Note 10 — I The Modern Perfecting of Political Passions

Let me define more precisely what is new here. In the seventeenth century the citizen already had the notion of national honour; Racine’s Letters would be sufficient to prove it (see a significant page in the Mémoires of de Pontis, Book XIV); but he left it to the King to decide what this honour demanded; indignation like Vauban’s against the peace of Ryswick ‘which dishonours the King and the whole nation’, is a very exceptional emotion under the old régime. The modern citizen claims to feel for himself what is demanded by the national honour, and he is ready to rise up against his leaders if they have a different conception of it. This new development is not peculiar to the nations living under democratic systems; in 1911 the citizens of the German monarchy thought that the concessions made to their country by France in exchange for German abstention in Morocco were insufficient, and they were extremely angry with their Sovereign who had accepted these conditions which, in their opinion, were an insult to German honour. It may be asserted that the same thing would be true of France if she ever became a monarchy again and if the King took it upon himself to feel the interest of national honour in a different manner to his subjects. Moreover, this actually happened throughout the reign of Louis-Philippe.