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Show PEACE WILL BE ON PAPER, NOT IN HEARTS OF PEOPLE Noted Economist and Philosopher Foreshadows Conditions Which Will Prevail at Conclusion of Warfare. By MAX NORDAU. I PART II. FRANCE, in 1870, deplored the deepest humiliation of her history his-tory since the battle of Pavia, whero Francis I. fell into Spanish captivity, she ached under the siege of Paris with its destructions and sufferings, suffer-ings, and most of all under the severing sever-ing of Alsace and Lorraine from her body, which left her flank a gaping, bleeding wound never healed since. The memory of the "terrible year'' oppressed op-pressed like a nightmare the popular mind. The greatest poets and writers ot the country evoked it anew, Victor Hugo with "l'Annee Terrible,'' Theodore Theo-dore de Banville with "idvlles Prus-siennes, Prus-siennes, " Paul Deroulede with "Chants du Soldat" and "Nouveaux Chants du Soldat, " Henry de Boruicr with "La Fille de Koiand," Alexander Parodi with "Some Vaincue," Victor Tissot with "Voyage an Pavs des Milliards," and much later Emilo Zola with "La Debacle.' ' And yet the ire subsided by and by, the Frenchmen learned to speak of the Germans without gnashing of teeth, and to render them justice. Guy de Maupassant described in one of his short tales the Prussian occupation of a Norman village, and put in the mouth of a farmer's wife these words: "These people were not a bad lot. They helped us in the houso and in the fields. Thev took care of our little ones and played with them. They, too, had wives and children at home, and cursed the war as much as we did." Hatred Wears Off. Edmond About gave them this character: char-acter: "They did not conduct the war in the stylo of barbarians. They did not destroy for pleasure's sake, and they respected the women." The consequence was that the prewar pre-war habits were resumed after a short interruption. Professor Gublcr initiated with sacred zeal a crusade against the German spas, and recommended French ones instead, showing his countrymen that it was their patriotic duty to give them the preference. Notwithstanding this, the French took in greater Dumber! Dum-ber! than ever the road to Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, Wiesbaden, Aix-la-L'hapclle, Kis-singen, Kis-singen, etc. ft became the great fashion tto have children board with German families, the young men frequented for some terms the German universities, the German immigration to France was immensely swelling, and ten years after the war the German colony in Paris was more numerous than before 3870. In every field the relations .between tho two nations were resumed, and they developed to an astonishing degree of intimacy. Trade was quadrupled within with-in forty years. German writers were admitted in the French associations of authors. Academies inscribed the names of German scholars on the roll of their corresponding members. Parisian theaters thea-ters performed plays of Sudermann, Hauptmann, Philippi, Fulda, Beyerlein, Frank Wedekind, Halbe, Meyer-Foer-ster, etc. Paul Ernst delivered German lectures at the Sorbonne. German artists ar-tists obtained distinctions at the Paris art exhibitions and became societaires of the French societies of artists. Intermingle Again. The "Salon d'Automne" arranged special exhibitions of the works of Hans von Maress and of the Munich decorative art. Hermann Wolff brought tho Berlin Philharmonic Orchextre to Paris and achieved triumphs. German conductors were invited and treated like demigods. Richard Strauss could bring out his "Legend of Joseph" in the Grand Opera of Paris, and after tho first night the then prime minister, M. Doumergue, introduced with his own hands the officer's cross of the Legion of Honor in the buttonhole of Strauss 's dress coat. This much coveted decora tion was conferred on many Germar residents in Paris from 19U0 onwards and the German government returnee the compliment in like manner, li Paris were started a "Revue Ger manique, " and two German daily pa tiers, in Munich, a "Revue Franco-Al lemande, " and in Berlin a Frenct "Journal de Berlin." Privy Councilloi and Consul Rene schemed the inviting; of French celebrities to lecture in Ber liu. and M. John Grand-Carteret did nol wait for official arrangements, but un dertook on his own account a successfu French lecturing tour across Germany . In Paris a Franco-German comruer cial committee for the furthering oi mutual trading relations was constituted, consti-tuted, the French chairman of which was the former minister, M. Yves Guyot In Switzerland a meeting of French and German Liberal members of parliament parlia-ment took place, and it might have resulted re-sulted in briuging about a complete reconciliation but for the Alsace-Lorraine question, which proved an unsur-mountable unsur-mountable obstacle. Will Be Different. Alas! After the present war we shall behold nothing of the kind. It will have lasted too long, have been top cruel, have left too indelible traces. The mothers, wives, children weeping over a beloved dead will doff their mourning dress, but their souls will remain shrouded in black veils. The soldiers returning from the war will not forget that the enemy has robbed them of so and so many years, the .best of their life, inflicting on them a permanent menace of death and an uninterrupted sojourn in vermin-infested, filthy dugouts, dug-outs, too dirty even for beasts accus- lomea to welter m mud. The ill-treated war prisoners, the carried-off and confined con-fined civil populations will not pardon their tortures and humiliations, and they will hand down the tale ' of their snfterings to their children and to the children of their children. The ruins of Louvain, and Rheims, of Arras, Lille, and Verdun will untircdly repeat their mute, yet eloquent, indictments, and by association of ideas keep alive the memory mem-ory of tho hundreds of sunk ships and of drowned men and women and children. chil-dren. Pens and pencils have torn innumerable in-numerable deep and smarting wounds in the souls, and the press of all countries coun-tries has poured in them murderous venom. They will never heal. Horribly Unnatural. Sooner or later the diplomats will conclude con-clude peace, because the peoples cannot bear an everlasting war; but the peace will exist on the paper, not in the hearts. Our generation will not witness that an Englishman or Frenchman will tender his hand to a German, an Italian to an Austrian, a Serbian to a Bulgarian. Bulga-rian. Those who are enemies today will remain enemies, with all that this implies. im-plies. International co-operation will become a legend of the past; there will only be coalitions of the actual allies against flieir actual adversaries. The place of work in common will be taken by boycott, by boycott of the people, of the goods, of the ideas, of the works. This state will be horribly unnatural. For the law of nature is not hatred, but love. It is affection that keeps the world together. Iu the long run men will find themselves side by sido again, because it is not possiblo otherwise, because be-cause it responds to the deepest impulsions impul-sions and necessities of human nature. But this blessing is refused to the eon-temporaries eon-temporaries of the great war. Those having lived in the Egypt of hatred will not enter the Canaan of reconcilement. reconcile-ment. 'They will all die during the forty years of wandering in the desert of hostile estrangement. Tho moral and economical damage to Europe, to mankind, that this means is incalculable. And I have not seen anyone any-one taking into account this disaster when he tries to grasp in figures the havoc wrought by the. war. |