing 
 Itself mto a great number of different peoples, languages 
 and cultures, it will have yet more need of the common 
 elements of culture uniting the elite of the civilized nations 
 more deeply than in the momentary promiscuousness of 
 sumptuous hotels; in the brief meetings of congresses or 
 
102 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 in the universal mania for flying over all the roads of the 
 world in automobiles. The national principle is too deeply 
 rooted in our civilization for it to be possible for the modern 
 world, at least in a near future, to transform itself into a 
 Cosmopolis; but it can not and ought not again to become 
 a Tower of Babel where all the languages are confused. 
 Therefore it also requires, if I dare say so, an ideal common 
 language and universal elements of culture which can form 
 so many links between the different peoples of Europe and 
 America. Where are these universal elements to be found, 
 now that religion has lost a part of its influence? Ancient 
 Rome can yet offer us some of these, as is proved by this 
 undeniable fact: the history of Rome, with that of France 
 in the eighteenth century, and of the French Revolution, is 
 the only one which is truly universal and everywhere read. 
 That being so, is it necessary to employ many words to 
 prove that the children of Rome have an interest in not 
 suffering this privilege to be proscribed? So long as the 
 history, the literature, the law of Rome, remain an integral 
 part of the higher culture of Europe and America, we, Latin 
 peoples, enjoy a kind of intellectual entailed estate; we 
 oblige all the peoples of two continents to be tributaries of 
 our culture ; we shall prolong for centuries, in the realm of 
 ideas, that Roman Empire whose body has been reduced to 
 dust. I do not ignore that our century hankers after em- 
 pires more solid than these domains of the invisible, which 
 cannot be measured, divided, enlarged, or exchanged. But 
 if, in modem civilization, the higher culture is not destined 
 to become the humble handmaid of finance and trade, never 
 can that invisible empire be abandoned without detriment 
 and shame by the peoples who have received it as a heritage 
 from their fathers : all the more . . . and this is a consid- 
 eration to which the practical spirit of the modem times 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 103 
 
 ought not to be insensible ... it is not necessary, for its 
 conservation, to have recourse to the force of arms and of 
 money, nor to combine the efforts of peoples, institutions 
 and parties, nor to risk perilous enterprises. It would 
 suffice to reanimate, both in the State and in the intellectual 
 classes, a profound, sincere and disinterested sentiment for 
 the great Latin tradition, in place of the restless, capricious 
 and litigious esoterism which rules there today. If the his- 
 tory of Rome can perform this unique function in Euro- 
 pean-American culture it is due to the fact that it is a perfect 
 unit. But, if we break up this unit into a number of frag- 
 ments, in what will these fragments differ, and how will 
 they be distinguished, from the analogous fragments which 
 make up the histories, more fragmentary and more unila- 
 teral, of so many other peoples? In itself and by itself a 
 Latin inscription is worth exactly as much as a Greek in- 
 'scription or a Phenician inscription; a ruin of a Roman 
 monument is worth exactly the same as a piece of a wall 
 at Mycenae. Perhaps, even, the relics of Rome are worth 
 less, since they are more abundant and relatively easy to 
 discover. But, what is unique in the history of Rome is 
 the plan that can be reconstructed from these materials. 
 There is, then, a safe criterion for estimating the studies 
 accomplished relative to Roman antiquity as well as to their 
 tendencies; and it is this that, when the analysis is not an 
 immediate preparation of the synthesis, it is a method un- 
 duly transferred from the natural sciences to phenomena 
 which do not permit of it; moreover, it is a vandalism and 
 a sacrilege, a kind of destruction of Rome perpetrated upon 
 the last intellectual remains of its vast empire. 
 
 Indeed, if we seek the intellectual and inner reason, 
 setting aside some external and social causes ivhich are," 
 nevertheless, numerous and important, ... of the decay 
 
104 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 of classical studies, we shall find that it is due to the abuse 
 of analysis, become an end unto itself both in literary and in 
 historical studies. For motives it would take too long to 
 set forth the studies of antiquity, which in the course of 
 the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, arose from the dis- 
 solution of the old humanism, separated themselves more 
 and more from art and philosophy, and, in the end, threw 
 themselves wholly into the arms of science ; or, they thought 
 to throw themselves there; for, in point of fact, they clasped 
 only a shadow. The results of this error are manifest 
 today. In the schools analysis, carried to an extreme, has 
 given the death blow to Latin which was yet vegetating, a 
 century ago; by substituting for the old humanist teaching 
 a philological analysis, whose aridity has caused the younger 
 generations to fling aside in disgust the most beautiful books 
 of Rome. In the domain of history this excessive analysis, 
 by arbitrarily distorting the phenomena, has strangely con- 
 fused both the rules according to which the problems should 
 be stated, and the methods which serve to solve them. It 
 has invented many chimerical problems, and it has not seen 
 the true ones. By its obstinate resolve to know too many 
 details, it has often rendered incomprehensible even that 
 which, in spite of the hiatuses, was relatively clear. Finally, 
 it has obliged history to repudiate art, and has thus shut 
 us out from those histories which at all epochs, by means of 
 Thucydides, Polybius, through Livy, down to Francesco 
 Guicciardini, had been one of the most forcible intellectual 
 stimulants of all the aristocracies truly worthy to govern. 
 
 IV 
 
 Such are the reasons why I think that every man of true 
 culture, jealous of the intellectual prestige of the Latin 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 105 
 
 nations, should exert himself to draw forth the Roman 
 studies from the silent cloisters of erudition, to bring them 
 back to the midst of the life, the passions, the interests and 
 the struggles of the world. Ancient Rome ought not to live 
 only in the little coteries of scholars and archeologists. It 
 ought to live in the soul of the new generations; project 
 its immortal light upon the new societies which are arising. 
 For, on the day when Roman history and its monuments 
 become but dead materials, useful only for erudition, which 
 would classify and catalogue them in museums beside the 
 bricks of the palace of Khorsabad, the statues of the As- 
 syrian kings and the relics of Mycenae, . . . the Empire of 
 Rome which, as yet, is not entirely dead, would rejoin, in 
 the Elysian Fields of history, the shades of the destroyed 
 empires; would wander there beneath the cypresses in com- 
 pany with the Babylonian Empire, the Egyptian Empire, the 
 Carlovingian Empire ; and the Latin civilization would have 
 to submit to a new disaster. 
 
 Let us not prove unworthy of the singular historic for- 
 tune we have inherited ; let us understand fully what there is 
 that is rare, and even unique, in that ideal survival of an 
 empire fallen so many centuries ago; and which, eliminated 
 from the play of the interests of the world, yet lives in the 
 system of moral forces which animate modern society; let 
 us not listen to those who affirm that, henceforth, the sacred 
 remains of ancient Rome can no longer serve but as sup- 
 ports for the aeroplanes flying majestically above the silence 
 of the Latin campagna. Let us try above all, — we who, 
 for forty years past, have brought within the old circuit of 
 the Aurelian walls the tools, the ideas and the interests of 
 a quite recent civilization, — not to deserve the reproach 
 that like new barbarians, we destroyed what survived of 
 that Empire of Rome that the Church carried on, with vary- 
 
106 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 ing fortunes but without flagging, since the frightful catas- 
 trophe of the Empire of the West. Roman tradition can 
 flourish, a vigorous branch, upon the trunk of our civihza- 
 tion, provided we do not obstinately resolve to cut it away ; 
 provided that we apply ourselves to preserve to Roman 
 studies that universal value which alone can render them 
 an essential element of modern culture. It matters little 
 if the other histories grow old; what is necessary, on the 
 contrary, to Roman history, precisely because it serves to 
 educate the new generations, is that it be renovated per- 
 petually, not merely by incorporating in it the new facts 
 discovered by erudition and archeology; not only by infusing 
 into it a larger philosophical spirit and by applying to it 
 the ripened experience of humanity ; but, above all, by work- 
 ing to preserve for it, and to increase in it, that quality 
 which is the highest in which a history, destined to be read 
 and studied by all, can excel : to wit : human clarity. 
 
 And, if such be the obligation which imposes itself upon 
 all the devoted sons that Rome yet numbers in the world, 
 it seems to me that, to conclude this discourse delivered on 
 the anniversary date of the foundation of Rome, I could 
 not do better than perform an act which will be in some 
 sort a symbolic expiation addressed to the shade, so cruelly 
 offended by the nineteenth century, of a man to whom the 
 city owes, indeed, some gratitude since it owes him its 
 existence ; I mean to say, to resuscitate Romulus. We know 
 in what a mystical penumbra the Natale Urbis is enveloped. 
 What beginning had the fabulous greatness of this city? 
 In all the centuries men would have been glad to rend this 
 mysterious veil. But, century and century, we were con- 
 tent to repeat a legend, full of poetry, although a little con- 
 fused, wherein miracles and wonders surrounded the cradle 
 of the city. Generations and generations had cursed the 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 107 
 
 villainous Amulius, lamented the unfortunate Numitor and 
 poor Rhea Sylvia, cherished the good Faustulus, meditated 
 on the shade of the Figtree Ruminal, caressed in imagina- 
 tion the maternal wolf and saluted the kindly woodpecker 
 who descended to nourish, and shelter under her wings, the 
 predestined twins. That this tale was a tissue of fables 
 the ancients had understood ; but they had respected its out- 
 line, at first from civic devotion, afterwards through a reli- 
 gious respect yielded to old traditions, and finally because 
 they were incapable of substituting another more exact ac- 
 count. Man must so often resign himself not to know! 
 But then comes on the scene the terrible nineteenth century 
 which claims to know everything, believes itself capable of 
 discovering everything; and seizes in its rough hands this 
 tissue of fables, tears it, unravels it, persuaded that it will 
 find the truth among the separated threads; reduces it so 
 thoroughly to ravellings that, finally, what remains in its 
 hands is no more than an inextricable medley of dead ma- 
 terial. The ancient fable has vanished with all its per- 
 sonae ; the woodpecker has flown back into the sky ; the she- 
 wolf has retired into the forest; Romulus himself, the re- 
 vered and deified founder of the city, is now no more than 
 a name; and all that remains in place of the legend is a 
 tenebrous void sounded in vain by ingenious historians with 
 the long measuring rods of hypothesis, without their suc- 
 ceeding in finding therein a single rag of truth ! 
 
 And yet, since Rome has existed, it is clearly necessary 
 that it must have had a beginning intelligible to the human 
 mind. Now, may there not be in the ancient fable a gleam 
 of intelligible truth? After one has cut away from the 
 legend the poetry which enfolds and impregnates it, it seems 
 to me that it stands up as a sufficiently trustworthy and sub- 
 stantial, although very summary, account; that is would 
 
108 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 say that Rome was a colony of Alba whence a part of the 
 population of that old city swarmed from the mountain 
 towards the sea. The city of Rome did not originate, then, 
 from a small village which grew, little by little, by favour 
 of circumstances. It was a city founded at one stroke, by 
 an act of personal volition, according to a studied design, 
 in an intentionally chosen place; a city which was, in con- 
 sequence, endowed from the first with an already mature 
 religious and military and political institutions, since, on 
 the one hand, they had undergone, in another more ancient 
 city, the test of long experience ; and on the other they had 
 doubtless been adapted with discretion to the peculiar con- 
 ditions of the new creation. 
 
 In short, this was a city which was bom grown-up, like 
 certain cities which are founded today in America; it was, 
 from its very beginnig, a new city with an old culture. 
 This explains both its marvellous position in Latium, upon 
 a river, between the sea and the mountains, and the exact 
 account that the ancients kept of the date of its founda- 
 tion; its sudden and bold entry into history, and the rapid- 
 ity of its development. But if Rome was created in this 
 manner, it could be founded only by one or several leaders 
 who selected its site and who ordered all its plans with 
 wisdom. Obviously this leader was a great man. And 
 since a founder was necessary to found Rome, what reason 
 have we to deny that the founder was this Romus or Romu- 
 lus of whom ancient tradition speaks? As I am accused 
 of so many grave misdeeds by modem criticism, I ac- 
 knowledge myself still further guilty of admitting that 
 the scanty knowledge we possess as to the origin of Rome 
 is contained entirely in the ancient tradition; and that, to- 
 wards the middle of the eighth century b. c. a prince of the 
 family which reigned at Alba came, for motives which 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 109 
 
 the legend allows us with difficulty to guess, into this cir- 
 cuit of hills, and founded upon the Palatine a little city 
 which he launched into eternity. 
 
 I say that he launched it into eternity : for it is yet possi- 
 ble to attribute to Rome the glory of being eternal without 
 falling into the pompous hyperboles of decadent rhetoric, 
 if we mean thereby that what has rendered complete the 
 history of Rome is the synthetic effort, the labour long sus- 
 tained to balance all the parts of its civilization into a har- 
 monious and proportioned unity; if we add that, thanks 
 to these characteristics, its literature, its law, its history will 
 be eternally the models upon which all the peoples who 
 desire to make of their own history a harmonious synthesis, 
 a complete whole which recommends itself by clarity, by 
 order and by noble proportions, will keep their eyes fixed. 
 The finest example of this in modem times is France, the 
 nation which, unquestionably, has created the greatest his- 
 tory of the last centuries. Profoundly imbued with the 
 classic spirit, France alone has succeeded, among all Euro- 
 pean nations , . . and, moreover, has accomplished it, like 
 ancient Rome, at the cost of formidable crises ... in cre- 
 ating a complete civilization, wherein, as in Roman history, 
 everything is found, although in a more restricted lapse of 
 time: trade and agriculture, aristocracy and democracy, the 
 monarchy and the republic, the higher culture and war, 
 art and law, philosophy and religion, revolution and tradi- 
 tion, the interior effort after liberty and the exterior effort 
 for expansion, all the practical interests and all the ideal 
 aspirations. If it is understood in this sense, the eternity 
 of Rome is a conquest which, gained over time, ought 
 
110 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 ceaselessly to recommence. For if civilization, in its most 
 perfect expansion, is a synthesis of opposed forces, these 
 syntheses are only prepared by long periods in which the 
 sentiment of vital unity is lost, and in which men neither 
 understand nor admire the circumstantial phenomena of 
 history. Now, without doubt, we live in times when the 
 world is becoming daily more unbalanced in her too greatly 
 augmented bulk. We witness the final demolition of a 
 society created on the ruins of the ancient world by Chris- 
 tianity ; at that demolition which Humanism and the Refor- 
 mation had begun, which the science and philosophy of the 
 seventeenth century have continued, which the French 
 Revolution was to accelerate by its tremendous impetus 
 and which is consummated in our century with a furious 
 ardour, by the progress of industry and commerce, the uni- 
 versal mania for making money, and the extraordinary 
 development of America. From this immense revolution 
 of history in the midst of which we live, from this supreme 
 dissolution of an order of things so ancient and venerable, 
 monstrous creatures are everywhere being born : States half 
 barbarous and half corroded by the vices of the most de- 
 crepit civilizations; enormous and shapeless cities; armies 
 which grow inordinately in spite of the rapid decadence of 
 the military spirit; fabulous riches which accumulate with- 
 out other object than their own increase ; gigantic industries 
 which are no longer upheld by the natural stay of agricul- 
 ture; philosophies divorced from practice and dying of 
 asphyxia in an atmosphere too rarified by purely intellectual 
 preoccupations; sciences which dive so deep into the prac- 
 tical that they are suffocated by it; arts and literatures 
 which claim to be their own origin and to have come into 
 the world without fathers or ancestors. 
 
 There is, then, no occasion to be surprised that, in a 
 
ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN CULTURE 111 
 
 period unbalanced to this point, the nations which, Hke 
 France, have succeeded in effecting a Roman synthesis of 
 their various parts, are obhged, to maintain it, to make 
 efforts daily more laborious; and that all the Latin world, 
 Italy included, more and more lose confidence in its great 
 intellectual tradition and daily inclines more to take dis- 
 order for strength, confused obscurity for profundity, in- 
 coherent extravagance for originality, wealth and its in- 
 creasing mass as the sign of the greatness of peoples. 
 There is no occasion to be surprised, perhaps; but there is 
 indeed occasion profoundly to regret it. If then the world, 
 in growing, and becoming complicated beyond measure, 
 seems to flee from the synthetic and harmonic power of the 
 Latin genius to fling itself into a delirious orgy of huge 
 and disorderly forces, it is but the more urgent for us, the 
 sons of Rome, to strain all our energies in order to subju- 
 gate to the harmonic genius of our race this horrible and 
 imposing chaos of blind forces. If all civilization be a syn- 
 thesis of opposite forces, the confusion of modem society 
 must some day find a more beautiful and wiser equilibrium. 
 What an error it would be, and how could posterity pardon 
 our generation and those which shall follow ours, if we 
 should let venerable traditions of social order and intel- 
 lectual discipline perish at the very hour when these tradi- 
 tions, rejuvenated in conformity to the spirit of the times, 
 could be of the greatest use to the world by reason of their 
 co-ordinating virtues; the tradition which is summed up in 
 the word " Rome " so often repeated during these twenty- 
 seven centuries, and with such various feelings ; at the sound 
 of which I have yet been able, in this twentieth century, . . . 
 and it will be the most precious memory of my life, . . . 
 to see almost two continents vibrate with admiration and 
 gratitude ! 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 Italy's Foreign Policy 
 
IT.\LY'S FOREIGN POLICY 
 
 I 
 
 Os the evening of Febnian." 29th, 1896. General Baratieri, 
 the commander-in-chief of the Italian army in Abyssinia, 
 left Sauria with all the troops at his disposal — about 
 15,000 — in order to carry out a manoeuvre whose object is 
 still unknown. This movement proved disastrous. After 
 marching all night, the little army lost its way in the laby- 
 rinth formed by the Raio and Abba Garima ; it split up into 
 three sections which lost touch with each other and was 
 surprised by 100,000 Abyssinians, armed with excellent 
 rifies. About 8,000 men fell, 2.000 were taken prisoners; 
 the remainder escaped as best they could, abandoning their 
 guns. 
 
 Unfortunate as it was, this defeat was after all only a 
 set-back. Only four Itahan brigades had taken part in 
 the battle of Adowa but the check came upon the country 
 at a moment of discouragement and anxiety. Italy had for 
 some years been passing through a serious economic crisis 
 and the pessimism which was the result of this crisis was 
 aggravated by political dissensions. Crispi. who had been 
 in power for two years, had not given the country a mo- 
 ment's peace. Sicily and the Lunigiana had been placed 
 under martial law in order to repress disturbances as to the 
 gravit}- of which opinions differed : whilst conflicts had been 
 provoked both in Parliament and the country by the perse- 
 cution of the Socialist party whose progress had alarmed 
 the upper classes and by the increased taxation proposed by 
 the government at this critical time and the conquests and 
 
 115 
 
116 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 annexations made by General Baratieri in Abyssinia. The 
 wide-spread irritation had been further increased by various 
 scandals. The African policy was especially unpopular in 
 a country which had never been used to overseas campaigns. 
 All these causes turned a mere colonial incident into a dis- 
 aster whose consequences were both complex and profound. 
 The whole history of Italy up to the outbreak of the Euro- 
 pean war, was, as it were, haunted by the sinister memory 
 of this set-back, which had impressed the nation as an ir- 
 reparable defeat. 
 
 As soon as the news became known, the country was 
 shaken by anger to its very depths. The Ministry was 
 forced to resign, so as to avoid the storm which it had not 
 the strength to resist. King Htunbert called upon the Mar- 
 chese di Rudini, a great Sicilian nobleman and the leader of 
 the Opposition, to form a Cabinet. Rudini was a man of 
 wide intelligence but not sufficiently resolute. He decided 
 not to attempt to avenge the Italian defeat, which would 
 have been an enterprise fraught with difficulty for geo- 
 graphical reasons; he concluded a peace with Emperor 
 Menelik and endeavoured to quiet the people by putting an 
 end to the persecution of the Socialists, and coming to an 
 understanding with the parliamentary representatives of the 
 Radical party which voiced the wishes of the lower and 
 middle classes. The Socialist deputies were at this time 
 but few in number. Di Rudini did not succeed in winning 
 the confidence of the masses but only in annoying the Court 
 and the upper classes. The masses, who realized that de- 
 feat had weakened the government, expressed their dissat- 
 isfaction with an audacity which struck terror into the 
 hearts of the Court and conservative parties, who had for 
 some time been haunted by dread of a revolution. Ere 
 long the Socialists accused Di Rudini of tyranny because he 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 117 
 
 would n6t accede to all their demands ; whilst at Court and 
 in the lobby s of the Chamber and the Senate it was whis- 
 pered that he had come to an understanding with the 
 Radicals and Socialists in order to set up a republic. Di 
 Rudini tried to make the best of this impossible situation 
 which had been brought about by the irritation of one party 
 and the fears of the other, but after two years the catas- 
 trophe could no longer be warded off. The failure of the 
 crops in 1898 provoked riots all over Italy, which began 
 in the south and took on a more and more political char- 
 acter as they spread northwards. At the beginning of May 
 violent popular disturbances broke out in Milan, a city 
 which was always a source of anxiety to official circles. 
 The Socialists and Radicals were stronger in Milan than in 
 any other town and the Republicans, too, exercised consid- 
 erable influence, while the lower and middle classes had 
 always affected a certain indifference to the monarchy. 
 Milan had moreover always been obstinately opposed to 
 Crispi and his African policy. When Rome learnt that 
 riots had begun at Milan there was a repetition of the phe- 
 nomenon which had taken place after the battle of Adowa. 
 On that occasion a colonial set-back had been regarded as 
 an irreparable defeat. Now agitations which could have 
 been easily suppressed by an energetic police force took on 
 the dimensions of a revolution in the eyes of the upper 
 classes. Panic broke out in official circles and spread over 
 the whole country. The troops were ordered to fire with- 
 out hesitation. Hundreds of persons were killed or 
 wounded both in Milan and other cities. Martial law was 
 proclaimed at Milan and elsewhere. The Di Rudini Cabi- 
 net resigned and was succeeded by General Pelloux, a 
 native of Savoy, who inaugurated a policy of violent perse- 
 cution of the three parties of the extreme Left — the Social- 
 
118 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 ists, the Republicans and the Radicals. Deputies, journal- 
 ists and prominent members of these three parties were ar- 
 rested, brought before courts martial and sentenced to five, 
 ten and even fifteen years of penal servitude. 
 
 Such a reaction could not last and before long the coun- 
 try realized the injustice of these sentences and a fresh 
 series of agitations began vi^ith the object of obtaining a 
 general amnesty. The government made certain important 
 concessions to public opinion on the subject, but at the same 
 time tried to introduce laws limiting the hberty of the press 
 and the right of holding public meetings and forming asso- 
 ciations. A group of deputies of the Right and Centre, 
 headed by Sonnino, supported these measures vigorously, 
 on the ground that it was absolutely necessary to defend 
 the State against the rebellious spirit of the masses; while 
 the Radical, Republican and Socialist deputies organized 
 obstructive tactics against these proposals on the ground 
 that it was necessary to defend the cause of liberty. The 
 struggle grew more and more acute and developed, or ap- 
 peared to develop, into a conflict between the reactionary 
 party and the champions of liberty, for, three years after 
 the battle of Adowa, the government had not the requisite 
 authority to break down the opposition to its restrictive 
 measures. The three parties of the extreme Left, which 
 knew that they had the country with them, succeeded in 
 placing the Cabinet in such an awkward position that it was 
 forced to dissolve the Chamber. The three parties then 
 made common cause and obtained one hundred seats at the 
 general election which took place in June, 1900, whereas 
 in the old Chamber they had never held more than fifty. 
 
 This general election was looked upon as the defeat 
 of the reactionary government. Pelloux resigned and the 
 King called upon Saracco, an old Piedmontese senator who 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 119 
 
 was supposed to hold liberal views, to form a new Cabinet. 
 Saracco formed some sort of Ministry and the newly elected 
 Chamber adjourned. This was in July. Every one was 
 well aware that Saracco's Cabinet was merely a stop-gap 
 and that the decisive struggle between reactionaries and 
 liberals would begin in November. The situation was ex- 
 tremely difficult and obscure, all the more so because the 
 King and the Court, whose prestige had suffered consider- 
 ably through the battle of Adowa, had been still further 
 compromised in popular opinion by the recent reactionary 
 policy. It was, moreover, obvious that no government 
 would be strong enough to carry out a systematic persecu- 
 tion of the Socialists, Republicans and Radicals. But was 
 the King likely to wish or be able to carry out any policy 
 differing from that which had hitherto met with his ap- 
 proval? Would he, or could he, throw off all the influ- 
 ences which urged him to a death struggle with the parties 
 of the extreme Left? This uncertainty troubled the whole 
 political world and still further complicated a situation which 
 in itself was far from simple, when fate solved the problem 
 in a manner both unexpected and tragic. On July 29th King 
 Humbert was present at some sports near Monza. At nine 
 in the evening he left the grounds to return to the royal villa. 
 Just as he was standing up in his open carriage to return the 
 greetings of the crowd, a man who had got up on a chair a 
 couple of yards off, as if to get a better view of the sovereign, 
 pointed his revolver and fired upon the King, who sank back, 
 mortally wounded. 
 
 II 
 
 It was under such circumstances that Victor Emmanuel 
 III ascended the throne. Curiously enough, he was unpop- 
 
120 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 ular with the people. He was supposed to have chosen the 
 German Emperor as his model and to intend to make war, 
 persecute the Socialists and govern with an iron hand. 
 Fortunately all these rumours proved utterly unfounded. 
 Parliamentary circles quickly discovered that the atmos- 
 phere of the Court had undergone a complete change. The 
 elections of 1900 and the assassination of King Humbert 
 had afforded people food for thought. All of these causes 
 tended to bring about a speedy reaction. The Chamber, of 
 which the majority had after all been elected in order to 
 support a Cabinet which proposed to introduce laws limit- 
 ing the liberty of the press and the right to hold public 
 meetings, and form associations, suddenly saw the error of 
 its ways and brought about the fall of the Saracco Cabinet 
 on the ground that it had illegally dissolved a workmen's 
 syndicate at Genoa. The King then turned to Zanardelli, 
 who formed a liberal Cabinet. Once the King and the gov- 
 ernment had become liberal, conversions in the press, in 
 Parliament and in the official world became startlingly fre- 
 quent. In a few months not a trace was left of the reac- 
 tionary policy of recent years, which was abjured by all, 
 with the exception of Sonnino and a small group of faithful 
 disciples, prominent amongst whom was Salandra, who had 
 been a member of the Pelloux Cabinet. 
 
