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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Forerunners, by Romain Rolland
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Forerunners
+
+Author: Romain Rolland
+
+Translator: Eden Paul
+            Cedar Paul
+
+Release Date: February 17, 2010 [EBook #31313]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORERUNNERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander, Chuck Greif and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FORERUNNERS
+BY
+ROMAIN ROLLAND
+
+TRANSLATED BY
+
+EDEN AND CEDAR PAUL
+
+HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE
+NEW YORK 1920
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+THE MEMORY OF
+
+THE MARTYRS OF THE NEW FAITH
+
+IN THE HUMAN INTERNATIONAL.
+
+TO
+
+JEAN JAURÈS,
+
+KARL LIEBKNECHT, ROSA LUXEMBURG,
+
+KURT EISNER, GUSTAV LANDAUER,
+
+THE VICTIMS OF BLOODTHIRSTY STUPIDITY
+
+AND MURDEROUS FALSEHOOD,
+
+THE LIBERATORS OF THE MEN
+
+WHO KILLED THEM.
+
+R. R.
+
+_August, 1919._
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                 PAGE
+
+DEDICATION                                                          5
+
+INTRODUCTION                                                        9
+
+I. ARA PACIS                                                       11
+
+II. UPWARDS, ALONG A WINDING ROAD                                  15
+
+III. TO THE MURDERED PEOPLES                                       23
+
+IV. TO THE UNDYING ANTIGONE                                        32
+
+V. A WOMAN'S VOICE FROM OUT THE TUMULT                             34
+
+VI. FREEDOM                                                        37
+
+VII. FREE RUSSIA, THE LIBERATOR                                    39
+
+VIII. TOLSTOY: THE FREE SPIRIT                                     41
+
+IX. TO MAXIM GORKI                                                 45
+
+X. TWO LETTERS FROM MAXIM GORKI                                    47
+
+XI. TO THE WRITERS OF AMERICA                                      51
+
+XII. FREE VOICES FROM AMERICA                                      55
+
+XIII. ON BEHALF OF E. D. MOREL                                     67
+
+XIV. YOUNG SWITZERLAND                                             69
+
+XV. UNDER FIRE                                                     86
+
+XVI. AVE, CÆSAR, MORITURI TE SALUTANT                              95
+
+XVII. AVE, CÆSAR, THOSE WHO WISH TO LIVE SALUTE THEE              101
+
+XVIII. MEN IN BATTLE                                              106
+
+XIX. VOX CLAMANTIS                                                121
+
+XX. A GREAT EUROPEAN, G. F. NICOLAI                               140
+
+XXI. REFLECTIONS ON READING AUGUSTE FOREL                         175
+
+XXII. ON BEHALF OF THE INTERNATIONAL OF THE MIND                  185
+
+XXIII. A CALL TO EUROPEANS                                        195
+
+XXIV. OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT WILSON                             204
+
+XXV. AGAINST VICTORIOUS BISMARCKISM                               207
+
+XXVI. DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE MIND                 209
+
+SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE TO CHAPTER XX                                  217
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+This book is a sequel to _Above the Battle_. It consists of a number of
+articles written and published in Switzerland between the end of 1915
+and the beginning of 1919. As collective title for the work, I have
+chosen "The Forerunners," for nearly all the essays relate to the
+dauntless few who, the world over, amid the tempests of war and
+universal reaction, have been able to keep their thoughts free, their
+international faith inviolate. The future will reverence the names of
+these great harbingers, who have been flouted, reviled, threatened,
+found guilty, and imprisoned. I speak of such as Bertrand Russell, E. D.
+Morel, Maxim Gorki, G. F. Nicolai, Auguste Forel, Andreas Latzko, Henri
+Barbusse, Stefan Zweig, and the choice spirits of France, America, and
+Switzerland, who have fought for freedom.
+
+To these essays I have prefixed an ode, "Ara Pacis," written during the
+first days of the war. It is an act of faith in Peace and Concord.
