Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/130

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

utilised through its mouthpiece—the militarist Press. Every event is pressed into its service; the return from Fashoda of a brave man, the procession of the École Polytechnique at the grand review, admired for its ill-treatment of an eminent professor, M. Georges Duruy, the son of Victor Duruy, because in the intervals of lecturing to them he presumed to write articles in the Figaro expressing doubts of the culpability of an unfortunate French officer, one of themselves. The sight of these young gentlemen suffices to create a delirious enthusiasm, which is fondly hoped by the authors of the frantic display will prove the death-knell of the Republic. Never has a nation worshipped stranger, more incongruous warrior-gods than France of to-day. She has embraced and wept rapturously over the military virtues and honour of an Esterhazy; she has melted in the furnace of adoration before Major Marchand; she has prostrated herself in reverence and gratitude at the feet of General Mercier, and now she is pantingly waiting for the generalissimo of her dreams—another Boulanger, plumed, handsome, and haughty, on a black charger. It used to be for the revanche she so ardently desired this deliverer, but now the hated enemy is no longer beyond the Vosges, but on the other side of the Channel. A French boy once wrote to an English comrade that he wanted to put his