Maurras—names which show that opposition to Romanticism may spring from divergent views and aims. It is, above all, a moral problem. The Revolution against the old Régime—in the last resort, against Catholicism-degenerated in France into an exaggerated naturalism and into a sexualism that was unhealthy and therefore decadent. In this tendency I see a grave question not only for France but for the other Catholic nations and, indeed, for the whole modern era; and its gravity is not lessened by the fact that the tendency has prevailed in so marked a degree over the more powerful French women writers like Rachilde, Colette and Madeleine Marx.
Since this literary and moral problem bore directly on the war, it is natural that I should have given it attention in Paris and London. I felt it important to ascertain how France and, particularly, her intellectual class would stand the hardships of war. True, I did not accept the arguments on which pan-Germans based prophecies of the final decadence of France and of the Latin peoples. But even temporary decadence has its dangers; and, in the case of France, they were the more threatening because the de-population which alarms the French themselves is certainly connected with moral decadence. And this danger, it seemed to me, would not be wholly averted even by an Allied victory though, at that time, everything depended on victory.
I thought over the stories of disorder in the French army—disorder not explicable solely by pacifist resistance to bloodshed—in connection with this problem of decadence. General Joffre, it was said, had only restored order by extreme severity. These stories were exaggerated, as I discovered; and it must be frankly acknowledged that, against decadence and its tendency towards passivity among the intellectual classes and especially in Paris, there were in France strong activist movements. The nationalism of Barrès proved itself in the war; and, alongside of Barrès, Bourget and Maurras exhorted the youth of France vigorously to withstand the pan-Germans. The names of Bourget and Maurras are associated with the younger Catholic movement, of which the best and most influential section, and its organ, the “Sillon,” were democratic. Since the Revolution, and particularly since de Maistre, the Catholic movement and the religious question have been foremost issues in France. Everywhere and always the fight for control of the schools and for the separation of Church from State has been on the order of the day. In
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