 The man, however, on whom all eyes were fixed when 
 the new Cabinet made its appearance before the Chamber, 
 was not Zanardelli, but his Minister for the Interior, Gio- 
 litti, who had been Prime Minister in 1892, when he had 
 tried to form a great " Liberal " or " Progressive " minis- 
 try. In this he had failed. At the end of 1893, when he 
 resigned, the exchange was at 18% ; Sicily in a state of 
 revolt ; the finances in disorder, public opinion depressed by 
 the scandal of the Banca Romana and convinced that Italy 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 121 
 
 was on the verge of bankruptcy and revolution, and that 
 Giohtti alone was responsible for the whole catastrophe. 
 This view was exaggerated. Giolitti's ministry had un- 
 doubtedly made serious blunders, the gravest of all being 
 one of which it was never publicly accused — that of sup- 
 plying Emperor Menelik with two million cartridges, but 
 the condition of the country at the time of its resignation 
 was due to pro founder causes than the blunders of the 
 Giolitti ministry. None the less the people revenged it- 
 self for all it had suffered by accusing Giolitti of having 
 brought Italy to the very brink of ruin and he had become 
 so thoroughly unpopular that for years he could not attempt 
 to speak in the Chamber. People even got into the habit 
 of speaking of him as if he were dead ! 
 
 The curiosity aroused by this political resurrection is 
 therefore readily understood. Giolitti's influence moreover 
 steadily increased both in the Cabinet and in Parliament 
 and obliterated the memories of the past. He surprised all 
 political parties by a complete and sudden change of front 
 towards the working classes and the parties of the extreme 
 Left. Hitherto the government had endeavoured to pre- 
 vent strikes by all the means which a suspicious and obscure 
 legislation, interpreted in accordance with the known wishes 
 of industrial magnates, put at its disposal. Giolitti allowed 
 the first strikes which took place after he came into office 
 to take their natural course ; in certain cases he even ordered 
 the authorities to assume a benevolent attitude towards the 
 workmen. The Socialists were of course delighted, but 
 strikes became steadily commoner and the consequent re- 
 monstrances of the manufacturers and employers more con- 
 sta-nt. Giolitti held firm and, when his policy was discussed 
 in the Chamber, declared plainly that the workmen had the 
 right to strike in the defence of their interests and that the 
 
122 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 State must remain strictly neutral. It was a revolution on 
 a small scale. In the division on this debate, Socialists, 
 Republicans and Radicals voted for the government, thus 
 ensuring it a majority in the House and bringing about a 
 radical change in the relations between the government and 
 the parties of the extreme Left. On the Right a group of 
 deputies, headed by Sonnino and Salandra, passed over to 
 the Opposition, on the ground that the government was 
 compromising the authority of the State. At the same time 
 a split took place in the three parties of the extreme Left. 
 In each of these parties the majority asked for nothing bet- 
 ter than to carry the possibilist policy to its logical end, 
 while the minority protested against these attempts to turn 
 the party into a government party. The struggle between 
 the two tendencies was especially violent in the Socialist 
 party which split up into two factions: the Revolutionary 
 and the Reformist. 
 
 Giolitti finally found himself, like the Marchese di Rudini 
 before him, between the Socialists, who accused him of a 
 hypocritical change of front, and the Conservatives, who 
 accused him of flirting with revolution. This position, 
 which had been Di Rudini's weak suit, proved Giolitti's 
 trump card. Times had changed. The Court was no 
 longer hostile to Liberalism, whilst even in the conservative 
 ranks there were many who recognized that Giolitti's meth- 
 ods, while not without their drawbacks, were more suc- 
 cessful than Pelloux's policy had been. Moreover the 
 economic crisis of 1890-1900 was now a thing of the past. 
 An era of prosperity had begun, and this prosperity lulled 
 much discontent to rest and turned the energy of many 
 people in other than political directions. The simultaneous 
 attacks made upon Giolitti actually strengthened his posi- 
 tion. If the extremists of both Right and Left attacked 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 123 
 
 him, it was argued that he must represent the happy medium, 
 and in spite of various untoward incidents his influence 
 steadily increased during 1901, 1902 and 1903 and when, 
 in the autumn of 1903, Zanardelli resigned on the ground 
 of old age and ill health, the King entrusted Giolitti with 
 the formation of a new Cabinet. The Ministery of 1893 
 was definitely relegated to limbo and Giolitti was avenged. 
 He formed his second Cabinet and to the general surprise 
 appointed Tittoni, the Prefect of Naples, who had hitherto 
 taken no active interest in politics, Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Once Giolitti had regained his position, his one idea was 
 to place it on a sure basis. If we are to understand his 
 policy and his success, we must understand the working 
 of the parliamentary system. The Chamber is composed 
 of 508 deputies, elected by the votes of the district. Of 
 these 508 " electoral colleges," as they are called in Italy, 
 there are perhaps 200 in which the deputies are elected by 
 organized political parties. In the remainder, the deputies, 
 though taking their seats in the Chamber on "the Right, Left, 
 or in the Centre, as the case may be, do not represent any 
 definite political creed. Their organization being either 
 excessively feeble or altogether lacking, the candidates are 
 chosen and supported by rival -cliques, having no political 
 character and quite unable to carry off the victory without 
 assistance. In these " electoral colleges " the decisive fac- 
 tor of success is almost always government support. 
 
 It is, therefore, possible for the Prime Minister in power 
 at the time of a general election — provided he be also 
 Minister of the Interior — to create a personal party in 
 ^hese " electoral colleges " which will return deputies whose 
 
lU EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 only political program is the support of the man to whom 
 they owe their election. It is also clear that if a statesman 
 were in power during several general elections, this personal 
 party might easily become the preponderating element in 
 the system. This happened in Giolitti's case. The first 
 elections during his term of power in the reign of Victor 
 Emmanuel III took place in 1904 and brought him in a rich 
 harvest. He succeeded not only in creating for the first 
 time a staunch and powerful personal party by making full 
 use of every means of administrative pressure within his 
 reach, but, owing to the circumstances under which Parlia- 
 ment had been dissolved, in gaining the support of many 
 Conservatives without breaking with the Extreme Left, 
 who had lost twenty seats owing to the public irritation 
 caused by a general strike which had taken place just before 
 the dissolution of Parliament. This election added im- 
 mensely to his prestige and it was soon rumoured in parlia- 
 mentary circles that the King wished general elections 
 should henceforth take place under Giolitti's auspices. 
 This rumour, though false, was quite as useful to Giolitti 
 as if it had been true, and established his power on a firm 
 basis. The three general elections which have taken place 
 during the reign of Victor Emmanuel III have all been 
 during Giolitti's terms of office as Prime Minister and Min- 
 ister of the Interior, 
 
 Giolitti thus was able to strengthen his party and graft 
 on to parliamentary institutions a curious system of personal 
 government. The keystone of the whole system was of 
 course the fact of his being in power at the time of general 
 elections. The fear of a dissolution of Parliament, which 
 is entirely in the hands of the King, was therefore, Giolitti's 
 most formidable weapon for the maintenance of the fidelity 
 of his majority. The dissolution of Parliament is not, 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 125 
 
 however, a weapon which can be constantly used, since the 
 Chamber cannot be dissolved within a month after its elec- 
 tion. During the first two years of a new legislature Gio- 
 litti's authority over his party and the Chamber as a whole 
 was of necessity weaker and the Chamber could more easily 
 show signs of independence. Giolitti got over this difficulty 
 by on each occasion resigning a few months after the gen- 
 eral election. He carried out this manoeuvre in the spring 
 of 1905, towards the close of 1909, and in the spring of 
 1914. But if during the first two years of its existence the 
 Chamber was intractable even with the author of its being, 
 it can readily be imagined that it was still more so in the 
 hands of a locum tenens. Hence this interim government 
 was invariably weak and fell into general disfavour in a 
 year or fifteen months. Giolitti's friends brought about its 
 fall and Giolitti formed a new Cabinet. Two years had 
 passed of the five which make up the legal life of a legis- 
 lature and the deputies were already beginning to think about 
 the next general election. Timor mortis initium sapientiae. 
 The Chamber became tractable once more and Giolitti re- 
 mained in power until the general election. 
 
 This ingenious game was accompanied by a process of 
 attrition applied to the political parties represented in Par- 
 liament, of which there are five: the Clerical; the Sonnino 
 group, which may be termed Conservative; the Radicals; 
 the Republicans and the Socialists, who are now divided 
 into two groups — Official and Reformist. Each party is 
 represented by from twenty to fifty deputies and is therefore 
 too small to act alone, while coalitions between parties are 
 very difficult on account of their numerous differences. At 
 the head of his personal party Giolitti was able to Induce all 
 these parties, with the exception of a few obstinate individ- 
 uals, either to give him their support or to form an opposi- 
 
UG EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 tion which would do him no harm. How was any othef 
 state of things possible? The opposition of any one of 
 these* parties, standing alone, was powerless and coalitions 
 were never a success. Giolitti's Cabinet, moreover, did its 
 utmost to conciliate every one and to content all parties and 
 shades of opinion, however contradictory. It gave the 
 Socialists liberty to form syndicates and turn the railways 
 into State concerns, while at the same time granting the 
 great industries all the privileges and all the protection they 
 demanded and guaranteeing the landed proprietors the in- 
 tangibility of the import duty on cereals. It increased the 
 stipends of the clergy and showed itself favourable to Cler- 
 ical influence in the schools, whilst choosing influential 
 Free Masons as Ministers of Public Instruction. In order 
 to please the masses it reduced the term of military service 
 to two years, refrained from imposing higher taxes and 
 gave up all schemes for colonial extension, whilst at the 
 same time increasing both army and navy to please the 
 upper classes and the Conservatives. It allowed its officials 
 to form syndicates, threaten to go on strike and do their 
 utmost to shake off the authority of the ministers, and even 
 rewarded these proceedings with a rise of salary. It al- 
 lowed Italy to get on better terms with France without 
 breaking off the Triple Alliance. It had adopted the prin- 
 ciple of yielding always and at once to any fairly decided 
 manifestation of public opinion or to anything which ap- 
 peared to be such a manifestation, while prepared to with- 
 draw the concession the moment public attention was 
 directed elsewhere. Almost heroic strength of mind and 
 even cruelty would have been needed to attack such an oblig- 
 ing government. Such principles will no doubt seem 
 strange to most people and, as a matter of fact, the system 
 of which it was an example has almost disappeared in 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 127 
 
 Europe, but similar governments have been common enough 
 in the past and in other continents. Caesar and Augustus 
 went upon the same plan: the former in order to achieve 
 the conquest of Gaul, the latter in order to reorganize the 
 Empire. There are other interesting analogies in the his- 
 tory of Florence and in that of the South American Repub- 
 lics. Such a system is, moreover, the necessary outcome 
 of an electorate which is not dominated by properly organ- 
 ized political parties. Sooner or later some individual, 
 family, or group of families, will take possession of the 
 electoral system and work it for their private ends. This 
 system, moreover, put into practice for ten years in Italy by 
 an intelligent, adroit time-server, endowed with a clear head 
 and a firm will, could not fail to produce remarkable re- 
 sults. It enabled Italy to benefit by the period of prosperity 
 which the world enjoyed after 1900; it eliminated a certain 
 number of abuses from the legislation and the administra- 
 tion; and it checked the antidynastic movement which had 
 gained ground during the last years of King Humbert's 
 reign. Nor must it be forgotten that it was under this 
 government and in part due to its efforts that an historic 
 event of considerable importance took place: the shifting of 
 the pivot of power from the aristocracy and the upper mid- 
 dle classes to the intelligentia, the lower middle classes and 
 the masses. The dogged struggle between the parties of 
 the Extreme Left and the other political parties which went 
 on during the whole period of Giolitti's power was in 
 reality a struggle for power between the wealthy and middle 
 classes. This is not the place to discuss whether this shift- 
 ing of power has been for good or evil. In any case it is 
 an event of considerable historical importance, which must 
 be due to profound causes, since it is a universal phenome- 
 non. We must not forget that the Prussian aristocracy 
 
128 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 thrust Germany into the European War for the express 
 purpose of delaying this shifting of power in Germany. 
 Giolitti did much to further this movement with his system 
 of personal government by supporting to the utmost the 
 demands and wishes of the middle classes. 
 
 There is, however, the reverse side of the medal to be 
 considered. The system had many drawbacks. Whatever 
 its merits, this personal government acted under the cloak 
 of parliamentary institutions and this contradiction between 
 substance and form could hardly fail to produce serious 
 results. Discussions, divisions, parties, the formation and 
 fall of ministries, the interaction of majorities and minori- 
 ties and the elections, everything in fact which forms the 
 essence of the true parliamentary system, became under this 
 kind of government more or less thinly disguised fictions, 
 serving merely to give a legal sanction to proceedings most 
 of which were decided upon without reference to the will 
 of either parliament or the electors. At the same time all 
 political parties found themselves in a false position forced 
 as they were to adduce principles as a reason for conduct 
 which was in reality more often than not determined by a 
 policy of parliamentary bargaining. The Socialists were 
 in the most awkward position of all. The Electors, who 
 understood nothing of these complicated intrigues, regarded 
 their deputy, who, while in Rome, was on excellent terms 
 with Giolitti, as the representative of the masses and the 
 champion of social revolution. In proportion as he became 
 more and more opportunist and possibilist in Rome, the 
 Socialist deputy had to redeem his backsliding by becoming 
 more and more revolutionary in his speeches to his con- 
 stituents, or at Monte Citorio on great occasions, when his 
 constituents were keeping a watch on his words and actions. 
 
 While there were many who found this state of things 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 129 
 
 quite congenial, others regarded it as both dangerous and 
 objectionable. One phenomenon especially proved a source 
 of irritation : the decadence of Parliament. It is an indis- 
 putable fact that both the Chamber and the Senate are of 
 less value today than twenty years ago. In the Chamber 
 there was formerly a small, by no means united, but very 
 influential circle, which has almost entirely disappeared and 
 been replaced by a herd of provincial attorneys, idle and 
 intriguing university professors, professional politicians of 
 the lowest order and wealthy men who regard a seat in 
 Parliament as a rung on the social ladder. This decadence 
 is even more serious in the Senate, whose members are all 
 chosen by the King, — i.e. : the government. In old days the 
 Senate was a close but select body. By filling it with the 
 dregs of the intellectual and academic world, it has been 
 turned into a centre of intrigue which the public refuses to 
 take seriously. Giolitti's government undoubtedly did 
 much to bring about this decadence, for, like all personal 
 governments, its main object was to fill the two chambers 
 with devoted and reliable adherents of no great intelligence, 
 many of whom were easily to be found in those middle 
 classes with which it was so anxious to stand well. To this 
 serious defect must be added the debilitating effect on the 
 State of the habitual weakness of the government when 
 confronted by public opinion. The government's policy of 
 yielding to every fairly decided manifestation of public 
 opinion and of withdrawing the concessions granted when 
 public attention had been diverted to some other subject, 
 certainly enabled it to avoid many difficulties, but it grad- 
 ually enervated the whole State, which fell into the hands 
 of ministers, deputies and officials who trembled before the 
 daily papers, which in their turn were terrified of public 
 opinion, which, failing to recognize in the papers the reflec- 
 
130 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 tion of its own ideas and passions, was led and dazzled by 
 the press which it regarded as a higher authority. Where 
 are we to seek the true centre of action and decision in this 
 vicious circle of fear? It is hard to say. It must not be 
 forgotten that governments which strive to please every one 
 commonly end by pleasing no one. Giolitti's government 
 was peculiarly exposed to this danger because Italy, since 
 her unification, has had a permanent cause of complaint 
 which must be recognized — one connected with the great 
 transformation of modem civilization of which we have 
 already spoken at length — one which may afford us the key 
 to events which would otherwise be inexplicable. 
 
 IV 
 
 The constitution of the Kingdom of Italy was at once a 
 poHtical and a social revolution. Together with parlia- 
 mentary institutions and bureaucratic centralization, the 
 new order of things introduced what is commonly called 
 modem civilization: railways and industrial machinery, 
 both of which the old regime discouraged energetically as 
 liberal conceptions and institutions. Public and private 
 expenditure increased considerably. Large sums were 
 needed for the construction of railways, the creation of 
 army, navy and administration and for educational pur- 
 poses. The country was therefore obliged to endeavour to 
 produce more. For Italy, too, the epoch of quantity was 
 dawning. 
 
 Italy, taken as a whole, is neither very poor nor very 
 rich. She is richer than the impoverished countries of 
 Southern Europe, but poorer than the wealthy ones of Cen- 
 tral Europe. She is, moreover, very small. It is too often 
 forgotten that France is nearly twice as large as Italy and 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 131 
 
 that she has a population of thirty-four milHon inhabitants 
 to an area of 300,000 square kilometres, wholly devoid of 
 coal and almost destitute of iron. It is obvious that such a 
 country was better off in the days of qualitative civiliza- 
 tion, when wealth had not as yet become a prime factor in 
 the development of a nation. Be that as it may, the march 
 of history could not be checked and Italy was forced to 
 submit to the law of our age and toil in order to increase 
 the wealth of the country. Her efforts were crowned with 
 success; they developed the riches of the country, its energy, 
 activity, spirit of initiative and even its intelligence, at all 
 events in certain directions. The poor peasantry of South- 
 ern Italy learned to tread the world's highways as emi- 
 grants. The people and the middle classes acquired the 
 habit of hard work, extended their technical, economic and 
 political knowledge and enlarged their ambitions. This 
 effort, however, brought about in the generation born after 
 i860 the ruin of the intellectual, artistic, social and religious 
 traditions of the past, which had already been partially de- 
 molished by the generation of the Risorgimento, and was 
 one of the causes of the triumph of German influence which 
 had already begun to make itself felt by the generation of 
 the Risorgimento, more especially after 1866 and 1870. 
 The joint effect of this effort and of German influence was 
 to dissociate the generation born after i860 from the con- 
 ceptions which the French Revolution had spread through- 
 out the world — ideas in which the generation of the Risor- 
 gimento had believed — and to replace them by a dreary 
 materialism. A superficial observer might have been de- 
 ceived into seeing signs of a fairly active intellectual life in 
 Italy during the last twenty years. It has even been 
 alleged that this period has seen a revival of idealism in 
 direct contradiction to this excessive materialism. This in- 
 
132 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 tellectual life is, however, but apparent. The present gen- 
 eration has no thought to spare for anything but how to 
 achieve an increase of salary, income, profits and produc- 
 tion; how to develop industrial machinery, increase the 
 prosperity of all classes, and ensure the progress of the 
 country, in accordance with the crudely quantitative con- 
 ception of progress with which the masses are satisfied in 
 the present day. It has subordinated everything to this 
 end; it has asked nothing of art but money and pleasure; 
 nothing of science and philosophy but useful discoveries, a 
 pleasant social position and teaching which in no way ham- 
 pers it in its pursuit of business. The intellectual classes 
 have enjoyed a high degree of liberty, as is always the case 
 in ages which cease to demand a high degree of perfection 
 in every sphere of intellectual activity, and they have made 
 the most varied uses of this liberty. The majority has 
 striven to acquire money, honours and desirable positions 
 by pandering to the public taste for amusement and minis- 
 tering to powerful public interests. In spite of all this a 
 certain minority endeavoured to prove that it could produce 
 work of real value in literature, philosophy, art and science ; 
 those who took the matter seriously by doing serious work 
 and the more frivolous by taking advantage of the igno- 
 rance of youth and the conceit of the educated classes foist- 
 ing on the public productions which had little to recommend 
 them but novelty and eccentricity, both frequently borrowed 
 from other countries. It must be admitted that this second 
 class was the more successful of the two, as well as the 
 larger, since it knew how to exploit the ignorance and indif- 
 ference of a day which looks upon the tonnage of mercantile 
 shipping, bank deposits and the output of blasting furnaces 
 as the only realities of existence. 
 
 This conception of life, which had obtained the upper 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY laS 
 
 hand in Italy perhaps even more thoroughly than in other 
 countries, was the channel by which German influence was 
 brought to bear on Italy. Germany's prestige is often at- 
 tributed to her victories. This applies to the generation 
 which entered upon the Triple Alliance in 1882 and wit- 
 nessed the wars of 1866 and 1870, but not of its successor 
 which had, moreover, a far greater admiration for Ger- 
 many. It may safely be stated that in the last ten years 
 all Italy, — professors and manufacturers. Socialists and 
 Conservatives, free thinkers and clericals, philosophers and 
 musicians alike, had been infected with Germanophilia. 
 Germany was regarded as the universal model, because she 
 had realized the quantitative formula of progress better than 
 any other nation and was the land where population, wealth, 
 production, commerce, army and navy were increasing most 
 rapidly. German order and discipline seemed admirable 
 to this generation which, by the way, took very good care 
 not to imitate them, because they seemed important factors 
 in this giddy process of development. France, on the coun- 
 trary, with her tendency to consolidate her actual position 
 rather than to develop it, was looked upon as an effete and 
 decadent country. In spite of the affinity of language, race 
 and culture, France had become a sort of enigma. The 
 educated classes in Italy, who were becoming more and 
 more dominated by the purely quantitative conception of 
 progress, did not understand the tragic position of a country 
 whose demographical conditions, traditions and historical 
 tendencies alike impelled it to develop in the direction of 
 quality, whilst forced to do so in the direction of quantity 
 by the competition of its neighbours and above all by the 
 preposterous and menacing growth of its foe. Thus Ger- 
 man influence triumphed all along the line. Everything — 
 army, banks, railways, industry, socialism, science, philoso- 
 
134 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 phy, schools and universities alike — became Germanized. 
 
 This state of mind could not fail to influence the duration 
 of the Triple Alliance. Immediately after the accession of 
 Victor Emmanuel III a change became noticeable in the 
 tendencies of foreign policy. The new King went to Petro- 
 grad and Paris, but not to Vienna. Prinetti, who was 
 Minister for Foreign Affairs during the first administration 
 of the new reign, was a pronounced opponent of the Triple 
 Alliance. He often remarked to his friends — and events 
 have proved him a true prophet — that there would be no 
 lasting peace in Europe until Germany had received a thor- 
 ough thrashing. There was clearly a desire to draw closer 
 to the group of powers which was soon to be known as the 
 Triple Entente. Unfortunately Prinetti fell ill and the mo- 
 ment Giolitti became Prime Minister with Tittoni as Min- 
 ister for Foreign Affairs the old triplicist policy once more 
 gained ascendancy. How is this change of front to be ex- 
 plained? Undoubtedly the Russo-Japanese War had much 
 to do with it, while it is also possible that secret influences 
 were brought to bear. 
 
 Even without these factors, however, it would have been 
 extremely difficult to detach Italy from the Triple Alliance 
 so long as the upper classes continued to regard Germany 
 as the universal model. The Triple Alliance, indeed, which 
 had for long been opposed, had come to be accepted by all 
 classes of late years, just when it had become a constant 
 menace to the peace of the world and was paving the way 
 for the present catastrophe. It must not be forgotten that 
 the Cabinet which committed the outrageous blunder of re- 
 newing the Triple Alliance in 19 12 contained three Radical 
 ministers, two of whom were amongst the most rabid 
 Germanophiles in the Cabinet. 
 
 Italy was progressing then, at least according to the pres- 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY I35 
 
 ent day conception of progress, and she was very proud of 
 the fact. Was she equally content? No. I have re- 
 marked elsewhere that the glorification of national pride is 
 a necessary condition of the development of modern civiliza- 
 tion, which is based upon industrialism and elected institu- 
 tions. Wealth neither is nor can be an aim in itself; it is 
 and only can be a means. Now whatever the advantages 
 ensured by modem civilization to the masses and the middle 
 classes, it is very doubtful whether these advantages com- 
 pensate many people for the burdens it lays upon them: 
 constant and strenuous work, strict discipline, loss of per- 
 sonal liberty in factory or office, military service, etc. It 
 was not, therefore, sufficient for the quantitative epoch to 
 show the masses the riches of the earth in order to arouse 
 their zeal and activity; an ideal had also to be sought and 
 found in one of the simplest and strongest passions which 
 moves the soul of man: pride. The initiative and activity 
 of all nations was aroused by the argument that the increase 
 of wealth was a means of increasing the power and great- 
 ness of the country and of showing other peoples its own 
 superiority. This was the case in Italy. As Giolitti's grasp 
 of power grew firmer and prosperity increased, the country 
 listened more and more readily to those who, whether in 
 prose or poetry, told it that Italy either was, or was about 
 to become, the first country in the world. Unfortunately, 
 in a period which gauges the worth of a people by statistics,' 
 neither poet, nor philosopher, nor statesman could double 
 the limited territory or discover in it coal fields like those 
 of Lorraine or Westphalia. By strenuous and well directed 
 efforts^ Italy did, it is true, succeed in increasing her wealth, 
 but this increase was of necessity on a more modest scale 
 than that of other nations to whom nature had been kinder, 
 and gave rise to constant comparisons mortifying to the 
 
136 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 national amour-propre which became more sensitive as the 
 nation advanced. Why should its efforts, which were quite 
 as great and even more arduous than those of other peoples, 
 be less productive of results ? Moods of self-congratulation 
 alternated with fits of despondency, during which the coun- 
 try attributed its inferiority to its frivolity, lack of disci- 
 pline, military weakness, irresolution, inability to imitate 
 the Teutonic virtues and, above all, to its government — 
 the malleable, easy-going, prudent government which never 
 dared to offend any one. The contradiction between the 
 form and the substance of this government, democratic in- 
 stitutions working in a country which had almost entirely 
 lost faith in democratic principles, could not fail to foment 
 the general uneasiness. The intellectuals and the politi- 
 cians never ceased to foster these opposing mental attitudes 
 by propounding every imaginable tlieory and thus adding 
 intellectual to moral perplexity. The country as a whole 
 was in a perpetual state of self-contradiction, which was 
 reflected in the behaviour and ideas of individuals and par- 
 ties alike, and had made public opinion extremely nervous. 
 This nervousness and this tendency to sudden anger and 
 equally sudden changes of front created at times extremely 
 difficult situations even during the rule of GioHtti. At 
 bottom the country was really vaguely striving after an 
 ideal of life both loftier and more complete than progress 
 regarded as mere increase of the wealth of the world and 
 perfecting of the machinery used by man. It failed to find 
 this ideal either in the present or the past. It must also 
 be borne in mind that Italy has not escaped the moral de- 
 terioration and self-disgust brought about by economic 
 materialism and the dominion of wealth in all modern coun- 
 tries in which classic learning is not confined to professors 
 and libraries and in which Christianity is something more 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 137 
 
 than merely the official religion. This explains why the 
 countr}' became more and more dissatisfied both with itself 
 and others just when it might have congratulated itself on 
 its progress, why Giolitti's unpopularity grew^ in proportion 
 to his power and why he w^as reproached more particularly 
 W'ith those aspects of his policy which, by pandering to the 
 passions and vices of the period, ensured his own success. 
 The contradiction was inherent in the situation itself and 
 came to a crisis in the Tripoli campaign. 
 
