France facing Germany - 1919 Author:Georges Clemenceau Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: inscribed in the book of fate. Emperor and imperial oligarchy are marching arm in arm, and leading the populace which, in this respect, seizes every opportunity ... more »to manifest its enthusiastic approval. Of what good are the fine phrases of the Vorwaerts when the social democracy permits representatives—if it does not oblige them—to vote the war-tax at a time when our socialists refuse their voices for the budget? June 25,1914. At Thermopylae . . . There is no tax-payer who does not welcome a diminution of his rates. Taxes of blood and taxes of money weigh upon us in the most cruel manner in all our active pursuits. At the moment when we are summoned to find without delay six hundred millions in new taxes (we should need eight hundred millions with Morocco) why is no one proposing that the state content itself with four hundred or two hundred millions and pay the difference by good mortgages on moonshine! Because the case is too clear. We must have good money and nothing else. Louis made out of gilt cardboard will not pass. So we are very much vexed. There is much recrimination, without willingness to acknowledge that if electors and representatives had been more watchful much wastefulness might have been avoided. There is lusty wrangling over the problem of discovering by what theory and practise of taxation we shall raise the tax, but, when all is done, we get ready to pay it,and that is all that is necessary. What big or little veins will be opened by the fiscal lancet we do not yet know. What is sure is that certain elements of life will be drawn off from us. We shall not run away from the operation. In the sphere of military service it is again life that is demanded of us, in a manner not less palpable, since we must pay with our flesh and muscle, the force of which, ...« less