of the young recipient and to prove a heavy heritage
for modern Europe. It was to set an indelible mark
upon all subsequent history, covering the face of
the earth with its menace, exacting a continuous
and increasing tribute of costly sacrifice from mil-
lions and millions of human beings who have paid
it in fear and trembling.

There were at the time Frenchmen of high stand-
ing in the realm of thought and action who urged
the Assembly never to sign this fateful document;
Gambetta, soul of the national defense, flaming,
dynamic embodiment of the resolution of a people
at bay, who had accomplished prodigies during the
war, but not quite prodigies enough, and who de-
manded war to the bitter end, believing that that
end would be less bitter than the alternative now
offered; Louis Blanc who appealed, in vain, for a
people's war, for a repetition of the epic of 1793
when the nation rose en masse and threw back the
invader, a kind of war which the German General
Staff feared above everything, as it later admitted;
Edgar Quinet who called the attention of the As-
sembly to the new frontier as both illogical and
dangerous, a veritable dagger pointed at the heart
of France; and who correctly prophesied the future,
war always latent, immanent in the nature of things,

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