Her international
misdeeds are past all number; she saps and undermines all that has been
laboriously built up by others. Germanisation carries with it the
seeds of disintegration; it is a sower of hatred, proclaiming for its
own exclusive benefit the equity of iniquity, the justice of injustice.
Only less extraordinary than the audacity of Prussia is Europe's
failure to realise these truths. In 1870 Napoleon III was deluded,
fooled and compromised, led into war by means of lies. Nameless
intrigues set our generals one against the other. At a moment when
victory was possible, the treachery of Bazaine made defeat inevitable
for France, whom the so-called genius of Moltke and Frederick-Carl
would never have vanquished. Having overthrown the Empire, the King of
Prussia, who had declared that he was fighting against it alone, made
war on France, well aware that sufficient vitality remained in the
broken pieces to enable them to come together again, and that, under
the threat of a French _revanche_, Prussia would be able to keep
Germany exercised in such a state of mind as would reconcile her to
remaining under the military yoke of the Hohenzollerns. And Europe,
without protest, accepts this condition of things, fatal to her
interests and security, created for the sole profit of the lowest of
nations. By her self-effacement, indeed, she increased fivefold the
influence and power of that nation.
September 31, 1897. [17]
You and I, all of us, we French people in particular, who think that we
were born clever, we are all a pack of credulous fools.
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