But, whether tirading against the evils of a bureaucracy or perorating against the iniquities of the censorship, you will find the politicians of France, Royalists, Clericals, Conservatives, Radicals and Socialists with all their subtle subdivisions, having proved their patriotism by the greatest sacrifice of which a politician is capable--having for nigh on ten months kept silent!--earnestly and honestly working for their country. They are striving, not for the quick peace of compromise which would relegate the silent, efficient soldiers to their subordinate powers and would restore to themselves all the prestige of full-throated eloquence, but for the deferred and definitive peace of victory, with all the continuance of second-fiddling to which such a postponement subjects them.
It is indeed fortunate for the alliance that France--Army, Government and People--is united in the determination to fight this war through to its logical conclusion. For France is apt to be the nation which pays the piper. England is physically safe behind her fleets, Russia proper is physically safe behind her distances, for the German invasion is not apt to go far beyond her alien provinces of Courland and Poland.
But France is not at sword's length, but at dagger's point, with her enemy--one little slip by any one, from an absent-minded General down to a sleeping sentinel, and she may become not a defeated, but a conquered nation.
And this you can see in the faces of the French to-day. Not anger, not bitterness, not sadness; neither excitement nor despondency is in their faces, but a look of hushed and solemn suspense. It is a nation with straining ears, with straining eyes, with bated breath, waiting, waiting.
After leaving the hush of France, England appears at a disadvantage largely undeserved. Compared with the atmosphere of strain in Paris, the atmosphere of London seems one of relaxation. Contrasted with the breathless struggle for self-preservation in France, the British attitude toward the war seems almost dilettante.
This is unquestionably due in part to the fact that in England a very literal-minded race is shipping its soldiers to fight in merely geographical localities for seemingly abstract principles. The trouble is that England has the Channel and France has the imagination. It is obvious how markedly stronger the combination would be if Britain were fighting an invader and France were fighting for a sentiment.