 In order to understand aright this war and its origin, we 
 must be thoroughly acquainted wuth the history of Italian 
 home affairs from November, 1909. In March Giolitti 
 had presided over a general election for the second time. 
 In autumn, when Parliament met, he resigned, as was his 
 wont. The leader of the Opposition at this time was Son- 
 nino, but his party only numbered about thirty deputies; 
 Giolitti, who was anxious to secure a year's rest, intended 
 to make his majority support the Sonnino Cabinet, but 
 Sonnino, a man of great force of character, was extremely 
 unpopular with the majority, who obliged him to resign in 
 three months. A more pliable man was called to take his 
 place — Luzzatti — who, however, proved too pliable, too 
 impressionable and too susceptible to flattery. He began 
 w^ith two acts of weakness : he included four Radicals in his 
 Cabinet, tw^o as ministers and two as under secretaries of 
 state — and he promised to introduce a measure for the 
 extension of the suffrage. These two acts were conces- 
 sions to the Extreme Left — the party in the Chamber 
 which Luzzatti had most reason to fear. The former was 
 much more to the mind of the Extreme Left than the lat- 
 
138 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 ter. Ever since Giolitti's return to power all but a very 
 small minority of the Radicals and Socialists had become 
 more and more desirous of holding the reins of govern- 
 ment, in spite of their relatively small number, with the 
 help of Giolitti's personal influence. The example of Mil- 
 lerand and Brand had turned the heads of a good many 
 Socialists and consequently Socialists, Radicals and even 
 part of the Republican party were extremely pleased to see 
 four Radicals in the Cabinet. It was the thin end of the 
 wedge. The suffrage question was much more compli- 
 cated. As at this time no one who was unable to read and 
 write could be placed on the register, illiteracy and indif- 
 ference reduced the number of electors to about three mil- 
 lion. The Socialists had for long demanded universal 
 suffrage, but they did not really attach any great impor- 
 tance to it, and demanded it mainly because they knew that 
 the government would not grant it. Giolitti himself had 
 opposed any such measure only a few years previously. 
 
 By these two concessions Luzzatti had hoped to secure 
 the support of, at all events, the benevolent neutrality of 
 the Extreme Left. In this he succeeded but at the cost of 
 gaining the ill will of the majority. This preference for 
 the Extreme Left was not in the least in accordance with 
 sound parliamentary principles. As for the extension of 
 the suffrage, it met with great opposition, owing to the com- 
 plicated nature of the system proposed by Luzzatti. The 
 majority would gladly have brought about the fall of the 
 Ministry, but Giolitti was not as yet inclined to resume 
 office and this time he succeeded in instilling patience into 
 his followers. The resulting situation was extremely curi- 
 ous. In the Chamber the majority did its utmost to put ob- 
 stacles in the path of the Radical ministers, who were not 
 men of any special ability; the Extreme Left in its turn 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 1S9 
 
 opposed the Cabinet ministers who belonged to the major- 
 ity; while these ministers intrigued against their Radical 
 fellow ministers both in the Cabinet and in the Chamber. 
 Luzzatti endeavoured to gain time by making great speeches 
 and promising everything which was asked of him. The 
 prestige of a government soon disappears under such cir- 
 cumstances. Giolitti remarked once that Luzzatti lost votes 
 wholesale in order to gain them retail. Dissatisfaction 
 became so general both in country and Parliament that the 
 Luzzatti Cabinet fell in March, 191 1, and Giolitti was 
 forced to resume office. 
 
 He had reached the zenith of his power. Luzzatti's gov- 
 ernment had created such a universal sense of irritation that 
 Giolitti was hailed as a saviour. The Exertme Left hoped 
 that he would form a great democratic Cabinet in which 
 many of its members would hold office; the majority that 
 he would dismiss the Radical ministers and abandon Luz- 
 zatti's sweeping democratic measures; the country con- 
 tented itself with hoping that he would govern firmly. The 
 Extreme Left came off better than the majority. Giolitti 
 even offered a portfolio to a Socialist, Bissolati, and when 
 this offer was refused, retained in the Cabinet the four 
 Radicals appointed by Luzzatti and added two more to 
 their number — a minister and an under secretary of state. 
 The new Radical minister, who was destined to play the 
 most unfortunate part in this ill-fated Cabinet, was Nitti, 
 who was nominated Minister of Agriculture, Commerce and 
 Industry. But if the composition of the new Ministry did 
 not fulfil the expectations of the majority, its program had 
 still more unpleasant surprises in store. As for the exten- 
 sion of the franchise, Giolitti brought in a much simpler 
 bill than that suggested by Luzzatti : he proposed to grant 
 manhood suffrage, with the one provision that electors who 
 
140 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 could not read or write should not be allowed to exercise 
 their rights until they were thirty years of age instead of 
 at twenty-one. He further proposed to make life insurance 
 a State monopoly. 
 
 It was not to be wondered at that Giolitti should continue 
 Luzzatti's relations with the Extreme Left in his own pol- 
 icy. He had always striven to rally the extreme parties to 
 the monarchy, while at the same time endeavouring to shift 
 the pivot of power from the wealthy to the lower and 
 middle classes. Since the three parties of the Extreme Left 
 are those representing the middle and lower classes, Gio- 
 litti might well think it the part of wisdom to give these 
 classes a share in the government proportioned rather to 
 their social importance than to the number of their depu- 
 ties. The majority, however, did not look upon it from 
 the same point of view and considered that Giolitti was 
 acting even less in accordance with " the sound principles 
 of constitutional law " than Luzzatti had done and com- 
 plained of being dispossessed by coup d'etat. A struggle 
 began between the majority and its leader. The majority 
 said : " I am the majority and I have, therefore, the right 
 to rule." Giolitti replied : " Yes, you are the majority, 
 but not by your own efforts. I created you and you are 
 bound to do my will." For the first time the reality of 
 this personal government came into conflict with the for- 
 mulae of Parliament in which it was concealed. The diffi- 
 culties consequent on this contradiction would not have been 
 so serious had Giolitti not proposed at the same time to 
 make life insurance a State monopoly and to introduce uni- 
 versal suffrage. 
 
 The monopoly of life insurance was not in itself a 
 reform of so radical a nature as necessarily to involve such 
 bitter struggles. The measure could have been carried 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 141 
 
 without any great difficulty had it been better prepared. 
 GioHtti had however, as we have seen, chosen as Minister 
 of Industry a Radical deputy, Professor Nitti, and Nitti 
 precipitated a political catastrophe by the carelessness and 
 imprudence with which he prepared the scheme. In a few 
 weeks he launched on the country a scheme which was not 
 only incoherent and inadequate from various points of 
 view, but in its first clause decreed in a few lines a sort of 
 total confiscation without awarding the insurance compa- 
 nies any compensation. According to this clause all life 
 insurance companies were to cease work at once and stated 
 that no compensation could be claimed for the loss entailed 
 by the new law either by the insurance companies, their 
 employes or the insured. Such a high handed abolition by 
 the State of the rights of its subjects, such a calm appro- 
 priation of private property for its own purposes was an 
 unheard of thing and only an extremely strong government 
 could possibly have carried such a measure and Giolitti's 
 government was far from being strong. The majority, 
 which disliked the composition of the Cabinet and dreaded 
 the introduction of manhood suffrage, promptly rose in 
 arms against the legal enormities of the bill, which was 
 attacked from every point of view. The protests of those 
 affected gained over parliamentary circles and ere long the 
 question of manhood suffrage was relegated to the back- 
 ground. For a time it was hoped that Giolitti would real- 
 ize his mistake, withdraw the bill and sacrifice its unlucky 
 author. This time, however, Giolitti persisted in his 
 scheme. He managed to get it approved by the parliamen- 
 tary commission which examined it and laid it before the 
 Chamber. The situation went from bad to worse. The 
 Chamber was resolved to reject the scheme, but did not 
 know how to set about it. The House had entered its third 
 
143 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 year of existence and Giolitti was supposed to have the 
 decree of dissolution in his pocket. The Sociahsts fo- 
 mented the general irritation by making it plain that they 
 intended to profit by the rupture between Giolitti and his 
 majority to seize the reins of power. The storm, which 
 had nearly broken four years before, began to lower in the 
 lobbies of the Chamber and the word " treason " was whis- 
 pered for the first time. Giolitti was betraying the mon- 
 archy and had gone off his head. Whilst these whispers 
 were heard in the lobbies, the discussion of the bill dragged 
 on for weeks in the Chamber. No one dared to attack it 
 boldly, and Giolitti showed no intention of yielding and 
 he was only convinced of the impossibility of passing it in 
 its present form by Salandra's forcible speech showing its 
 absurdities and mistakes. By this time June was drawing 
 to an end and Giolitti profited by this fact to ask for a 
 vote approving the general principle of the law, whilst post- 
 poning the discussion of its details — i.e., the essential part 
 — till November, after which the House adjourned for the 
 holidays. 
 
 This affair left the ministry very weak. The scheme it- 
 self, the carelessness with which it had been prepared and 
 the shifty behaviour of the Chamber had disgusted the 
 country. The hopes raised in April by the " great minis- 
 try " had given place to bitter disappointment. Political 
 circles were more and more absorbed by the scheme for 
 manhood suffrage and the attitude adopted by the Socialists 
 who were now posing as the next heirs to power. The dis- 
 satisfied state of public opinion was aggravated by the un- 
 certainty and contradictions of such a paradoxical situa- 
 tion. No one knew whether Giolitti would emerge from it 
 as the triumphant ruler or the hated victim. His enemies 
 were working hard. Just at this juncture the " Panther " 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 143 
 
 went to Agadir and the Franco-German pour parleys on the 
 Morocco question began. Ere long no one doubted that 
 Morocco was about to become a French protectorate. 
 Many newspapers then reminded the pubhc that once Mo- 
 rocco had become French, the only territory in North 
 Africa left for Italy would be Tripoli and pointed out that 
 if she failed to seize this opportunity, she would be encir- 
 cled and stifled in the Mediterranean. 
 
 Until that time the Italian people had but a very vague 
 notion of Tripoli. The efforts made by writers and politi- 
 cians after the Mediterranean agreements with France and 
 England to draw its attention to these regions had been 
 fruitless. The memory of Adowa still lay heavy upon the 
 nation, but this time to the astonishment even of those who 
 had opened the campaign with but Httle hope of rousing the 
 people from its indifference, public opinion suddenly showed 
 an interest in the matter — an interest which grew daily. 
 Yes, Italy would lose an opportunity which could never 
 recur if Giolitti's government showed its usual indifference 
 to the great questions of international and colonial policy. 
 In reality Tripoli was but a pretext. The country was 
 longing to escape from the state of discontent and despond- 
 ency I have described and it seized this occasion, regardless 
 of danger, in the hope of finding in Tripoli what it had 
 vainly sought in liberalism — the increase of wealth, a new, 
 happier and nobler life. When, however, the public as- 
 serted that if France took Morocco, Italy must take Tripoli, 
 it forgot that Tripoli was a province of the Ottoman Em- 
 pire, and that since Turkey was a European power, to seize 
 Tripoli would upset the balance of Europe, on which de- 
 pended the peace of the world. It was easy enough for the 
 nation to demand Tripoli ; it was quite another matter for 
 the government to satisfy its wishes. Accordingly it hesi- 
 
144i EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 tated. When, however, the press, the various political par- 
 ties and those who did not wish to see the Radicals in 
 power, or the introduction of the State life insurance mo- 
 nopoly and manhood suffrage saw both this hesitation and 
 the excited condition of public opinion, they did everything 
 in their power to excite public opinion still more as the 
 most efficacious way of discrediting the Ministry. They 
 succeeded so well that the Cabinet realized that its fall was 
 inevitable if it tried to resist the wishes of the people. If 
 Giolitti had not set up a Radical ministry; if he had not 
 tried to introduce either the life insurance monopoly or man- 
 hood suffrage, he would probably have been able to make the 
 country understand that it was impossible to attack another 
 Power without rhyme or reason merely because the nation 
 desired to do so. Under the circumstances, however, he 
 could not enforce this view, since, had he attempted it, all 
 his enemies and political opponents would immediately have 
 accused him of betraying the interests of the country; he 
 could not have hoped, with all his power, to withstand the 
 onslaughts of excited public opinion and the fate which over- 
 took him in the spring of 191 5 would have been his in the 
 spring of 191 1. 
 
 The government therefore decided upon war and declared 
 it as best it could. From the point of view of International 
 Law, the pretext for hostilities was somewhat feeble, and 
 those who had kept their heads were therefore not sur- 
 prised that Italy's step was not cordially received by the 
 other Powers. This attitude annoyed Italy and the extent 
 to which the country had been Germanized during the last 
 thirty years suddenly became manifest. The nation, or at 
 all events the most influential classes, seemed to take a 
 morbid pleasure in making a bad use of its power, in reply- 
 ing angrily to all foreign criticisms, even the most courte- 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 145 
 
 ous and reasonable, in abusing all Europe, in clamouring 
 for the extermination of the enemy, in exalting war and 
 conquest as the sacred rights of the higher races and in 
 forcibly suppressing all dissentient voices. Every arrange- 
 ment suggested which might have saved the prestige of the 
 Sultan whilst at the same time giving satisfaction to Italy 
 was regarded as humiliating, and the country demanded 
 unconditioned victory with such resolution that the govern- 
 ment was forced to issue the decree of annexation. There 
 was but little dissent from this universal greed for conquest; 
 the Socialists were, to do them justice, the only political 
 party to oppose it. The storm which had threatened to ruin 
 Giolitti and his Cabinet blew over, the sky cleared and Gio- 
 litti actually became popular. Such is the irony of human 
 affairs! The man, who had been unpopular when he had 
 striven to make the country prosperous and contented and 
 to please every one as far as in him lay, became the object 
 of general admiration and had to make speeches from his 
 balcony to crowds beside themselves with enthusiasm when 
 his errors in home affairs had forced him to forge the first 
 link in the claim which was to end in the world war. 
 
 Whilst the nation was intoxicated with dreams of con- 
 quest, the government had made the same blunder as in 
 1896 and was entering upon a colonial campaign with the 
 forces intended merely for home defence — a blunder which 
 had the gravest consequences. At the beginning of the war 
 even the masses were full of enthusiasm; they had taken 
 the press too literally and were convinced that Tripoli was 
 a country of fabulous wealth which would afford land and 
 work to millions of emigrants. Their enthusiasm cooled 
 rapidly. The Italian generals were obliged to wage a war 
 of positions, for blood could not be shed recklessly in 
 order to achieve the conquest of what the troops rightly 
 
146 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 or wrongly regarded as a sandy waste. The war dragged 
 slowly along and became a source of anxiety not only to 
 Italy but to the whole of Europe. The enthusiasm of the 
 first few months gave place to impatience, irritation and 
 even greater discontent than that prevailing before the war. 
 The government, which was still anxious to pass the Insur- 
 ance Monopoly and Manhood Suffrage Bills, had recourse 
 to all kinds of artifices — such as press campaigns, an at- 
 tack on the Dardanelles and the occupation of the Dodeca- 
 nese — in order to keep up the spirits of the people. It 
 succeeded in passing a modified form of the Life Insurance 
 Monopoly Bill which had more respect for vested rights 
 and in introducing Manhood Suffrage. A little later, dur- 
 ing the autumn of 191 2, it also succeeded in concluding 
 peace with Turkey. These successes, however, only weak- 
 ened the power of the government. The two years which 
 elapsed after the introduction of this electoral reform and 
 before the outbreak of the European War were amongst 
 the most anxious through which Italy has passed since i860. 
 The Peace of Lausanne was hailed with joy, as a way out 
 of an intolerable situation, but it satisfied no one. It was 
 a matter of universal knowledge that while Italy had not 
 been defeated in Tripoli, she had not achieved the complete 
 success hoped for. The disappointment was aggravated 
 by the fear of possible internal repercussions. The coming 
 elections, the first since manhood suffrage had become an 
 accomplished fact, were the absorbing thought of political 
 circles. This common anxiety instead of, as might have 
 been expected, showing the advisability of union between 
 the ruling classes, seemed to make them more suspicious of 
 one another, whilst the general public was weary and indif- 
 ferent. The two Balkan wars, the many evidences of the 
 increasing instability of the European balance of power, 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 147 
 
 the menacing growth of the German army and navy, and 
 the incessant Austrian intrigues, made but little impression 
 on either the government, political circles, the press or the 
 nation. Deputies and parties alike were busy trying to 
 gain government support during the coming elections and 
 were carrying on a fierce wordy warfare both in Parliament 
 and the press. The public took no interest whatsoever in 
 these intrigues and struggles, thus leaving the government 
 free to settle the most weighty matters as it thought fit. 
 The government, thus left to itself by public opinion, weak- 
 ened by the war, and itself anxious as to the results of the 
 coming elections, allowed itself to be influenced by passing 
 events, habit and every kind of intrigue. Austria and 
 Germany profited by this state of things to induce the gov- 
 ernment to renew the Triple Alliance before the term agreed 
 upon, to take their side against Serbia, to support their 
 policy in Albania and to do everything in its power to bring 
 about the second Balkan war, of which Italy is now feeling 
 the disastrous results. The Marquis of San Giuliano, at 
 this time Minister for Foreign Affairs, who was left to his 
 own devices, readily yielded to the various influences 
 brought to bear upon him, whilst Giolitti devoted his whole 
 attention to the general election, employing to their fullest 
 extent his favourite tactics of weakening all parties by 
 intermingling them. The confusion which prevailed during 
 the general elections of 19 13 will never be forgotten. In 
 one district the Minister supported the Socialist candidate 
 against the Clerical ; in another the Clerical against the So- 
 cialist; the very same Prefect who in one constituency sup- 
 ported the Radical candidate opposed him violently in the 
 neighbouring one. These contradictions were specially 
 marked in the large towns, where the government policy 
 varied according to the street and district. Influential 
 
148 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 deputies belonging to Giolitti's personal party were of 
 course supported against every party. The most notable 
 instance of this confusion was that of a Cabinet Minister, 
 a prominent Free Mason, who seemed about to be defeated 
 by a Clerical candidate, when the Vatican, at the request 
 of the government, ordered the Clerical to withdraw his 
 candidature in favour of the Socialist. 
 
 The result of the elections was disastrous. Out of five 
 million electors, one million voted for the Socialists, who 
 had eighty seats in the new Chamber as against forty in 
 the preceding one. They gained this large number of votes 
 — more especially in the country districts — because they 
 had had the courage to protest against the Tripoli cam- 
 paign, and would probably have gained still more, had they 
 conducted their anti-war campaign with more boldness and 
 intelligence. This result of the elections increased the 
 general depression. The Chamber became the scene of in- 
 vective disturbances and even blows ; Giolitti as usual seized 
 the first favourable opportunity of resigning and was suc- 
 ceeded by Salandra, who, next to Sonnino, was the most 
 influential member of the small party of the Right which 
 had always remained in Opposition. His selection was 
 not, however, due to any recognition of the principles of 
 constitutional law, but because it was absolutely essential 
 to place at the head of the government a man who, while 
 more malleable than Sonnino, was both capable and con- 
 scious of the seriousness of his position, and would en- 
 deavour, without breaking with Giolitti and his party, to 
 deal with the situation resulting from the war and the pol- 
 icy of the late government. Salandra, though he did not 
 attempt to form a Conservative Ministry, dissociated him- 
 self from the Radicals, and set to work. He was, however, 
 soon confronted with the most unforeseen difficulties. Be- 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 149 
 
 fore Giolitti resigned, he had proposed various new taxes 
 to cover the deficit caused by the war. The new Cabinet 
 brought forward these measures, which were clearly abso- 
 lutely necessary, but the Socialists opposed them by every 
 means in their power on the ground that the poor were to 
 be made to pay for a war desired by the rich. Whilst the 
 government was still trying to overcome this opposition, 
 a skirmish took place at Ancona between the police and a 
 crowd which had taken part in a political meeting. The 
 police fired upon the people and killed one person; the 
 Socialist party proclaimed a general strike which in many 
 towns caused outbreaks of violence; stations and churches 
 were burnt down, revolver shots exchanged freely; several 
 town in Romagna proclaimed themselves republics, while 
 everywhere the authorities, taken by surprise, dealt with 
 the outburst with a sort of fatalistic inertia. Order was 
 re-established, but, though the government succeeded in 
 putting down the riots, it failed to overcome the obstruc- 
 tionary tactics of Parliament and had to content itself with 
 a compromise: i.e., a royal decree authorizing it to impose 
 these taxes for one year. The upper classes were pervaded 
 with a sense of insecurity and indeed the whole country felt 
 as if it were on the edge of a volcano. It was under these 
 disquieting circumstances that the Chamber adjourned in 
 the summer of 19 14. In a few weeks a far greater storm 
 burst over the world — the European War. 
 
 VI 
 
 When confronted with this cataclysm, the country pulled 
 itself together. German aggression and the violation of 
 Belgium neutrality aroused in the masses that moral sense 
 which the Tripoli campaign had dulled, while at the same 
 
150 iEUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 time opening the eyes of the nation to the danger threaten- 
 ing Italy, and the Power which had begun a world war with 
 such criminal callousness, which had broken faith with such 
 insolence and had proclaimed to the world that it recog- 
 nized no law but that of might, became in a few days the 
 object of general execration. Justice, honour, loyalty, 
 right, all those ideals in fact which the era of quantity had 
 scorned, once more became matters of moment. The ha- 
 tred of Germanism, which had been latent amongst the 
 masses since the days of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, sud- 
 denly awoke and intense indignation was roused in all 
 classes. 
 
 The Treaty of the Triple Alliance was denounced on 
 May 4th, 191 5, but it had really been rejected by the nation 
 between the ist and 4th of August, 191 4. Even if the 
 Italian government had been foolish enough to pledge itself 
 to take part in a war of pillage and aggression, it would 
 not have been able to keep its word, for the country would 
 have refused to support it. It was in vain that the German 
 ambassador offered the Italian government Tunis and two 
 milliards of francs and that the military attache tried to 
 convince Cadorna that it was a matter of a short and easy 
 campaign, that " in six weeks the whole thing would be 
 over." If the government had at that moment been in a 
 position to renounce the Treaty and declare war on the 
 Germanic empires, the country would have supported it 
 with enthusiasm, but such a course was not possible and 
 Italy had to resign herself to being a mere spectator of the 
 great struggle, though there could be no doubt as to which 
 way her sympathies lay. The masses quickly realized that 
 nothing could be a greater disaster than the annihilation of 
 France; old quarrels were forgotten and the three weeks 
 which elapsed between the battle of Charleroi and the bat- 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 151 
 
 tie of the Marne were weeks of the most intense anxiety. 
 During those three weeks, the circulation of the newspapers, 
 which had risen considerably since the outbreak of the war, 
 dropped rapidly, for the public would not read the bad news 
 they contained. 
 
 The Battle of the Marne and the Battle of Lemberg al- 
 layed their fears, the former especially being hailed with 
 great joy. Italy was glad to receive proof that, in spite of 
 all that had been said about the decadence of France, there 
 was still beyond the Alps an army strong enough to bar 
 the road to Paris. The public gradually realized that the 
 surprise sprung on Europe by the two empires had failed, 
 that the war was developing along unexpected lines and 
 would be of long duration. The part which Italy would 
 have to play soon came to the fore. The general feeling 
 of sympathy for the Allies and of disgust with the Central 
 Empires was so strong that the possibility of Italy's ranging 
 herself on the side of Germany and Austria was never even 
 considered. Italy had to choose between neutrality and 
 going to war against the two empires and on this point the 
 country split into two parties — the Neutralists and the 
 Interventionalists. 
 
