The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-10-18

armed three years and Germany re- turning to what one of her princes called the national industry" will seek by war to re-establish that power which peace had not abolished, but had rightly limited.
 The "call to arms" decided upon in cold blood by the German gov ernment was to find the adversaries of yesterday and of tomorrow In widely divergent pastures. The enc, France, profoundly attached to peace, so long as it no longer meant servitude, and confi dent In It's duration; the other, Ger many, physically and spiritually in- tent OH war. have roughly sketched the political events of 40 years; but the historian is false to his task who does not seek beneath the surface for those underlying impulses which animate national will. Behind the governments di- recting the moves, where stood the people7
 The France of 1911, faithful guardian of the traditions of the race, honest, brave and free, dif- fered somewhat from the France that had known defeat. To the generation branded by disaster an other generation had succeeded which, not having suffered directly from defeat, sometimes failed to rec ognize It's causes and it's conse- quences.
 l The spirit of revenge" so often invoked by Germany as an excuse for her provocation, no longer ex- isted. Had 1t, In the real sense of the word, ever existed?~ It is doubt ful. few noble minds and brave he pan1 narnt1Iadas few momentary outbursts had at certain hours given tangible form to this feeling. But the nation as whole whether it be praised or blamed | therefor-was foreign to these movements as facts have shown. Buckingham, born of internal dis- content, rather than of great inter national aspirations, had been but brief flash in the pan. The memory of Alsac-Lorraine lived in our hearts, but how were the lost prov l inces to be recovered? Before the Russian alliance, we had been too isolated to challenge the status quo; afterward, we were bound to respect it. Years had passed without sin gle act of revenge. Hope remained, l a religion which no one surrendered. But between hope and reality peace endured at first. and then. accepted, [ reared a wall.
 The men of my generation who reached maturity about 1900, faced
 this painful problem with the pa- triotism of resignation. Those among them who had closely studied history had little belief in the eff cacy of resignation to span the moral abyss created by Bismarck between | France and Germany. But by far the greater number, allowing themselves to live with the times, paid little heed to the warnings of the past.
 The courtesies of the German Elm peror in our days of national mourn ing-the deaths of Carnot of Mac Mahon, the burning of the Charity Bazar, and in the days of our national pride, such as the exhibition of 1900, were not without effect. German penetration of France, of which the ever rising tide of emigration was l but a minor means, proceeded every where with extraordinary thorough ness. Our financiers were becoming
 accustomed to sleeping partnerships in which--as in the Bagdad matter
 French money furnished was but a
 very inadequate return. Our social ists, hoodwinked by the material and political prosperity of German social Ism, were content after the Congress l of Amsterdam to be the minor breth- ren of the Marksist order. Our con- | servatives, to whom imperial diplo- macy laid assiduous siege in the sa- Ions, were not insensible to the fas- l cination of social order as exempli- fled by the German empire. There was infiltration in every strata of French society.
 | ITO Rs Coptinued)