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Pro Aris

"chivalrous adversaries," and that they should not be so, that they should dare to defend themselves by all the means and the arms that remain to them, she proclaims a crime! …

One recognises there indeed the interested teaching of your Prussian masters! Great minds of Germany, I do not doubt your sincerity, but you are no longer capable of seeing the truth. Prussian Imperialism has crushed down over your eyes and conscience its spiked helmet.

"Necessity knows no law." … Here is the eleventh commandment, the message that you bring to the universe to-day, sons of Kant! … We have heard it more than once in history: it is the famous doctrine of Public Safety, mother of heroisms and crimes. Every nation has recourse to it in the hour of danger, but the greatest are those who defend against it their immortal soul. Fifteen years have passed since the famous trial which saw a single innocent man opposed to the force of the State. Fifteen years have passed since we French affronted and shattered the idol of public safety, when it threatened, as our Péguy says, "the eternal safety of France."

Listen to him, whom you have killed; listen

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