In our case, So-and-so is Barrès. He has become all that we thought he might become. Public life and the patriotic duty have absorbed him more and more; he has been to the France of 1914-19 something of that which Lamartine was in 1848. He, more than any, has preached the need of union--‘L’Union sacrée,’ bringing into public affairs a largeness of outlook and sweetness of temper rare in politics,--especially in France. Few of these eloquent pages which day by day he has contributed to the _Echo de Paris_ will remain as works of literature, but, piled up, no longer read, in their accumulation they form a pedestal which certainly heightens the moral importance of the man. Here at least we have the satisfaction of finding our analysis exact. More and more, in these days of storm and stress, Barrès has ‘felt the need of merging himself in something larger and more durable than any individual existence’; ‘no longer the singular, the extraordinary attracts him;’ he finds something pleasant and satisfying in the alliance of courage and the spirit of adventure, ‘with a certain soldierly mediocrity of mind’--and all the more when their conjunction ‘promises the conquest of Alsace-Lorraine.’ Above all, he has given himself heart and soul to ‘the creation of a truly National Party, capable of bringing out of chaos a new organic order.’ Shall we not say of him that, like his heroine, Colette, ‘Il se sent chargé d’une grande dignité, soulevé vers quelquechose de plus vaste, de plus haut, et de plus constant que sa personne’? Yes, I can re-read the chapter on Barrès with a certain satisfaction. But, when we come to Romain Rolland, what a falling-off was there! How is it that Romain Rolland, who seemed, if such there was, the very prophet and the teacher of the younger generation, should have proved so much less sure as a guide and a standby than the fantastic and singular Barrès? Always an aloof and solitary spirit, Rolland completely detached himself from his country during the war. In his voluntary exile at Geneva he occupied his hands, and no doubt his heart, with works of mercy, but his mind gave no support to his compatriots. Doubtless the attraction of Germany was too strong: ‘Jean Christophe’ continued to subjugate the delicate ‘Oliver.’ These great international friendships have their perils (and, doubtless, I speak of them in the mood of Bishop Berkeley: ‘There, but for the Grace of God, go I!’) Yet Renan was no less attached to intellectual Germany than Rolland: Renan, who, when his mind crossed the Rhine, ‘crut entrer dans un temple,’ and in 1870-71 France had no firmer patriot than Ernest Renan.