Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/73

 the right of one nation to interfere with the affairs of another, which if generally recognised becomes the surest possible source of tyranny and injustice. But we can easily understand why the Royal Government decided to interfere, conscious as it was of a resolve to display moderation in the first place, and knowing also that the war was a matter of life or death to it. Curiously enough the man who most clearly saw this necessity was Châteaubriand, whose political perspicuity had hitherto been almost invariably at fault. He realised perfectly that the Monarchy would never be founded until the Army should have won some victory, or carried through some successful campaign under the white standard, and with a prince at its head. The justice of this idea might be seen when the extreme Left, especially its Bonapartist and Jacobin members, defined their attitude. That attitude was shameful. Not only did men like Carrel, the celebrated journalist, cast aside all notions of duty to go and enrol themselves in the Spanish Army and fight against their own countrymen, but in the ranks of the French Army everything was done to provoke desertion and revolt. The passage of the Bidassoa