of the Republic to overthrow the Government. In a word, it became the cry of sedition, admirably worked up by the Church, the Army, and Society. M. Urbain Gohier's famous book, L'Armée contre la Nation, undoubtedly contains much exaggerated abuse of French officers and French chiefs, but it also contains many indisputable truths. When one hears French officers speaking of civilians with indescribable contempt as "pekins," and remembers that all of these miserable pekins have served in the army and will be called upon, without reward or pay, to defend their country with their lives, it is difficult not to regard such a passionate attack as his as justified. The Nationalists to-day have the hardihood to describe themselves as the only true patriots, the only pure Frenchmen. The Temps once pertinently asked what they expected to do in war more than any other kind of Frenchman or patriot—carry two muskets instead of one? One sees MM. Coppée, Lemaître, and Barrès, the literary chiefs of the patriots, thus accoutred with an incredulous smile. After twenty-five years the patriots are still stalking the shades of Alsace and Lorraine, and hurling defiance towards the Vosges, while every honest Alsatian with them passes for a traitor.
The army owes its present unwonted prestige and popularity to the fear war breeds in the modern mind, and this fear it has evidently
