[97] In the _Dictionnaire théologique_ of Vacant-Mangenot (1922, article ‘Guerre’), I find the following passage, which I recommend to all aggressors desirous of sheltering under a high moral authority: ‘It is not only the right but the duty of the leader of a nation to adopt this method (i.e. war) to safeguard the general interests committed to his care. This right and duty apply not only to a strictly defensive war, but also to an offensive war rendered necessary by the actions of a neighbouring State whose ambitious intrigues constitute a real danger.’ In the same article will be found a theory of colonial wars identical to Kipling’s when he calls them: _the white man’s burden_. [98] This expression (i.e. ‘la blague’) is Sorel’s (see Julien Benda, _Les Sentiments de Critias_, p. 258); and again (_Reflexions sur la Violence_, ch. ii): ‘You cannot sufficiently execrate those who teach the people that they should carry out some alleged superlatively idealistic injunction of a justice moving towards the future.’ Moreover, Sorel professes a similar hatred for those who preach this injunction to the bourgeoisie. [99] See Note K at the end of the book. [100] See _Reflexions sur la Violence_, ch. vi: ‘The morality of Violence.’ We shall be told that the justice denounced by Sorel is the justice of tribunals, which according to him is a false justice, a ‘violence with a judicial mask’. There is no indication that a justice which was a true justice would receive any more respect from him. [101] In this respect one cannot stress too much in certain political teachers a defence of intolerance, carried out with a consciousness and arrogance which hitherto had only appeared sometimes in the mandatories of a revealed religion. A specimen is quoted by G. Guy-Grand (_La Philosophie nationaliste_, p. 47). See also one of these defences in L. Romier, _Nation et Civilisation_, p. 180. [102] ‘Modern science has established as the measure of truth, not the deductive demands of its understanding, but the observed existence of the fact.’ (Paul Bourget.) The ‘truth’ here is evidently moral truth; for scientific truth the phrase would be a tautology. Once more, here the ‘fact’ is solely the fact which happens to suit the author’s passions. When M. d’Haussonville points out to M. Bourget that democracy is a fact, and an unavoidable fact, he is told that this belief is a ‘prejudice’ and one suddenly learns that ‘boats are made to row against the stream’. This is exactly what revolutionaries say. [103] See Note L at the end of this book.