France (it was argued) is in the last phase of political decadence. Comfort, luxury, self-indulgence, and the financial means to procure these are the goal of her latter-day strivings. She has no faith, no moral or religious ideals, no lofty aspirations, no generous ambitions. Her enthusiasms are burnt out, her thirst for military glory is stilled by historic memories. She possesses territory enough to absorb whatever energies she may still have left. Contented to live as she now is, her one desire is to be undisturbed. Above all else, she loathes the idea of a war which would bereave her of her material well-being and force her to put forth strenuous exertions for which she no longer has the heart. Her population, and therefore the race itself, is being systematically sacrificed to this love of ease. Peace, universal peace, is the French ideal to-day, and pacificism the form in which it is popularized for the man in the street. Look at the debates on the introduction of the three years’ military service in the Republic, and compare the reception accorded to that measure by the nation with the way in which the German race received, nay, welcomed, the sacrifices imposed by the recent war-tax. The truth is, France is undergoing a process of rapid decay. The martial spirit that flashed forth during the French Revolution and nerved the nation to withstand the world was the last flicker before extinction. The people of France is dying of self-indulgence.