For the Soul of France

Civilization, life itself, is something learned and invented. Bear this truth well in mind: Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes. After several years of peace men forget it all too easily. They come to believe that culture is innate, that it is identical with nature. But savagery is always lurking two steps away, and it regains a foothold as

Before the late 1880s, service was compulsory in name only, the grounds for exemption being so numerous as to make a mockery of the term. Exempted were family breadwinners, the elder sons of widows, the brothers of serving soldiers, educational administrators, and priests, among others. Men who didn’t qualify could, for fifteen hundred francs (a su

Several months later, in December 1892, the valiant, independent-minded Abbé Frémont noted regretfully in his journal, “Hatred of the Republic and of Jews is today the sustenance of French clergy. Drumont is their preceptor. Above all, don’t tear this choice morsel out of their mouths: if you try, you will immediately be smeared with ink and blacke

Carthago delenda est.

“I will not dwell on his shameless, intolerable associations with all that is worst on the extreme left, his absolute subordination to M. Clemenceau, his debasing intimacy with the men of La Lanterne.”

As Tocqueville saw it, demagoguery would be the ultimate political expression of a society bereft—of family pride, manners, grammar, local custom, hierarchical structure, religious principles, and sacred space.

Another paradoxical courtier, Arthur Meyer, saw only white, the color of French royalty. His paper, Le Gaulois, which circulated like a house organ among Paris’s upper crust, offered sufficient proof of his anti-Semitism to earn him forgiveness for having been born Jewish.

Wilhelm refused, and the matter might have rested there had Bismarck not made the refusal sound contemptuous by mischievously editing a telegram from Wilhelm to Louis-Napoléon.

Everyone agreed that France faced a demographic crisis.