are neither moral nor immoral but simply animal. If love is her chief
function, it is not the passion sublimated by reason but love in the
raw state, splendidly blind, mingling selfishness and sacrifice,
equally irresponsible, and both subservient to the deep purposes of
the race. The tender, flowery embellishments with which the couple
always try to veil the forces that affright them, are like arches of
tropical vines over a rushing stream; their object is to deceive. Man
could not bear life if his feeble soul saw the great forces, as they
are, that carry him along.

His ingenious cowardice strives to adapt them mentally to his
weakness; he lies about love, about hatred, about his gods, and above
all he is false about woman and about Country. If the naked truth
were shown to him, he would fear to fall into convulsions, and so
he substitutes the pale chromos of his idealism. The war had broken
through the thin disguise, and Clerambault saw the cruel beast without
the mantle of feline courtesy in which civilisation drapes itself.

Among Clerambault's former friends, the most tolerant were those
belonging to the political world. Deputies, Ministers, past or future;
accustomed to drive the human flock, they know just what it is worth.
Clerambault's daring seemed merely foolish to them. What they thought
in their hearts was twenty times worse, but they thought it silly to
speak it, dangerous to write it, more dangerous still to answer it.
You make a thing known when you attack it, and condemnation only gives
it greater importance. Their best advice would have been to keep
silent about these unlucky articles, which the sleepy, stumbling
public would have neglected if left to itself. This was the course
usually followed by Germany during the war; if the authorities did
not see their way clear to suppress rebellious writers, they hid them
under some flowery humbug.

The political spirit of the French Democracy, however, is more
outspoken and more narrow-minded; silence is unknown to it, and far
from concealing its hatreds, it spits them forth from the house-tops.
Like that of Rude, French liberty opens her mouth and bawls. Anyone
who differs from her opinion of the moment is declared a traitor
forthwith; there are always some yellow journals to tell at what price
the independent voice was bought, and twenty fanatics to stir up the
crowd against it. Once started, there is nothing to do but wait until
the fit has passed off;