M. Poincaré stands for many things: it is no mere flourish of words to say that through him France heard and obeyed the call of her past. She deliberately reverted to her origins, and her traditional sources of strength. The new France put itself to school to old France. Intellect, family tradition, gracious manners, thrift, minute industry, a certain austere discipline of thought, and with all that an immense cheerfulness, able to _ça ira_ itself out of any desperate pass--such was _la douce France_ of M. René Bazin and of history. The folly must not be imputed to me of supposing that the election of President Poincaré restored, or will restore, that submerged world. But that is the atmosphere evoked by his personality. The good M. Dupont and that amiable plumpness, M. Durand, being of the earth earthy, and of Latin earth into the bargain, are in no danger of being transformed into angels of light. They will wink and chuckle as before over their dominoes and their aperitives; they will try to anticipate each other with the latest ambiguity of the comic paper and the vaudeville. But they are none the less conscious of the new orientation, and they adapt themselves to it with a purr of satisfaction. The lines on which reconstruction proceeds are in the nature of things that are inevitable. Patriotism is once more in fashion: were Hervé to revive his brilliant dream of planting the tricolour on the dunghill he would run some risk of being planted there himself. It is, no doubt, unfortunate that the national idea should in our day find expression universally in the increasing diversion of capital from productive industry to unproductive armaments. Signs are not lacking that the excess, or rather the frenzied debauch of which Europe has in this regard been guilty, has created an impossible situation. The so-called “strike of capital” even indicates that the point has been reached at which the disease must either generate its own cure, or else kill the patient. But while your ten competitors are arming more and more heavily, it is foolish to stand in your shirt chanting the praises of a millennium which obstinately refuses to arrive. France has accepted the Three Years’ Service Law; and it is certain that no ministry of the near future will dare to repeal that measure. This increase of the army by fifty per cent. is expensive: it is a defeat for the party of reason, if you will, and a triumph for that of violence. But it is an act of sacrifice rendered necessary by events. Any possibility of repeal is ruled out by the opening of old wounds in Alsace-Lorraine. And because the Army Act must stand, the Loan must go through. On that point, doubt is inadmissible: _la nouvelle France_ has made up its mind. The conditions of issue of the new Rente, its immunity or otherwise from taxation, even its amount, are questions in controversy. The discussion on them, so far as it has proceeded, has been of extreme