justified. The same spirit was evident in the fight on conscription.
This attitude has been a handicap to England in successfully carrying on
the War, as it is to us; but it shows how strong is the essential spirit
of democracy in both lands.

In France, the Revolution was at bottom an affirmation of individualism
--of the right of the people, as against classes and kings, to seek life,
liberty and happiness. The great words, _Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,_
that the French placed upon their public buildings in the period of the
Revolution, are the essential battle-cry of true democracy,--as it is to
be, rather than as it is at present.

Through her peculiar situation, threatened and overshadowed by potential
enemies, France has been forced to a policy of militarism, with a large
subordination of the individual to the state. The subordination,
however, is voluntary. That is touchingly evident in the beautiful
fraternization of French officers and men in the present War. With our
Anglo-Saxon reserve, we smile at the pictures of grave generals kissing
bearded soldiers, in recognition of valor, but it is a significant
expression of the voluntary equality and brotherhood of Frenchmen in
this War. The reason France has risen with such splendid courage and
unity is the consciousness of every Frenchman that complete defeat in
this War would mean that there would be no France in the future, that
Paris would be a larger Strassburg, and France a greater
Alsace-Lorraine. While the subordination has been thus voluntary,
surely the French soldiers, man for man, have proved themselves the
equal of any soldiers on earth.

The anomaly of the first two years of the War was the presence of the
vast Russian autocratic empire on the side of the allied democracies.