[English translation below]
Source : Hugo – Actes et paroles – volume 6, p. 119 et s.
XIX LA QUESTION DE LA PAIX REMPLACÉE PAR LA QUESTION DE LA GUERRE
Victor Hugo (in 1874, anticipating the revenge)
“If the great battle is fought, what will be on both sides,
alas, will be men.
Lamentable conflict! What an extremity for the human race!
France cannot attack a people without being fratricidal;
a people cannot attack France without being parricidal.
Inexpressible tightness of heart!
We, preparers of future events,
would have wished for another outcome;
but events do not listen to us;
they go to the same goal as us, but by other means.
Where we would use peace, they use war.
For unknown reasons, they prefer the solutions of high struggle.
What we would do amicably, they do by breaking and entering.
Providence has its abruptnesses.
But it is impossible that the philosopher
is not deeply saddened by it.
What he painfully notes, what he cannot deny,
is the chain of events, their necessity,
their fatality. There is an algebra in disasters.”