 If we are to understand the ensuing struggle aright, we 
 must have a clear grasp of its causes. The party which 
 from the first was heart and soul for the war was recruited 
 from the educated classes — journalists, teachers at the sec- 
 ondary schools, men of letters, students, and the most cul- 
 tured section of the upper middle class and the nobility. 
 It also included a small number of university professors, 
 but the majority of these professors remained true to Ger- 
 many which they regarded as the fount of all learning. 
 The journalists were the most active advocates of the Inter- 
 ventionalist movement. The press, with the exception of a 
 
152 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 few newspapers which were frankly organs of the Neutral- 
 ist party, was favourable to interv^ention, even the papers 
 which had hitherto supported the Triple Alliance and looked 
 favourably on the spread of German influence in the coun- 
 try taking up the same line. Many Interventionalists, more 
 especially those belonging to conservative circles, realized 
 that if Italy did not intervene, she would find herself in a 
 position of dangerous isolation after the war. National 
 aspirations, Irredentism, as they were commonly called, the 
 re-conquest of the Italian provinces still subject to the 
 Hapsburgs, were the main ground for intervention in the 
 eyes of many young men of the conserv'ative classes and 
 also of the Republican and Socialist parties, which had been 
 Irredentist out of opposition to the Triple AlHance, The 
 parties of the Extreme Left realized, moreover, with anxi- 
 ety the inevitable political and social consequences of the 
 victory of the Germanic empires — the triumph of mili- 
 tarism, of the monarchical principle and of reactionary 
 ideas. The dread of German hegemony weighed more or 
 less heavily on all classes. The unbounded ambition of 
 Germany together with her desperate efforts to satisfy it 
 had taken the whole world by surprise, since Germany had 
 always been regarded as the nation most nearly approaching 
 the modern ideal of progress and there were very few who 
 had any suspicion that the gospel of progress could give 
 birth to ambitions and acts of violence such as those at 
 which Italy was now gazing in horror. This very aston- 
 ishment added to the universal dismay. Moreover, it must 
 not be forgotten that amongst the reasons which inclined 
 many people to intervention was the ancient hatred of 
 Austria and a half unconscious desire to engage in some 
 great enterprise which should enable the country to shake 
 off the spirit of despondency and unrest resulting from the 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 153 
 
 events of the last few years. The InterventionaHst intel- 
 lectuals belonged to all parties. Moreover, in each party 
 there was a group of intellectuals which did its utmost to 
 win over the whole party — an effort which succeeded in 
 certain cases and failed in others. The Radicals, Repub- 
 licans and Reformist Socialists declared for intervention; 
 the Official Socialists and the Clericals for neutrality; the 
 Conservatives and the Liberals — that is to say, the classes 
 and groups upon w^hich the government had leaned until 
 Giolitti's Radical ministry came into power — did not com- 
 mit themselves definitely one way or the other. If w^e are 
 to have a clear grasp of the attitude of the various parties, 
 we must not forget to take into account an important fact 
 which is the key to the events which led to Italy's inter- 
 vention — that the masses, i.e., the peasants, working men, 
 and lower middle classes, the classes affected by the intro- 
 duction of manhood suffrage — much as they detested Ger- 
 many and Austria never desired war. They wanted peace 
 for the simple reason that they considered it preferable to 
 war. " We will go to war when we are attacked," summed 
 up their view of the case. The considerations of world 
 policy, the equilibrium of Europe and the danger of German 
 hegemony were altogether beyond their comprehension, and 
 they were utterly indifferent to Irredentism. No one had 
 spoken to them of Trieste and Trent for thirty-two years, 
 for the government had enforced silence on this national 
 question in deference to the Triple Alliance. 
 
 The attitude of the lower classes explains why the Social- 
 ists and the Clericals declared for neutrality. In the case 
 of the Clericals there was another reason, this party having 
 always been Francophobe and Austrophile, for reasons 
 which are not hard to seek. The attitude of the masses 
 also affords an explanation of the contradictions and oscil- 
 
154 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 lations of the Liberals and Conservatives; in other words, 
 the ruling classes. Thus, while the organs of these parties 
 and classes were for the most part favourable to interven- 
 tion, the Chamber and the Senate were impenitent neutral- 
 ists. The Chamber was afraid of the electors brought in 
 by manhood suffrage who had so plainly shown their dis- 
 satisfaction with the Tripoli campaign and was moreover 
 anxious as to the political consequences of intervention. 
 Would not a break with the Germanic Empires be tanta- 
 mount to confessing that the alliance of thirty-two years 
 had been a mistake? Would it not put a formidable 
 weapon into the hands of the Opposition? Whilst the Rad- 
 icals and Republicans were filled with anxiety as to the 
 poHtical consequences of a German victory, the Conserva- 
 tives were equally anxious as to the results of a German 
 defeat. The exaggerated veneration for everything Ger- 
 man so prevalent during the last thirty years in certain 
 aristocratic and intellectual circles — more particularly in 
 the universities — seemed to have disappeared with the first 
 shock of the war, but raised its head afresh when the inter- 
 vention campaign began, as was evidenced by the appear- 
 ance in Rome during the autumn of i9i4ofa weekly jour- 
 nal published by a group of professors at the University 
 of Rome, whose object was the seconding of Prince Bulow's 
 intrigues by means of a venomous and unscrupulous cam- 
 paign against the Triple Entente and especially against 
 France. Economic considerations also played their part, 
 for it must not be forgotten that during the last ten years 
 Italy's trade with Germany and Austria had become more 
 important than that with the Entente Powers. The Central 
 Empires afforded the chief market for Italy's agricultural 
 produce. German influence also predominated in both the 
 banking and the industrial world. If to these reasons we 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 155 
 
 add anxiety as to how the losses and expenses of the war 
 were to be met, the uncertainty as to its duration and issue, 
 we shall readily understand why government circles and 
 their supporters hesitated to take action. 
 
 Ere long the question of intervention became the subject 
 of lively discussions which were however confined to cer- 
 tain small circles. The masses remained quiescent. At 
 this juncture von Biilow arrived in Rome and set to work, 
 much in the same way as if he had been at Athens or Con- 
 stantinople. He bought everything which was for sale in 
 the press and in the political world; he rallied round him 
 all those German interests which might be expected to exer- 
 cise pressure on the country and he took advantage of his 
 numerous personal connections to plot and intrigue in po- 
 litical circles. He found many supporters among the Slav- 
 ish admirers of Germany and the professional members of 
 the Senate which became the centre of pro-German and 
 unpatriotic intrigues. What was the Government about in 
 the meantime? The government too had pulled itself to- 
 gether and, after proclaiming the neutrality of Italy, was 
 preparing armaments with a rapidity and energy hitherto 
 unknown. San Giuliano having died, Sonnino became 
 Minister for Foreign Affairs — a very significant appoint- 
 ment — for while Sonnino has his faults like any other 
 man, it is an undeniable fact that his devotion to duty had 
 ended by making him extremely unpopular in Parliamentary 
 circles. As for the line to be taken up by Italy, the govern- 
 ment had come to the conclusion that she could not remain 
 merely a spectator for an indefinite period ; further that the 
 government ought to take advantage of this excellent op- 
 portunity of settling the question of the Unredeemed Prov- 
 inces — a question at once national and strategical — that 
 this question should be settled diplomatically if possible, 
 
156 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 but that if diplomacy failed, Italy should have recourse to 
 arms. Accordingly on December 9th, 19 14, Sonnino 
 opened negotiations with Austria by requesting that the con- 
 ditions contained in Art, 7 of the Treaty of Alliance would 
 be carried out. This article laid down that any act which 
 disturbed the power of balance in the Balkans, whether per- 
 formed by Italy or Austria, would entitle the other Power 
 to compensation. By declaring war on Serbia, Austria had 
 disturbed the balance of power in the Balkans, thus giving 
 Italy the right to compensation. 
 
 This step was both perfectly correct and extremely clever,. 
 The Italian government could not be accused of wishing 
 to violate the treaty, since it was merely asking that one of 
 its provisions be carried into efifect. If Austria consented 
 to settle the national and strategical question of the Unre- 
 deemed Provinces by way of compensation — a contingency 
 which the government regarded as very improbable — the 
 government would have a decisive argument wherewith to 
 convince the Interventionists of the futility of their war 
 propaganda ; if Austria refused, the Neutralists would be 
 forced to admit that war was unavoidable. I believe I am 
 correct in stating that this line of conduct was taken up 
 by the government with the full knowledge and approval 
 of Giolitti, who as the leader of the majority was bound 
 to afford all possible assistance to the government. It must 
 be admitted that he gave his support as ungrudgingly as the 
 circumstances demanded. It cannot, however, be said that 
 his followers did their duty equally well. They could not 
 forget that Salandra and Sonnino were the two most emi- 
 nent members of the small group of the Right which had 
 never ceased its opposition to Giolitti's government. They 
 had agreed to support Salandra for a few months while 
 Giolitti enjoyed a rest, but the European War threatened 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 157 
 
 to upset their whole game. The Salandra Cabinet seemed 
 settling into power and, if it managed to conduct a great 
 national war successfully, might it not rally to itself suffi- 
 cient forces to dispossess the Giolittians altogether? They 
 therefore began to make trouble in Parliamentary circles, 
 alleging on the one hand that the government was rushing 
 the nation into a war which could not fail to be disastrous, 
 and, on the other, that if war were really inevitable, the con- 
 duct of it ought to be in the hands of Giolitti and his party. 
 During the whole winter of 19 15 a spirit of unrest per- 
 vaded the upper classes and Parliamentary circles. Both 
 political parties and the press continued their pro or anti- 
 war propaganda. The Ministry continued its secret nego- 
 tiations with Austria. Von Biilow poured out gold like 
 water, invited senators to dinner and intrigued in the polit- 
 ical world. Giolitti's lieutenants worked the Parliamentary 
 circles where they felt themselves strongest, while the So- 
 cialists carried on their campaign against intervention with 
 increased energy and attacked the Ministry with ever grow- 
 ing violence. Is the story true that during March and 
 April very intimate relations had been set up between von 
 Biilow and certain of Giolitti's most prominent lieutenants? 
 I cannot say and I would fain hope that German influence 
 had nothing to do with the fierce and virulent campaign 
 carried on by the official organ of the Socialists in order 
 to prove that all the belligerents were equally to blame and 
 that France and Great Britain were just as much actuated 
 by capitalist motives and greed of conquest as Germany. 
 Whatever may have taken place during these months, it is 
 a fact that the public, which had remained perfectly calm, 
 was much less interested in these intrigues and discussions 
 than in trying to divine the real intentions of the govern- 
 ment Did it mean to remain neutral or to go to war? 
 
158 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 We now know what it was doing and what its real inten- 
 tions were, but at this time it was only known that it was 
 negotiating both with Austria and the Triple Entente, whilst 
 Interventionalist circles were inclined to blame it severely 
 for what they considered disgraceful bargaining with Aus- 
 tria. The most widely different rumours were in the air, 
 and towards the end of Italy's period of neutrality — i.e., 
 in March and April, 19 15, the general public began to show 
 signs of unrest. Uncertainty was enervating public opin- 
 ion, for a nation cannot live for months under the shadow of 
 impending war without becoming excited. 
 
 Suddenly, on April 21st there was an indication that the 
 crisis was not far off. On that day the Socialist organ 
 Avanti published an interview with a " former minister " 
 of the Giolitti Cabinet, in which the state of the negotiations 
 between Austria on the one hand and the Triple Entente 
 on the other was set forth and the conclusion drawn that 
 Italy ought to remain neutral and even strengthen her ties 
 to Germany in order to safeguard her Adriatic interests. 
 Whoever may have been the personage concerned and what- 
 ever the value of his conclusions, the revelations as to the 
 negotiations were absolutely correct. Those who were au 
 courant of the situation made no mistake as to the object 
 of the articles in question, which was an anti-war manoeuvre 
 arranged with the Socialist organ by persons whose accu- 
 rate information proved them to be highly placed. The 
 Neutralist party was preparing to make a general appeal 
 to the masses against the government and the Intervention- 
 alists. It was obvious therefore that the war party was 
 getting the upper hand in ministerial circles. A few days 
 later Paris telegrams announced in a somewhat vague form 
 that Italy had signed an agreement with the Powers of the 
 Triple Entente. The news was denied, confirmed and de- 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 159 
 
 nied again. It was next announced that the King intended 
 to be present at the unveiHng of the monument to Gari- 
 baldi's Thousand at Quarto which was expected to be a 
 great Interventionalist demonstration. At the same time 
 contradictory rumours as to the issue of the negotiations 
 with Austria multipHed. The agreement had been con- 
 cluded — it had not been concluded — the King would de- 
 clare war at Quarto — Italy was about to resume her old 
 place in the Triple Alliance. Suddenly it was announced 
 that the King was not going to Quarto at all, but this an- 
 nouncement was accompanied by another to the effect that 
 his change of plans was due to the fact that the government 
 had come to decisions of such weight that the Head of the 
 State could not be absent from Rome. What had really 
 happened ? The public racked its brains in vain. On May 
 5th the Quarto monument was unveiled, but the ceremony 
 did not make the expected impression on the nation and 
 was even followed by a certain amount of disappointment. 
 The absence of the King and members of government had 
 been explained on the ground of impending serious deci- 
 sions and the nation accordingly expected some news of 
 importance on the 5th or 6th. None came. The public 
 was inclined to believe that the government had not taken 
 part in the ceremony at Quarto for fear of annoying Prince 
 von Bulow, as had been stated by certain newspapers. 
 Then suddenly the Giolittian section of the press published 
 a list of concessions made by Austria and announced that 
 Giolitti had been summoned to Rome by the King. On 
 May 7th Giolitti left Cavour for Turin and on the follow- 
 ing day he arrived in Rome. 
 
 What had happened? The mystery is now revealed in 
 part. Since December the Government had been negotiat- 
 ing with Austria without, however, coming to any arrange- 
 
160 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 ment. The Green Book tells the story of these fruitless 
 negotiations. It took time to induce Austria to admit the 
 possibility of a discussion based on Article 7 and further 
 time to induce her to make any proposals. What she 
 offered was much less than Italy asked. Moreover, the 
 question as to when the agreement would be carried into 
 effect was a source of great difficulty. On April 26th the 
 government signed an agreement with the Triple Entente, 
 valid if Italy declared war within a month. The govern- 
 ment had decided to hurry events and declare war without 
 delay if Austria would not accede to Italy's demands. 
 
 On May 3d, Austria having refused to yield, the govern- 
 ment denounced the Triple Alliance. This meant war. I 
 think I am safe in saying that these two steps — the agree- 
 ment with the Triple Entente and the denunciation of the 
 Treaty — were taken without consulting Giolitti who was 
 still at his home in Piedmont. Parliamentary circles soon 
 divined that war was imminent. The anxiety of the ma- 
 jority, of official circles, and of the Giolitti party was great 
 and the Pro-German party in the Senate redoubled its 
 activities, as did also von Biilow. What took place at this 
 juncture? It is difficult to say for certain. Too many 
 points are still far from clear. But it would appear that 
 Germany and Austria, alarmed by the denunciation of the 
 Triple Alliance, which came as a painful surprise, had or- 
 ganized a plot to overthrow the Cabinet with the assistance 
 of various senators. Socialists and lieutenants of Giolitti's, 
 influential personages sufficiently blinded by political pas- 
 sion to lend themselves to the intrigues of foreign Powers. 
 The idea which gave rise to this conspiracy seems to have 
 been as follows: The Neutralists had a large majority 
 in the Chamber — numbering as they did 400 out of 508 
 deputies. The Chamber was to meet on May 20th. The 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 161 
 
 problem was how to bring about the fall of the Ministry 
 before that date, thus preventing it from declaring war, 
 and then confronting Parliament with the accomplished 
 fact ? How was it to be done ? In this dilemma the Neu- 
 tralists turned to the powerful politician who had prac- 
 tically created the Chamber and appeared to hold the fate 
 of the Cabinet in the hollow of his hand. 
 
 In my opinion Giolitti was not absolutely opposed to the 
 idea of declaring war on Austria. He, too, realized the 
 necessity of taking advantage of the European War in 
 order to settle the question of Italy's eastern frontier if he 
 did not wish to give the Opposition a formidable weapon 
 against the monarchy but, since he was convinced that the 
 war would be very long, he thought that Italy should only 
 intervene if absolutely necessary, when, that is to say, di- 
 plomacy had failed, and that her intervention should even 
 then be deferred until the last possible moment. I am also 
 of the opinion that he hoped that it would be possible to 
 go to war with Austria only and not with Germany, which 
 latter power he had always regarded as a necessary guaran- 
 tee of Italy's safety with France and Great Britain. This 
 scheme was ingenious enough ; the only doubt was its feasi- 
 bility. Such being Giolitti's views, it is easy to see why 
 the Neutralists regarded him as the one man who could 
 force the Salandra Cabinet to resign before the Chamber 
 met. Giolitti was to be called to Rome by the King; Aus- 
 tria was to make fresh concessions in addition to those 
 already rejected by the Cabinet; these new concessions were 
 not to be communicated to the government, which had 
 already denounced the treaty, but given to the public in the 
 columns of the papers implicated in the plot ; a demonstra- 
 tion in favour of Giolitti was to be organized in the ranks 
 of the Parliamentary majority, after which Giolitti was 
 
162 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 to declare that there must be no rupture with Austria and 
 that the discussion of the proposed concessions must con- 
 tinue. The Cabinet would find itself confronted by a pop- 
 ular peace movement on the one hand, — in which the 
 Socialists were expected to play a leading part — and a 
 Parliamentary demonstration on the other and would have 
 no choice but to resign. It is easy to see the weak point of 
 this intrigue as far as the Italians involved were concerned. 
 They were co-operating with foreign Powers, which were 
 on the point of becoming enemies, in order to bring about 
 the fall of the Ministry, It must, however, in justice be 
 added that men who were thoroughly au courant of the 
 situation and whose loyalty is beyond suspicion declare that 
 on May 8th, when Giolitti left Turin for Rome, he was not 
 aware that the latest Austrian concessions had not been 
 communicated to the Italian government and that he was 
 under the impression that he had to deal with official pro- 
 posals which had been properly presented. Giolitti himself 
 had therefore been deceived by German diplomacy, which 
 rewarded him for his fidelity to the Triple Alliance by tell- 
 ing him a lie which induced him to make a faux pas which 
 was destined to have the gravest possibile results. This 
 scheme, an excellent example of the unscrupulous boldness 
 of German diplomacy, seemed at first about to succeed. By 
 some means or other Giolitti's summons to Rome was ac- 
 complished; he arrived on May 9th and next day had an 
 audience with the King and a long conversation with Salan- 
 dra. He must therefore have known that the agreement 
 with the Triple Entente had been signed and had already 
 begun to come into effect, that the Triple Alliance had been 
 denounced, and that Austria's latest proposals were of a 
 wholly unofficial character and were simply a low stratagem 
 to deceive both Parliament and the nation. How was it 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 16S 
 
 that he failed to reahze that it was not possible to undo 
 what had been done, that war was inevitable and that 
 everything must be done to avoid spreading distrust amongst 
 the masses who were still cherishing lingering hopes of 
 peace? Had he compromised himself too deeply with his 
 lieutenants? Was he simply giving vent to his annoyance 
 with the Cabinet for taking such important steps without 
 consulting him? Did he fail to realize the gravity of his 
 proceedings? Had he gone too far to draw back? His- 
 tory may perhaps shed light on the mystery. The fact 
 remains that on the day following Giolitti's interview with 
 the King the iicwspapers announced that, according to him, 
 the negotiations with Austria were to continue. The effect 
 of this declaration at first seemed very marked. Three 
 hundred deputies and a large number of senators rushed to 
 leave their cards on Giolitti; there were excited scenes in 
 the lobbies of both Chamber and Senate and shouts of 
 " Down with the Pro-war Cabinet," while both the Crown 
 and the Ministry had to face a very awkward situation. 
 The Alliance with the Central Empires had been denounced 
 and the understanding with the Triple Entente was already 
 being carried into effect: how could Italy go back? Yet 
 how could she declare war in the face of vacillating public 
 opinion and directly against the wishes of Parliament? 
 There was some talk of bringing the question before Par- 
 liament, but the danger of such a course was obvious. The 
 Ministry was therefore forced to choose between a coup 
 d'etat and resignation. It decided to resign. Then certain 
 sections of public opinion veered round. The movement 
 began amongst the educated classes, but quickly gained 
 over part of the aristocracy, lower and upper middle classes. 
 This change was brought about by a variety of sentiments : 
 the disgrace of seeing Italy descend to the level of Greece; 
 
164. EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 anxiety as to the probable result of such vacillation; the 
 longing to put an end to the uncertainty in which the coun- 
 try had lived for the last two months. But there were 
 two sentiments which did even more to produce the storm. 
 One of these was anger at Germany's interference in Italy's 
 home policy. Erzberger is said to have furnished the news- 
 papers which lent themselves to the conspiracy with the 
 famous hst of the latest Austrian concessions; if this be so, 
 the Triple Entente has every reason to be grateful to him. 
 The overbearing, encroaching spirit and perpetual intrigues 
 of German diplomats, bankers, and even of those officials 
 whom the Italian government had been weak enough to take 
 into its service had been tolerated too long, but this time 
 the unscrupulous insolence of German and Austrian diplo- 
 macy met with the chastisement it so richly deserved, and 
 the fury of the people was aroused when it saw Italy 
 treated like some decadent eastern state. There was a 
 violent outbreak of hatred for Giolitti who in those two 
 days had to face the accumulated detestation which his 
 rule had earned in the course of years. The opponents of 
 his Manhood Suffrage Bill and of the State monopoly of 
 life insurance, together with those who disliked his system 
 of personal government, his weak foreign policy, and his 
 contradictory home policy, seized the opportunity of aveng- 
 ing their wrongs. His third attempt — or what the public 
 regarded as his third attempt — to resume power when it 
 happened to suit him disgusted the people. Was the gov- 
 ernment of a country like Italy to be, so to speak, the per- 
 sonal property of Giolitti ? Shouts of " traitor " and 
 " treason " were heard in the streets and echoed by the 
 press, while in the large cities, and especially in Rome and 
 Milan, there were constant demonstrations whose war-cry 
 was " Death to Giolitti." In Rome the best known mem- 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 165 
 
 bers of the former Premier's party were abused and sub- 
 jected to violence in the streets and the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment were invaded by a furious crowd. Parliament, press 
 and political parties, who had for long been accustomed to 
 yield to any fairly decided expression of public opinion, 
 made no attempt at resistance. The newspapers either at- 
 tacked Giolitti or were silent; the senators and deputies 
 who were too deeply compromised disappeared ; others were 
 suddenly converted to intervention; in two days Giolitti's 
 personal rule, which had appeared invulnerable, collapsed, 
 while Giolitti himself, forsaken by his party, was forced to 
 shut himself up in his hotel lest he should be shot in the 
 streets by one of the numerous Interventionalists, who 
 would fain have punished the " traitor ! " When the dem- 
 onstrations had lasted three days the King, who for all his 
 reserve was favourable to the course matters had taken, 
 put an end to the struggle by announcing that the war party 
 had carried the day. He refused to accept the resignation 
 of the Cabinet; Parliament understood that King and Cabi- 
 net were of one mind and yielded to the force of circum- 
 stances. Fiction had for a moment endeavoured to become 
 reality, but the wrath of the nation had promptly banished 
 it to the realm of shadows. War was voted for almost 
 unanimously by a Senate and Chamber of which the ma- 
 jority would not even hear of such a thing ten days before. 
 It must not, however, be supposed that all Italy rose 
 during those stormy May days. With but a few exceptions 
 the masses took little part in the political demonstrations, 
 which however were furthered even by their abstinence 
 from active participation, since the plan of the German 
 Embassy of bringing about the fall of the Cabinet might 
 have succeeded had the Socialists started counter-agitations 
 in the Neutralist interests. Had they done so, disturbances 
 
166 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 would undoubtedly have taken place and with civil war 
 menacing it, the government would not have ventured to 
 declare war on Austria. Why did the Socialists remain 
 quiescent instead of coming out boldly at the decisive mo- 
 ment? For the simple reason that, while they desired 
 peace, they hated Austria who had let loose the hounds of 
 war and, when the underhand manoeuvre was revealed to 
 which they were asked to give their support, were not in- 
 clined to engage in a sort of civil war on behalf of the King 
 of Prussia and the ravages of Belgium. They left the 
 Interventionalists masters of the situation and the war 
 party triumphed. 
 
 VII 
 
 And now Italy, like all the other European peoples, is in 
 the hands of God or of Destiny — whichever you choose 
 to call it. She has nobly redeemed the error of the Tripoli 
 campaign by intervening in this most appalling of wars 
 without being forced to do so by any direct attack, thus 
 ranging herself on the side of the nations who have been 
 the victims of German aggression and are struggling to 
 save Europe from an intolerable hegemony. ^The impulse 
 which made her take this step was not, however, as has 
 been often said a mere outburst of national feeling. It was 
 something much more complicated — something far deeper. 
 The necessity of putting an end to an artificial, contradic- 
 tory and enervating system of government; shame at hav- 
 ing for so long submitted meekly to German influence ; hor- 
 ror and dread of this monstrous power resting on numbers, 
 steel, the authority of the monarchy, the prestige of the 
 army, the credulity and blind passions of the masses ex- 
 ploited by a strong and unscrupulous oligarchy; the desire 
 for moral independence which could only be hers with a 
 
ITALY'S FOREIGN POLICY 167 
 
 more secure frontier, together with a somewhat vague but 
 very real longing for a nobler, higher and happier life — 
 all these causes impelled Italy to take part in the struggle. 
 A coalition of various elements overcame the official oppo- 
 sition to this act of sacrifice and put an end to the vacilla- 
 tion of the masses. This coalition has been of the greatest 
 service to Europe, but it has entailed grave responsibilities. 
 Italy has pledged herself to her allies to induce the country 
 to make the greatest possible effort in the common cause '^ 
 and they have pledged themselves to give the' country, to- 
 gether with its natural frontiers, a sure and lasting peace, 
 moral independence and an existence free from the obses- 
 sion of German example and influence. The coalition 
 which willed the war might one day find itself in a perilous 
 position should it fail to fulfil these pledges. It will fulfil 
 the former, for, the masses, vacillating as they were up to 
 the very declaration of war, have accepted the heavy sacri- 
 fices asked of them with admirable courage and dignity. 
 It is for the Allied Powers to help it to redeem the pledges 
 it has given to the country, by taking into account the limits 
 placed upon Italy's participation in the war by the circum- 
 stances under which she entered it. It must never be for- 
 gotten that the problem of war is not presented in the same 
 way to the government of a country which has been forced 
 to take up arms by brutal aggression, as to the government 
 of a country which has desired war on political and national 
 grounds which are always open to discussion. If the Allies 
 bear this in mind, they will be better able to help the Italian 
 government and be in turn helped by it to attain the common 
 goal : the victory which will ensure to Europe a real, lasting 
 and equitable peace. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 The Genius of the Latin Peoples 
 
THE GENIUS OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 
 
 I 
 
 History is full of tragic surprises, but it is indubitable 
 that no generation, . . . not even that which witnessed the 
 stupendous upheaval of the French Revolution . . . has 
 seen, as has ours, all its illusions and its hopes destroyed 
 in a few weeks by a catastrophe more unexpected. 
 
 It is not the war which has been the surprise. Even 
 while hoping that the precarious and uneasy peace which 
 Europe has enjoyed for more than forty years might be 
 prolonged indefinitely, every one knew that war was one of 
 the possibilities in the old continent. But no one expected 
 to see overthrown, in a few weeks, the very foundations 
 of the civilization which had sheltered us, with our posses- 
 sions, under its protective roof. And yet we have seen the 
 nations which were considered as the elite of humanity, who 
 had exerted themselves to sweeten conduct to the extent 
 of protecting horses in the street from the brutality of 
 drunken carters, fling themselves on one another for a war 
 of extermination. We have seen an age which had deified 
 productive labour annihilate, in a few years, the wealth 
 accumulated during generations. We have seen Europe 
 which seemed to us a living unit animated by rivalries, if 
 not courteous at least not mortal, divide itself all at once 
 into two camps separated by an insuperable abyss, which 
 can no longer exchange, across that abyss, but cannon shots 
 and curses. There is no longer any way of understanding 
 each other; for that which is the good on this side of the 
 barrier is the evil on the other side. 
 
