Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/93

 accept reforms, while pressing forward to greater ones, is a more attractive and hopeful way of working than always to be standing aside. But Jaurès was led on, partly through the political condition of the time, to the further position that members of the Socialist party should, if possible, enter the government if invited to do so, and this was the wedge which at the end of the century split the French Socialist party into two.

The Dreyfus affair had let in a flood of light on certain dangers that threatened France. During the thirty years which had passed since the foundation of the Republic, Frenchmen as a whole had grown to love this form of government more and more. But a large number of those who really cared for the Republic had been asleep, or at any rate had forgotten that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. The "Affaire" awoke them, not at once, but gradually, as the sordid tale unfolded. Then it was seen that the clerical plotters were imperilling the foundations of the Republic. It came to the point when the President could be publicly insulted by a section of the French people. It was certain that the air was thick with plots, that the opposition in the French Chamber would really have liked to overthrow the Republic and re-establish monarchy, that the work of the Revolution was not secure, but was in constant danger from the secret