"
There is nothing more remarkable than these German Socialists and their
congresses, these fellows who always preach to other nations against
patriotism, and never come together except to make speeches about the
Fatherland. At the Hamburg Congress, Auer, the socialist deputy,
looked into the future and saw "the Cossacks trampling underfoot all
the liberties of Western Europe." What tyranny of barbarians could be
more cruel than the tyranny of Germany which, wherever it extends,
oppresses the racial instincts of mankind, ruins and absorbs a people,
reducing it to servitude by the assertion of the rights of a superior
race over its inferiors.
Has the Hamburg Congress disabused the minds of French Socialists on
the brotherhood of their German brethren? Let us hope that it will not
be necessary for them, as it was for us, to hear the thunder of German
guns to understand that all parties in Germany are included in the
_German party_, and that those who believe anything else are nothing
but poor deluded dupes.
October 26, 1897. [18]
Those amongst us who, hour by hour, have devoted their lives to the
service of our mutilated country, have for their object, each within
the humble limits of his individual efforts, the glorification of
France and that of Russia, the greatness of the one being dependent on
the greatness of the other. This twofold devotion, and dual service
keep our fears perpetually alert in two directions; how great are those
two commingled sources of fear when patriotic Frenchmen, like patriotic
Russians, come to consider the bewildering development of Prussian
power--a veritable process of absorption.
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