In public life, why is abstention from the franchise attributed to the moderate party, to those whom one calls or who call themselves “respectable” people?--as if there were such a thing as negative respectability! Quite recently men boasted in certain circles that they never voted; and, if they do not boast of this any more, they make their voting subordinate to hunting and entertainments, and it is fashionable to affect the greatest contempt for politics. In the life of a modern nation, rightly or wrongly, everything reduces itself to politics or is influenced by politics. This is a fact against which it is useless to protest. “The really useful work,” said Mr. Roosevelt, President of the United States, “is not accomplished by the critic who keeps out of the battle but by the man of action who bravely takes part in the struggle, without fear at the sight of blood or sweat.” We have so many of these critics who keep out of the battle and read the papers every morning in order to be able to discuss the affairs of the nation in a superior tone, who vainly regret the past, sigh over the future, and discourage those who undertake to show them the way. The mere fact of living in society, of enjoying social rank, creates social duties. No one has the right to arrange his life separately, for no one person can dispense with the rest. To pay one’s taxes, grumbling all the time, is not enough. The wealth which represents accumulated work in the past does not exempt one from work. Since it furnishes the means of better and greater production, it should result, not in a class of people who enjoy it, but in a class of leaders; and a leader is one who understands how to take on himself the greatest share of the work and responsibility. But, to judge from observation, it would seem that wealth is only a factor in selfishness, an occasion for petty and ridiculous pleasures--as though wealth were more difficult to bear than poverty. The latter constantly furnishes examples of solidarity and devotion. In these strikes, too often gotten up by the leaders for their own purpose, do we not see the workmen suffering from hunger and poverty for the sake of one another, or subscribing a tithe of their modest wages to help their comrades in other towns and other trades? Do we not find Victor Hugo’s _Pauvres Gens_ to the very life in those paragraphs which tell, in two or three lines, how at the death of some poor wretch with a family the neighbours have fought for possession of the orphaned children, even before the charitable organisations or private benevolence have had time to intervene?