The accident of birth made me first of all a Breton patriot. When I emerged from the narrow egoism of childhood, my first love was directed to Brittany. When the development of my intellect permitted me to realize the solidarity of my little homeland with the French fatherland, I became a French patriot. Later I learned from history that all the nations on this side of the Rhine once formed a glorious Federation; then I became a Gallic patriot. Still later study of the Megalithic monuments revealed to me a new connection,—that with the Megalithic race. As logic continued its work, I became a European patriot; finally, a patriot of humanity. In our day national love is an imbecile love unless it is illuminated by the love for mankind.
I have read only the three last-named works of the admiral; but he regularly sent me the articles that he published in the journal La Dépêche, in which he always took a consistent attitude—that of “illuminating” love for mankind—toward all the questions of the day; not, however, in the least in a visionary way, nor with any smack of mysticism, which so constantly stirs the spiritual lives of poetically inclined seafarers. He based his political ideals on actual and positive considerations, drawn particularly from the domain of national economy. Thus he wrote:
In order to meet the industrial rivalry of the United States of America and the yellow races, it would be desirable—in the interest of France and Germany—to see a customs union formed, embracing Germany, Belgium, Holland, and France, and including, at the same time, the colonies of these countries. It really seems almost impossible at the present time to swim against the stream of protective tariffs, and yet every nation is conscious of the necessity of extending its market. If there is opposition to this extension on European soil, why is not an effort made to gain it through a colonial union,—a union by means of which the federated countries might insure to their citizens, their vessels, and their products the same rights and privileges in all the colonies?
With regard to the lot of the masses, which so greatly needs to be improved, Réveillère says that this amelioration depends on the general production of useful articles. As long as the masses are wasting their energies in unproductive labors there is no alleviation possible for them, ... and at the present time the nations are wearing themselves out in unproductive and destructive labor. There is no halfway measure; either international anarchy (that is to say, the lack of a code of laws regulating the intercourse of nations), with poverty, or federation, with wealth.
My Breton friend was inclined not to mince words in speaking of the politicians: “Steam has changed everything in this world except the routine of our statesmen!” And in the following letter:
Engineers and scholars are all the time at work filling up the graves which the professionals in statecraft are digging; the engineers are expending all their energies in increasing the productivity of labor, the politicians are doing everything they possibly can to make it sterile.
Many persons are of the opinion that the end sought is too broad and distant, and the initiation of it is beset with too great difficulties, to be willing to attempt the regulation of a pacific mutual relationship among the European states; especially at the present time, when almost every state has to endure so much trouble and disturbance arising from the violent national and social battles which are raging within its own borders. An answer to this objection is afforded by the following passage from one of Réveillère’s books (“Extension, Expansion,” p. 23):
When a physician has to treat a case of consumption, his first care is to prevent his patient from breathing poisoned air. If he has to perform an operation, he sees to it that the room in which the operation is to take place is purified of every contagious germ. Exactly the same principle holds with regard to national diseases. No state can think of curing its internal ills before the European room is disinfected. Certainly it is the duty of every nation to do everything possible to modify the ills of its own people; but to claim that serious internal reforms can be carried out without having first secured European federation is just like caring for wounded men in a hall filled with microbes.
I kept up a correspondence with Admiral Réveillère for a long time. Of late years our letters fell off in frequency. A short time ago—in March, 1908—he died. Ah, when we have grown old, how often we have to report of our friends that they are no more! In childhood life is like a nursery; in youth, like a garden; in old age, like a cemetery.
Tidings of a death which affected us painfully—I am now telling of what happened in the year 1895—came to us suddenly from the Caucasus,—Prince Achille Murat had shot himself. Was it suicide or an accident? I never learned the exact truth. It happened in Zugdidi, in the villa which My Own had built for the Murats. Princess Salomé, who was sitting in the next room, heard the report of a shot in her husband’s room. She hastened in and found the unfortunate man fallen back in an easy-chair, with a pistol between his legs, the barrel pointing up in the air. Had he been cleaning the weapon carelessly, or was it weariness of life? As I said, I do not know.