r and patriotism, was
able to conquer the instinct of fear, should not merely "fulfil" his
military duty with firmness, but should hurl himself on death, because
it was only at that price that success could be obtained over a
numerical majority."

This is a revelation of that individualism which is characteristic of
the trained French character, a quality which, though partly obscured
by the turn the great struggle has taken, will undoubtedly survive and
ultimately reappear. It is derived from the admonitions of a series of
moral teachers, and in the wonderful letters which M. Maurice Barres
has brought together with no less tact than passion in his series of
volumes issued under the general title of "L'Ame Francaise et la
Guerre," we have an opportunity of studying it in a great variety of
situations. This is but a portion, and it may be but a small portion,
of the multiform energy of France, and it is capable, of course, of
being subjected to criticism. That, in fact, it has had to endure, but
it is no part of my business here, nor, if I may venture to say so, is
it the business of any Englishman to criticise at any time, except in
pathetic admiration, an attitude so beautiful, and marked in its
self-sacrifice by so delicate an effusion of scrupulous good taste. We
are in presence of a field of those fluttering tricolor flags which
fill the eyes of a wanderer over the battle-centres of the Marne with
a passion of tears. We are in presence of the memorials of a chivalry
that did not count the price, but died "joyfully" for France.[1]

[Footnote 1: The poet Leon Guillot, in dying, bid his
comrades describe him to his father and mother as "tombe au
champ d'honneur et mort _joyeusement_ pour son pays."--"Les
Diverses Familles Spirituelles de la France," pp. 178, 179.]

There is not much advantage in searching for the germs of all this
exalted sentiment earlier than the middle of the seventeenth century.
The malady of the Fronde was serious precisely because it revealed the
complete absence, in the nobles, in the clergy, in the common people,
of patriotic conviction of any kind. Cardinal's men and
anti-cardinalists, Mazarin and Monsieur, Conde and Plessis-Praslin,--we
follow the bewildering turns of their fortune and the senseless
evolution of their mercenaries, without being able to trace any moral
line of conduct, any ethical aim on the part of the one or the other.
It was anarchy for the sheer fun