She gapes and wonders every now
and then, like an awkward peasant, at some other things--railway
kings, electro-biology, and other trumperies; but nothing stirs
her grand old heart down to its central deeps universally and
long, except the Right. She puts on her shawl very badly, and she
is awkward enough in a concert-room, scarce knowing a Swedish
nightingale from a jackdaw; but--blessings large and long upon
her!--she knows how to teach her sons to sink like men amidst
sharks and billows, without parade, without display, as if Duty
were the most natural thing in the world; and she never mistakes
long an actor for a hero, or a hero for an actor." (6)
It is a grand thing, after all, this pervading spirit of Duty in a
nation; and so long as it survives, no one need despair of its
future. But when it has departed, or become deadened, and been
supplanted by thirst for pleasure, or selfish aggrandisement,
or "glory"--then woe to that nation, for its dissolution
is near at hand!
If there be one point on which intelligent observers are agreed
more than another as to the cause of the late deplorable collapse
of France as a nation, it was the utter absence of this feeling of
duty, as well as of truthfulness, from the mind, not only of the
men, but of the leaders of the French people. The unprejudiced
testimony of Baron Stoffel, French military attache at Berlin,
before the war, is conclusive on this point.
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