guns, as it were, we had made their chief gunner necessarily their chief
citizen. Had the French Republic been left alone, it would probably have
followed the example of most other ideal experiments; and praised peace
along with progress and equality. It would almost certainly have eyed
with the coldest suspicion any adventurer who appeared likely to
substitute his personality for the pure impersonality of the Sovereign
People; and would have considered it the very flower of republican
chastity to provide a Brutus for such a Caesar. But if it was
undesirable that equality should be threatened by a citizen, it was
intolerable that it should be simply forbidden by a foreigner. If
France could not put up with French soldiers she would very soon have to
put up with Austrian soldiers; and it would be absurd if, having decided
to rely on soldiering, she had hampered the best French soldier even on the
ground that he was not French. So that whether we regard Napoleon as a
hero rushing to the country's help, or a tyrant profiting by the
country's extremity, it is equally clear that those who made the war
made the war-lord; and those who tried to destroy the Republic were
those who created the Empire. So, at least, Fox argued against that much
less English prig who would have called him unpatriotic; and he threw
the blame upon Pitt's Government for having joined the anti-French
alliance, and so tipped up the scale in favour of a military France. But
whether he was right or no, he would have been the readiest to admit
that England was not the first to fly at the throat of the young
Republic. Something in Europe much vaster and vaguer had from the first
stirred against it. What was it then that first made war--and made
Napoleon? There is only one possible answer: the Germans. This is the
second act of our drama of the degradation of England to the level of
Germany. And it has this very important development; that Germany means
by this time _all_ the Germans, just as it does to-day. The savagery of
Prussia and the stupidity of Austria are now combined. Mercilessness and