[13] Is it necessary to point out that wars started by public passion against the will of the government have often occurred under monarchies? And not only under constitutional monarchies, like the war of France with Spain in 1823 and with Turkey in 1826, but under absolute monarchies. For instance, the War of the Austrian Succession imposed on Fleury by an uprising of public opinion; the War of American Independence under Louis XVI; in 1806 the war of Prussia against Napoleon. In 1813 the war of Saxony. It seems probable that in 1914 war was imposed on absolute sovereigns like Nicholas II and Wilhelm II by popular passions which they had been exciting for years and then found themselves unable to restrain. [14] ‘But what is much more important than material facts is the soul of nations. Among all races a kind of effervescence it to be noticed; some defend certain principles, others the opposing principles. By becoming members of the League of Nations, the different peoples do not abandon their _national morality_.’ (Speech of the German Minister for Foreign Affairs at Geneva, on the occasion of the entry of Germany into the League of Nations, 10th September, 1926.) The orator went on: ‘Yet this should not result in raising up nation against nation.’ One is surprised that he did not add: ‘On the contrary.’ How much nobler, and at the same time more respectful of the truth, is the language of Treitschke: ‘This consciousness of themselves which the nations are acquiring and which can only be strengthened by culture, this consciousness means that war will never disappear from the earth, in spite of the closer linking up of interests, in spite of the growing uniformity of customs and the exterior forms of life.’ (Quoted by Charles Andler in _Les Origines du Pangermanisme_, p. 223.) [15] This is what Mirabeau seems to have foreseen when he announced to the Constituent Assembly that the wars of the ‘free nations’ would cause the wars of the Kings to be regretted. [16] The religion of the ‘national soul’ is obviously and logically an emanation of the popular soul. Moreover, it has been sung by an eminently democratic literature: Romanticism. It is to be observed that the worst enemies of Romanticism and of Democracy have adopted it; it is constantly to be found in the Action Française. To such an extent is it now impossible to be a patriot without flattering democratic passions. [17] See Note B at the end of the book. [18] See Brunot, _Histoire de la Langue Française_, t. v, liv. iii. [19] On this topic see some excellent remarks of Auguste Comte, _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, 57^e leçon.