no more conduces to economic, social, and political efficiency
than would the incarceration of a fine army in a fortress conduce to
military success. A nation or an individual who wishes to accomplish
great things must be ready, in Nietsche's phrase, "to lived
angerously"--to take those risks, without which no really great
achievement is possible; and if Frenchmen persist in erecting the virtue
of thrift and the demand for safety into the predominant national
characteristic, they are merely beginning a process of national
corruption and dissolution.

That any such result is at all imminent, I do not for a moment believe.
The time will come when the danger of the present drift will be
understood, and will create its sufficient remedy; and all good friends
of democracy and human advancement should hope and believe that France
will retain indefinitely her national vitality. If she should drift into
an insignificant position in relation to her neighbors, a void would be
created which it would be impossible to fill and which would react
deleteriously upon the whole European system. But such a result is only
to be avoided by the general recognition among Frenchmen that the means
which they are adopting to render their personal position more secure is
rendering their national situation more precarious. The fate of the
French democracy is irrevocably tied up with the fate of French
national life, and the best way for a Frenchman to show himself a good
democrat is to make those sacrifices and to take those risks necessary
for the prestige and welfare of his country.

V

THE RELATION OF GERMAN NATIONALITY TO DEMOCRACY

The German Empire presents still another phase of the relation between
democracy and nationality, and one which helps considerably towards an
understanding of the varied possibilities of that relationship. The
German national organization and policy was wrought in a manner entirely
different from that of either France or England. In the two latter
countries political freedom was conquered only as the result of
successive revolutions; and the ruling classes were obliged to recognize
the source of these political reformations by renouncing all or a large
part of their inherited responsibilities. In Germany, on the other hand,
or rather in Prussia as the maker of modern Germany, the various changes
in the national organization and policy, which have resulted in the
founding of a united nation, originated either