d its
revenge and its day, or at least what we call its day, which may
extend over a hundred years and more where nations are concerned, for
fatality does not reckon in the manner of men, but after the fashion
of the great movements of nature. It is important at this time to know
whether we shall be able to escape that revenge and that day. If men
and nations were swayed only by reason, if, after being so often the
absolute masters of their happiness and their future, they had not so
often destroyed that which they had just achieved, then we might
say--and indeed ought to say--that our escape depends only upon
ourselves. In point of fact, three-quarters of the risk are run and
the fourth is in our power; we have only to keep it so. Almost all the
chances of the fight are on our side at last; and, when the war is
over, there will be nothing but our wisdom and our will confronting a
destiny which from that time onward will be powerless to take its
course, unless it first succeed in blinding and perverting them.

In this hour all that lies hidden under that mysterious word will be
waiting on our decision, waiting to know if victory is with us or with
it. It is after we have won that we must really vanquish; it is in the
hour of peace that the actual war will begin against an invisible foe,
a hundred times as dangerous as the one of whom we have seen too much.
If at that hour we do not profit by all our advantages; if we do not
destroy, root and branch, the military power of an enemy who is in
secret alliance with the evil influences of the earth; if we do not
here and now, by an irrevocable compact, forearm ourselves against
our sense of pity and generosity, our weakness, our imprudence, our
future rivalries and discords; if we leave a single outlet to the
beast at bay; if, through our negligence, we give it a single hope, a
single opportunity of coming to the surface and taking breath, then
the vigilant fatality which has but one fixed idea will resume its
progress and pursue its way, dragging history with it and laughing
over its shoulder at man once more tricked and discomfited. Everything
that we have done and suffered, the ruins, the sacrifices, the
nameless tortures and the numberless dead, will have served no purpose
and will be lost beyond redemption. Everything will not have to be
done over again, for nothing is ever done over again and fortunate
opportunities do not occur twice; but everything except our woes and