At first sight it looks as if France was something like a genuine economic democracy, and ought to escape the evils which threaten other countries from an economic organization, in which concentrated capital plays a more important part.
But the situation is not without another and less favorable aspect.
France, in becoming a country of small and extremely thrifty property owners, has also become a country of partial economic parasites with very little personal initiative and energy.

Individual freedom has been sacrificed to economic and social equality; and this economic and social equality has not made for national cohesion.

The bourgeois, the mechanic, and the farmer, in so far as they have accumulated property, are exhibiting an extremely calculating individualism, of which the most dangerous symptom is the decline in the birth-rate.

Frenchmen are becoming more than ever disinclined to take the risks and assume the expense of having more than one or two children.

The recent outbreak of anti-militarism is probably merely another illustration of the increasing desire of the French bourgeois for personal security, and the opportunity for personal enjoyment.