 171 
 
172 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 If our hearts are wrung at seeing this youth mown down 
 each day upon so many battle fields, the bloody sacrifice of 
 a generation is yet, unhappily, but a part of this prodigious 
 cataclysm, destined to change the course of history. It is 
 consequently natural that men seek to understand its pro- 
 found significance, and that they ask themselves what dan- 
 gerous madness has impelled one of the most powerful 
 nations of our epoch to risk its whole position, and unfor- 
 tunately also the well-being and happiness of the whole 
 of Europe, to possess itself, in a few weeks, of the empire 
 of the world. For there is now no longer any doubt that 
 the European war, in its origins and in the dark plans of 
 the State which plotted it, was the audacious attempt to 
 possess itself, by a coup-de-main, of a hegemony which 
 would have delivered over to Germany at least the half 
 of the world. One has only to follow up on the map the 
 operations of the German army, from the violation of Bel- 
 gian neutrality until the battle of the Marne, to understand 
 that Germany attempted, in a few weeks, by a lightning- 
 like surprise, to annihilate France ; to destroy for centuries, 
 if not for all time, her riches, her power, her prestige. Nor 
 is it any more uncertain, now, that, had this plan succeeded, 
 neither England nor Russia alone would have been able to 
 save Europe from the German supremacy; Europe would 
 have fallen under the dominion, direct or indirect, of the 
 Empire of the Hohenzollerns ; and how much time would 
 have been required by a Germany, yet further extended, 
 overlord of all the European continent, intoxicated by this 
 new success, to prepare itself for a decisive struggle with 
 England? . . . that is to say, for the conquest of a world 
 supremacy? But it is also evident that a stroke of such 
 audacity, if it did not succeed within a few weeks, would 
 
THE GENIUS OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 173 
 
 set going a struggle for life or death among the greatest 
 powers of Europe. 
 
 So that the real problem of the European war seems to 
 present itself thus: how was a nation, universally regarded 
 as a brother of the great European family, able to conceive, 
 at the dawn of the twentieth century, the idea of con- 
 quering, by surprise, a decisive supremacy over all the other 
 countries of the world, by destroying with fire and sword, 
 in a few months, one of the most ancient, most glorious and 
 most active centres of civilization; and how did it decide 
 to stake all that is possessed, . . . that is to say, a very 
 brilliant position, ... in this venture ? 
 
 II 
 
 For the last years the world has been in perplexity over 
 this problem. The problem seems so much the more diffi- 
 cult in that, for thirty years past, we were accustomed to 
 attribute to Germany the genius of order. Germany, — 
 that was order. It is for this reason that, in almost all 
 countries, the upper classes felt for her a growing admira- 
 tion. And behold, all at once, from one day to the next, 
 without apparent reason, this pretended land of order throws 
 the whole of Europe into the bloody chaos of this tremen- 
 dous crisis, and reveals itself as the most astounding force 
 of disorder that history has yet seen. The world has diffi- 
 culty in comprehending a phenomenon so paradoxical. It 
 will, however, appear simpler if one reflects a little upon 
 order, upon what it is and upon the conception which we 
 form for ourselves of it. It is evident that order is a very 
 vague word and that it can signify many different things, 
 according as it is employed by a gendarme or by a philoso- 
 
174 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 pher, by the Home secretary or by the head of a Christian 
 church. But, in recent times, this elementary truth had 
 been a Httle too much forgotten, and, thanks to that intel- 
 lectual levity which held sway to some degree everywhere 
 in Europe previous to the war, we had ended by believing 
 that, where the government was disputed and unstable, dis- 
 order must reign; and that one found oneself in the realm 
 of order where the authority of the State was better obeyed. 
 But this concept of order and disorder was too simple. 
 Order is too complicated a phenomenon for us to be able 
 to confide the task of defining it exclusively to the police, 
 as this concept would assume. Order is also, . . and 
 for my part I shall not hesitate to say is above all . . . 
 the sense of the limits which a society ought not to over- 
 pass if it does not wish to see reason transform itself into 
 folly, truth transform itself into error, beauty transform 
 itself into ugliness, good transform itself into evil. It is 
 a law of the human mind, in every domain of practical and 
 of spiritual life, that all effect, if it overpasses a certain 
 limit, destroys itself, and, instead of attaining its end, 
 engenders the most varied troubles and crises, becoming a 
 disturbing element. There is nothing more noble in the 
 world than the love of truth, of justice and of beauty. And 
 yet all science which, having lost the sense of the limits 
 of its powers, seeks to resolve insoluble problems, departs 
 from the luminous sphere of reason and loses itself in the 
 fog of chimeras, producing intellectual disorder. The 
 states and religions which have demanded of their age too 
 great a moral perfection, by means of methods of coercion 
 too violent, have sometimes ended by sowing moral dis- 
 order through provoking the most unexpected reactions of 
 vice and crime. The divine force of art is originality, that 
 privilege of genius which creates beauties yet unknown; 
 
THE GENIUS OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 175 
 
 but originality has also its limits, for it risks, in overpassing 
 them, falling into extravagance, into confusion, into the 
 absurd. This law^ is even more obvious in the practical 
 realm. It is a well known fact that nothing is so dangerous 
 for any political or economic organization . . . whether a 
 state, a party, an army, a bank, or a business ... as to 
 engage in enterprises which are beyond its powers. The 
 extreme limit of its powers is also the limit beyond which, 
 for all human institutions, disintegration begins; that is to 
 say, the incurable disorder which precedes death, slow or 
 swift. 
 
 This concept of order accepted, we can affirm without 
 hesitation that the spirit of order is represented, in history, 
 not by the Germanic genius, but by the Latin genius. From 
 a certain point of view one can say that the Latin genius 
 is essentially order in its highest possible concept, and that 
 such little order as has reigned in the world has been its 
 work. The political troubles which have agitated the Latin 
 countries at different periods, and especially for the last 
 hundred and thirty years, have not changed this profound 
 characteristic of our spirit. It is always difficult to define 
 the genius of a people, of a race or of a civilization. This 
 genius is always a very complex force, which eludes precise 
 definitions. It is never, moreover, constant and uniform in 
 itself. All nations and all civilizations contradict them- 
 selves in their history, by recurring, in certain periods, to 
 the tendencies which dominated preceding epochs. But if 
 one understands by the genius of a people or of a civiliza- 
 tion its most persistent tendencies, to which the people or 
 the civilization returns after inevitable fluctuations, one can 
 say that the Latin genius, like the Greek genius to which it 
 owes so much and which has been its master, is a genius 
 par excellence limited, and in consequence orderly : and that 
 
170 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 it is a limited and ordered genius because, in its most bril- 
 liant periods, it, like the Greek genius, set before itself, as 
 an end to be attained, models of perfection, aesthetic, moral 
 or intellectual, as defined as possible. Let us take Greece: 
 why has she attained, in many arts and in certain forms of 
 literature, so great a perfection, which has consecrated so 
 many of her works as models that are always studied with 
 profit? Because she succeeded in limiting the creative en- 
 ergy of genius by traditions and by rules, and the force of 
 the traditions and rules by the creative energy of genius. 
 In all the arts, she has produced, in the most brilliant 
 moments of her activity, great geniuses, who have been able 
 to work within the limits of tradition and of rules strong 
 enough to support them, but not so strong as to stifle them. 
 In philosophy, Greece has produced all kinds of theories. 
 All the conceptions, and even all the aberrations, to which 
 the human mind reverts periodically, are there represented. 
 But it is not by mere chance that one of the two great 
 Greek philosophers whose work has come down to us almost 
 entire, and who has exerted so great an influence upon the 
 ancient world and upon the whole development of the Latin 
 civilization, whether directly or through St. Thomas Aqui- 
 nas, is Aristotle. Aristotle might be defined as the philoso- 
 pher of limitation and of order par excellence. He began 
 by limiting the universe, by reducing the world to a narrow 
 enclosed system, contesting the astronomic theories which, 
 in making the earth turn round the sun, would have exacted 
 as corollary the infinity of space. He limited the develop- 
 ment of the universe, by giving too all things a point of 
 arrival which does not recede in proportion as they ap- 
 proach it ; which is fixed and determinate ; its entelechie, the 
 complete realization of its faculties or of its tendencies. He 
 has founded morality on the idea that virtue is a mean be- 
 
THE GENIUS OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 177 
 
 tween two extremes; and he has, consequently, admitted 
 that no element of human nature is radically evil when it 
 keeps to its own place; it only becomes so when it over- 
 passes the limits assigned to it by nature. He has created 
 a system of aesthetics which is, in the main, but a very 
 subtle and ingenius philosophical justification of a certain 
 number of rules which the taste of his epoch imposed upon 
 the poets, writers, and orators ; that is to say, the philosoph- 
 ical justification of the limits imposed by the Greek taste 
 upon the originality of genius. He has, in short, created a 
 system of politics which bases itself, ultimately, on the 
 limitation of the population. Aristotle would find himself 
 very much out of his reckoning in his political theories in 
 the modern world, and above all in the countries where, as 
 in Germany, the population swarms; for the State such 
 as he conceives it requires, for its good government, a lim- 
 ited and but little varying population. But what is the aim 
 which this State, whose population is limited, ought to set 
 before it? It is not the unlimited increase of power and 
 wealth; it is virtue; that is to say, an ideal of moral per- 
 fection. Virtue is the first care of a State which truly 
 merits this title and which is not a State only in name. 
 
 If ancient Greece possessed to so high a degree the sense 
 of limits in the spiritual domain, Rome possessed it in the 
 political domain. The phenomenon which is seemingly the 
 strength in the history of Rome is the persistent spirit of 
 opposition to territorial aggrandizements which dominated 
 its policy after the conquest of Italy. So long as it was 
 a question of conquering central and southern Italy, Rome 
 proceeded, when she was able, with a sufficiently decided 
 spirit of aggression; but so soon as it was a matter of 
 overpassing the Apennines, the Alps and the sea, of found- 
 ing the great Mediterranean empire which has had so great 
 
178 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 an influence on the history of Europe, she felt herself as it 
 were paralysed by the very greatness of the opportunity 
 which presented itself to her. Even during the centuries 
 of the great conquests in Europe, in Asia and in Africa, 
 the aristocracy which governed the empire was always 
 opposed to the policy of annexations and of conquest. It 
 is no exaggeration to say that Rome created her immense 
 empire in spite of herself, forced by a sequence of events 
 which was stronger than the will of her government, or by 
 exceptional personalities such as C. Flaminius and Julius 
 Caesar, who were not, moreover, much admired. The ad- 
 miration of Julius Caesar is modern; the intellectual elite 
 of his generation and of the succeeding generations felt 
 towards him, rather, fear and distrust. This phenomenon 
 seems bizarre and almost incomprehensible to an age like 
 ours, where aggressive imperialism has enjoyed such high 
 favour in all countries; but for him who looks from the 
 Roman point of view the reason for this is clear. The 
 Roman nobility knew that it was easier to conquer terri- 
 tories than to keep them; it saw on all sides the ruins of 
 empires which had fallen because they had wished to expand 
 too much and too fast; it did not wish to risk too much 
 for the conquest of an empire which it would not have 
 the strength to keep. The Roman nobility, moreover, . . . 
 and it is another characteristic which distinguishes it from 
 the ruling classes of our age, . . . was never ambitious to 
 make of Rome a state richer or more powerful than other 
 states; It only wished, after having conquered Italy, that 
 Rome might enjoy a certain security and that she might 
 be governed according to certain principles which seemed 
 to It, rightly or wrongly, to represent a perfect ideal of 
 virtue and wisdom. In short, it put Into practice, to the 
 best of its ability, the principle of Aristotle, that virtue is 
 
THE GENIUS OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 179 
 
 the chief preoccupation of a state which merits that title. 
 For centuries Rome found herself in contact with states 
 which were richer, or more powerful, or more cultivated 
 than herself; never was she envious of them, never did she 
 feel herself humiliated by the comparison, nor obliged to 
 seek to imitate them. She limited herself always to taking 
 from the other peoples what seemed to her useful for her 
 own conservation; but she sought, above all, not to com- 
 promise that ideal of wisdom and virtue in which she saw 
 the goal of all her effort. To remain faithful to that ideal, 
 she preferred, during several centuries, to renounce con- 
 quests and enrichments which would have been easy to her; 
 which explains, for instance, why Paul Emilius, after hav- 
 ing conquered Macedonia, closed all the gold mines and 
 forbade their exploitation; which explains also why, at a 
 certain moment, the Senate refused to accept Egypt, which 
 the King had bequeathed it in his testament. Yet Egypt 
 was considered the richest and most fertile country of the 
 ancient world. But Rome refused it just because it was 
 too rich. The traditionalist and puritan aristocracy feared 
 lest these riches and the Egyptian examples might end by 
 " corrupting " Rome ; that is to say, by divorcing the new 
 generations from that ideal of moral perfection in which 
 it believed, and which seemed to it essential for the main- 
 tenance of the people in a state of moral vigour. The ideal 
 of moral perfection prevailed over the ambition for power 
 and the desire for wealth. This prudence also explains 
 to us why, when she conquered a country, Rome asked 
 nothing better than to let it live as it would, with its laws 
 and its beliefs, mixing herself with its affairs as little as 
 possible. Rome never dreamed of imposing her language, 
 her manners, or her laws upon her subjects ; all the peoples 
 who, under her rule, became Romanized freely and slowly, 
 
180 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 because they believed it advantageous to adopt the language 
 and ideas of the dominant nation, Rome knew that she 
 would not be able to impose her will upon all the subject 
 peoples, and she preferred to leave them to govern them- 
 selves. This prudence and these hesitations explain the 
 slowness with which the Roman Empire was created, but 
 it also explains its duration. 
 
 Ill 
 
 These examples show us the Latin genius, and the Greek 
 genius, which has been the master of the Latin genius, in 
 their characteristic manifestations, seeking, in art as in 
 politics, in literature as in philosophy, order, measure, har- 
 mony. Both the one and the other have supplied the models 
 studied and imitated until two centuries ago, more or less 
 well, by all the civilizations which have followed one another 
 in Europe. One may say that the Latin spirit dominated 
 Europe, although with some more or less grave lapses, 
 until the end of the seventeenth century. L'^p to that period 
 all the social organizations of Europe, diverse as they were 
 in details, had yet a character which could be defined as 
 Greco-Latin. They were all based upon the great pessimist 
 doctrine which has been formulated under force so different 
 by the religions and philosophies of the past, and according 
 to which human nature is more prone to evil than to good. 
 They deduced from this principle that it was necessary to 
 distrust men, to multiply restraints and limits around their 
 perverse instincts, to master their pride and cupidity. They 
 sought to succeed in this partly by all kinds of moral and 
 political coercion, partly by enjoining on the generations 
 elevated ideals of perfection. All these civilizations were 
 poor, were lacking in energy, and ignorant in comparison 
 
THE GENIUS OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 181 
 
 with contemporary civilizations; they hmited their desires, 
 their ambitions, their spirit of initiative, their audacity, their 
 originaHty; they produced Httle and slowly, and even while 
 suffering much from the insufficiency of their material re- 
 sources, they considered the augmentation of wealth only' 
 as a painful necessity. But they sought to attain to arduous 
 standards of perfection . . . artistic, or Hterary, or moral, 
 or religious. To make use once more of a formula which 
 I have perhaps a little abused in these latter days, quality 
 prevailed over quantity; all the limitations to which these 
 civilizations submitted with so much patience were only the 
 necessary price of these coveted perfections; in good as in 
 evil, effort was made rather in the direction of depth than 
 in that of extent. Rather than to generalize vices and 
 virtues by extenuating them, these civilizations tended to 
 create a small number of great villains, of great characters, 
 of great scholars and of great artists. 
 
 A conclusion thus forces itself upon us: it is that, if the 
 Latin spirit had dominated the modern world as it dom- 
 inated the ancient world, a catastrophe like this would not 
 have been possible. Europe would have yet seen wars ; but 
 she would not have seen armies so formidable, nor engines 
 of war so murderous, nor proceedings so barbarous, nor so 
 savage a fury of passions, nor a people dreaming of con- 
 quering the empire of the world in a few weeks, nor the 
 frightful disorder which that insane ambition would let 
 loose Rome had shown, by a conclusive historical experi- 
 ence, that the empire of the world cannot be, even where it 
 is possible, but the slow and patient work of centuries. But 
 then another question arises : for what reason has the Latin 
 spirit no longer today the influence over the world which 
 it had formerly? What new force has replaced it? Why, 
 to these limited and ordered civilizations has there succeeded 
 
Igg EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 a social state which can give birth to such cataclysm ? What 
 has happened in the world? An immense revolution . . , 
 the greatest perhaps that men have ever seen . . . and which 
 has overthrown in two centuries the world wherein our 
 ancestors lived, I believe that it is not possible to under- 
 stand the import of modem life if one has not understood 
 the magnitude of that revolution; and one cannot under- 
 stand it if one has not an exact idea of the civilizations 
 which have preceded our own. Classic culture, if it should 
 succeed in freeing itself from the German influence which, 
 at least in Italy, has dominated it owing to the baneful in- 
 fluence of the universities, ought to serve, above all today, 
 to make modern civilization in its essential difference under- 
 stood by an exact knowledge of ancient civilizations. In 
 what does this difference consist ? An enthusiastic optimist 
 has succeeded, during the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- 
 turies, and with the aid of favourable circumstances, in con- 
 vincing a part of humanity that human nature is inherently 
 good in itself; that, delivered from all the restraints with 
 which laws and religions had surrounded it, abandoned to 
 its instincts, it would continually better itself, and would 
 create happiness around it, by a kind of interior law. All 
 the means of coercion, of which former ages made use so 
 largely to subdue the evil tendencies of human nature, have 
 been mitigated or destroyed ; man has conquered liberty ; he 
 has permitted his will and his intelligence to develop to the 
 extreme limit of his energy and power of action; he has 
 created science, conquered the earth and the air, subjugated 
 nature. . . . But he has been forced to abandon or lower 
 almost all the ideals of artistic, moral or religious perfec- 
 tion venerated by our ancestors; forced everywhere to sac- 
 rifice quality to quantity. . . . History has thus changed 
 its course ; a new world has come into being, in which cer- 
 
THE GENIUS OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 183 
 
 tain principles of life seem to have been reversed. Was 
 this new world better or worse than the old ? For the last 
 century we do nothing but discuss this problem, under a 
 thousand different forms, and, for the most part, without 
 being aware of it, in our quarrels, political, religious, philo- 
 sophical. This problem underlies all these quarrels. But 
 the question, thus stated, is insoluble. For the two con- 
 ceptions of life, being partial, have their true side and their 
 false side, their weaknesses and their strong points. The 
 ancient has given to the world incomparable master-pieces, 
 great philosophers, great religions. It has also given hor- 
 rible tyrannies and fetters very heavy to bear. It has 
 divided men into a great number of small isolated and 
 antagonistic groups; but it has given birth, in the midst 
 of all these enmities, to the most sublime among the doc- 
 trines of love and charity that man has ever known. The 
 modern conception has bestowed on man much liberty, do- 
 minion over all the earth, a fabulous wealth and power. 
 But it has too much mixed up, and confounded, in a kind 
 of fog, the distinctions between truth and error, between 
 beauty and ugliness, between good and evil. And it is in 
 this confusion that three generations have sown with con- 
 fidence the noblest ideas of fraternity and love, to gather the 
 bloody harvest of this gigantic war! 
 
 IV 
 
 The present catastrophe is, in reality, only the final out- 
 come of a gigantic but confused effort accomplished by 
 four or five generations who have thought only of aug- 
 menting the power of man, without distinguishing between 
 the power which creates and that which destroys ; who have 
 considered it equally progressive to construct steamboats as 
 
184. EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 to build dreadnoughts, to construct railroads as to construct 
 monstrous cannons or to invent terrifying explosives; who, 
 although not repudiating the moral traditions of the past, 
 have left full liberty to all the passions which could stimulate 
 human activity, even to those which seemed the most dan- 
 gerous to the predominating morality of past ages, such as 
 pride and cupidity. Our age has demanded of men three 
 things : activity, patriotism, and the docility to economic and 
 political discipline which great industrial civilization re- 
 quires. Outside of these three virtues it has not imposed 
 with vigour any moral law, either upon private or upon col- 
 lective life. Beneath its apparent unity the world had ended 
 by concealing a restless chaos of opposing interests, of pas- 
 sions and of ideas, in which the Latin genius, which is a 
 genius of order, of reason and of perspicuity, has ever felt 
 itself a little misplaced; whereas the German genius, re- 
 maining turbulent and uneven, delighted in it as in its ele- 
 ment, and grew, in it, over-excited to the pitch of preparing, 
 in silence, for the unsuspecting world the formidable sur- 
 prise of this war. All the tragedy of our age lies in this 
 contradiction; and no country has felt it, has suffered by 
 it, as has France, which had remained the most loyal to the 
 Latin tradition in the midst of the tremendous shocks of 
 the last two centuries. The political convulsions which 
 have shaken her during these last hundred and thirty years 
 have caused many people to think that France was the great 
 centre of disorder in Europe. It is to be presimied that 
 the European War will have proved to the most obstinate 
 that the centre of disorder was elsewhere. Even at the 
 very height of its gravest political crises France did not 
 cease to be, to such a degree as this was yet possible, an 
 element of order in Europe, because she has been, among 
 the great nations of Europe, the one which has preserved 
 
THE GENIUS OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 185 
 
 to the highest degree the two quahties which are the con- 
 dition of true order: the sense of limits, and the aspiration 
 towards a qualitative civilization. One might even go 
 further, and say that the agitations and revolutions from 
 which France has suffered during more than a century, and 
 which have caused her to be considered as the greatest focus 
 of disorder, proceeded, at least in part, from the discrep- 
 ancy existing between the tendencies of the epoch and her 
 spirit of order, " France," . . . and I here ask your per- 
 mission to quote a page written by myself ; not that it pos- 
 sesses any special value, but because it was written previous 
 to the war. ..." France, in effecting the Revolution, gave 
 the coup de grace to the limited civilization of our fathers. 
 It was not of set purpose, but in thinking of and aiming 
 at something else, that she dealt the blow; and this is so 
 true that she has since continued, and, perhaps alone in 
 the world, she yet aspires, to produce excellence, to be of 
 worth, and to assert herself through quality rather than 
 through quantity. But excellence cannot multiply itself so 
 quickly, so easily, and in so large a degree as the mediocre 
 and the bad. And so it is that the nation which did not 
 tremble before Europe in arms, which dared to defy God 
 and instal Reason on His throne, hesitates, takes alarm, is 
 terrified at the ever-growing figures read in the statistics of 
 its neighbours ; and it no longer knows whether it is in de- 
 cline or if it marches as the head of the nations ; and some- 
 times it is proud of itself, sometimes is discouraged; has 
 the sense of being isolated ; asks itself : * what is to be done? 
 Resist to the death the universal triumph of quantity? Or 
 utterly abandon the ancient tradition and Americanize one- 
 self like the rest?' Often when I come to Paris I go, at 
 sunset, up the Avenue des Champs Elysees towards the Arc 
 de Triomphe. ... Do you know what, for some time past, 
 
186 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 I cannot help thinking when I walk along that avenue? I 
 think of the statistics of the production of iron in Ger- 
 many. A million and a half tons in 1870; two millions in 
 1875; three in 1880; nearly five in 1890; eight and a half 
 in 1900 ; eleven in 1905 ; nearly fifteen in 1910 ! My friends, 
 believe me ; it was on the day when Apollo made his speech 
 in Olympus that there began between him and Vulcan the 
 war which is let loose today in the whole world. Who will 
 prevail? Iron is incontestably a precious metal; railways 
 and machines have been made of it ; cannons, guns, breast- 
 plates have been made of it. But to encumber the world 
 with iron to the point of driving out beauty from this 
 earth, and all the qualities which reveal the mobility and 
 greatness of the human spirit, is not this to lead the world 
 back to barbarism ? Who will prevail ? Vulcan or Apollo ? 
 Quantity or quality ? " 
 
 The struggle between the two gods of Olympus, which I 
 had dreaded during my journeys in America, has assumed 
 all of a sudden a form most violent and terrible. One day, 
 suddenly, in this chaos of conflicting interests, passions 
 and opinions in which we live, pride, ambition, and the 
 spirit of violence prevailed. The nation which had made 
 a superficial age believe that it represented the spirit of 
 order in the world has, seized with a fit of madness which 
 was the logical outcome of its pride and cupidity, thrown 
 Europe and half the world into the disorder of an unprec- 
 edented historic crisis. Since that day we dwell upon an 
 earth which quakes; and as if, from one moment to the 
 next, the sky would fall upon our heads. The sky will 
 not fall upon our heads ; but it would be difficult to foresee 
 the future which awaits our civilization if it does not suc- 
 ceed in regaining once more, in the quest for new aesthetic 
 and moral perfections, a surer sense of limits. Is the prob- 
 
THE GENIUS OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 187 
 
 lem which the war presents to Europe anything, indeed, but 
 a problem of Hmits? It presents it to all under a material 
 and geographical form. There are some nations which 
 have emerged from their frontiers and invaded the terri- 
 tories of their neighbours ; there are others who struggle to 
 drive back the invaders and to conquer frontiers which shall 
 protect them for the future from fresh outrages. But if it 
 be necessary, before all, to drive back the horde, so soon as 
 possible, into the territory from which it ought never to 
 have issued forth, to drive it back is not sufficient. It is 
 necessary to create in Europe a political situation and a 
 moral state which shall prevent the turbulent genius of the 
 Germanic peoples from again filling the pages of history 
 with a second venture of this kind. Together with the 
 question of geographic and political limits, there is a ques- 
 tion of moral limits; the greatest, perhaps, that has ever 
 been presented to man: the question as to the limits which 
 states, nations, economic interests, intellectual cultures, shall 
 know how to set to their ambition, their activity, their spirit 
 of competition and of conquest. For the whole question 
 lies in that. The European War shows that modern civili- 
 zation is yet more powerful than even its most ardent admir- 
 ers had thought it. No one, I believe, would have dared two 
 years ago to prophesy that the greatest states of Europe 
 would be able to endure for years a war of this magnitude. 
 It is unquestionable that men had never achieved a more 
 stupendous effort. But just because one part of humanity 
 has arrived at a degree of power which had never been 
 attained, the question today is to know to what use it 
 intends to put that force. Does it intend to yield it as a 
 Wind instrument of destruction to pride, to cupidity, to 
 ambition, so that they may periodically precipitate crises 
 such as that which today agitates the world? Or will it 
 
188 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 desire to make use of it solely in definite directions and 
 for aims which shall be in accord with a high and noble 
 ideal of life? Will it succeed, in short, in imposing on its 
 tremendous force some moral limits, . . . and what? 
 