+Another act of faith will comprise the final chapter. This time it will
+be faith in action; the faith which, in the face of the brute force of
+states and of tyrannical opinion, proclaims the invincible independence
+of Thought.
+
+I was half inclined to add to this collection a meditation upon
+_Empedocles of Agrigentum and the Reign of Hatred_.[1] But it was
+somewhat too long, and its inclusion would have impaired the symmetry of
+the volume.
+
+In republishing the articles, I have not kept to a strictly
+chronological order. It appeared preferable to group them in accordance
+with the nature of their contents or under the guidance of artistic
+considerations. But at the close of each essay I have mentioned the
+date of original publication, and, wherever possible, the date of
+composition.
+
+A few more words of explanation will help the reader to understand my
+general design.
+
+_Above the Battle_ and _The Forerunners_ are no more than a part of my
+writings on the war, writings composed during the last five years. The
+volumes contain those essays only which I have published in Switzerland.
+Even so, the collection is far from complete, for I have not been able
+to gather together all these writings. Moreover, the most important
+materials at my disposal, as to scope and permanent value, are a
+register made day by day of the letters, the confidences, the moral
+confessions, which I have uninterruptedly received throughout these
+years from the free spirits and the persecuted of all nations. Here,
+likewise, as soberly as possible, I have recorded my own thoughts and my
+own part in the struggle. Unus ex multis. The register is, as it were, a
+picture of the untrammelled souls of the world wrestling with the
+unchained forces of fanaticism, violence, and falsehood. A long time
+must doubtless elapse before it will be judicious to publish this
+record. Enough that the documents in question, of which several copies
+have been made, will serve in times to come as a witness of our efforts,
+our sufferings, our unconquerable faith.
+
+ROMAIN ROLLAND.
+
+PARIS, _June, 1919._
+
+
+
+
+THE FORERUNNERS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ARA PACIS
+
+
+    De profundis clamans, out of the abyss of all the hates,
+    To thee, Divine Peace, will I lift up my song.
+
+    The din of the armies shall not drown it.
+    Imperturbable, I behold the rising flood incarnadine,
+    Which bears the beauteous body of mutilated Europe,
+    And I hear the raging wind which stirs the souls of men.
+
+    Though I stand alone, I shall be faithful to thee.
+    I shall not take my place at the sacrilegious communion of blood.
+    I shall not eat my share of the Son of Man.
+
+    I am brother to all, and I love you all,
+    Men, ephemerals who rob yourselves of your one brief day.
+
+    Above the laurels of glory and above the oaks,
+    May there spring from my heart upon the Holy Mount,
+    The olive tree, with the sunlight in its boughs, where the cicadas sing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Sublime Peace who holdest,
+    Beneath thy sovran sway,
+    The turmoil of the world,
+    And who, from out the hurtling of the waves,
+    Makest the rhythm of the seas;
+
+    Cathedral established
+    Upon the perfect balance of opposing forces;
+    Dazzling rose-window,
+    Where the blood of the sun
+    Gushes forth in diapered sheaves of flame
+    Which the harmonising eye of the artist has bound together;
+
+    Like to a huge bird
+    Which soars in the zenith,
+    Sheltering the plain beneath its wings,
+    Thy flight embraces,
+    Beyond what is, that which has been and will be.
+
+    Thou art sister to joy and sister to sorrow,
+    Youngest and wisest of sisters;
+    Thou holdest them both by the hand.
+    Thus art thou like a limpid channel linking two rivers,
+    A channel wherein the skies are mirrored betwixt two rows of pale poplars.
+
+    Thou art the divine messenger,
+    Passing to and fro like the swallow
+    From bank to bank,
+    Uniting them.
+    To some saying,
+    "Weep not, joy will come again";
+    To others,
+    "Be not over-confident, happiness is fleeting."
