Unless they were united against her she had little to fear from them; and her comparative strength tempted her to be aggressive, careless, and experimental in her foreign policy.

That policy was vacillating, purposeless, and frequently wasteful of the national resources.

Eventually, it compromised the international position of France.

After 1871, for the first time in almost three hundred years, the very safety of France in a time of peace became actively and gravely imperiled.

The third Republic reaped the fruit of all the former trifling with the national interest of France and that of its neighbors; and the resulting danger was and is so ominous and so irretrievable that it has made and will make for internal stability.