English Pharisees and French Crocodiles Part 14

CHAPTER XIX.

WHY THE FRENCH WERE BEATEN IN 1870.

Everyone accounted for our disasters of 1870 after his own fas.h.i.+on. The most ingenious theories were brought forward, and we very well know why we believe it to be indispensable and patriotic to learn German.

"Ah!" cried some, "if we had only known German, we should not have been defeated." And forthwith instruction in German was decreed obligatory.

"That is not it," said others, "it is our geography, of which we did not know even the rudiments, that has been the cause of all the evil. On leaving Paris, our officers, ignorant of the meanders of the Seine, thought that they were beating a retreat each time they came to a fresh bend of that river." And the study of geography received a fillip.

Others again would have it to be that if the visors of our soldier's _kepis_ had not been lifted upward in front, the Prussians would have had a warm time of it. Down came the visors without delay.

I pa.s.s over the pious people, who saw in our disasters only the just chastis.e.m.e.nt of our faults, and will only give the opinion of Thomas Carlyle. This philosopher, whom the hazard of birth had made English, but who was a perfect German, cried out that "Germanic virtues had triumphed over Gallic vices."

Some few worthy folks, perfectly dest.i.tute of genius, but possessing an ounce or two of common sense, attributed our defeats to the fact that the Germans had an army of 1,200,000 men, whereas our own forces scarcely numbered 350,000. I fancy it is these latter that history will show to have been in the right.

The virtuous Germans that vanquished us, were they, after all, so clever at geography and French? This is how they learnt the geography they required, and how they made themselves understood in French:

A few Uhlans would approach to within a respectful distance of a village. There they would seize upon the first peasant, old man, or child, that pa.s.sed, place a pistol to his throat, and after asking, "Are there any French soldiers in your village?" would say: "Show us the way to such and such place, and tell us the names of all the people around here, who have wine in their cellars, or hay in their barns. And you had better take care to tell the truth, or we will blow your brains out, and set fire to the four corners of your village."

Loaded pistols and lighted torches are magical quickeners of slow intellects; a deaf man would understand such arguments as these. If I took by the collar the first lad I came across in Germany, and, lifting my stick to his head, shouted into his ear: "You young rascal, I will knock your head off," I will warrant he would understand me as quickly as if I spoke the purest German.

If we have any spare time, let us learn German that we may be able to read Goethe and Schiller; from the practical point of view, the utility of German is but secondary. If we should ever demand of Germany the provinces that she wrenched from us, we shall find we have enough German-speaking mouths, if we can only put into the field as many mouths of cannon as Wilhem II.

CHAPTER XX.

ENGLAND WORKS FOR HERSELF. THE WORLD OWES HER NOTHING.

"If," as M. Renan says,[6] "those nations which have an exceptional fact in their history expiate this fact by long sufferings and pay for it with their national existence--if the nations that have created unique things by which the world profits often die victims of their achievements," England may hope to live a considerable time yet, for everything that she undertakes is national, never universal. She works for herself and herself alone. Whenever she is asked to co-operate in the execution of a great project of universal interest, she refuses pointblank, unless it appears quite clear to her that she alone will reap the profits and honors of the undertaking. An Englishman's sphere of action is always England and her colonies; his only aim, British interests--two magic words to his ears.

If the Channel Tunnel could be made so that it could only be used by the English, it would be commenced to-morrow.

Lord Beaconsfield p.r.o.nounced patriotism to be the most rational form of egotism. Would to Heaven it might be so interpreted in France!

When shall we, in France, cease to strive after the extraordinary and the universal? When shall we cease to concern ourselves about the happiness of the whole human race and, minding our own business, undertake only the possible and the practical? When shall we cease to become inventors and be men of business?

There is not much discovered in England nowadays, except new ways of dodging the arch-enemy.

Yet it was Newton who discovered the infinitesimal calculus and the laws of universal gravitation. Yet it was England that produced Shakespeare, the sublimest example of the Creator's handiwork. Yet it was Harvey who discovered the circulation of the blood. But now England is entirely given over to business; she has no time to throw away upon inventions.

For that matter, why should England go in for inventing? She has money and a genius for commerce, and, possessing these, can do without inventors, who, as a rule, die in the workhouse, with the satisfaction of knowing that shrewd men of business have made fortunes out of their discoveries.

This has always been so. Even the sublime and Divine Thinker expiated with an ignominious death the invention of a theory which, but for the meddling of speculators, would have insured the happiness of the world.

