In the past, a heritage of glory and a reluctance to break apart, to realize the same program in the future; to have suffered, worked, hoped together; that is worth more than common taxes and frontiers conforming to ideas of strategy; that is what one really understands despite differences of race and language. I have said "having suffered together"; indeed, common suffering is greater than happiness. In fact, national sorrows are more significant than triumphs because they impose obligations and demand a common effort.

A nation is a grand solidarity constituted by the sentiment of sacrifices which one has made and those that one is disposed to make again. It supposes a past, it renews itself especially in the present by a tangible deed: the approval, the desire, clearly expressed, to continue the communal life. The existence of a nation (pardon this metaphor!) is an everyday plebiscite; it is, like the very existence of the individual, a perpetual affirmation of life. Oh! I know it, this is less metaphysical than the concept of divine right, less brutal than the so-called historic right. In the order of ideas that I submit to you, a nation has no more right than a king of a province to say: "You appear to me, I take you." A province for us is its inhabitants; if anyone in this matter has a right to be considered, it is the inhabitant. A nation never has a real interest in being annexed or holding on to a country despite itself. The desire of nations to be together is the only real criterion that must always be taken into account.

We have traced the politics of metaphysical and theological abstractions. What remains after that? Man remains, his desires, his needs. . . . Human desires change; but what does not change on this earth? Nations are not something eternal. They have begun, they will end. They will be replaced, in all probability, by a European confederation. But such is not the law of the century in which we live. At the present time the existence of nations happens to be good, even necessary. Their existence is a guarantee of liberty, which would be lost if the world had only one law and only one master.

Through their varied, frequently opposing, abilities, nations serve the common cause of civilization; each holds one note in the concert of humanity, which, in the long run, is the highest ideal to which we can aspire. Isolated, they have their weaknesses. I often say to myself that a person who has these defects in quality that nations have, who nourishes himself on vainglory, who is jealous, egotistic and quarrelsome, who could support nothing without fighting; he would be the most intolerable of men. But all these unharmonious details disappear when we are united. Poor humanity! How you have suffered! What ordeals await you yet! Can the spirit of wisdom guide you to prevent the many dangers that line your path?