If the Republic can provide for French national defense and can keep for France the position in Europe to which she is entitled, the Republic will probably endure.
And in that case it will certainly deserve to endure, because it will have faced and overcome the most exacting possible national peril.
Even the most loyal friend of France can, however, hardly claim that the French democracy is even yet thoroughly nationalized.

It has done something to obtain national cohesion at home, and to advance the national interest abroad; but evidences of the traditional dissociation between French democracy and French national efficiency and consistency are still plainly visible.

Both the domestic and the foreign policies of the Republic have of late years been weakened by the persistence of a factious and anti-national spirit among radical French democrats.
The most dangerous symptom of this anti-national democracy is that an apparently increasing number of educated Frenchmen are rebelling against the burdens imposed upon the Republic by its perilous international position.

They are tending to seek security and relief, not by strengthening the national bond and by loyalty to the fabric of their national life, but by personal disloyalty and national dissolution.

The most extreme of democratic socialists do not hesitate to advocate armed rebellion against military service in the interest of international peace.