Page:Chesterton - The Wisdom of Father Brown.djvu/70

THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN resistance to militarism, and wished the chorus of the Marseillaise altered from "Aux armes, citoyens" to "Aux grèves, citoyens." But his anti-militarism was of a peculiar and Gallic sort. An eminent and very wealthy English Quaker, who had come to see him to arrange for the disarmament of the whole planet, was rather distressed by Armagnac's proposal that (by way of beginning) the soldiers should shoot their officers.

And indeed it was in this regard that the two men differed most from their leader and father in philosophy. Dr. Hirsch, though born in France and covered with the most triumphant favours of French education, was temperamentally of another type; mild, dreamy, humane, and, despite his sceptical system, not devoid of transcendentalism. He was, in short, more like a German than a Frenchman; and much as they admired him, something in the subconsciousness of these Gauls was irritated at his pleading for peace in so peaceful a manner. To their party throughout Europe, however, Paul Hirsch was a saint of science. His large and daring cosmic theories advertised his austere life and innocent, if somewhat frigid, morality; he held something of the position of Darwin doubled with the position of Tolstoy. But he was neither an anarchist nor an antipatriot; his views on disarmament were moderate and 56