The End of an Epoch

Abstract

The middle nineties offer a brief period of political calm between the subsidence of the Right and the ascension of the Left. In this, the coherence of the Republic can be considered as a prelude to that period of rapid enrichment of the North Atlantic countries which culminated with the outbreak of war in 1914, a period in which French economy was, as it were, dragged onward by the vulgar appetites of the British, German and American peoples. Here pass a few years of scarcely vexed tranquillity between the period of defence against the past and that of resistance to the future.