 There is no doubt that the future of Europe depends upon 
 this alternative. It is difficult to believe that the masses 
 would adapt themselves indefinitely to regard, as the final 
 expression of progress, a state of things by which, period- 
 ically, two generations should work tenaciously so as to 
 afford to the third the means of exterminating itself. The 
 world in which we live, huge and powerful, but unbalanced 
 and full of confusion, requires a little more order, harmony, 
 justice, beauty and measure. The crisis in which Europe 
 is struggling proves clearly that, if we do not succeed in 
 raising the moral tone of European life, the civilization of 
 sword and science will end in a kind of gigantic suicide. 
 The task which awaits Europe, on the morrow of the war, 
 is, then, very difficult; for it is a matter of nothing less 
 than attempting to profound, serious, organic reconciliation 
 between what is most noble and most beautiful from the 
 moral, religious and intellectual point of view in the quali- 
 tative civilizations of the past, and the new forces created 
 by our age, such as industrialism and democracy. We have, 
 hitherto, set side by side and jumbled up all these contra- 
 dictory elements ; it is necessary to blend them. Now these 
 adjustments, when they are not superficial hoaxes, but seri- 
 ous attempts to lead men to accomplish their duties better, 
 are always very difficult, demanding a great spirit of sacri- 
 fice, a great moral energy, the ardent faith in an ideal. 
 Our age, moreover, has achieved things too great, and 
 obtained too much success in over-passing all the limits 
 respected by our ancestors, not to feel a strong attraction 
 towards the limitless greatness of quantity, towards all that 
 
THE GENIUS OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 189 
 
 is colossal, unbalanced, enormous, violent. The task then 
 will be difficult. . . . But if human nature has not changed; 
 if beauty, reason, virtue, have not lost their eternal forces 
 of attraction for the soul, the task should be possible and 
 glorious. It is not conceivable that Europe will emerge 
 from this crisis without understanding that there are, in 
 contemporary civilization, some excesses which we must 
 correct under pain of seeing all our efforts periodically 
 annihilated by catastrophes. It is the struggle between the 
 two Gods of Olympus; between the God who forges the 
 iron and the God who knows the laws of the necessary pro- 
 portions between the elements of life; that is to say, the 
 secret of health, of beauty, of truth, of virtue; it is this 
 struggle which has provoked the immense moral crisis from 
 which the war has ensued. We, the Latin nations, have 
 suffered more than the other nations from this moral crisis 
 . . . for we were especially devotees of the God who is 
 the august guardian of measure. The solution of this 
 great moral crisis would be compensation to us for the 
 sacrifices which this crisis in history imposes on us; and 
 no country would have so well deserved it as France, which 
 has made the greatest sacrifices. Like all the foreigners 
 whose hearts are wrung by the thought of all that France 
 has suffered and will suffer in this war, I ardently hope that 
 it will usher in in Europe an epoch in which the Latin 
 genius will be able to shine with its full radiance, in a world 
 which will understand what is order, harmony, reason, hu- 
 manity, better than the last generation had understood. 
 France is entitled to this recompense for the terrible sacri- 
 fices that she endures with so much steadfastness; and 
 history will bestow it upon her, to her glory and for the 
 happiness of the world. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 The Intellectual Problems of the New World 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEMS OF THE 
 NEW WORLD 
 
 There is perhaps nothing which will surprise the historians 
 of the European War more than the general reconciliation 
 of parties and opinions by which its outbreak was followed. 
 Strange as such a statement may appear, there can be no 
 doubt that Europe enjoyed internal peace for the first time 
 during the greatest war history has ever known. The most 
 bitter religious, political and intellectual feuds were for- 
 gotten in the space of a few short days from end to end 
 of a continent which for three centuries had never ceased 
 to afford the world a spectacle of ever recurring conflicts. 
 This extraordinary phenomenon has been one of the 
 greatest surprises of the war. At the same time it is one 
 which readily admits of explanation. Every country 
 realized immediately that union of strength was absolutely 
 necessary, since not merely its prestige or the possession 
 of some special territory, but its very life was at stake. 
 Undoubtedly this explanation is true as far as it goes, but 
 it does not go far enough. The phenomenon is in reality 
 more complex and attributable to causes which lie deeper. 
 Reconciliation is almost always a very difficult matter when 
 it has to deal with animosities fostered and intensified by 
 long centuries of conflict; on this occasion, however, 
 it was comparatively easy, because the European War in- 
 A^olved in serious difficulties all the parties and schools of 
 thought which had striven so fiercely for the mastery in time 
 of peace. Much as each party or the adherents of each 
 
 193 
 
194) EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 school of thought would have enjoyed casting their op- 
 ponents' mistakes in their teeth, they preferred to forgive, 
 seeing that the arguments of each and every party might be 
 turned against it. 
 
 A few examples will make this clear. What Pacifist 
 would today venture to assert that universal peace is the 
 necessary result of the evolution of modern society? 
 Such Utopian theories have been carried away in a deluge 
 of blood. On the other hand, what opponent of pacifism 
 would dare to avow that when he maintained the necessity 
 of war, he had in his mind a war which knows no limits 
 whether of space, time, destruction of life and property, 
 or the unscrupulousness of its methods? If events have 
 proved the Pacifists to be in the wrong, they have so far 
 transcended the predictions of their opponents as to pre- 
 clude any possibility of triumph for the advocates of war. 
 It is of course clear that those who, at a time when Ger- 
 many was arming herself to the teeth, demanded the re- 
 duction of armaments, were mistaken; they were, how- 
 ever, right when they asserted that modern armies were 
 being developed beyond the limits set by nature to this 
 organ of the social body. It is, moreover, evident that 
 one reason why we have returned to the war of position 
 is the enormous size of modern armies and the complicated 
 nature and destructive power of their weapons. The war 
 of manoeuvre demands armies which are relatively small 
 in comparison to their field of action, can be readily moved 
 about and the range of whose weapons does not exceed a 
 certain limit. But how can a war of position, which lasts 
 for years, in an age when armies are composed of all able 
 bodied men between eighteen and fifty years of age, fail 
 to lead to a universal cataclysm? The actual outbreak 
 of the European War proved the Pacifists in the wrong, 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE NEW WORLD 195 
 
 but its course has shown them to be right in declaring 
 that Europe's vast armed hosts would not ensure her peace 
 and would make the next war an appalling social catas- 
 trophe. It must indeed be admitted that their pessimistic 
 predictions fell short of the truth, for no Pacifist ever so 
 much as dreamed of so long and terrible a conflict. 
 
 If we turn our attention to the relation between the 
 European War and the political doctrines which divided 
 Europe before the war, we shall find the same contradic- 
 tion. Germany had many admirers all over the world, 
 more especially in the upper classes, simply because she 
 represented, or seemed to represent, the principle of author- 
 ity and order. Her government was indeed, as we know 
 to our cost, the strongest in Europe, the only one perhaps 
 which did not as yet stand in awe of those whom it was 
 supposed to rule. It was able to take the initiative in this 
 war and to inflict this appalling scourge upon the world just 
 because it was so strong and could exercise such unlimited 
 authority over its people. This fact will in the eyes of 
 several generations lessen the prestige still enjoyed by 
 strong, autocratic governments. The existence of the prin- 
 ciple of order cannot be admitted in a system which brought 
 this overwhelming disaster upon the world, and, whatever 
 may have been the mistakes and weaknesses of the demo- 
 cratic and parliamentary governments of western Europe 
 — and they were only too numerous — posterity will judge 
 them leniently, since these governments would never have 
 involved the world in this war, or violated the neutrality 
 of Belgium, or waged war in so barbarous a manner. At 
 the same time the world will be forced to recognize that 
 a little more farsightedness before the war and a little more 
 rapidity, energy and intelligence in its prosecution, would 
 have been of material service to these governments. It is 
 
196 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 fairly safe to predict that all the nations concerned will 
 issue from the war more or less dissatisfied with their re- 
 spective governments, for one reason or another. Seeing, 
 however, that every civilized form of government is rep- 
 resented among the belligerent states, the European War 
 is hardly likely to furnish any decisive argument in favour 
 of any one such form; it is more likely to emphasize the 
 weak points of all the various systems which Europe has 
 created and tried in the hope of finding the one most nearly 
 approaching perfection. 
 
 The same thing applies to the much disputed subject of 
 protection and free trade. It is difficult to say which of 
 these two theories, each of which has had such ardent 
 partisans during the last century, is likely to gain by the 
 experiences of the war, which seems to prove protection 
 and free trade to be equally necessary and equally danger- 
 ous. Has it not shown conclusively that national defence 
 is impossible without the support of certain industries which 
 must consequently be artificially furthered if they fail to 
 develop naturally? It is obvious today that absolute free 
 trade would put certain European countries at the mercy 
 of others from a military point of view, but it is no 
 less clear that the increasing difficulties with which all the 
 belligerents have to cope are partly due to the hindrances 
 placed in the way of international commerce by the war. 
 Food supply difficulties have exercised great influence on 
 the course of the war and are likely to influence its out- 
 come, but these difficulties are merely the result of the sup- 
 pression of free trade. Just as absolute free trade would 
 have placed certain countries at the mercy of others, the 
 blockade, that is to say, the suppression of exchange, will 
 be one of the causes of the eventual capitulation of the 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE NEW WORLD 197 
 
 Central Empires. Even in this problem, we find ourselves 
 faced by an insoluble contradiction. 
 
 II 
 
 There would be no difficulty in finding other examples. 
 Any thoughtful man who turns his attention towards the 
 events of the present day and the discussions to which they 
 give rise, will easily find other instances to which these 
 reflections apply and understood why so many sworn foes 
 have agreed to sink their differences. The various political 
 parties suddenly found themselves face to face and with- 
 out weapons of defence. The war has had the effect of 
 a philosophic earthquake, shaking to their very founda- 
 tions the most diametrically opposed ideas or at all events 
 those which claimed to solve the most urgent problems of 
 contemporary life. It is a phenomenon unique in the his- 
 tory of the world and one which is worthy the attention 
 of all thoughtful minds not wholly absorbed by the military 
 situation, just as financiers are already turning their atten- 
 tion to the taxation and commercial treaties of the future. 
 This intellectual upheaval is indeed a far more serious 
 problem than the destruction of wealth and probably no less 
 so than the destruction of so many human lives which 
 were the hope and mainstay of Europe. This upheaval 
 will probably be the point of departure of that great crisis 
 of modern civilization of which the world war is but the 
 prologue — a crisis which promises to be universal, 
 economic, intellectual and moral. In order to realize the 
 truth of this, we have only to consider the position after 
 the conclusion of peace of the institutions, parties and 
 theories of which the war has shown the weak points and 
 
198 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 falsified the predictions. These institutions, political par- 
 ties and theories, which ruled European society with vary- 
 ing degrees of success before the war, will find themselves, 
 as it were, in an empty void, and the probable consequences 
 of such a position and the moral crisis resulting from it 
 are easily divined. Hence it is important to seek its causes. 
 How was it possible for so learned and powerful a civiliza- 
 tion to be suddenly confronted with events which falsified 
 so many of its beliefs, shattered so many of its hopes and 
 proved all it had thought and accomplished during two 
 generations to be erroneous? How could it fall into so 
 gross an error? 
 
 Ill 
 
 The answer to this question is simple. The error was 
 possible because our civilization had too many aims and, 
 by striving to attain them all at the same time, had lost the 
 power of selection. This expression may seem obscure, but 
 I will endeavour to explain it by choosing the most obvious 
 of the numerous examples which lie to hand : the way in 
 which Europe had faced and solved one of those great 
 problems which have engaged the attention of every success- 
 ive generation — the problem of peace and war. In every 
 age there have been discussions as to peace and war, their 
 nature and the part they play in the world. In every age 
 there have been men who looked upon perpetual peace as 
 the highest good and others who regarded law as the divine 
 law of life. Without entering into the discussion of this 
 subject, we may safely assert that there have been periods 
 when the principle of war has prevailed and others when 
 that of peace has been predominant ; that both have accom- 
 plished great things and that both have at a given moment 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE NEW WORLD 199 
 
 passed through a crisis determined by the development of 
 the principle which had guided them. If it be admitted 
 that each state is a sovereign will, which neither can nor 
 should recognize any limit to its liberty save the greater 
 strength of another state, the principle of war will prevail. 
 Each state will strive to be as strong as possible; it will 
 turn every citizen into a soldier; it will avoid contact with 
 other states, that is to say, with those other sovereign wills 
 which are fated to come into collision with its own will 
 m the course of time ; it will be hostile to everything which 
 tends to make the peoples of different countries expand and 
 fuse their interests : i.e., to commerce, treaties, international 
 marriages and the adoption of foreign customs. It will 
 act upon what I may call the principles of narrow national- 
 ism on which the cities of ancient times were founded; 
 the system prevalent in part of the classical world before 
 the Pax Romana. It cannot be said that this regime is in 
 Itself opposed to human nature or radically bad, when we 
 reflect how much was accomplished by ancient civilizations 
 under it, but if, on the other hand, it be admitted that each 
 state is subject to a higher law of fraternity, charity and 
 moral perfection, of which it is but the instrument, political 
 and military organization will lose much of its importance 
 and the necessity of fulfiling this higher duty will lead men 
 to fuse their interests, ideas and sentiments. We have an 
 example of this, due to the influence of Christianity, in 
 mediaeval Europe. The peoples of Europe had almost 'en- 
 tirely lost their political and military spirit: they were no 
 longer capable of organizing a great state ; their wars, which 
 occupy so large a place in our modern histories, were mere 
 child's play, since they did not know how to raise even a 
 small army and had lost the art of strategy. The intellect- 
 ual and moral frontiers between nations had vanished and 
 
200 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 given place to a cosmopolitanism of which Latin was the 
 official language. The disadvantages of cosmopolitanism 
 were indoubtedly great, but here again the system cannot 
 be condemned as in itself opposed to human nature or 
 radically bad. The Middle Ages were amongst the greatest 
 periods in the history of Europe — a period to which we are 
 immensely indebted. It gradually populated countries 
 which the upheavals following the fall of the Roman Empire 
 had depopulated ; it brought many barbarians under the in- 
 fluence of civilization; it brought forth marvellous arts — 
 architecture, for instance. Moreover, it was under this 
 regime of political cosmopolitanism that Europe began that 
 magnificent work of exploration which has made the whole 
 world ours. 
 
 It is therefore clear that man can live under either a 
 national or a cosmopolitan regime and neither will prevent 
 his contributing his quota to that great and mysterious task 
 of history whose purpose we vainly seek to read. Both sys- 
 tems have their weak points and drawbacks ; like all things 
 human, they have their limits and at some given time they 
 become exhausted; they may, however, none the less be of 
 service to what we somewhat vaguely term the progress of 
 the world, provided that man makes a definite choice between 
 them and accepts all their inevitable disadvantages. The 
 inhabitants of classical cities did not aspire to the advantages 
 of cosmopolitanism, just as the peoples of the Middle Ages 
 resigned themselves to the drawbacks of political dismem- 
 berment and disarmament. The weakness of the individual 
 state was an essential condition of the cosmopolitanism of 
 the Middle Ages, just as the spirit of exclusion was an 
 essential condition of Sparta and Rome. Where our age 
 has failed is in its inability to choose between two principles 
 and two systems. By developing to the utmost a movement 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE NEW WORLD 201 
 
 which began in the seventeenth century, it has confused 
 these two distinct principles, just as if it were possible for 
 them to develop side by side without the time ever coming 
 when one of them would say to the other : " Thus far and 
 no farther," thus making a choice absolutely unavoidable. 
 It had apparently adopted the principle of peace. The vari- 
 ous states of Europe, large and small alike, had made end- 
 less treaties and agreements. They had all allowed for- 
 eigners to reside, move about freely, own property, engage 
 in commerce and marry within their borders. They had 
 done everything in their power to encourage the exchange 
 of capital, merchandise, ideas, discoveries and tastes. We 
 had ceased to possess an international language like Latin, 
 but there was more study of languages, and important books 
 were translated into all the leading languages. Interna- 
 tionalism was ostentatiously advocated by certain political 
 parties and an international organization of interests had 
 come into existence which was to a certain extent the neces- 
 sary condition of the interior well-being of each nation. 
 The Great Powers of Europe had moreover recognized of- 
 ficially, though with varying degrees of good faith, the 
 maintenance of peace as the end and object of their policy — ~ 
 an aim to which everything else was to be subordinate. Our 
 age had indeed created a cosmopolitanism which in certain 
 respects recalled the Middle Ages. The logical consequence 
 was that the opposite principle of war should have been so 
 limited that wars endangering this international order, this 
 comity of nations, by their length, their extent or their dura- 
 tion would be absolutely impossible. This was not the case. 
 A political organization of the Great Powers, recalling in 
 many ways the nationalism and belligerent spirit of the cities 
 of ancient times, but on a far vaster scale, was grafted on 
 to this cosmopolitanism. The Great European Powers for 
 
202 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 various reasons vied with each other in the increase of arma- 
 ments such as the world had never seen — armaments which 
 turned war into a duel a outrance, just as in the days when 
 each state looked upon each of its neighbours as an enemy. 
 In almost every country national pride, suspicion or hatred 
 of neighbouring peoples, the spirit of jealousy and rivalry, 
 the desire to be the first in everything were all sedulously 
 fostered, just as though we were living in a perpetual state 
 of war. In the most powerful military empire of Europe 
 we have even seen the development of a school enjoying 
 official protection, which preached to an unprotesting world 
 the doctrine of war knowing neither law nor limit, contempt 
 for treaties, the divine nature of force and the uselessness 
 of the rights of civilians. This school, intoxicated by 
 official protection and the admiration of the world, ended by 
 making Germany ready to make war upon the most highly 
 civilized nations of Europe, her best customers and most 
 sincere admirers, with the ferocity of African savages be- 
 fore they came under European rule. It is no exaggeration 
 to say that the nationalism grafted by Europe on to the in- 
 terests and aspirations of cosmopolitanism was far bolder 
 and far more dangerous than the nationalism of the ancient 
 world, which did at all events recognize the sanctity of 
 treaties. A treaty was a sacred thing, placed under the pro- 
 tection of the divinity, and binding the contracting parties 
 unconditionally. A state which desired to violate a treaty 
 had to try and prove that it was really being true to it, since 
 it would have been an unheard of thing for it to declare that 
 it no longer intended to carry it out because it no longer 
 served its purposes, a theory which it was reserved for twen- 
 tieth century Europe to teach in its universities — a theory 
 evolved in Germany, of course, but received favourably even 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE NEW WORLD 203 
 
 in the universities of those countries which are now fighting 
 against her. 
 
 IV 
 
 It is obvious enough today that if peace and war be two 
 natural conditions of human nature, we have, by our unwise 
 confusion of the principles of peace and war, invented a 
 liigh explosive which has ended by destroying Europe. 
 Europe had, however, gradually become so used to this 
 unique and paradoxical situation that she looked upon it as 
 quite natural. The various efforts made to rouse her to 
 a realization of her imminent peril all failed. This illusion 
 was after all but a special instance of a more universal 
 illusion to which our civilization fell victim, which was the 
 foundation of our whole mode of thought and of our con- 
 ception of the world, and will probably be looked upon by 
 our grandchildren as positively childish: i. e., the illusion 
 that man can have anything in the world without its corre- 
 sponding drawbacks — the advantages of war and the bene- 
 fits of peace ; both power and perfection, both quantity and 
 quality, both speed and beauty. Our age is the most learned 
 which the world has ever seen, but, in spite of its immense 
 learning, it had contrived to forget one very simple truth 
 which far more ignorant peoples have borne in mind : that 
 the good things of this world are so intimately interrelated 
 that it is impossible to enjoy them all at the same time for 
 an indefinite period. A moment invariably comes when 
 one becomes the limit of the other and a choice must be 
 made between them. This simple truth, of which we lost 
 sight in our quest of power and riches, is the key to the 
 whole of the vast tragedy which the world finds so hard to 
 understand. The contradiction between the two principles 
 
204. EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 of peace and war which we have studied has not been the 
 only error into which our age has fallen. But for the limi- 
 tations of space, we might analyse in like manner the anti- 
 thesis between the other principles of which we have spoken : 
 liberty and authority, tradition and progress, ethics and eco- 
 nomic interests. We should find everywhere, when compar- 
 ing our age with its predecessors, the same phenomenon : 
 the attempt to reconcile two irreconcilable principles instead 
 of assigning definite limits to each and then choosing be- 
 tween them. Our epoch, which was the first to attempt this 
 compromise, has done so in every sphere : in politics, ethics, 
 law, and even in art. Those who deplore the decadence of 
 art in the modern world are constantly told that no other 
 age has so striven to understand and appreciate the most 
 widely different schools, styles and artists. The remark 
 itself is true enough, but the conclusion drawn from it is 
 not equally so, since this endeavour to admire everything 
 results from an inability to make a definite choice peculiar 
 to our day. The ages which gave birth to the greatest works 
 of art were limited in their tastes. When artistic taste com- 
 prehends so many different styles, it becomes feeble and 
 superficial and ends in becoming mere dilettantism which 
 weakens the creative power of the artist when he has not 
 the strength to rise above the caprices of fashion. The 
 effects of this inability to choose are, however, nothing like 
 as injurious to art as to law, politics and ethics. The en- 
 feeblement of governments, their inconsistencies, the irri- 
 tability and uncertainty of public opinion in every country, 
 the short-sighted fatalism prevalent before the war, the in- 
 toxication of public opinion in Germany, are one and all the 
 offspring of this intellectual and moral confusion. When 
 an age ceases to be governed by clear and definite principles, 
 its actions will be either slow and uncertain or violent and 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE NEW WORLD 205 
 
 passionate, and Europe before the war was in both these 
 frames of mind. A nation which was a prey to diaboHc 
 pride, unlimited greed, unbounded confidence in its own 
 strength and superiority, was surrounded by vacillating, per- 
 plexed peoples, conscious of their own weakness and of the 
 peril threatening them, but unable to do anything to avert 
 the dreaded catastrophe and even, from time to time, de- 
 ceiving themselves into thinking that the frenzy of their 
 dangerous neighbour could be held in check by smiles and 
 concessions. The intellectual and moral confusion, which 
 dominated our epoch and made a course of action having 
 definite aims and dictated by definite principles an im- 
 possibility, had brought about two opposite results : an ever 
 increasing frenzy in Germany and an ever increasing dis- 
 quietude in every other country, and it was inevitable that 
 this frenzy should one day break out openly in central 
 Europe and claim as its victims the perplexed peoples of 
 the neighbouring lands. 
 
 V 
 
 How could such an enlightened epoch as our own cherish 
 the delusion that it is possible to possess everything at the 
 same time? What part was played in the great drama of 
 modern history by that inability to choose which resulted 
 from this illusion and is characteristic of our age? Here 
 we ha-ve the great problem which Europe must face once 
 more and endeavour to solve definitely after the war, when 
 so many institutions and theories which seemed founded 
 upon the rock will prove to have been built upon the sand. I 
 said that Europe must face this problem once more and en- 
 deavour to solve it definitely, because it has been continually 
 discussed under the most varied forms during the last cen- 
 tury. The two solutions found seem, however, to have been 
 
206 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 mere makeshifts, since one of them regarded this confusion 
 merely as an aberration of minds led astray by pride and 
 false doctrine, while the other looked upon it as a higher 
 condition, a kind of perfection attained at last by part of 
 the human race. The time has perhaps come when man 
 will more readily realize the inadequacy of both these solu- 
 tions. It is not difficult to prove that, far from being a 
 mere collective aberration, this confusion was the condition 
 of an immense effort made by the two last centuries. It 
 must not be forgotten, if we would understand the modern 
 world and its crises, that Europe has for two hundred years 
 been engaged upon two gigantic tasks without precedent in 
 history. She has been striving to organize society and the 
 state on wholly new principles, such as the will of the people, 
 liberty, the concept of progress, nationality and its rights, 
 and she was at the same time endeavouring to populate the 
 whole earth and turn it to account with the help of marvel- 
 lous instruments, thus making the whole world one. In 
 order to succeed in both these tasks she had to stimulate 
 the energy, initiative, activity and capacity for work of 
 every class, — an unceasing effort which has been consider- 
 ably furthered by the illusion that man can have all the good 
 things of this world at the same time, and by the mental 
 fog which leads him to confuse beauty and ugliness, good 
 and evil, truth and error. Men and ages alike, when aiming 
 at rapid and continual success, are fond of imagining them- 
 selves omnipotent and are unwilling to be hampered by 
 definite ethical, logical or aesthetic principles, which, while 
 sure rules of conduct, are also definite limitations. A civil-, 
 ization which aimed at the rapid creation of wealth, insti- 
 tutions, conceptions, theories, machinery and new nations, 
 was bound to hate all modes of thought and all laws which 
 would have hampered it and to adopt standards sufficiently 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE NEW WORLD 207 
 
 flexible to approve as good and beautiful everything which 
 favoured its many and varied interests. 
 
