“Si Pergama dextra
Defendi possent: etiam hac defense fuissent.”
But against physical impossibilities no struggle can succeed; all strength exhausts itself, the strong will weakens, and patriotism, courage and resistance to the last, every prodigy of flaming love for one’s country, is impotent to effect the impossible—impotent to do what is beyond human strength.
Many have criticised the desperate efforts of a people who refuse to recognise that they are beaten, and do not acknowledge the evidence of defeat; but these are precisely the efforts which, in spite of final defeat, will be written in its history in letters of gold.
All the victories and glories, all the past grandeurs of the nation, pale in the presence of the greatness, unique in history, of a vanquished people which would not despair and would not surrender, a people which, when its Government, its army, its generals, all had foundered around it, alone remained upright to save its honour, grasping in one hand its flag and in the other the hilt of its broken sword.
* * * * *
I was convinced, in the course of my journey across Europe, and particularly by my welcome in Austria and England, that France, who was detested at the beginning of the war for having suddenly lit such a formidable fire, had reconquered general esteem by the energy she showed in the midst of her disasters.
M. de Chaudordy, whom I saw at Tours, gave me much encouragement in the interviews I had with him before leaving for Vienna. This gentleman was in daily communication with the representatives of the Powers at Tours and so was better able than we, who had been shut up in Paris, to give an exact estimate of the opinion of Europe and the changes it had undergone. He assured me that M. Jules Favre was right in telling me that there was a considerable move in our favour in the sympathies of Europe.
He also, without abandoning himself to over-sanguine ideas, hoped much from this change of opinion. He thought that the efforts which I was about to make in the Cabinets of Vienna and London ought to be attempted, and that they might very well produce satisfactory results.
Under these circumstances I was all impatience to leave and arrive at Vienna, since, according to my instructions, the Austrian Government was the first that I was to address. But before going to Vienna I wanted to inform myself as to the situation in Germany, in order to be able to speak with full connaissance de cause.
I left Tours in the first days of November, and directed my course towards Germany.