striking act in the great drama. But it was not the concluding one. French
militarism, in that affair, was scotched but not killed, and the contest
was never fiercer than in the years immediately preceding the war. The
fighters for peace were the Socialists, under their leader, Jaurès, the one
great man in the public life of Europe. While recognizing the urgent need
for adequate national defence, Jaurès laboured so to organize it that it
could not be mistaken for nor converted into aggression. He laboured, at
the same time, to remove the cause of the danger. In the year 1913, under
Swiss auspices, a meeting of French and German pacifists was arranged at
Berne. To this meeting there proceeded 167 French deputies and 48 senators.
The Baron d'Estournelles de Constant was president of the French bureau,
and Jaurès one of the vice-presidents. The result was disappointing. The
German participation was small and less influential than the French, and
no agreement could be reached on the burning question of Alsace-Lorraine.
But the French Socialists continued, up to the eve of the war, to fight
for peace with an energy, an intelligence, and a determination shown
in no other country. The assassination of Jaurès was a symbol of the
assassination of peace; but the assassin was a Frenchman.

For if, in France, the current for peace ran strong in these latter
years, so did the current for war. French chauvinism had waxed and
waned, but it was never extinguished. After 1870 it centred not only
about Alsace-Lorraine, but also about the colonial expansion which took
from that date a new lease of life in France, as it had done in England
after the loss of the American colonies. Directly encouraged by Bismarck,
France annexed Tunis in 1881. The annexation of Tunis led up at last to
that of Morocco. Other territory had been seized in the Far East, and
France became, next to ourselves, the greatest colonial Power. This policy
could not be pursued without friction, and the principal friction at the
beginning was with ourselves. Once at least, in the Fashoda crisis, the two