_That political passions affect a large number of men they never before
affected ..._
It is very difficult to know to what extent crowds are moved by the
political events of their time (of course, I am leaving on one side all
truly popular movements). Crowds do not write their memoirs, and those
who write memoirs scarcely ever speak of the crowds. However, I do not
think my proposition will be seriously disputed. To limit ourselves to
France and the two examples I quoted--suppose we had another upheaval
like the Religious Wars, I do not think we should see the immense
majority of country districts possessed by no other passion than a
hatred for soldiers, whatever party they belonged to.[170] Nor should
we see cultivated bourgeois who keep diaries giving a couple of lines
to such events as Luther’s preaching, along with the thousand little
facts they relate.[171] Nor do I think that a month after an event like
the taking of the Bastille we should find a foreigner on his travels
in France, writing: ‘13th August, 1789. Before I leave Clermont I must
remark that I have dined or supped five times at the table d’hôte with
some twenty to thirty merchants and tradesmen, officers, etc.; and it
is not easy for me to express the insignificance--the inanity of the
conversation. Scarcely any politics, at a moment when every bosom ought
to beat with none but political sensations.’ (Arthur Young.)[172]
The attitude of populations towards wars between States long seems to
have been that described by Voltaire in the following lines: ‘It is
indeed a deplorable evil that this multitude of soldiers should always
be kept up by all Princes. But, as we have pointed out, this evil
produces a good. The peoples take no part in the wars carried on by
their masters; the citizens of besieged towns often pass from the power
of one to another without having cost the life of a single inhabitant;
they are simply the prize of the King who possesses most soldiers,
cannons and money.’ (_Essai sur les Moeurs_, towards the end.) Again,
in 1870, a Prussian servant girl said to a French prisoner employed
on the farm where she was working: ‘When the war is over I will marry
you. Don’t be surprised at what I say, patriotism doesn’t mean much to
us, you know.’ I imagine that in 1914, many servant girls, Prussian or
otherwise, felt in their hearts and put into practice, this absence of
patriotism; but I dare to assert that very few would have formulated
it, even to themselves. The really new fact to-day is not perhaps that
the peoples feel political passions, but that they claim the right to
feel them. This claim is sufficient to make them act and therefore
furnishes a magnificent opportunity for their leaders to exploit them.