France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Causes; Revolutions; Social psychology
All these effects are displayed in a general insubordination and
anarchy. The son revolts against the father, the employee
against his patron, the soldier against his officers.
Discontent, hatred, and envy reign throughout.
A social movement which continues is necessarily like a machine
in movement which accelerates its motion. We shall therefore
find that the results of this mentality will become yet more
important. It is betrayed from time to time by incidents whose
gravity is daily increasing--railway strikes, postmen's strikes,
explosions on board ironclads, &c. A propos of the destruction
of the Liberte, which cost more than two million pounds and
slew two hundred men in the space of a minute, an ex-Minister of
Marine, M. de Lanessan, expresses himself as follows:--
''The evil that is gnawing at our fleet is the same as that which
is devouring our army, our public administrations, our
parliamentary system, our governmental system, and the whole
fabric of our society. This evil is anarchy--that is to say,
such a disorder of minds and things that nothing is done as
reason would dictate, and no one behaves as his professional or
moral duty should require him to behave.''
On the subject of the catastrophe of the Liberte, which
followed that of the Iena, M. Felix Roussel said, in a
speech delivered as president of the municipal council of
Paris:--
``The causes of the evil are not peculiar to our day. The evil
is more general, and bears a triple name: irresponsibility,
indiscipline, and anarchy.''
These quotations, which state facts with which everyone is
familiar, show that the staunchest upholders of the republican
system themselves recognise the progress of social
disorganisation.[12] Everyone sees it, while he is conscious of
his own impotence to change anything. It results, in fact, from
mental influences whose power is greater than that of our wills.
[12] This disorder is the same in all the Government departments
Interesting examples will be found in a report of M. Dausset to
the Municipal Council:--
``The service of the public highways, which ought above all to be
noted for its rapid execution, is, on the contrary, the very type
of red-tape, bureaucratic, and ink-slinging administration,
possessing men and money and wasting both in tasks which are
often useless, for lack of order, initiative, and method--in a
word, of organisation.
Speaking then of the directors of departments, each of whom works
as he pleases, and after his own fashion, he adds:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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