To-day He can contemplate from His celestial throne, the bishops coming out of their palaces in luxurious carriages to go to the House of Lords and vote against the opening of museums on Sundays, or on their way to the Mansion House to feast with the Lord Mayor, who gives better dinners than were to be had in Galilee, I a.s.sure you.

The world is made up of fools and knaves, such was the judgment pa.s.sed upon mankind by Thomas Carlyle, the great English historian, a rough and dyspeptic philosopher, who himself, however, was neither a knave nor a fool.

This writer, who pa.s.sed his life in insulting his countrymen one after another, who could make love to his wife by correspondence when she was far away, but who never found an amiable word to say to her when she was near, this same Thomas Carlyle has calumniated the world. Where should we be without the few disinterested heroes who have devoted themselves to the amelioration of their fellow-creatures, and who, in return, have received but poverty and prison, torture and death? The men who have suffered for country, religion, science, liberty; are these Carlyle's fools?

CHAPTER XXI.

THE SPIRIT OF DESTRUCTION AND THE SPIRIT OF CONSERVATISM.

How is it that the French are such vandals with regard to their country and their inst.i.tutions, seeing that the love for their family, respect for their parents, and veneration for souvenirs, are such marked features in their character? The fact is that France is towed unresistingly by Paris, and that we often have to say "the French," when in reality we only mean "the Parisians."

We are accused of no longer having much respect for anything. Alas! that it should be impossible to deny such an accusation!

A country, just like a family, lives by its traditions, its souvenirs, even by its prejudices. Destroy these souvenirs, some of which serve as examples and others as warnings, destroy these traditions, and you break the chain that binds the family together, and the past, though never so glorious, has been lived in vain. Is a country less dear to her sons because of her prejudices? Do we not love to find them in a dear old mother?

Do not the very prejudices and weaknesses, the thousand little failings of our friends, often endear them to us?

Then why are we not content with France as she is? Why be always wanting to change her? Is it possible that we Frenchmen, the most home-abiding men in the world, can be attacked by this ridiculous mania for change?

The study of the French language furnishes of itself plain proof of our spirit of destruction, and the _Dictionnaire des Significations_, which, is shortly to be published, and is awaited with impatience by the learned world, will show, by the history of the changes of meaning that our words have undergone, that the character of the French people can be recognized to this very day by the descriptions that were given of it two thousand years ago.

The French word _benit_ formerly meant "blessed."

Thanks to the jokes of the old Gauls, our ancestors, it now means "silly." Our forefathers heard in church: "Benedicti stulti quia habebunt regnum coelorum."[7] Benis seront les pauvres d'esprit, car ils auront le royaume des cieux. Now, in French, _pauvre d'esprit_ means "silly," and, on their way home, the old jokers would indulge in merry remarks at one another's expense. When anyone gave proof of want of wit, he was congratulated on having his entry into the kingdom of heaven secured:

"You are _stultus_ enough to be _benedictus_"; and the first adjective soon came to have the meaning of the second.

It will soon be impossible to p.r.o.nounce the word _fille_ in good society, except to express relations.h.i.+p.

Why are we obliged to make use of this word to designate a child of the feminine s.e.x? Simply because the feminine of _garcon_ began to be used in a bad sense in the seventeenth century. Before the feminine of _garcon_--which the French had to give up, as they will soon have to give up the word _fille_--they had a word which is, in the present day, a horribly coa.r.s.e expression.

Such is the march of the spirit of destruction.

The Gauls have always been rich in wit, but wit often of a bantering and sarcastic kind, which disparages and covers with ridicule, and of which Voltaire was the personification.

People who eat sausages on a Friday,[8] in France, think they are doing a smart thing, and rebelling against a form of tyranny, forgetting that Lenten fasts had originally a sanitary reason. To give rest to the stomach, such was the aim; and a French physician said to me one day: "If there were no Lent in the spring, I should order my patients to fast two or three times a week, through that season of the year."

The Talmud forbids the Jews to eat pork, because that meat is heavy and indigestible; the Koran forbids the use of wine among the Mussulmans, because of its intoxicating properties; in fact, have not all these religious edicts a foundation of common sense, and do we not give proof of common sense in conforming to them? Truly, he is but a pitiful hero--not to use a stronger term--who boasts of not following a salutary counsel, that he does not know how to appreciate, because he does not understand.