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Show 138 139 that the intellectual lights of lirance are less bright. or [hp glm‘y of French civilization extinguished. If it is true. it means only that the nation is crippled. if we cut the roots of a growing tree, we do not impair its fruits or its tlowers. \Ve strike at. its future. It is claimed that the change. whatever it may be. is deep-seatwl, not individual. It is said that the birth rate is steadily falling, that the average stature of men is lower by two inches at least than it was a century ago, that the physical force is less among the peas- ants at their homes. Legoyt tells us that "it will take, long periods of peace and plenty before lirance can recover the tall statures mowed down in the wars of the Republic and the liirst Empire." What is the cause of all this? lutemperance. vice. misdirected education, bureaucracy and the rush toward ready-made careers? These may be symptoms. They are not causes. Demolins asks in that clever volume of his: "In what constitutes. the superiority of the Anglo- Saxon ?" Before we answer this let us inquire in what constitutes the inferiority of the Latin races? If we admit this inferiority exists in arty degree, and if we answer it in any degree we find in ww "mm niflMllw the background the causes of the fall of Greece, the fall of Rome, the fall of Spain. It is not an inferiority of race. but the severity of race experience. "'6 find the spirit of domination, the spirit of glory. the spirit of war. the final survival of snbserviency, of cowardice and of sterility. The man who is left holds in his grasp the history of the future. The evolution of a race is always selective. never collective. Collective evolution among men or beasts, the movements upward or downward of the whole as a whole, irrespective of training or selection, does not exist. As Lepouge has said, "It exists in rhetoric, not in truth nor in history." The survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence is the primal moving cause of race progress and of race changes. In the red stress of human history, this natural process of selection is sometimes reversed. A reversal of selection is the beginning of failure. Can we see this in the fall of Rome or the downfall of France? Let us look again at the history. A single short part of it will be enough. It will give us the clue to the rest. In the \‘Viertz gallery in Brussels is a wonderful painting. dating from the time of Waterloo, called "Napoleon in Hell." It represents the great marshal with folded arms antl face unmoved descending slowly to the land of the shades. Before him, filling all the background of the picture. with every expression of countenance, are the men sent before him by the unbridled ambition of Napoleon. Three millions and seventy thousand there were in all, so history tells us, more than half of them Frenchmen. They are not all shown in one picture. They are only hinted at. And behind the millions shown or hinted at are. the millions on millions of men who might have been and are not-- the huge widening human wedge of the possible descendants of the men who fell in battle. These men of Napoleon's armies were the youth without blemish, "the best that the nation could bring," chosen as "food for powder," "ere evening to be trampled like the grass" in the rush of Napoleon's great battles. These men came from the plow, from the workshop. from the school. the best there wereithose front eighteen to thirty-five years of age at first, but afterwards the older and the younger. "The more vigorous and well born a young man is,‘ says Novicow. "the more normally constituted, the greater his chance to be slain by musket or magazine. the rifled cannon and other similar engines of civilization." Among those destroyed by Napoleon were "the élite of Europe." "Napoleon," says Otto Seeck. "in a series of years seized all the youth of high stature and left them scattered Over many battlefields. so that the French people who followed them are mostly inert of smaller stature. More than once in France since Napoleon's time has the military limit been lowered." I need not tell again the story of Vapoleon's campaigns. It began with the First Consulate. the justice and helpfulness of the Code Napoleon, the prowess of the brave lieutenant whose military skill and intrepidity had caused hint to deserve well of his nation. The spirit of freedom gave way to the spirit of domination. The path of glory is one which descends easily. Campaign fol« lowed campaign. against enemies, against neutrals. against friends, The trail of glory crossed the Alps to Italy and to ligypt. crossed Switzerland to Austria, crossed Germany to Russia. L1)nserip« tion followed victory, and victory and conscription debased the human Species. "The human harvest was bad." The First Con- sul became the Emperor. The servant of the people became the founder of the dynasty. Again conscription after conscription. |