 This confusion, which has been considered a mere aberra- 
 tion, was therefore the essential condition of what we have 
 rightly or wrongly called the progress of our age. Must we 
 then conclude that those who regarded this confusion as a 
 state of perfection were in the right? In default of other 
 reasons, the crisis of so many institutions and opposing doc- 
 trines, which began with the European War, would be 
 enough to make us doubt it. If the principles of authority 
 and liberty, of pacifism and militarism, of nationalism and 
 cosmopolitanism, have all alike been affected by the war, it 
 would be absurd to conclude that they are all alike false and 
 that they must one and all disappear. They are all prin- 
 ciples which have ruled human society and it is obvious 
 that they must continue to do so, since it is impossible to con- 
 ceive of a state not dominated by one or other of them. 
 What else is then proved by this universal crisis of necessary 
 institutions and doctrines but that we must no longer strive 
 to reconcile and blend opposing principles as we have hith- 
 erto done ; that we must no longer desire peace and prepare 
 for war at the same time, multiply the prerogatives of the 
 state and diminish its authority and its prestige, worship 
 both right and force and confuse success with perfection? 
 
 VI 
 
 We see then that there are numerous indications that the 
 time is approaching when Europe will have to choose one 
 of the various principles which she had confounded. If this 
 be the case, we can also see what a tremendous intellectual 
 task will fall to the lot of the new world, which will have to 
 substitute systems of philosophy, ethics, politics, law and 
 
208 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 religion, schools of art and learning whose aim it will be to 
 distinguish between opposing principles from those which 
 endeavoured to reconcile and fuse them — an attempt to 
 which they owe the success which they have enjoyed during 
 the last half century. Thus stated, the change seems simple 
 enough, but those who have to initiate it will soon realize 
 that it involves a far reaching intellectual revolution. The 
 whole question of German versus Latin culture, which has 
 been the subject of such heated discussions since 19 14, con- 
 tains in itself a dim presentiment of the necessity and diffi- 
 culty of this intellectual revolution. Since that fateful date 
 there has been one continual protest against the supremacy 
 of the obscure and ill-balanced Teutonic genius over the 
 lucid and harmonious Latin genius. How was it possible 
 to prefer obscurity and complication to lucidity and simplic- 
 ity? Why was the brilliant Latin genius dimmed by the 
 fogs borne by the north wind from the forests of Germany ? 
 Surely this state of things must come to an end. On all 
 hands it is admitted that the Latin and the Germanic genius 
 are irreconcilably opposed. What is the meaning of all 
 these protests and recriminations? 
 
 What has already been said, and a careful comparison of 
 modern civilization with the civilizations of ancient times 
 will help us again here. The lucidity of the Latin genius 
 is merely the endeavour to define principles exactly, to pre- 
 vent their being confused with one another, and conse- 
 quently to lay down accurate and certain laws. German 
 obscurity, which has so frequently been taken for depth, is 
 the attempt to confound principles by weakening the force 
 of laws. In philosophy, law, ethics, history, in every 
 branch of learning indeed, the German mind has, more 
 especially during the last two centuries, steadily confounded 
 principles and definitions, demolished traditions, confused 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE NEW WORLD 209 
 
 good and evil, the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the 
 false, in order to give a freer rein to passions and interests. 
 The moral and intellectual confusion of our age is not 
 wholly the work of the German mind; other peoples, even 
 the Latin races themselves, have helped to bring it about, 
 but there can be no doubt that the German mind has accom- 
 plished more in this direction than any other, and it is just 
 because it has been, often under the cloak of liberty, the most 
 determined and energetic factor in this untold disorder, that 
 in spite of or, it may be, on account of its faults, it has con- 
 trived to obtain the pre-eminence in the modern world. It 
 appealed to the tendencies of an age which would submit to 
 no discipline but that imposed by work and the state and 
 aspired in everything else, in art and private morals, in 
 religion and family life, in business and pleasure alike, to 
 an ever increasing measure of liberty. Even obscurity of 
 form had become a virtue, since it served to conceal the in- 
 coherence of contradictory doctrines, Kant, one of the 
 most involved writers of any age or country, was the most 
 highly esteemed philosopher of the nineteenth century : why? 
 Because contradiction was the very essence of his system.' 
 His materialistic spirituality, his absolute relativism, his 
 theistic atheism, his free determinism, were admirably suited 
 to a period which thought it did well to admit all principles, 
 even to the most contradictory, so as to make use of them 
 all. Obscurity was a valuable quality to a system which 
 was based upon contradiction. H Kant had written like 
 St. Thomas Aquinas or Descartes, the world would perforce 
 have seen all those contradictions which he was anxious to 
 conceal from it. 
 
 The hatred of Germanism which is now prevalent leads 
 us then to the same conclusion as the examination of the 
 position of political parties and doctrines at the close of the 
 
glO EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 war. We must strive to emerge from the intellectual and 
 moral confusion by which we were surrounded when the 
 war broke out, and if we are to do so, we must make a 
 great intellectual effort in the direction indicated by our 
 analysis of this confusion. We must induce coming gen- 
 erations to aim rather less at power and rather more at 
 perfection; we must teach the mind to find enjoyment once 
 more in lucidity of thought and simplicity of sentiment; we 
 must familiarize man in a world grown so wide, and a 
 civilization become so powerful, with the idea of the impass- 
 able limits of truth, beauty, virtue, reason and power, which 
 men understood so readily when they were weaker and more 
 ignorant; we must discover scholars, artists, writers and 
 philosophers endowed with not only the intelligence but also 
 the moral force necessary for the accomplishment of this 
 task. Will Europe be equal to this effort? The future 
 alone can tell. It would seem, however, as if not only the 
 possibility of a lasting peace, but the very existence of the 
 older civilized peoples depended on this transformation. 
 We have always felt somewhat out of place amid this 
 confusion, which was only suited to nations, which, like the 
 German peoples, were subject to fits of passion and attacks 
 of collective madness. Of this the present crisis affords a 
 proof. The governments of the nations now arrayed 
 against Germany and Austria have frequently been re- 
 proached for their lack of military preparedness. It is, 
 however, beyond question that this unpreparedness, at least 
 in so far as France, Great Britain and Italy are concerned, 
 was not due merely to lack of foresight on the part of their 
 respective governments. We allowed ourselves to be out- 
 distanced by Germany in the race for armaments partly be- 
 cause we realized that this race was madness and that the 
 exaggeration of the system was making it absurd. Not 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE NEW WORLD Sll 
 
 being blinded, like the German people, by pride, covetous- 
 ness and ambition, we shrank from developing a system 
 whose excesses, complications, difficulties, untold sacrifices 
 and dangers were more or less clearly perceived by all 
 nations. We were wrong, of course, and we are now ex- 
 piating our mistake. This expiation will not, however, 
 render reasoning nations better able to play their part in a 
 world dominated by the absurd and its train of attendant 
 passions. It is therefore a matter of life and death for us 
 to lead the policy and institutions of Europe back to more 
 humane and logical conceptions than those prevalent dur- 
 ing the last half century, since in a world ruled by passions 
 and theories carried to extreme, those of us who are rea- 
 sonable beings will always be at a disadvantage and will 
 end by becoming the victims of the madman and the tur- 
 bulent. It is above all for this reason that we must do 
 everything in our power to bring the war to a victorious 
 end. We shall not deliver Europe from the insanity of 
 which she all but died unless we succeed in defeating that 
 army which is the master-piece of that rabid spirit to which 
 Europe has been forced to submit for the last forty years — 
 a spirit which she had even come to admire from time 
 to time. This is the task of the soldiers of whom we think 
 with such tenderness and with the hope that they may ac- 
 complish it ere long and with such a meed of success that 
 their sacrifices may not be in vain. When, however, their 
 work is finished, the task of scholars, philosophers and law- 
 yers will begin and we must only hope that their patience, 
 tenacity and self-sacrifice will prove worthy of the soldiers 
 who are preparing the way for better times — times in which 
 Europe, far removed from the perils which menace her on 
 every hand today, may live in peace and safety in the light 
 of newer and loftier conceptions. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 The Great Contradiction 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION 
 
 When we consider the present state of things in Europe, 
 we invariably find ourselves confronted by the question — 
 a question as persistent as the importunate widow, a ques- 
 tion which has never yet been satisfactorily answered — 
 How is it that an epoch so concentrated on the increase of 
 wealth, the greater security of life and the establishment 
 of the universal rule of reason could prepare, will and wage 
 this appalling conflict? We will make one more attempt 
 to find the answer to this poignant and ever recurring ques- 
 tion. 
 
 I 
 
 PATRIOTISM AND PROGRESS 
 
 The old proverb tells us that " it is an ill wind that blows 
 nobody good," and even in the terrible calamities of the 
 world war we may find some ground for encouragement. 
 It was commonly supposed that if a European war ever 
 broke out, and reason and compassion failed to do their 
 work, egotism would issue the order to lay down arms. 
 It was further alleged that in every grade of society men 
 had been too long accustomed to an easy and safe existence 
 to endure the ruin and privation of a universal war. We 
 were told that revolution would be the inevitable result 
 if the war lasted more than three months. Our century 
 was credited with the spirit of self-sacrifice and abnega- 
 tion for a few weeks at most. The General Staffs of 
 Europe recognized self-interest as their sovereign and de- 
 clared that they would never go to war except in obedience 
 to his orders. When the history of the Great War comes 
 
 215 
 
gl6 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 to be written, it will be seen that almost all the blunders and 
 cruelties of its early days were due to haste. The rulers 
 who had willed the great adventure set out with the fixed 
 idea that the campaign must be finished quickly because no 
 nation would stand a long ordeal. Here, however, we did 
 ourselves scant justice. None of these prophecies has been 
 fulfilled. In July, 19 14, the dissensions which had so long 
 troubled Europe seemed to take on a fresh lease of life. 
 Civil war appeared imminent in Ireland. In France the 
 two parties which had for centuries been at loggerheads, 
 had flown at each other's throats in the confined area of 
 the law courts. In Italy there had been a sort of dress re- 
 hearsal of revolution. In Russia millions of workmen 
 had gone on strike. In Austria each of the many races 
 of which the Empire is composed was endeavouring to 
 shift the blame for the assassination at Sarajevo on to the 
 shoulders of its neighbours. But in the forty-eight hours 
 from July 30th to August ist, when it became apparent 
 that war was inevitable, all these dissensions were laid 
 aside. Even France, the country whose geographical posi- 
 tion and history alike have made it the storm centre of 
 Europe for centuries — the land in which the struggle be- 
 tween Teutonism and Latinism, Protestantism and Catholi- 
 cism, authority and liberty, the principle of quantity and the 
 principle of quality have never ceased — had but one heart 
 and one soul, perhaps for the first time since the days of 
 Julius Caesar. Not only did political and religious discords 
 cease, but the mutual recriminations of riches and poverty 
 also came to an end. Socialism betook itself to the near- 
 est barracks and donned its uniform as meekly as a young 
 conscript fresh from his native village. Moreover, today, 
 after more than three years of war in which millions of 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION 217 
 
 men have been killed and wounded, untold wealth destroyed, 
 and the whole order of things we had known for so many- 
 years demolished, not one of the belligerent nations has 
 uttered a cry for mercy. History had never subjected such 
 an immense number of men to such an ordeal and the great 
 ordeal has been so magnificently borne as to be almost 
 miraculous. But each of the so-called miracles of history 
 is a slow process accomplished secretly by time and sud- 
 denly revealed to man in its completed state. We find 
 the explanation of this miracle, too, in the revolutionary 
 changes which began in Europe after the discovery of 
 America to which we have so often turned for the key to 
 the calamities of the present day changes, which by giving 
 a fresh aim to existence, gradually rendered the world more 
 uniform and hence more harmonious. It is of course 
 obvious that modern civilization is more uniform than its 
 predecessors; for proof of this assertion we only have to 
 compare Europe and America, and the most ancient lands 
 of Europe with its more modern countries. Most people, 
 however, fail to realize clearly that this difference too results 
 from the transition from ancient qualitative civilization to 
 its modern quantitative successor. The man who aims at 
 perfection must of necessity work in limited sphere; he 
 must, that is to say, choose one of the innumerable types 
 of perfection with which he is confronted, without, how- 
 ever, concentrating all his powers of soul and intellect 
 upon it or ignoring or rejecting all the rest, for there is 
 no surer way of being mediocre in everything than to aim 
 at too many different types of perfection. Variety, isola- 
 tion and discord are consequently the very essence of all 
 qualitative civilization, which aims at one or more types 
 of perfection : hence the countless religious, artistic, literary. 
 
218 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 moral and political struggles which rent the world asunder 
 in times past. At the present day the only violent struggles 
 are those between races and languages, where one race is 
 governed by another which wishes to force it into allegi- 
 ance to an alien people and tongue. The other struggles 
 — religious, artistic, literary, moral and political — have 
 for the last fifty years been gradually growing feebler in 
 both Europe and America. What is the reason of this 
 change ? It is because in proportion as quantity dominates 
 the world and man chooses the conquest of the earth as his 
 aim rather than beauty, glory, heroism, honour, and holi- 
 ness, the differences which in time gone by aroused such 
 bitter hatred and caused so many wars gradually lose their 
 force and finally vanish altogether. Europe still numbers 
 among her inhabitants Catholics and Protestants, laymen 
 and clergy, the proletariat, the middle classes and the 
 nobility, the learned and the ignorant, romanticists and 
 classicists, conservatives and liberals, monarchists and 
 republicans, but the men of the present day hardly notice 
 these differences when they are labouring together to con- 
 quer the wealth of the world, — an enterprise in which noth- 
 ing counts but skill, zeal and activity. An artisan, an em- 
 ploye, an engineer or an official is estimated according 
 to what he can do, not according to the religion he happens 
 to profess. The upper classes may still have more refine- 
 ment of manner, but the middle classes are richly endowed 
 with the energy which the world holds of more account 
 than manners, because it is of more service. The proletariat 
 may be coarse and ignorant, but does that give the upper 
 classes any right to look down upon them? If the masses 
 did not work hard and spend their wages freely; if they 
 were content, as in the good old times, to earn little and 
 live poorly provided they had not to work too long, would 
 
JHE GREAT CONTRADICTION 219 
 
 not the upper classes be impoverished? It is not difficult 
 for the rich to show human sympathy for the masses in aiv 
 era when they can love themselves in them. Literature 
 has ceased to be a laborious striving after a high and envied 
 degree of perfection and has become but a pastime or a 
 weapon in the latest political and social struggles which 
 rend the world asunder: provided that it fulfils these two 
 purposes, one school or one style is the same as another 
 to an eclectic and changeable public which has lost the 
 very idea of the standards of perfection at which literature 
 was wont to aim in times past. Monarchy and republic 
 are two forms of government based upon different prin- 
 ciples; but who has either time or leisure to fight for or 
 against either of these principles in a century whose one 
 object is to increase the wealth of the world? Republics, 
 kingdoms and empires alike strive to enrich their respective 
 peoples. It is therefore the part of wisdom to make the 
 best of the existing regime. The last republicans will re- 
 sign themselves to living in a monarchy and the last 
 monarchists to living in a republic. Hence for the last 
 century, during which man has devoted himself with grow- 
 ing enthusiasm to the conquest of the earth to the neglect 
 of every other enterprise and ambition, every nation of 
 Europe and America has become a more or less homo- 
 geneous mass, in which the struggles between opposing re- 
 ligious, moral and aesthetic principles characteristic of pre- 
 ceding civilizations, and even differences of religion, class 
 and race have become obliterated and the spirit of isola- 
 tion and discord has gradually grown weaker. This ac- 
 counts for the accusations of materialism and of indiffer- 
 ence to everything but wealth so frequently brought against 
 our age — accusations which are, however, unmerited, since 
 there are two mystic ideas which pervade the homo- 
 
no EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 geneous mass of modern nations and insure their coherence: 
 patriotism and progress, — both very simple ideas or at all 
 events ideas which can be simplified to such a degree as to 
 bring them within the comprehension of even the most 
 ignorant. Both are somewhat vague, by which I mean 
 that they are more apt to excite than to restrain the dominant 
 passions of the epoch and more especially the pride which 
 plays such a prominent part among the sentiments actuating 
 our century. The idea of progress is, as I have already 
 pointed out, both contradictory and incoherent. Both 
 these ideas may be regarded as mystic and transcendant, 
 because they force man to sacrifice his egotism — today 
 his pleasure, tomorrow his liberty, his most cherished 
 opinions, his possessions and sometimes even his life to 
 something which transcends them all — something invisible, 
 something surrounded with the halo of a sacred mystery. 
 Even if up to August ist, 19 14, man toiled from morning 
 to night to increase the wealth of the world, did he enjoy 
 the fruits of his toil? Why do we bear so many burdens 
 — unceasing hard work, military service for a term of 
 several years, the perpetual danger of war, innumerable 
 taxes and countless civic duties — unless it be to further 
 this ill-defined progress whose meaning we hardly under- 
 stand and to create wealth which is more often than not a 
 burden and a source of anxiety? This epoch, which is sup- 
 posed to be so practical, is on the contrary mystical to the 
 last degree, and that nation which is apparently the most 
 practical of all, the American people, is the most mystical, 
 since it more than any other strives to create wealth of which 
 it has the least enjoyment! 
 
 Do not let us be unjust to our epoch if we would under- 
 stand the European War and find an explanation of its 
 surprises. The sudden concord between the citizens of all 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION 2^1 
 
 the nations of Europe, the spirit of sacrifice of which they 
 have given proof, are no inexplicable miracle. Europe 
 desired peace, but when she saw the German menace, she 
 met German concord with her own concord; she was able 
 to put aside in a few days all religious and political dissen- 
 sions, because they had for long been growing weaker and 
 because the spirit of patriotism had spread in even the least 
 homogeneous of nations. The fact that Germany had given 
 the example made it easier for the various governments to 
 obtain the ready consent of the whole people to every sacri- 
 fice, and they were thus enabled, with the help of the power- 
 ful means at the disposal of the modem state, to take posses- 
 sion of both body and soul of their respective nations to 
 such a degree as to make any subsequent repentance both 
 useless and impossible. We see every nation bearing the 
 unspeakable sacrifices of war with the utmost patience, 
 either because in every nation, and more especially in those 
 composed of a single race speaking the same language, the 
 spirit of patriotism has pervaded even the most ignorant 
 classes; or because they have pledged themselves to their 
 Allies to fight to the bitter end, so that none can now draw 
 back; the aggressors as a matter of honour and for fear 
 of the reprisals they so well deserve and the victims from 
 the necessity of defending themselves and the thirst for 
 vengeance. 
 
 We thus find ourselves brought to the happiest of con- 
 clusions. We have really been bom in the Golden Age 
 of legend and poetry! The doctrine of progress cannot 
 deceive us, even if we cannot define it accurately! The 
 world is really on the path of progress, since we possess 
 all this world's goods — wealth, power, learning, concord 
 and the spirit of sacrifice ; since we are capable of living 
 in peace and yet know how to make war. The century 
 
22a EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 which we reproached with materiaUsm, concealed un- 
 suspected treasures of heroisrn. 
 
 II 
 
 THE TWO SIDES OF PROGRESS 
 
 This conclusion is, however, too optimistic and too hasty. 
 The doctrine of progress in which we have hitherto believed 
 was ambiguous if not actually false, and its ambiguity has 
 involved us in the present crisis. When I was travelling 
 in America and comparing that continent with the classical 
 world which had for so many years been my spiritual home ; 
 when I was subjecting the innumerable contradictions in- 
 herent in our idea of progress to the searchlight of analysis, 
 and gazing at the world half sadly as it struggled and strove 
 for something newer and better without really knowing 
 what, I had never for a moment imagined that within a 
 few short years one of these contradictions would bring 
 about such a catastrophe. The student who would trace 
 the causes of the European War back to their remotest 
 origin, passing in review one by one the intrigues of diplo- 
 matists, the sinister plans of General Staffs, the ambitions of 
 governments, the jealousies of nations, the agitations of the 
 press, the random utterances of paid philosophers, the 
 rivalries of industry and commerce, the turmoils of decadent 
 empires, the sufferings of oppressed peoples, the pride, 
 ambition and dreams of the German nation and its tendency 
 to overshoot the mark, will find himself led step by step 
 to one of the numerous contradictions in the midst of which 
 we have lived for the last century — the great contradiction 
 from which we have never succeeded in liberating our- 
 selves — the mania for increasing the power of man with- 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION 223 
 
 out troubling to distinguish between the creative and the 
 destructive power. .When science made some new dis- 
 covery, when industry constructed some more rapid and 
 powerful machine, when we coimted our riches and found 
 that they had increased, we were convinced that the world 
 was progressing. Had our century not undertaken to con- 
 quer the whole earth with the help of fire and science? 
 Was not every step which brought us nearer this goal to be 
 regarded as progress ? Europe and America had therefore 
 advanced by abandoning the old time coaches for trains 
 and sailing boats for steamers; by inventing the telegraph, 
 the telephone, the motorcar, the aeroplane and the dirigible ; 
 by acquiring the knowledge and the means enabling it to 
 pierce the Isthmus of Panama; by constructing reaping, 
 threshing, measuring, ploughing and sewing machines and 
 other machines for making shoes, driving in nails, and per- 
 forming at lightning speed many other operations for which 
 for centuries man had no other apparatus than his hand. 
 
 Nor is this all. Our era, consistently with its own defini- 
 tion of progress, extolled activity, discipline, obedience, 
 courage, energy, initiative, ambition and self-confidence as 
 the noblest of virtues; its heroes were self-made men, 
 fortunate or unfortunate inventors, pioneers of every sort 
 of aspiration, leaders of revolutionary movements in art, 
 industry, religion, banking, fashion and politics. Our epoch, 
 however, has not confined itself to constructing railways, 
 ships, ploughs and threshing machines; it has not merely 
 discovered marvellous remedies, and how to make electricity 
 produce a brilliant light, and learned to talk and write across 
 space; it has also manufactured rifles, guns, ironclads, and 
 explosives a hundred times more powerful and more deadly 
 than those known to our fathers and grandfathers. It 
 enlarged and beautified schools, hospitals and libraries; but 
 
224< EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 with what appalling weapons it has furnished the greatest 
 armies the world has ever seen ! Are we to be equally proud 
 of both these types of progress? It is a difficult question 
 to answer. If we answer it in the affirmative, we were 
 virtually adopting Hegelianism, venerating destruction as 
 much as creation and worshipping God and the devil on the 
 same altar — a view revolting to an epoch which believed 
 in the goodness of human nature and strove so hard to in- 
 crease the wealth of the world. If, however, we answer 
 it in the negative, universal disarmament, the dethronement 
 of the monarchies at the head of the present armies, the 
 reconstruction of the map of Europe and a far-reaching 
 change in the spirit of the modern state should necessarily 
 have followed. For such sweeping changes Europe had not 
 the courage. She took refuge in ambiguity and a definition 
 of progress sufficiently vague to cover both peace and war, 
 justice and violence, life and death, steam ploughs and 
 Lewis guns, Pasteur serum and melinite. She shrank from 
 saying definitely whether the same meed of admiration was 
 to be accorded to audacity, courage, self-sacrifice, initiative 
 and perseverance when displayed in wars of aggression as 
 when employed in the struggle against nature. She has 
 always halted between two opinions. The century de- 
 manded peace, but its teaching was received with such ironic 
 smiles by so many soldiers, philosophers and politicians that 
 it lost heart, and the century which had dared so much did 
 not venture even to repeat what St. Thomas Aquinas boldly 
 affirmed amid the barbarism of the Middle Ages — that 
 war is only justifiable when waged in a good cause and 
 without evil intention. 
 
 Thus the day dawned when Germany set Europe ablaze. 
 She dared this crime just because she had brought to greater 
 perfection than any other nation this very conception of 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION 225 
 
 progress which reconciles the idea of destruction with that 
 of creation by affirming boldly that a people must strive 
 to be great in peace and war alike, and that it is no less 
 meritorious and glorious for it to force other nations to sub- 
 mit to its will than for it to conquer nature and wrest her 
 secrets from her. The victories of 1866 and 1870, the 
 development of her industries, the increase of both her 
 population and her wealth, the lack of feeling for humanity 
 and of sense of proportion characteristic of the German 
 mentality, the wave of overweening pride, ambition and 
 cupidity which has swept over Germany during the last few 
 years explain how she has been able to reconcile two such 
 contradictory principles in her hybrid definition of 
 progress; how she could manufacture instruments of life and 
 death without apparently any feeling of incongruity, build 
 factories and barracks, merchant ships and ironclads; how 
 she could at one and the same time be a vast factory and 
 a vast entrenched camp, by regarding progress as a two- 
 faced deity, inciting men to become at once wealthier and 
 more redoubtable, more learned and more cruel, more in- 
 dustrious and more violent. Then, when she had reached 
 the very zenith of prosperity and power, she thought she 
 had also reached the apex of strength and challenged three 
 great nations to a deadly combat, and the great butchery 
 began — that butchery whose end cannot be foreseen, since 
 this war differs from all previous struggles in that it knows 
 no limits whether of space, time or form. 
 
