of MM. Briand and Barthou. Its leaders and members have come to it, as to every central position, from different camps and by different routes. Hammered upon from the outside by German aggression, they demand domestic peace as the first condition of national security. They ask for a république aérée et habitable. They propose an army strengthened and increased through the sacrifices of the rich and the middle classes. It is a synthesis of Déroulède and Millerand, of militarism and social transformation.
M. Jaurès and his integral Socialists may, of course, be trusted to find their place among the "pacifists." The late Herr Bebel led the German Social Democrats back to an acceptance of the national idea; but not so M. Jaurès. A strategist at once bold and astute, who has never known the responsibilities of office, to whom la patrie is only a gunmaker's advertisement, he will almost certainly co-operate with the reorganised bloc.
It is for the prophets to tell us what the elections will bring forth. For us, plain onlookers, the life of the most interesting and logical nation in Europe has come to a crisis, the solution of which may notably react not only upon civilisation and humanity—those great abstractions—but upon ourselves, and the little parts we play in each.
