war-like and the most restless of nations, the French; and he has permitted warlike inclinations, which in former centuries existed in no such degree, to grow strong in Russia.  Thus we get a certain amount of spurring on both sides, and are forced into exertions which otherwise perhaps we should not make.  The pikes in the European carp-pond prevent us from becoming carps, by letting us feel their prickles on both our flanks; they constrain us to exertions which perhaps we should not voluntarily make; they constrain us Germans also to a harmony among ourselves that is repugnant to our inmost nature:  but for them, our tendency would rather be to separate.  But the Franco-Russian press in which we are caught forces us to hold together, and by its pressure it will greatly increase our capacity for cohesion, so that we shall reach in the end that state of inseparableness which characterizes nearly all other nations, and which we still lack.  But we must adapt ourselves to this decree of Providence by making ourselves so strong that the pikes can do no more than enliven us....

The bill gives us an increase in troops trained to arms—­a possible increase:  if we do not need it, we need not call for it; we can leave it at home.  But if we have this increase at our disposal, and if we have the weapons for it, ... then this new law constitutes a reinforcement of the guarantees of peace, a reinforcement of the league of peace, that is precisely as strong as if a fourth great power with an army of 700,000 men—­and this was formerly the greatest strength that existed—­had joined the alliance.  This powerful reinforcement will also, I believe, have a quieting effect upon our own countrymen, and lessen in some degree the nervousness of our public opinion, our stock-market, and our press.  I hope it will act upon them as a sedative when they clearly comprehend that from the moment at which this law is signed and published the men are there.  The armament too may be said to be ready, in the shape of what is absolutely necessary:  but we must procure a better, for if we form an army of triarians of the best human material that we have,—­of the men above thirty, the husbands and fathers,—­we must have for them the best weapons there are.  We must not send them into the fight with an outfit that we do not regard as good enough for our young troops of the line.  The solid men, the heads of families, these stalwart figures that we can still remember from the time that they held the bridge of Versailles,—­these men must have the best rifles on their shoulders, the completest armament, and the amplest clothing to protect them from wind and weather.  We ought not to economize there.—­But I hope it will tranquilize our fellow-citizens, if they are really thinking of the contingency (which I do not expect to occur) of our being attacked simultaneously on two sides,—­of course, as I have pointed out in reviewing the events of the last forty years, there is always the possibility of any sort of coalition,—­I