With profound emotion it salutes our soldiers who, animated by the virtues of our ancestors, are thus demonstrating the immortality of France.
When these words were published they may have appeared excessive to certain minds outside of the best-informed circles.... Since then diplomatic documents have appeared, followed by various official reports on German atrocities, and today the truth is known to all.
No. 4.
THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW.
On the 9th of November the President of the Council, M. René Viviani, traveled to Rheims in order to deliver to the Mayor, M. Langlet, the Cross of the Legion of Honor that his courage had gained for him. On this occasion the President of the Council pronounced the discourse from which the following is cited as exhibiting French thought on the present war:
As if it were really necessary to accentuate the rôle of France, German militarism has raised its voice. It proclaims, through the organ of those whose mission it is to think for it, the cult of force and that history asks no accounts from the victor. We are not a chimerical people, nor dreamers, we do not despise force; only we put it in its place, which is at the service of the right. It is for the right that we are contending, for that Belgium is struggling by our side, she who sacrificed herself for honor; and for that, also, our English and Russian allies whose armies, while waiting till they can tread this unchained force under foot, oppose it with an invincible rampart. France is not a preying country; it does not stretch out rapacious hands to enslave the world. Since war has been forced upon her, she makes war. Soon the legitimate reparations will come which shall restore to the French hearth the souls that the brutality of arms separated from it. Associated in a work of human liberation we shall go on, allies and Frenchmen united in war and for peace, as long as we have not broken Prussian militarism and the sword of murder with the sword of freedom.
