The third crime, the offense which seemed most unpardonable of all, and the one most dangerous to the state, was that Rolland refused to regard a military victory as likely to furnish the elixir of morality, to promote spiritual regeneration, to bring justice upon earth. Rolland's sin lay in holding that a just and bloodless peace, a complete reconciliation, a fraternal union of the European nations, would be more fruitful of blessing than an enforced peace, which could only sow the dragon's teeth of hatred and of new wars. In France at this date, those who wished to fight the war to a finish, to fight until the enemy had been utterly crushed, coined the term "defeatist" for those who desired peace to be based upon a reasonable understanding. Thus was paralleled the German terminology, which spoke of "Flaumachern" (slackers) and of "Schmachfriede" (shameful peace). Rolland, who had devoted the whole of his life to the elucidation of moral laws higher than those of force, was stigmatized as one who would poison the morale of the armies, as "l'initiateur du défaitisme." To the militarists, he seemed to be the last representative of "dying Renanism," to be the center of a moral power, and for this reason they endeavored to represent his ideas as nonsensical, to depict him as a Frenchman who desired the defeat of France. Yet his words stood unchallenged: "I wish France to be loved. I wish France to be victorious, not through force; not solely through right (even that would be too harsh); but through the superiority of a great heart. I wish that France were strong enough to fight without hatred; strong enough to regard even those whom she must strike down, as her brothers, as erring brothers, to whom she must extend her fullest sympathy as soon as she has put it beyond their power to injure her." Rolland made no attempt to answer even the most calumnious of attacks. He quietly let the invectives pass, knowing that the thought which he felt himself commissioned to announce, was inviolable and imperishable. Never had he fought men, but only ideas. The hostile ideas, in this case, had long since been answered by the figures of his own creation. They had been answered by Olivier, the free Frenchman who hated hatred; by Faber, the Girondist, to whom conscience stood higher than the arguments of the patriots; by Adam Lux, who compassionately asked his fanatical opponent, "N'es tu pas fatigué de ta baine"; by Teulier, and by all the great characters through whom during more than two decades he had been giving expression to his outlook upon the struggle of the day. He was unperturbed at standing alone against almost the entire nation. He recalled Chamfort's saying, "There are times when public opinion is the worst of all possible opinions." The immeasurable wrath, the hysterical frenzy of his opponents, confirmed his conviction that he was right, for he felt that their clamor for force betrayed their sense of the weakness of their own arguments.