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448 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1941
Terrorists of the Year Two identified the Terror with one man, that they might themselves, by appearing peaceable and humane, win the confidence of the moderates. Barère revealed what was going on, writing in self-defense when he himself was accused: 'Is his grave not wide enough for us to empty into it all our hatreds?' This was precisely what happened. The living sought a new harmony by agreeing to denounce the dead.
It is clear that the Committee of Public Safety was nationalising the war without intending to do so. What the members of the Committee believed was that there was no conflict between free nations; but a free nation was one which overthrew its king and its nobles, and which also, according to the somewhat temporary doctrine of 1793, attacked its rich business class. A nation which persisted in not imitating France was not free, and so not exactly a nation; the war therefore, though the Committee by its own admission consulted only the interests of France, was not a national war.
"There is a satanic element in the French Revolution which distinguishes it from any other revolution known or perhaps that will be known. Remember the great occasions - Robespierre's speech against the priesthood, the solemn apostasy of the priests, the desecration of objects of worship, the inauguration of the goddess of Reason, and the many outrageous acts by which the provinces tried to surpass Paris: these all leave the ordinary sphere of crimes and seem to belong to a different world."