One picks up the old skin which the young
snake has thrown off long ago, and tries to sew it together again.
These pedantic admirers of old revolutions believe that those of the
future will be made on the same lines. They will not see that the new
liberty must have a gait of its own, and will overleap barriers before
which its grandmother of ninety-three stopped, out of breath. They are
also much more vexed by the disrespect of the young people who have
gone by them, than they are by the spiteful yelping of the old whom
they have left behind; this is only natural, for these young folks
make them feel their age, and then it is their turn to yelp.
So it ever shall be; as they grow older there are very few men willing
to let life take its own course, and who are generous enough to look
at the future through the eyes of their juniors, as their own sight
grows dim. The greater number of those who loved liberty in their
youth, want to make a case of it now for the new broods, because they
can no longer fly themselves.
The followers of the national revolutionary cult--in the style of
Danton, or of Robespierre--were the bitterest adversaries of the
internationalism of today; though they did not always agree perfectly
amongst themselves, and the friends of Danton and Robespierre, with
the shadow of the guillotine between them, hurled the epithet of
heretic at each other with the deadliest threats.
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