Poincaré's grand design for France was unity; that unity was seen as the key to the greatness which he, and others before and after him, believed to be France's destiny. Unity had seemed within reach when he had formed his broadly based government in 1912. He believed he was furthering it when in July he had ensured the vote of the law on electoral reform in the Chamber of Deputies in the belief that it would usher in a new political morality and strengthen the executive, something he considered a sine qua non of domestic unity. In the military field, reforms had been undertaken to arrest the decline of public esteem for the army since Dreyfus, and to enhance the army's own strength and unity by tightened military discipline and a higher public profile. Public military tattoos, banished since the Dreyfus affair, had been resurrected and had restored some public pride in the army, countering the anti-militarism and pacifism of the revolutionary syndicalists and extreme Left. Poincaré certainly believed that his concentration on foreign affairs had strengthened France's international position and united a majority of the political class and the country, as he made clear on his return from Russia in the autumn of 1912: