neighbours made herself hated with an undying hate; there
were times, again, when she rallied them to her side in
friendship and admiration. There were epochs in which
her hegemony passed unquestioned among men of other lands,
and there were times when a sudden shift in fortune seemed
to lay the nation prostrate, with none so poor to do her
reverence.

It was France that first brought an orderly nationalism
out of feudal chaos; it was her royal house of Capet that
rallied Europe to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre and
led the greatest of the crusades to Palestine. Yet the
France of the last crusades was within a century the
France of Crecy, just as the France of Austerlitz was
more speedily the France of Waterloo; and men who followed
the tricolour at Solferino lived to see it furled in
humiliation at Sedan. No other country has had a history
as prolific in triumph and reverse, in epochs of peaceful
progress and periods of civil commotion, in pageant and
tragedy, in all that gives fascination to historical
narrative. Happy the land whose annals are tiresome! Not
such has been the fortune of poor old France.

The sage Tocqueville has somewhere remarked that whether
France was loved or hated by the outside world she could
not be ignored. That is very true. The Gaul has at all
stages of his national history defied an attitude of
indifference in others. His country has been at many
times the head and at all times the heart of Europe. His
hysteria has made Europe hysterical, while his sober