New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-05-16
President Poincare's "No."


peace so far as France is concerned.
There is nothing surprising in the state
ment save for those who have listened TO
assertions of German sympathizers that
the French pcopla are weary Of the war
and France is exhausted.
Nothing could he further from the
truth. Nowhere so clearly as in France
are the issues Of the great world war per
ceived. Il is Germany who has educated
Frenchmen to the present point. Eleven
years ago. when the Kaiser went to Tan
Cier, this education began. From that
day until Armageddon France was sub
iected to brutal. persistent, intolerabe
bullying. German writer's like Bern
hardi frankly foretold the day when
France was to be crushed permanently, and
the decadence Of the nation and its ap-
preaching dissolution were familiar topics
in Germany.
Now, to understand the marvellous
French resistance, the resurgence of all.
that has been splendid in French history,
the renaissance which has been the most.
glorious fact in our own time, it is neces-
sarv to think Of the decade in which
France learned day by day, by humilia-
ton. by insult. by injury, that Germany
purposed to destroy her and that day
was to come when the existence Of the race
was to be at stake.
No other nation has been threatened as
France was. For years before the war
this fact had penetrated into the heart
of the least important of Frenchmon, and
the German stroke at Agadir came to COM
plete the education of Frenchmen and to-
disclose a nation already resolute, pre-
pared 50 far as the mind can be prepared
for the shock of a struggle for existence.
To-day every Frcnchman who talks at
all about the war, and France is little
given to talk at present, has the same
thought. For hir1 this war is not war
as other wars; it is not a struggle such as.
France has known at frequent intervals
it is a combat for race existence, it is a.
fight for national life, because Germany
has deliberately declared an intention to
erase France from the world.
Nor do German words alone explain the
French feeling In the opening days Of the
war Germany translated into action those
threats of the years before the war.
Northern France was ravaged and laid IN
waste as no nation has been for centuries.
This desire not to conquer but to annihi-
late expressed itself in the nameless atroci-
ties visited upon French women and chill
dren and the fury that assailed all that
was beautiful in French civilization.
Therefore Frenchmen conceive this strug
gle to be for France and for civilization,
for the right TO exist, and to exist IN con-
formity with the genius and will Of their
own race. The attack that has come has
not been the attack of a civilized enemy.
1t has not been war as war has been known
hitherto; it is the attack Of barbarians, and
for France the duty and necessity are
identical with the duty and necessity which
demanded resistance to Attila, which car
ried Romans to the city walls when the
Goths and Vandals swept down from out
Of the north.
Given such an emotion, such belief
for it is not in any sense an emotion-there
is patiently no present basis for peace so
far as France is concerned. The peril has
been halted on the road; not all France,
but only portion, has been turned into a
desert; not all Frenchmen have been killed
or subjugated, but only a small percent
age. But TO make peace now is for the
French but TO postpone the struggle for
few more years There is still the moral
certainty that the attack will come again.
What President Poincare says is the
clear expression Of this French temper.
The issue between Germany and France,
now joined, must be settled at least for a
generation. For ten years the threat has
hung over France, the visible. the audible
threat. For nearly half century, ever
since the Treaty Of Frankfort, Germany
has bulied and threatened and coerced.
Wherefore the Frenchman, all Frenchmen
and all Frenchwomen, have at last risen in
what may be death struggle but what is
for them a final resolve to have done with
the shame, the agony and the terror Of
recent years before the war and recent
months since the var began.
Germany having advertised her pur-
nose has at length undertaken to realize
il. She has fallen upon France IN the
spirit Of the destroyer, and, halted upon her
halfway by French devotion, courage and
efficiency. she now offers equvocal terms
she now invites application by the French
for a peace which would leave her IN pos
session of part of what she has con-
quered and with an appetite for further
attacks hereafter.
But France prefers death to life on
such terms. France is resolved never to
20 back to the nightmare of the past half
century which has weighed on the nation,