 Ill 
 
 K RUTHLESS WAR 
 
 In all preceding wars, even in that of 1870, only part 
 of the nation was engaged — that young, vigorous sec- 
 
2£6 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 tion which was already trained in the use of arms. The 
 forces on which each nation could count were limited and 
 wars were consequently short, violent and decisive. In the 
 present war several of the great belligerent nations have 
 ceased to take into account either age, weakness, lack of 
 training or family circumstances: every man capable of 
 learning in a few weeks how to handle a gun is pressed 
 into the service. It may indeed truthfully be said that even 
 women and old men have been mobilized, since those who 
 are not actually fighting are taking the place of those on 
 active service in all kinds of civil employment, caring for 
 the wounded and helping families whose heads are away. 
 One almost wonders whether the war will not be brought 
 to an end by beardless lads and white-haired men. The 
 participation of all Europe in the wars of the French Revo- 
 lution and the Empire had appeared something at once 
 tremendous and unheard of: this time Europe, the whole 
 of North America and many of the South American States, 
 British India, China, Japan, Siam, a large part of Africa 
 and all the British overseas dominions are involved — 
 practically the whole civilized world. When the war broke 
 out, we all thought it could not possibly last more than a 
 few months; forty months have elapsed and, unless some 
 miracle happens, there seems nothing to prevent its dragging 
 on for many another weary month. Although it is certain 
 that the Great War must come to an end some day, like 
 everything else In the world, and it is not unlikely that the 
 end may be sudden, we can as yet catch no glimpse of the 
 bound set to this fresh instance of human folly; nor do 
 we see any signs of a limit to the ruthlessness of those 
 of the belligerents who apparently propose to wage warfare 
 with no regard to the dictates of laws, conventions or prin- 
 ciples of compassion and humanity. 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION 227 
 
 Even legend has no records of such a struggle — a 
 struggle involving such hosts of combatants, such pro- 
 longed battles, such wholesale destruction of life and prop- 
 erty, such arousing of the fiercest passions of mankind. 
 Modern civilization is more powerful than any of its 
 predecessors, but it will brook neither curb nor limit, and is 
 consequently lacking in discernment. It creates and de- 
 stroys, does good and evil according to the dictates of self- 
 interest and the circumstances or passions of the moment, 
 and it does both in accordance with its character, that is to 
 say, on a large scale. For three generations it busied it- 
 self colonizing new countries, opening up new routes, in- 
 creasing riches, learning and machinery, teaching and dis- 
 ciplining the masses, and it must be admitted that it ac- 
 complished marvels. When, however, in a moment of mad- 
 ness it turned its energies to destruction, it achieved its 
 object to an equally great degree. Are not the very virtues 
 — concord, patriotism, the spirit of self-sacrifice — evoked 
 by the war also the very reason why this fierce struggle 
 has lasted so long? Germany, France, Belgium, Serbia, 
 Russia, Austria and the rest have been fighting now for 
 years; now the one, now the other side gaining the upper 
 hand; countless thousands have fallen and yet the war is 
 still going on. Why? Because the conflict has ceased to 
 be merely between armies and states and is being waged 
 by whole peoples, each and all of them equally determined 
 to conquer at any cost, because they are one and all animated 
 by that mystic spirit of patriotism which adds fresh fuel 
 to the fires of pride and love of domination on the one side 
 and inspires their opponents with the determination to 
 avenge the wrong inflicted upon them by their aggressors. 
 This too explains why the defeats and victories of this war 
 are never decisive. Battles which do not end in the an- 
 
228 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 nihilation of the forces of one or other side — and such 
 decisive battles are rare — have no effect beyond the moral 
 impression they make : hence a people may be defeated re- 
 peatedly w^ithout being conquered provided it does not lose 
 heart and hope. The v^ars waged by the ancient Romans 
 afford endless proofs of the truth of this assertion, for there 
 has never been a nation w^hich v^^as often more defeated or 
 v^on more w^ars. Were we then self-deceived when we 
 flattered ourselves that our civilization had attained a higher 
 degree of perfection than any of its predecessors? It 
 would almost appear so. There are compensating circum- 
 stances in everything. The men of the Middle Ages were 
 undoubtedly poorer, coarser and more ignorant than our- 
 selves ; they had no railways, no aeroplanes, no submarines ; 
 on the other hand they never so much as dreamed of the 
 horrors witnessed almost as a matter of course by Europe 
 today : cities burned down, millions of men killed, mutilated, 
 burned alive, blown up by appalling explosions, great vessels 
 sinking in a few minutes with their living freight. The 
 Europe of 13 17 was a paradise compared to the Europe of 
 1917: and this is the result of six centuries of progress — 
 progress which surely gives the Chinese, Indians and other 
 peoples to whom we are wont to consider ourselves so 
 superior, every right to smile ironically — progress which 
 fills the soul of many a European with deep distrust. Is 
 this progress ? we may well ask. We can no longer let the 
 question pass in silence, as we have done hitherto, claiming 
 that the answer is to be found in our deeds rather than in 
 our words ; for our desire to advance without wasting time 
 defining progress and taking for granted that everything 
 which served our purpose or ministered to our pleasure 
 for the time being must necessarily be progress, has brought 
 us to the point of destroying in a few months the treasures 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION 229 
 
 which it has taken us years to accummulate and of being 
 f^.^ed to look on helplessly at the wholesale massacre of 
 our young men. And this in an age which has even set up 
 societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals! The 
 masses have every right to ask those who in the name of 
 progress led them to this fiery ordeal whether they are not 
 themselves deluded. The Chinese and Indians may well ask 
 if the European War is to be regarded as another proof 
 of that civilization which we are so anxious they should 
 adopt. How many of us can be certain that the horrified 
 world will not answer by rejecting as false that progress 
 of which Europe was so proud? 
 
 IV 
 
 NEW STRENGTH AND ANCIENT WISDOM 
 
 And yet it is not really so. The progress in which we 
 have perhaps believed somewhat too readily is not altogether 
 a delusion; it is rather one of the laws of life which at times 
 seems to be deceptive, simply because it is obscure and we 
 do not as yet understand it, although we are not insensible 
 to its influence. 
 
 It is beyond the power of man to foretell the future, 
 but we may none the less venture to assume that history 
 will look upon the European War as the crisis of a civiliza- 
 tion which prided itself on having enabled human energy 
 to throw off the chains and shackles which had hampered 
 it in the civilizations of the past, but proved powerless to 
 hold it in check when it fell a prey to the lust of destruction : 
 the crisis of a civilization which, after exhausting three 
 generations in laborious creative work, is now destroying 
 the fourth with all its heaped up wealth for the selfsame 
 
230 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 reason — because it knows no bounds either for good or 
 evil. The first great crisis of that society to which Social- 
 ists apply the epithet capitalist (from the order of things 
 established by the nineteenth century in both Europe and 
 America) is the European War: a crisis very different from 
 that predicted by Socialists and no less so from the last 
 great historical crisis — the French Revolution. Then, an 
 age thirsting for liberty, wealth, power and learning arose 
 and overthrew all the ancient barriers which stood in the 
 way of the realization of its aspirations; today we see 
 tottering to its fall, wounded to death, an age, which after 
 winning for itself liberty, power, science and all the treasures 
 earth has to offer, has fallen victim to a mania which 
 prompts it to destroy not only itself but all the fruit of its 
 labours as well. 
 
 One of two things must happen. Either it will rise again, 
 its wounds closed, to resume as soon as it has sufficiently 
 recovered its strength, its course towards its old goal — 
 that goal which recedes as fast as man marches towards it 
 — in which case the European War will have been but a 
 parenthesis in the history of the twentieth century, a terrible 
 but transitory incident like an earthquake or a flood — a use- 
 less warning to man — the first rehearsal as it were, of a 
 still more appalling catastrophe to take place in fifty or a 
 hundred years; or else this war will cure the world once 
 for all of the mania which had taken possession of it, forc- 
 ing it to ask itself what use it has made in the past and what 
 use it should make in the future of its unbounded power — 
 a question which will mark the dawn of real progress. I see 
 no way out of the apparently insoluble difficulties with 
 which thought and action are confronted when thought 
 would fain define progress, and action is equally anxious 
 to put it into practice, save the admission that each epoch ac- 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION 231 
 
 complishes but a portion of the never ending and multifari- 
 ous task set humanity as a whole. Some civilizations have 
 produced works of art and systems of philosophy; others 
 political institutions ; others have given birth to religions and 
 rituals; others to fresh developments of industry and com- 
 merce and others again to weapons and the tactics of war. 
 All these incomplete labours of successive generations are 
 contributions towards a whole, and true progress lies in the 
 slow but constant additions made to their number — the 
 only way in which we can hope to reconcile quality and 
 quantity in our definition of progress, for each successive 
 generation possesses a larger number of qualitative prin- 
 ciples ; or, in other words, a larger number of aesthetic, politi- 
 cal, religious and moral principles, allowing of a greater 
 wealth of combinations and of a fuller and more original 
 life. 
 
 Let us take an example. If we compare ourselves with 
 the ancient Greeks or Romans or with the peoples of the 
 Middle Ages, we shall undoubtedly find that we are superior 
 to them in some respects, though inferior in others. The 
 Greeks were superior to us in art and literature ; the Romans 
 in law; the Middle Ages in certain branches of art, such 
 as architecture. On the other hand, we are much wealthier, 
 much more learned and much more powerful than the 
 Greeks, the Romans, or the peoples of the Middle Ages. 
 When confronted with these differences how are we then to 
 decide whether the world has made progress in the centuries 
 which have passed since the days of the ancient Greeks? If 
 we are to answer such a question, we much first decide 
 whether it is better to be a scholar or an artist, to construct 
 steam engines or build beautiful cathedrals, to explore Africa 
 or be the creator of " Antigone." It is, however, obvious 
 that every man and every age believe the work accomplished 
 
23a EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 by himself and his age to be the most useful and the noblest 
 of all, and that it is impossible to prove that riches are of 
 greater or less value than beauty, or beauty of greater or 
 less value than science. All the lines of argument by which 
 one or other of these points is supposed to have been proved 
 take for granted a definition of progress in vi^hich the thesis 
 to be proved is already tacitly admitted; they therefore 
 merely amount to sophisms which only interest and passion 
 could seriously look upon as arguments at all. We may, 
 however, fairly affirm that the world has progressed when 
 we compare our epoch as a whole with ancient Greece, for 
 we enjoy Greek art and literature; we are acquainted with 
 her philosophy; we have adopted some of her views and 
 political principles, while we are acquainted with other arts 
 unknown to the Greeks, mediaeval architecture, and Japa- 
 nese sculpture, amongst others ; we are acquainted with other 
 systems of philosophy; we practise the virtues taught by 
 Christianity, such as love of our neighbour, charity and 
 purity; we add to their political principles those to which 
 the French Revolution gave birth; we possess far wider 
 geographical and scientific knowledge; we travel by rail- 
 way, we speak across space and have learned to fly. 
 
 If this is what we understand by progress, a little light 
 is shed on the moral problems raised by the European War. 
 The increase of wealth, learning and power only constitutes 
 progress if we make of this wealth, learning and power a 
 wiser, nobler and finer use. We shall, however, never learn 
 to do so of ourselves and starting, as it were, from nothing 
 if we make no attempt to blend the ideas, sentiments and 
 principles transmitted to us by past generations with those 
 which we ourselves have created. The ancient civilizations 
 knew how to hold man in check and thus prevent him from, 
 committing great and dangerous acts of folly, but at the 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION 233 
 
 same time they limited his power of initiation and action. 
 Modern civilization exalted human energy by freeing it 
 from every fetter, and has enabled it to accomplish wonders, 
 but it has at the same time removed the bonds which re- 
 strained it from committing acts of supreme folly. Our 
 civilization will reach the zenith of glory and perfection 
 when, by tempering the new powers it has created with the 
 ancient wisdom it has forgotten, it succeeds in subduing 
 the disorderly energies of men to the moderating influence 
 of aesthetic, moral, religious and philosophical rules and prin- 
 ciples which shall set a limit to them — a limit as wide 
 as you will, but none the less clear and well defined. His- 
 torians and philosophers would accomplish ends of far 
 greater value if they would endeavour to prepare the mind 
 of man for this fusion of two great civilizations which may 
 give birth to a third civilization of a higher type than either, 
 instead of wasting their time on discussions as to whether 
 Romulus ever lived or not, or toying with eighteenth cen- 
 tury theories of knowledge. 
 
 When exhausted Europe has laid down her arms and 
 is forced to ask herself what she ought to do in order to 
 provide for the future, will she not find herself face to face 
 with the eternal question which confronts man at the end 
 of every path which he takes in search of happiness — the 
 question of limits? If after the European War the differ- 
 ent Powers begin once more to increase their armies and 
 fleets just as they did from 1870 to 19 14, we shall sooner 
 or later find ourselves back at the same point. Europe, 
 drained as she has been of her life blood, can only hope to 
 recover her strength if the belligerent Powers come to a 
 serious understanding as to the limitation of armaments — 
 a condition easy to propose, but extremely difficult to carry 
 into effect, since there is nothing from which the modern 
 
234 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 world shrinks so much as the suggestion of any sort of 
 limitation — no matter what the motive. I have already 
 remarked that St. Thomas Aquinas asserts and proves war 
 to be a sin in itself, that is to say, an evil, but adds that 
 it may become permissible on three conditions: i. e., that 
 it be waged by lawful authority in a just cause and without 
 evil intention. The subtle teacher of the Middle Ages had 
 foreseen wars waged in a just cause but with evil intention. 
 Who can fail to see that this view of war is the one ap- 
 pealing most strongly to all those who have not interested 
 motives for desiring the continuance of the war or are not 
 totally devoid of that sense of humanity which German 
 philosophy has done so much to blunt even in ourselves? 
 Who can fail to see that to ensure Europe a true and last- 
 ing peace all that is necessary is that these principles should 
 be put into practice ? Yet in the nineteenth century you will 
 find few thinkers who ventured to uphold such teaching 
 boldly without being somewhat ashamed of what was re- 
 garded as an old woman's idea! How is this strange dis- 
 crepancy to be explained? Only by the fact that almost 
 all modern systems of philosophy have started from them- 
 selves and have refused to submit their investigations to any 
 of the limits respected more or less voluntarily by the sys- 
 tems of antiquity, or even to those imposed by common 
 sense or the sense of humanity, which shrink from every 
 doctrine and every principle which is opposed to the most ob- 
 vious requirements of human nature. These various sys- 
 tems of philosophy, thus emancipated from the bands of 
 discipline and surrounded by so many different passions and 
 interests, held the sound common sense of St. Thomas 
 Aquinas in utter contempt and, reversing each other's argu- 
 ments, proved war to be either divine or diabolical, those 
 taking the former view maintaining that to carry off the 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION 235 
 
 victory in war is to give evidence of the highest degree 
 of perfection; while their opponents asserted with equal 
 conviction that war was utterly degrading and should never 
 be resorted to by civilized peoples even to repel aggression ! 
 If it was diffcult to induce our age to accept reasonable 
 theories as to war and its limits, is it likely to be easy to 
 induce it to act reasonably? Yet who can doubt that 
 modern civilization will end by destroying itself with its 
 own hands if it does not learn to use its terrible powers 
 with more judgment? Our descendants will perhaps say 
 that our century played with machine- and quick-firing guns, 
 shells and millions of soldiers like a child with a box of 
 matches without realizing how terrible its toys would be 
 when put to real use: the century must grow up and learn 
 to handle such engines of warfare with the prudence de- 
 manded by their dangerous character. We must pray the 
 shades of our fathers to let their wisdom, which we have 
 too long neglected, help Europe out of the difficult pass to 
 which her pride and foolhardiness have brought her. We 
 must above all invoke the shades of those great writers of 
 the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who taught man 
 that there might and should be such a thing as national 
 as well as individual justice — a sentiment which, like so 
 many of those newer conceptions which dignify our age 
 ' — had its birth in eighteenth century France. It found a 
 refuge in hearts and books and thus survived the devastating 
 wars of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century. Gradually, during the long period 
 of hopes and regrets which followed the fall of the first 
 Empire, it ventured out of its hiding places and spread 
 secretly over Europe under the suspicious eyes of the police, 
 winning thousands of hearts and intellects, until the memor- 
 able year 1848, when it seemed to establish its sway over 
 
236 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 all Europe in a few brief weeks and to become the ruler 
 of a new and happier world. Disillusion swiftly followed, 
 however! How distant was its triumph still! The politi- 
 cal and economic upheavals of the second half of the nine- 
 teenth century, the era of steel and steam, the blatant 
 triumph of quantity, the clash of classes and interests, the 
 advent of the middle classes, were all still to come. This 
 great conception was no longer the object of police perse- 
 cution, but rather that of ridicule and contempt. The at- 
 tempt was made to isolate it by closing every door to it; 
 it was banished from school and parliament alike. In every 
 country more or less successful efforts were made to provoke 
 admiration of Bismarck in the hope that the mere sight 
 of his bull-dog countenance would chill the souls in whom 
 the new ideas had lighted the fire of enthusiasm. The ef- 
 forts to win the minds of men made by the new conception 
 were met by governments and political parties with an ever 
 increasing production of new weapons, with the appoint- 
 ment of philosophers and philosophasters to burnish up in 
 press and university alike old theories, such as Hegelianism, 
 which might be turned to account as antidotes. It was ac- 
 cused of being half Catholic, half Protestant ; Catholic, be- 
 cause it aspired to be transcendent and eternal; Protestant, 
 because it claimed to be the offspring of reason: as if a con- 
 ception could forfeit the right to act as a guide to truth or be- 
 come an imposture merely because it is able to give an ac- 
 count of itself and justify its laws. In spite of all these 
 criticisms, however, the conception did not perish, simply be- 
 cause it was a true conception springing from the very depths 
 of the soul of man, and it may yet save Europe from ruin, 
 because it knows how to set limits to the pride, the ambition 
 and the passion for power of the different peoples. We 
 must therefore bring about a revival of this principle in the 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION ^7 
 
 soul of man and call in the aid of reason in order to give 
 definite form to its precepts; we must let it exercise 
 dominion in Europe over the masses who are looking on in 
 horror at the present catastrophe — those masses whom the 
 age of quality has made arbiters of almost everything and 
 more especially of peace and war. 
 
 BACCHUS IN BONDS 
 
 It is given to none of us to be able to foretell what the 
 future holds in store. We may, however, before con- 
 cluding these pages, turn our attention for a moment to an 
 indication which time has already made plain — a sign per- 
 haps slight in itself but which may encourage us to hope 
 that the conscience of Europe is really progressing, not 
 with halting and uncertain steps as in so many other direc- 
 tions on which we none the less prided ourselves — but 
 making real advances, thanks to the revival of old principles, 
 in the midst of the powerful but outrageous disorder of the 
 modern world. 
 
 The ancients numbered wine among the gods, because 
 they regarded as divine a drink which, taken in moderation, 
 soothed pain, stimulated the imagination, promoted cheer- 
 fulness and stirred the mind; but during the last century 
 the ancient deity has appeared upon earth in so many and 
 different forms as to forfeit his status as god and sink to 
 that of a demon, begetting madness, crime, sterility, pov- 
 erty and death instead of joy and gladness, as of old. 
 We all know the disastrous results all over the world of 
 this disease, to which the medical profession has given 
 the name alcoholism, but in Russia and France two of 
 
238 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 its worst forms — vodka and absinthe — had wrought more 
 havoc than anywhere else. It is therefore not surprising 
 that in these countries special efforts should have been made 
 to stay the plague. Statesmen, scientists, philanthropists, 
 priests, moralists, industrial magnates, schoolmasters and 
 estimable women all had some panacea to offer. Countless 
 commissions were appointed, countless societies founded, 
 countless laws promulgated during the last twenty five 
 years to cope with the evil and convert men to sobriety, 
 while of the making of books with the same object there 
 was no end. But in spite of all the efforts of these many 
 physicians, the evil steadily increased in every country and 
 more especially in Russia and France. The remedy was 
 apparently not to be found. Church and school were alike 
 impotent. The workman listened to the good advice given 
 him and then betook himself to the nearest public-house 
 for another glass. Many of the would-be physicians came 
 to the conclusion that man is naturally vicious and that it 
 is useless to try to prevent him from going to perdition 
 in the quest of pleasure. Some even sought excuses for 
 the vice. Was it really so fatal as was supposed? Was 
 there anything else which could do as much to lighten the 
 burden of the toiler in modern industry? Every man 
 tries at times to escape as best he can in imagination from 
 the fetters which hold him captive in the world into the 
 'unbounded freedom of infinity, and the glass of wine or 
 spirits may serve as the gateway into the infinite for the 
 workman who knows no other means of escape. 
 
 Accordingly Europe indulged freely in strong drink, 
 although many thoughtful people who did not share the 
 illusions of the optimist felt their hearts sink as they watched 
 noble peoples thus degrading themselves. And there seemed 
 no hope of finding a remedy. Then the European War 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION 239 
 
 broke out and the authorities, realizing that if drunkenness 
 be a dangerous vice in time of peace, it is far more so in 
 time of war, when both those who fight and those who 
 remain at home must make the best possible use of their 
 mental powers for the common weal, decided on a drastic 
 measure — a remedy so heroic that no one had ventured 
 to suggest it seriously before — the prohibition of the man- 
 ufacture and consumption of the most harmful beverages. 
 The egg of Columbus with a vengeance! When the work- 
 man and the peasant can no longer turn into the nearest 
 public-house for a glass of some pernicious drink, they 
 will cease to get drunk, or at all events will do so much less 
 often. No sooner said than done : half measures are not 
 for wartime. On the day after the proclamation of mar- 
 tial law, the military authorities in France prohibited the 
 sale of absinthe, and when Parliament met it lost no time 
 in passing a bill prohibiting for ever the manufacture, 
 sale and import of absinthe. A few weeks after the out- 
 break of war, the Tsar closed all distilleries and places 
 where vodka was made or sold, vodka being in Russia a 
 state monopoly. And while it cannot of course be said 
 that no vodka or absinthe is consumed in Russia and France 
 — since evasion of the law will continue as long as the 
 world exists — temperance has steadily increased and the 
 evil effects of drink have equally steadily decreased. 
 
 Why were so many years and a cataclysm like the 
 European War necessary for the discovery and application 
 of the remedy? — the only efficacious way of keeping the 
 intemperance of the people in check. If the men of two 
 or three centuries ago were in certain respects much worse 
 off than ourselves, they were undoubtedly also much more 
 temperate, simply because they did not distil so many kinds 
 of spirits every year, they did not press so many tons of 
 
240 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 grapes, so that no one person could drink more than a 
 moderate amount, A few wealthy drinkers might possibly 
 ruin their health, but such a proceeding was not in the power 
 of the poor and those of moderate means. Why have men 
 taken to drink to such an alarming extent during the last 
 century, a period which coincides with the dawn of the 
 era of quantity? Because the nineteenth century planted 
 vines in thousands of acres of hitherto uncultivated land, 
 even upon land snatched from Islam, even on land beyond 
 the ocean; because it enlarged and added immensely to the 
 number of breweries ; because it invented countless new and 
 ingenious ways of distilling alcohol from endless different 
 substances; because it manufactured in great distilleries all 
 over the world liquors of which only a few bottles had 
 hitherto been made annually by private families after some 
 traditional receipt. Then when it had distilled so many 
 intoxicating drinks, modern industry had to find some 
 means of ensuring their consumption. It is useless to say 
 that all these intoxicating liquors are made to satisfy the 
 demands of a thirsty world, that vice is the cause and not 
 the effect of the immense increase in the wine, beer and 
 liquor trades. No — here, as elsewhere — industry first 
 created abundance and then persuaded man that it was his 
 duty to consume its whole production. 
 
 It is therefore clear that as long as industry is free to 
 distil as much intoxicating liquor as it chooses, just as it 
 is at liberty to weave as many yards of linen or cloth as 
 it likes, alcoholism will increase in the world. The trade 
 will be driven to manufacture such drinks in ever increasing 
 quantities and the world will have to swallow veritable 
 floods of beer, wine and spirits every year. The brewery 
 and the public-house will encourage men to drink more 
 than they need both night and morning, Sunday and week- 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION 241 
 
 day, for man is naturally inclined to excess in his pleasures, 
 and, if you make vice easy for him, he will not fail to take 
 advantage thereof. Our age first gives men full liberty 
 to drink to excess, and then is amazed that they do so, just 
 in the same way as having created the vastest armies history 
 has ever seen, and provided them with the most murderous 
 weapons, it fails to understand how the vastest and most 
 bloody war of all ages can possibly have broken out. The 
 cause of its surprise is the same in both cases. Our age 
 has created the greatest armies of all time not because it 
 intended to bring about its own ruin in a world war, but 
 because no power, or mortal power, or authority existed 
 in Europe strong enough to set a limit to the competition 
 of armaments. It left vice full liberty, not from perversity 
 or corruption, but because in its anxiety to further industry 
 and commerce, it shrank from setting any limit — even that 
 demanded by health, morals and beauty — to the increase 
 of wealth; it furthered productive industries and at the 
 same time encouraged men to consume as much as they 
 could, to eat, drink, smoke, amuse themselves, wear out 
 and renew their clothing, travel, and seek for the greatest 
 available measure of comfort. But in order to achieve all 
 this it had to abolish the standards which in past ages 
 distinguished wise expenditure from extravagance, and the 
 undue growth of desire, since, had these criteria been as 
 clear and definite as they were two centuries ago, they would 
 have set limits to this liberty of expansion of which modern 
 industries are so jealous; and in the same way it has failed 
 to distinguish between the services rendered by science and 
 industry to peace and those rendered to war. 
 
 The European War put an immediate end to this contra- 
 diction so far as drink was concerned. It has already 
 brought certain of the European peoples back to the prin- 
 
242 EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR 
 
 ciples which ruled the world two or three centuries ago. In 
 the face of immediate danger all have had to realize that 
 the State has both the right to prevent the people committing 
 suicide by excessive drinking and is bound to exercise that 
 right; that the welfare of the race and the interests of 
 public morals must and should set a limit to the full liberty 
 of indulging in pleasure to excess which individuals had 
 claimed as a right for the last century. Will Europe under- 
 stand equally quickly that war ought not to be — as it is 
 in Europe today — the savage explosion of all the forces 
 of destruction and sacrifice, love and hatred, good and evil 
 accumulated by human nature in the course of a generation, 
 until the whole physical and moral strength of a nation is 
 exhausted — something like a natural force, subject to no 
 law? Will it understand that war should be a human 
 institution like justice, a sign and symbol of the strength of 
 a people, as true and adequate as possible to what they 
 represent, but limited, if it is not to become a scourge of 
 God and a means of exterminating victors, vanquished and 
 neutrals alike? 
 
 The future will show. The obscure, powerful will of the 
 masses who are today engaged in this titanic war will 
 decide. The essential thing today is an act of will — a 
 great act of will on the part of the masses. During the 
 last two centuries man has inverted the order of things in 
 which his fathers lived so long ; he has begun that new and 
 marvellous history of the world, whose final crisis is taking 
 place today, because he has determined to have liberty, 
 wealth, power and knowledge. Our children and grand- 
 children will enjoy peace if they really desire it, by en- 
 deavouring to realize in what the essential conditions of a 
 real and lasting peace consist. At this moment when so 
 many men are in arms keeping a watch on one another with 
 
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION 248 
 
 field glasses and cannon, by land and water, it is well to 
 repeat to the soldiers of the new alliance — this time a Holy 
 Alliance in very truth — the soldiers of the Powers which 
 have had to endure this war, because the Central Empires 
 forced it upon them, the memorable words of St, Augustine, 
 words worthy of being taken as the motto of the newer and 
 better Europe for which we all hope, for which so many 
 have already given their lives : " Esto ergo hellando 
 pacificiis, ut cos quos expitgnas, ad pads utilitatem vincendo 
 perducas." 
 
 THE END 
 
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