_On the 9th of November the President of the Council, M. Rene
Viviani, traveled to Rheims in order to deliver to the Mayor, M.
Langlet, the Cross of the Legion of Honor that his courage had gained
for him. On this occasion the President of the Council pronounced the
discourse from which the following is cited as exhibiting French
thought on the present war:_
As if it were really necessary to accentuate the role of France,
German militarism has raised its voice. It proclaims, through the
organ of those whose mission it is to think for it, the cult of force
and that history asks no accounts from the victor. We are not a
chimerical people, nor dreamers, we do not despise force; only we put
it in its place, which is at the service of the right. It is for the
right that we are contending, for that Belgium is struggling by our
side, she who sacrificed herself for honor; and for that, also, our
English and Russian allies whose armies, while waiting till they can
tread this unchained force under foot, oppose it with an invincible
rampart. France is not a preying country; it does not stretch out
rapacious hands to enslave the world. Since war has been forced upon
her, she makes war. Soon the legitimate reparations will come which
shall restore to the French hearth the souls that the brutality of
arms separated from it. Associated in a work of human liberation we
shall go on, allies and Frenchmen united in war and for peace, as long
as we have not broken Prussian militarism and the sword of murder with
the sword of freedom.
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