Page:Gilbert Keith Chesterton - How to Help Annexation (1918).djvu/16

 16 century exactly as she stood upon the Marne in the twentieth; but she was even more solitary, and of the peoples there was none to help her. From that stand, and from that alone, came all that we call democracy to-day.

What shall an instructed disciple of democracy say to the democrats who wish to complete an experiment in Petrograd or an inquiry at Stockholm by extinguishing in darkness and disappointment the lights of Paris? Where were they when the foundations of the republic were laid, or when was fixed the corner-stone thereof, when the men about to die sang together, and the boys who fell in thousands shouted for joy? We know where were the Russians, where were the Swedes, where were the English, in that first and fearful crisis when none knew whether liberty should live. Now we have learned better; and can make an end of our teacher. Let us wear the red cap and never reveal from whose head we have plucked it; let us shout "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," so long as we translate them out of the language in which we learnt the words. The very name of France shall be a guilty secret for us. The very emblem of France shall insult us like a caricature. We shall go forth gravely into the streets as the disciples of democracy; and we shall be ashamed to hear a cock crow, because we have denied our master.