She
seems now to have become moderate and pacific, and to be devoted rather
to the arts of peace than to those of war.'
'France _is_ changed,' answered Tocqueville, 'and when compared with the
France of Louis XIV., or of Napoleon, was already changed when you wrote,
though the war-cry raised for political purposes in 1840 deceived
you. At the same time, I will not deny that military glory would, more
than any other merit, even _now_ strengthen a Government, and that
military humiliation would inevitably destroy one. Nor must you overrate
the unpopularity of the last war. Only a few even of the higher classes
understood its motives. "Que diable veut cette guerre?" said my country
neighbour to me; "si c'etait contre les Anglais--mais _avec_ les Anglais,
et pour le Grand Turc, qu'est-ce que cela peut signifier?" But when they
saw that it cost only men, that they were not invaded or overtaxed, and
that prices rose, they got reconciled to it.
'It was only the speculators of Paris that were tired of it. And if,
instead of the Crimea, we had fought near our own frontiers, or for some
visible purpose, all our military passions, bad and good, would have
broken out.
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