I should be inclined to judge with more painful severity those witty writers who advise us to light-hearted friendship with Bismarck the "great German," with William the "sympathetic Emperor", with Richard Wagner "the highest expression of historical poetry and musical art," those men who prepared and who perpetuate Prussia's victories--I should judge them differently, I say, were it not that I remember my former anger against the young decadents and the older _roues_ in the last days of the Empire. All of them used to make mock of patriotism in a jargon mixed with slang which greatly disturbed the minds of worthy folk, who became half ashamed at harbouring, in spite of themselves, the ridiculous emotions "of another age." But these same decadents and _roues_, after a period of initiation somewhat longer than that which falls to the lot of ordinary mortals, behaved very gallantly in the Terrible Year. True, in order to convince them that they had been wrong in regarding the theft of Schleswig-Holstein as a trifle, wrong in applauding the victory of Sadowa, and declaring that each war was the last, it required such disasters, that not one of us can evoke without trembling the memory of those events, whose lurid light served to open the eyes of the blindest. "Understand this," Nefftzer was wont to insist (before 1870), "we can never wish that Prussia should be victorious without running the risk of bringing about our own defeat; we must not yield to any of her allurements nor even smile at any of her wiles." If the people of Paris applaud Wagner, he who believed himself to be the genius of victorious Germany personified, it can only be in truth that Paris has forgotten. And in that case, there will only be left, of those who rightly remember, but a few mothers, a few widows, a few old campaigners and your humble servant! So that we may recognise each other in this world's wilderness, we will wear in our button-holes and in our bodices that blue flower which grows in the streams of Alsace-Lorraine, the forget-me-not! And we shall vanish, one by one, disappearing with the dying century, _that is, unless some surprise of sudden war, such as one must expect from William II, should cure us of our antiquated attitude_. Need I speak of these rumours of disarmament, wherewith the German Press now seeks to lull us, rumours which spread the more persistently since, at last, we have come to believe in our armaments?