Some already dreamed of wading through blood to conquer an epaulette, others that they gained millions in supplies, and became great dignitaries in the empire. {133} So they went about repeating that their country was degraded, reduced to a second rank; that Germanic insolence must be chastised, and the glorious tricolor planted on the left shore of the Rhine. The journals commented on their words, and the rustic in his hut, the laborer at his forge, and the financier in his counting-house dreamed with terror of the dawning evil. Certain politicians, meditating on the situation and the march of events, declared war inevitable, necessary, providential, and alone able to reëstablish the influence of the country and the _prestige_ of the government. So they burst out in eloquent discourses in favor of military armaments, while on their side strategists, inventors, and administrators set to work, believing they were the foundation of the future prosperity of their country. Their theory was very simple. The power of a nation, they said, depended on the number of men capable of bearing arms, and on the quantity and quality of the engines of destruction that they possessed. That is, our country must be powerful in order to be rich, prosperous, and free. _Ergo_, let us increase to every extent the effectiveness of our troops and fabricate without parsimony such arms as are unparalleled in Europe. Weak patriots and economists, the _Sancho Panzas_ of these _Don Quizotte_ politics, murmured a little, but they found themselves obliged to be silent and bow their heads under the taunts and reproaches with which they were loaded. "Utopists," cried the inventors, "you say our machines are not useful; but look down there in the direction of Sadowa and Custozza, and tell us afterward if we have not rapidly and economically fabricated smoke and glory. Ask the surgeons, and they will describe to you the gaping wounds, the deep rents they can produce; [Footnote 42] ask statesmen, and they will tell you the services they render to the ambitious, and the good livings they secure thereby." "Miserable citizens! men without energy and honor," cry they to others, "you lazily prefer well-being to glory, and the success of your personal enterprises to that of the national glory; but let the hour of danger come, and we will make you walk at the point of the bayonet, notwithstanding your cries and menaces." ... And people who cared nothing for truth, and judged by appearances, echoed the cry, and called them utopists, hollow dreamers, theorists, and, after all, cowardly and egotistical.