Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/80

56 President of the Republic, was drawn into the intrigues of the monarchist parties; another, Boulanger, plotted revolution and usurpation, probably for his own benefit; and now, in these latter days, in consequence of the hideous Dreyfus affair, the administration of justice has, in the interest of the chiefs of the army, been subjected to a perversion calculated to undermine the very foundations of legal government, and, it is to be feared, ultimately to effect the total subversion of republican institutions. The domineering spirit of the army is such that it claims to be above discussion and criticism, assumes to dictate the decisions of judicial tribunals, and actually seeks to substitute for what in other countries is the crime of lèse-majesté, the crime of lèse-armée. At any rate, whatever the future may bring, it is no exaggeration to say that the attitude of the army in France has dealt the reputation of republican government a staggering blow, and that all this may turn out to be only a prelude to new usurpations.

It is idle to pretend that all the historical facts I have enumerated were owing only to the proverbial inconstancy of the French temperament; for it should not be forgotten that even in England, when the parliamentary forces during the so-called Great Rebellion of the seventeenth century had assumed the character of a standing army, that army, in spite of its origin, became in the hands of Oliver Cromwell a ready instrument for the transformation of the republic into a personal government essentially monarchical, and finally, under the leadership of Monk, served to bring about the restoration of the monarchy with all its forms and attributes by the return of the Stuarts. Thus we see that it was not a mere French peculiarity which made a strong standing army a danger to republican institutions in Europe, but that the large standing army has always played the same part in Euro-