Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/136

 of the French reaction with something of Russian servitude."

Jaurès welcomed the Entente between France and England, but not as against Germany. He would have wished for an understanding, too, with Germany, but not at the price of weakening the understanding with England.

Above all, Jaurès thought that one of the greatest evils was the supposed necessity of a struggle between Germany and England, with its terrible effect upon the growth of armaments and of militarism.

His words were solemn and prophetic: "Doubtless," he says, "the rivalry of economic interests is acute. But war would be a solution neither for the one people nor the other. It is doubtless impossible to abolish England's great power of expansion, and it is impossible to crush the methodical force of production of the populous and scientific Germany. Striking at one another desperately, the two peoples would bruise and wound one another and splash the world with blood; but neither of them would eliminate the other; and after an exhausting struggle they would still have to reckon with one another."

"Or if, by a peculiar stroke of fortune, one of the two peoples reduced the other to a long powerlessness, the conqueror, become formidable to the rest of the world, would see formed