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But now, to the amazement of all those who will one day consider them in cold blood, events are suddenly ascending the irresistible current and, for the first time since we have been in a position to observe it, the adverse will is encountering an unexpected and insurmountable resistance.  If this resistance, as we can now no longer doubt, maintains itself victoriously to the end, there will never perhaps have been such a sudden change in the history of mankind; for man will have gained, over the will of earth or nature or fatality, a triumph infinitely more significant, more heavily fraught with consequences and perhaps more decisive than all those which, in other provinces, appear to have crowned his efforts more brilliantly.

Let us not then be surprised that this resistance should be stupendous, or that it should be prolonged beyond anything that our experience of wars has taught us to expect.  It was our prompt and easy defeat that was written in the annals of destiny.  We had against us all the force accumulated since the birth of Europe.  We have to set history revolving in the reverse direction.  We are on the point of succeeding; and, if it be true that intelligent beings watch us from the vantage-point of other worlds, they will assuredly witness the most curious spectacle that our planet has offered them since they discovered it amid the dust of stars that glitters in space around it.  They must be telling themselves in amazement that the ancient and fundamental laws of earth are suddenly being transgressed.

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Suddenly?  That is going too far.  This transgression of a lower law, which was no longer of the stature of mankind, had been preparing for a very long time; but it was within an ace of being hideously punished.  It succeeded only by the aid of a part of those who formerly swelled the great wave which they are to-day resisting by our side, as though something in the history of the world or the plans of destiny had altered, or rather as though we ourselves had at last succeeded in altering that something and in modifying laws to which until this day we were wholly subject.

But it must not be thought that the conflict will end with the victory.  The deep-seated forces of earth will not be at once disarmed; for a long time to come the invisible war will be waged under the reign of peace.  If we are not careful, victory may even be more disastrous to us than defeat.  For defeat, indeed, like previous defeats, would have been merely a victory postponed.  It would have absorbed, exhausted, dispersed the enemy, by scattering him about the world, whereas our victory will bring upon us a twofold peril.  It will leave the enemy in a state of savage isolation in which, thrown back upon himself, cramped, purified by misfortune and poverty, he will secretly reinforce his formidable virtues, while we, for our part, no longer held in check by his unbearable but salutary menace, will give rein to failings and vices which sooner or later will place us at his mercy.  Before thinking of peace, then, we must make sure of the future and render it powerless to injure us.  We cannot take too many precautions, for we are setting ourselves against the manifest desire of the power that bears us.