French & English

I think it must be admitted that there has been an apparent decline in national courage both in England and France during the latter half of the nineteenth century. They now, both of them, shrink from war as they did not shrink in former times, and when the casus belli would have been clear to the Englishman and the Frenchman of more heroic days their descendants prefer to wink at it. We are no longer quite certain that national courage was a great virtue, and there are certain considerations that may console us for its real or apparent diminution.

In the first place, Did the men who decided upon former wars risk their own lives? When a cabinet of civilians declares war, or when it is declared by a king who is not really a soldier, the act is not one of courage at all, but of political wisdom or folly. Or if a military king with a standing army declares war, the act is not one of national courage; it is only a demonstration of the military caste. When the nation itself is the army, and when it declares war through its freely-elected representatives, then the act is one of national courage; but how often has a war been declared in that way? Nations do not desire war, and the better they are educated the less they wish for it. The only French war in our time which really excited the enthusiasm of the nation was that for the liberation of Italy. The French had no enthusiasm whatever for the Crimean War, which they looked upon as an English enterprise; they had none for the Mexican, and there was only a little noisy surface excitement in favour of the war of 1870. Since then the nation has really had the control of its own affairs, and has shown no warlike tendencies. The Tonquin enterprise was ministerial, and ruined the minister who undertook it. The French people would not even support a vigorous Egyptian policy. Its only national courage is that which takes the form of waiting calmly for the German onslaught.

Neither England nor France now ventures to attack a really first-class Power; but they exercise their military strength against weak, half-civilised peoples. England breaks the Zulu power, but not the Russian. France advances her African frontier, but not her European. France now exactly imitates the English policy of expansion out of Europe, and of doing nothing in Europe until she can find an ally.

They are still nominally Great Powers, but they now belong in reality to a second class which might be defined as that of the nations that do not fight without allies except against feeble potentates. Neither one nor the other preserves those illusions about its own strength which are necessary for heroic action. What is more, the other nations have lost the old fear of England and France, whose mutual distrust breaks forth on every possible occasion and deprives them of the one source of real strength—association.

The kind of national courage which consists in offering a determined though hopeless resistance to a successful enemy was very nobly displayed by the French after Sedan, especially during the siege of Paris. Some English writers called this mere obstinacy, and had nothing but contemptuous blame for it, yet I venture to say that if an invading army surrounded London the English would show exactly the same kind of noble obstinacy themselves. In such a case a nation does not fight without a purpose, though it may struggle without hope. It fights for its self-respect.

This is the sort of courage that second-class Powers may still retain, they may reserve themselves for a fierce and prolonged defence. There remains for them a peculiar danger. It might happen that two Powers, not quite of the first rank, might fight each other because they dared not assault the greatest Powers. A superfluity of unexercised courage might explode in a war between England and France, because one dared not fight Russia, nor the other Germany. There have been moments when this seemed very likely to happen. The dangerous effects of bottled-up courage were curiously displayed in the time of the Paris Commune. The National Guards had been expecting to be led against the Prussians in a grand sortie, but were always put off till the peace came. They had their rifles and their bottled-up courage, so they rushed into conflict with the “Versaillais.”

For individual courage the two peoples are nearly on a par, but they differ in their training. It is unpleasant to have to confess that brutal and barbarous customs are favourable to the development of courage, yet some of them unquestionably are so, and a higher civilisation might have a difficulty in replacing them. Football, as practised in English public schools, is a brutal pastime, but it is an excellent discipline in courage. French duelling, though infinitely more refined in its forms, is in principle thoroughly barbarous, but as a school of courage there is nothing to equal it, and the great advantage of it in that respect is the constant possibility of an encounter that hangs over the head of every Frenchman, and accustoms him to the idea of danger. He goes through life like an armed knight riding through a wood. In saying “every Frenchman” I exaggerated, because, in fact, men are very differently exposed to the danger of duelling in France. Peasants never fight duels, workmen hardly ever, but there is not a gentleman, or an officer, or a deputy, or a journalist, who is not ready to go on the field of private battle at a moment’s notice. It is true that these encounters rarely end fatally, yet there is always danger, if only from accident. An intimate French friend of mine, when he had a duel on his hands, would go home to his wife and say, “Now, my dear, I must be left very quiet, as I have to fight to-morrow morning;” then he would go to bed and sleep till four o’clock, when he drank nothing but a glass of water before facing lead or steel.

I have a poor opinion of the sort of courage which consists in looking on with tranquil nerves whilst others suffer. However, this base valour may sometimes be of use. The English may acquire it to some extent by witnessing pugilistic combats, the French of the south by seeing bull-fights in the arenas of Nîmes and Arles; but it is only a very small proportion of the population in England and France that now witnesses these things, the spectators are not comparable in numbers to the vast Roman public that hardened its heart in the gladiatorial shows.

As for field sports, those practised in England require little courage except in horsemanship for English hunting. In France there are dangerous boar-hunts. It is, however, only in some parts of France that this amusement is to be had, and it is practised by comparatively few persons, chiefly amongst the richer gentry. Field sports are good for keeping up the energy of semi-barbarous aristocracies, which, in the absence of war, might lapse into indolence without them.

Courage is kept up amongst the common people chiefly by dangers repeatedly incurred in their ordinary avocations. This discipline of experience with boats, horses, bulls, and other dangerous things or creatures, is common both to England and France. In a word, as to the lower classes, they are in the same situation in both countries, except that the humble Frenchman has to undergo military service, which is a fine school, especially in the cavalry and artillery. Young English boyhood, in the middle and higher classes, is in a better situation for acquiring manliness than French boyhood, because it has more liberty. I have not, however, noticed that French boys were timid for themselves (except in talking), it is their parents and teachers who are timid for them.