Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/62

 Napoleon desired to subjugate the world in order to deliver it. He made war in order to enforce peace, and enlisted men to discipline them in the practice of liberty. Unknown is the name of the genius who published this theory ; but his work did not perish. His views were repeated, timidly at first, as an audacious paradox with only a grain of truth in it. Then public opinion in the lower classes got used to the idea. The grotesqueness shocked them no longer. Democrats, Republicans, or even Liberals, gravely accompanied the Jacobins in their periodical pilgrimages to the Vendôme Column. A new Napoleon dominated France, sung in prose and verse, glorified in every conceivable way — a man perhaps a little uncertain in his temper, but full of generous impulses, who adored the people, only lived to make it happy, and had not succeeded because he had fallen a victim to kings, priests, and nobles.

The men of the Revolution participated in this unforeseen hero-worship. They had been the forerunners of Napoleon. No doubt they had been guilty of faults, not to say violences (their crimes were no longer mentioned), but they were full of great thoughts and noble