"We exaggerate when we talk of tyranny.... There would be a certain amount of rearranging to be got through. What these people want, is...."
"To pick our pockets," cried Guillaumin.
"Yes, to pick our pockets, and also...."
Fortin let himself be carried away. Was it paradox or conviction?
"Would you like to know what they want? Well, simply the reign of reason, of their reason. To their physical need for conquest is added this intellectual need. I think that in the case of a crushing victory they would not be exacting, that they would content themselves with re-organising and ordering the world to their ideas. The triumph of 'Kultur,' yes! Without doubt they would allow as many individual liberties and indeed local constitutions, as possible, to subsist. Their charter of empire is so convenient! The United States of Europe. That is their avowed dream, often expressed by the Kaiser. Peace, yes, but under the aegis of the Hohenzollern, chosen of God! An imposing task to which they bring the fervour of apostles, which to-morrow, on the battle-field will become the fanaticism of martyrs. The horror of this contest does not dismay them, they consider it unavoidable. There are two obstacles in their path; France in their eyes grown old and debased; Russia that huge inorganic body, still in a state of barbarism. Their idea was to humiliate both nations, with the object of raising them up again later on while imbuing them with the moral and intellectual virtues on which the Teuton prides himself. England impedes them equally. This conflict too was fated. They despise the English because they consider them too exclusively concerned with their well-being, with their comfort; too material, shopkeepers, in fact! They themselves pose as idealists and philosophers, but heirs to the spiritualistic traditions, and regardful of the property, of the integri——"
"What about the violation of Belgium!" Guillaumin interrupted.
"Oh, that! That does'nt count: Das ist Krieg! It's only outside the state of war that they flatter themselves that they're good, just, sentimental, and gentle. It is impossible to deny that their ambition, in the main, is generous; to put an end to the inferior period of improvisation and disorder, and to instigate the reign of perfect equilibrium—of happiness, that is!—among men."
He paused:
"And bear in mind that it must be admitted that no race has ever had a better chance of success than they have at this moment!"
Yes, Fortin showed us this prodigious result as being remote and still hidden behind the veil of the future, but within reach—all Germany was aware of it!—of the present generation or at all events of the next. German Europe? But, except for the three powers in question, who were to be overcome by force, was it not that already?