As we said, M. Gambetta made a little mistake in his prophecy. Catholicity is not dead in France; Catholics are not a small fraction of the people, and in the government of the country of which they form so important a part they must be taken into account. They will not and cannot submit to have convictions which are sacred to them disregarded, to have necessary and national rights trampled under foot at the will either of M. Gambetta or of anybody else. He assumes altogether too much. What did the figures of the election show? As M. de Fourtou pointed out in his speech in the Chamber of Deputies, November 14, 1877: The Opposition had flattered itself that it would return with four hundred, and yet it lost fifty votes. “It required an astonishing amount of assurance for the Opposition, after such a check, to pretend to claim power in defiance of the rights of the Senate.”
“The Opposition,” he continued, “had obtained 4,300,000 and the Government 3,600,000 votes, France thus dividing herself into two almost equal parties. Instead of striving to oppress the one by the other, it would be better to seek a common link to bind themselves together. Candidates presented themselves to be elected in the name of a menaced Constitution, the public peace in jeopardy, and in the name of modern liberties and civil societies. But if the Opposition only asked for that, it had no adversaries; if it asked for something else it had no mandate. (Applause from the Right.)”
There is no denying the force of this reasoning. The parties in France show themselves almost equal, and the only hope of governing the country is by mutual concession and good-will. M. Gambetta must let the church alone, if he is so very anxious for peace.
Frenchmen not blinded by passion might have taken warning from the attitude of Germany and Italy previous to and during the elections. These two powers—for Italy has now become a sort of tender to Germany—were earnest for the success of the party led by Gambetta. Why so? What sympathy can Prince Bismarck possibly have with Gambetta? What sympathy could he be supposed to have with a republic of the Gambetta stripe, of the red revolutionary stripe, as his next-door neighbor, while he so dreads his own socialists? The cause of his new-born sympathy for a red republic, or a republic of any color, is not far to find. It was the same sympathy that he had with the Commune during the siege of Paris. He knows Gambetta, and has had a taste of “the tribune’s” effective generalship and governing qualities. He was in France when M. Gambetta made that famous “pact with death” of which we heard so much and so little came. He knows thoroughly the elements that make up the strength, the very explosive strength, of M. Gambetta’s party, and there is probably nothing he would better enjoy than to see the fou furieux at the helm of state once more. A few months of the Gambetta régime, and Prince Bismarck might say of France, as he said of Paris, “Let it fry in its own fat.” France is now a most dangerous foe to Germany—negatively so, at least. She is growing more dangerous every year. Every year of quiet is an enormous gain to her. She is vastly richer than Germany. She can stand the strain of her immense army far more easily than Germany. She is winning back something of the old love and admiration of the outer world, which she had lost on entering into the war with Germany. She is patient, laborious, industrious, desirous of peace with all the world, and day by day becoming more able to maintain that peace even against Germany. But a revolution in France would destroy all this and throw the nation years behind. And so sure as Gambetta attained to power a revolution would follow; i.e., if he adhered—and there is no doubt that he would—to the programme of a republic which he has sketched in such bold colors. Once in power, once the strong but quiet hand of Marshal MacMahon was removed from the helm, the ship of the French state, with or without Gambetta’s will, would go to speedy wreck.
That is why Prince Bismarck so carefully encouraged the Gambetta faction. That is why his press thundered against a “clerical” government in France. That is why the Italian press took up the cry, as it explains in great measure the mysterious comings and goings between the courts of Berlin and the Quirinal. That is why, if France would abide in safety, she must retain her soldier at the head of affairs, and hasten during the next few years of his term to heal her internal discords and become one heart and one soul. Marshal MacMahon has attempted nothing against the republic that was confided to his safe-keeping. There is yet time, before his term of office expires, for all Frenchmen to come together and shape their government so as to ensure peace, freedom, and order in the future. If they cannot do this, the republic is hopeless in France. It will go out as its predecessors have gone out within a century, only to make room for a new usurper.
GERMANY.
There is every year less likelihood of a renewal of the dreaded war between Germany and France. France does not want to fight. Even if Germany did want to fight she must reckon on a far stronger and more dangerous foe than she encountered in 1870. Competent military critics, like the writer in Blackwood’s Magazine, whose articles on the French army attracted such wide and deserved attention, assert that France, though probably unequal to an attack on Germany, is rather more than able to hold her own against attack. A stronger critic yet establishes this fact. In his famous speech in the German Parliament last April, in favor of the increase of one hundred and five captaincies in the army—an increase that was bitterly opposed—Count Von Moltke said:
“What the French press does not speak out, but what really exists, is the fear lest, since France has so often attacked weaker Germany, strong Germany should now for once fall upon France without provocation. This accounts for the gigantic efforts France has made in carrying through within a few years the reorganization of her army with so much practical intelligence and energy. This explains why, from the recent conclusion of peace till to-day, an unproportionately large part of the French army, chiefly artillery and cavalry, is posted, in excellent condition, between Paris and the German frontier—a circumstance which must sooner or later lead to an equalizing measure on our part. It must also be taken into consideration that in France, where the contrast of political parties is even stronger than with us, all parties are agreed on one point—viz., in voting all that is asked for the army. In France the army is the favorite of the nation, its pride, its hope; the recent defeats of the army have been condoned long since.”
“The total strength of all these [the French] battalions,” he said in the same speech, “in times of peace amounts to 487,000 men; whilst Germany, with a much larger population, has but little over 400,000 under arms. The French budget exceeds the German by more than 150,000,000 marks (shillings), not including considerable supplementary sums that are there required. Even so wealthy a nation as the French are will not be able to bear such a burden permanently. Whether this is done at present for a distinct purpose, in order to reach a certain goal placed at not too great a distance, I must leave undecided.”
That speech alarmed Europe at the time. Yet it was only a plain statement of facts which it is as well for Europe to look in the face. It may seem strange that under the circumstances we should feel so sanguine about the preservation of peace between these two armed and hostile nations. But both want peace, and both are too strong to fight. Of course the unexpected may always occur. France does not disguise her purpose of revenge, and she means to “mak siccer” next time. But the gentle hand of Time softens the deepest hatreds; and if even this enforced peace can only be prolonged the war-fever may die away. Politics and administrations will change in both countries. Prince Bismarck will not live for ever. The French had just as bitter a resentment against England after Waterloo. The resentment died with the generation that bore it; and only for the evil legacy left by Prince Bismarck to the empire—the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine—we could fairly hope for better feeling between the two peoples at least within a generation.