+
+    Thy shapely arms tenderly enfold
+    Thy froward children,
+    And thou smilest, gazing on them
+    As they bite thy swelling breast.
+
+    Thou joinest the hands and the hearts
+    Of those who, while seeking one another, flee one another;
+    And thou subjectest to the yoke the unruly bulls,
+    So that instead of wasting
+    In fights the passion which makes their flanks to smoke,
+    Thou turnest this passion to account for ploughing in the womb of the land
+    The furrow long and deep where the seed will germinate.
+
+    Thou art the faithful helpmate
+    Who welcomest the weary wrestlers on their return.
+    Victors or vanquished, they have an equal share of thy love.
+    For the prize of battle
+    Is not a strip of land
+    Which one day the fat of the victor
+    Will nourish, mingled with that of his foe.
+    The prize is, to have been the tool of Destiny,
+    And not to have bent in her hand.
+
+    O my Peace who smilest, thy soft eyes filled with tears,
+    Summer rainbow, sunny evening,
+    Who, with thy golden fingers,
+    Fondlest the besprinkled fields,
+    Carest for the fallen fruits,
+    And healest the wounds
+    Of the trees which the wind and the hail have bruised;
+
+    Shed on us thy healing balm, and lull our sorrows to sleep!
+    They will pass, and we also.
+    Thou alone endurest for ever.
+
+    Brothers, let us unite; and you, too, forces within me,
+    Which clash one upon another in my riven heart!
+    Join hands and dance along!
+
+    We move forward calmly and without haste,
+    For Time is not our quarry.
+    Time is on our side.
+    With the osiers of the ages my Peace weaves her nest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    I am like the cricket who chirps in the fields.
+    A storm bursts, rain falls in torrents, drowning
+    The furrows and the chirping.
+    But as soon as the flurry is over,
+    The little musician, undaunted, resumes his song.
+
+    In like manner, having heard, in the smoking east,
+        on the devastated earth,
+    The thunderous charge of the Four Horsemen,
+    Whose gallop rings still from the distance,
+    I uplift my head and resume my song,
+    Puny, but obstinate.
+
+     Written August 15 to 25, 1914.[2]
+
+    "Journal de Genève" and "Neue Zürcher Zeitung,"
+     December 24 and 25, 1915; "Les Tablettes,"
+     Geneva, July, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+UPWARDS, ALONG A WINDING ROAD
+
+
+If I have kept silence for a year, it is not because the faith to which
+I gave expression in _Above the Battle_ has been shaken (it stands
+firmer than ever); but I am well assured that it is useless to speak to
+him who will not hearken. Facts alone will speak, with tragical
+insistence; facts alone will be able to penetrate the thick wall of
+obstinacy, pride, and falsehood with which men have surrounded their
+minds because they do not wish to see the light.
+
+But we, as between brothers of all the nations; as between those who
+have known how to defend their moral freedom, their reason, and their
+faith in human solidarity; as between minds which continue to hope amid
+silence, oppression, and grief--we do well to exchange, as this year
+draws to a close, words of affection and solace. We must convince one
+another that during the blood-drenched night the light is still burning,
+that it never has been and never will be extinguished.
+
+In the abyss of suffering into which Europe is plunged, those who wield
+the pen must be careful never to add an additional pang to the mass of
+pangs already endured, and never to pour new reasons for hatred into the
+burning flood of hate. Two ways remain open for those rare free spirits
+which, athwart the mountain of crimes and follies, are endeavouring to
+break a trail for others, to find for themselves an egress. Some are
+courageously attempting in their respective lands to make their
+fellow-countrymen aware of their own faults. This is the course adopted
+by the valiant Englishmen of the Independent Labour Party and of the
+Union of Democratic Control, and by those fine men of untrammelled mind
+Bertrand Russell, E. D. Morel, Norman Angell, Bernard Shaw; this is the
+path taken by certain persecuted Germans, too few in number; this is the
+path taken by the Italian socialists, by the Russian socialists, by
+Gorki, the master of Sorrow and of Pity; and this is the path taken by
+certain free Frenchmen.
