Jeniffer electronic book

The French people rallied
to a king who united them in their resistance to foreign domination; and
the ultimate effect of the prolonged English aggression was merely the
increasing national efficiency and the improving political organization
of the French people.
The English could not extinguish the resistance of the French people,
because their aggression aroused in Frenchmen latent power of effective
association. Notwithstanding the prevalence of a factious minority, and
the lack of any habit or tradition of national association, the power of
united action for a common purpose was stimulated by the threat of alien
domination; and this latent power was unquestionably the result in some
measure of the discipline of Christian ideas to which the French, in
common with the other European peoples, had been subjected. That
discipline had, as has already been observed, increased men's capacity
for fruitful association one with another. It had stimulated a social
relationship much superior to the prevailing political relationship.


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