This feeling, far from being weakened since that time, had only been increased and strengthened. The longer the war lasted, and the greater the sacrifices that it imposed, the greater and the stronger also grew the general opinion of Germany that peace must be concluded solely in return for, over and above a large ransom, the cession of these two provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, which were regarded as German, and, above all, as a necessary rampart against France. Here and there, of course, scattered and lost among the crowd, there were a few philosophers whose dreams were in more elevated spheres and who did not wish to admit the right to annex a country by the brutal path of arms and conquest, at any rate without consulting its population.... But who would listen to them? Who took them seriously? They were regarded as Idealists, only to be laughed at; they were accused of madness, and if they had really been thought to be of sound mind, they could not have failed to be treated as traitors to their country. I spoke with many individuals between the Rhine and the Danube, but I never met anyone who would have consented to a peace without territorial gains. Even those whom I had formerly known as “Liberalists” and belonging to the “Republican Party” were no exception, and energetically insisted on annexation. The fact is that the situation had changed since the month of July of the “année terrible.” At the beginning of the war--as I have already remarked--a good part of Prussia’s allies were lukewarm enough, but later on enthusiasm had become general. I was told an incident which seems characteristic. I will cite it as I heard it, without comment and without guaranteeing its authenticity. The King of X., who did not love the new régime, who suffered cruelly from it in his own capital and who did not wish to let his authority over his own army be taken away from him, was ready to cry with vexation when he was asked for the last reinforcements to be despatched to the theatre of war. He would like to have refused them, but dared not do so. Shutting himself up in his palace, he refused to see his troops at their departure defiling with music across the public square in front of his palace. * * * * * But the whole of Germany had become drunk with the unheard-of, unhoped-for success of its arms, and this success exalted the different populations all the more that it had been greater than they had dared to hope for when the war began. Up to that time France had been a formidable and much-feared power. The “_Rothosen_,” or “Red Breeches,” were regarded beyond the Rhine as invincible soldiers. At the news of the declaration of war, the various peoples were at first in great anxiety; everyone expected to see the French arrive from one day to the other.