Maurras endorses the thesis developed by Maurice Barrès in Les Déracinés in 1897 by linking it to the Dreyfus affair on the grounds that the Jews would be in favor of centralism to weaken France.

In the first pages, Maurras takes stock of the previous defenders of decentralization, including Tocqueville, Proudhon, Louis-Xavier de Ricard or Maurice Barrès.

[2] Moreover, centralism has as its corollary a cosmopolitan conception of education which would consist in uprooting the child from his family, ethnic, social and intellectual determinisms.

[3] These are considered "essential to the moral and mental health of French society"[2] on the grounds that they would give him "a taste for initiative, a sense of responsibility and pride in himself".

:[2] "In this case, Maurras saw more accurately than the great geopoliticians of his time, the Ratzel, the Kjellén, Mahan and Haushofer, which all counted on the continuation of the process of spatial concentration".