France, the most deeply injured and despoiled, whom the German conquest has plundered to the utmost, she also will take part in the procession, and in order that our humiliation be the more complete, so that the French army may be unable to forgive the French navy for it, our Flag, our beloved colours, will doubtless salute one of those Prussian vessels which carry the name of one of our defeats, for instance, the Woerth!

After that, William II, King of Prussia, will be unable to descry a single cloud on the German horizon.  And Germany, Germany will be above and over all!  The glory and the splendour of the Hohenzollerns will shine upon the entire universe, and the German Emperor, Emperor of Emperors, like the King of Kings, will have nothing to fear until the Heavens fall.

And we, who have forgotten nothing of the Terrible Year and what it took from us, we, who can see under the left breast of our beloved France, her bleeding heart, ravished Alsace-Lorraine, we shall lift our eyes unto Heaven, our last hope, beseeching it to strike down the presumptuous one, since men are afraid of him.

April 10, 1895. [11]

It has always been a dream of mine to see a newspaper founded under the title Foreign Opinion, a sheet confined to information, in which would be presented, clearly, simply, and held together by an intelligent sequence of ideas, quotations from the principal organs of those countries in which we have interests, either identical or opposed.  Statesmen and Members of Parliament would be compelled to read such a paper.  A knowledge of foreign opinion would render the greatest services to public opinion in this country, for it would compel our somewhat self-centred mind to take into consideration the judgment of others, to determine the justice or the harshness of the criticism directed against us, and to draw, from the study of these things, warnings and rules of conduct.

To take an immediate instance, let me give my readers an extract from the Muenchner Nachtrichten, a newspaper, which as a rule does not share the brutal harshness of the Berlin Press with regard to our feelings and their expression in French newspapers—­

“These foolishly vain Frenchmen, sitting in their meagre little thicket of laurels, contemplate with evident displeasure the stirring of the winds in the great forest of German oaks, and their discontent finds expression in ways that are frequently comical.  The Figaro for example, has expressed it in an article which is particularly silly (with a kind of foolishness not often found even in a French newspaper, which is saying a good deal).  It denies to Germans the right to remember the glorious years of 1870 and ’71, for the reason that French people might thereby be hurt.  Does it mean to say that the French would threaten us with war if we continue to celebrate our victories over them?  Well, if these gentlemen are of that opinion, we will answer them that Germany is peacefully inclined, but that, if the French are not satisfied with the severe lesson that we gave them in 1870-71, we are quite prepared to begin it all over again.”