clearly perceive that just as we cannot invent any flower or seed moi : truly appropriate to a plant than those it produces, so we cannot imagirl } any two persons, with all their past in such complete congruity, down 1 the smallest details, with the part they were destined to play.
Ill
The underlying essentially significant feature of the European events o the beginning of the present century is the military movement of masse of European peoples from west to east, and again from east to wesl The original movement was that from west to east. That the peoples o the west might be able to accomplish the military march upon Moscow which they did accomplish, it was essential (i) that they should h combined in a military group of such a magnitude as to be able to with stand the resistance of the military group of the east 5(2) that they shouk have renounced all their established traditions and habits; and (3) tha they should have at their head a man able to justify in his own name anc theirs the perpetration of all the deception, robbery, and murder tha accompany that movement.
And to start from the French Revolution, that old group of insufficient magnitude is broken up; the old habits and traditions are destroyed; step by step a group is elaborated of new dimensions, new habits, and new traditions; and the man is prepared, who is to stand at the head of the coming movement, and to take upon himself the whole responsibility of what has to be done.
A man of no convictions, no habits, no traditions, no name, not even a Frenchman, by the strangest freaks of chance, as it seems, rises above the seething parties of France, and without attaching himself to any one of them, advances to a prominent position.
The incompetence of his colleagues, the weakness and insignificance of his opponents, the frankness of the deception, and the dazzling and self-confident limitation of the man raise him to the head of the army. The brilliant personal qualities of the soldiers of the Italian army, the disinclination to fight of his opponents, and his childish insolence and conceit gain him military glory. Innumerable so-called chance circumstances attend him everywhere. The disfavour into which he falls with the French Directorate turns to his advantage. His efforts to avoid the path ordained for him are unsuccessful; he is not received into the Russian army, and his projects in Turkey come to nothing.
During the wars in Italy he was several times on the verge of destruction, and was every time saved in an unexpected fashion. The Russian troops—the very troops which were able to demolish his glory—owing to various diplomatic considerations, do not enter Europe until he is there.
On his return from Italy, he finds the government in Paris in that process of dissolution in which all men who are in the government are
:evitably effaced and nullified. And an escape for him from that peril- is position offers itself in the shape of an aimless, groundless expedition Africa. Again the same so-called chance circumstances accompany Jm. Malta, the impregnable, surrenders without a shot being fired; the lost ill-considered measures are crowned with success. The enemy’s ret, which later on does not let one boat escape it, now lets a whole army ude it. In Africa a whole series of outrages is perpetuated on the almost narmed inhabitants. And the men perpetrating these atrocities, and reir leader most of all, persuade themselves that it is noble, it is glory, tat it is like Ccesar and Alexander of Macedon, and that it is fine.
That ideal of glory and of greatness, consisting in esteeming nothing i e does wrong, .and glorying in every crime, and ascribing to it an in- • mprehensible, supernatural value—that ideal, destined to guide this an and those connected with him, is elaborated on a grand scale in ,'rica. Whatever he does succeeds. The plague does not touch him. The (iielty of murdering his prisoners is not remembered against him. His
< ildishly imprudent, groundless, and ignoble departure from Africa, aandoning his comrades in misfortune, does him good service; and again 1 e enemy’s fleet lets him twice slip through their hands. At the moment men, completely intoxicated by the success of his crimes and ready for the 1 rt he has to play, he arrives in Paris entirely without any plan, the (integration of the Republican government, which might have involved 1 m in its ruin a year before, has now reached its utmost limit, and his tesence, a man independent of parties, can now only aid his elevation.
He has no sort of plan; he is afraid of everything; but all parties clutch ; him and insist on his support.
He alone—with the ideal of glory and greatness he has acquired in lily and Egypt, with his frenzy of self-adoration, with his insolence in
< me, and his frankness in mendacity—he alone can justify what has to 1 accomplished.
