The Daily News. FRIDAY, MAY 6, 1921. THE FRENCH WAR SPIRIT.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 May 1921, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, MAY 6, 1921. THE FRENCH WAR SPIRIT.

Much has happened to France since Turgot’s time, when dumb Drudgery staggered up to its King’s Palace, and in wide expanse of sallow faces, squalor and winged raggedness, presented hieroglyphieally its Petition of Grievances, and, for answer, got hanged on a “near gallows forty feet high.” Then followed the Reign of Terror, and from out of the maelstrom of horror there arose two measures, one externally odious, the other glorious for ever. The first was the wholesale butchery of the Terror; the second was the “levy in mass,” when all France took up arms or the tools of war, and stood, as it were, in hollow square, fighting four ways at once, while within the square the people argued their fierce debates to the death. Then France became a nation of soldiers, officered by men of the people, who managed great bodies of men in great battles, defeated learned old masters of war, and won imperishable names, many of them before the age of thirty. It was, as Carlyle says, the consummation of Sansculottism, the brightest tint of which was that which the armies gave it, the outstanding inspiration being that “in victory alone is life.” It was while the smoking ruins of Lyons were quenched in rivers of blood that the 'torch of civil war was kindled at Toulon, and it was to extinguish that torch there, came upon the scene the most remarkable man in history, a young captain of artillery—Napoleon Bonaparte—who had been sent by Carnot to the array of the Alps, but was stopped on the way to replace the commandant of artillery who had been wounded at Toulon. In a few words, and in a few days, he displayed his genius, and was the soul of all operations. His future was in this. position (says one historian) : “A military genius bursting forth in the fire of civil war, to seize on the soldier, illustrate the sword, stifle the utterance of opinion, quench the revolution —and compel liberty to retrograde for a century. ’ This is neither the time nor the place to dwell upon Napoleon’s brilliant episodes. Suffice it to say that his government was marked by sagacity, activity and vigor in the administration of civil affairs, though war was his element. It is to him that France owes the spirit which was so strikingly exemplified by the late war, and, in commemorating the centenary of his death, the French people desire to honor the man who shed immortal glory upon their country, and not the victorious general who was a menace to the peace of the world. This is as it should be, for at no time in the history of France has there been a period so pre-eminently appropriate as the present for the French to honor the soldier, dictator and Emperor who brought his country out of the direst travail and raised her to a pinnacle of fame in the art of war. Under the oiretuastan-

ees in which France is now placed it is natural that the people should look back and honor the memory of the great genius who made the world tremble at his audacity and unquenchable militarism. To-day, French troops are on German soil, the power of her implacable foe broken to shreds by the help of the Allies. Thus both the spirit of pride and of gratitude join in the commemoration. Meanwhile the memory of Napoleon’s conquests grows dim with the passing of the years, but the spirit he inculcated shines as brightly and potently as ever in the hearts of the people, and will be as immortal as the glory which Napoleon the Great shed upon his country.

“Things gained are gone; But great things done endure.”