+
+My own task is different, for it is to remind the hostile brethren of
+Europe, not of their worst aspects but of their best, to recall to them
+reasons for hoping that there will one day be a wiser and more loving
+humanity.
+
+What we now have to contemplate may, indeed, well incline us to despair
+of human reason. For those, and they were many, who were blissfully
+slumbering upon their faith in progress, a progress from which there was
+to be no looking back, the awakening has been rude. Without transition,
+such persons have passed from the absurd excesses of slothful optimism
+to the vertigo of unplumbed pessimism. They are not used to looking at
+life except from behind a parapet. A barrier of comfortable illusions
+has hidden from them, hitherto, the chasm above which, clinging to the
+face of the precipice, winds the narrow path along which man is
+marching. Here and there the wall has crumbled. The footing is
+treacherous. But we must pass, nevertheless. We shall pass. Our fathers
+had to make their way across many such places. We have been too ready to
+forget. Save for a few shocks, the years of our own lives have been
+spent in a sheltered age. But in the past, epochs of disturbance have
+been commoner than epochs of calm. What is taking place to-day is
+horribly abnormal for those alone who were drowsing in the abnormal
+peace of a society equally devoid of foresight and of remembrance. Let
+us call to mind those whom the past has known. Let us think of Buddha,
+the liberator; of the Orphics worshipping Dionysos-Zagreus, god of the
+innocent who suffer and will be avenged; of Xenophanes of Elea who had
+to witness the devastation of his fatherland by Cyrus; of Zeno tortured;
+of Socrates put to death by poison; of Plato dreaming during the rule of
+the Thirty Tyrants; of Marcus Aurelius, sustaining the empire whose
+decline was at hand. Let us think of those who watched the ruin of the
+old world; of the bishop of Hippo dying when his city was about to fall
+before the onslaught of the Vandals; of the monks who, in a Europe
+peopled with wolves, worked as illuminators, builders, musicians. Let us
+think of Dante, Copernicus, and Savonarola; of exiles, persecutions,
+burnings at the stake; of Spinoza, frail in health, writing his immortal
+_Ethics_ by the light of the burning villages of his invaded country.
+Let us think of our own Michel de Montaigne, in his defenceless castle,
+softly pillowed, waking from his light sleep to hear the bells pealing
+from the church towers of the countryside, or asking himself in his
+dreams if he was to be murdered that very night.... Man is not fond of
+reviving the memory of disagreeable occurrences; he dislikes to think of
+things which disturb his tranquillity. But in the history of the world,
+tranquillity has been rare; nor is it in a tranquil environment that the
+greatest souls have been fashioned. Let us without a shudder contemplate
+the raging flood as it passes. For those whose ears are attuned to the
+rhythm of history, all contributes to the same work, evil no less than
+good. Those of impulsive temperament, carried away by the flood, move
+along blood-stained roads, and are none the less moving, willy-nilly,
+whither fraternal reason beckons. Were we compelled to depend upon men's
+common sense, upon their goodwill, upon their moral courage, upon their
+kindliness, there would be ample reason for despairing of the future.
+But those who will not or cannot march, pushed onward by blind forces, a
+bleating flock, move towards the goal: Unity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The unity of our own France was forged by agelong struggles between the
+separate provinces. At one time every province, even every village, was
+a fatherland. For more than a hundred years the Armagnacs and the
+Burgundians (my ancestors) went on breaking one another's heads, to
+discover in the end that they were men of one blood. The war which is
+now mingling the blood of France and of Germany, is leading the French
+and the Germans to drink from the same cup to their future union, like
+the barbaric heroes of the epic age. Struggle and bite as they may,
+their very grapple binds them together. These armies which are
+endeavouring to destroy one another, have become more akin in spirit
+than they were before they faced one another in battle. They can kill
+one another, but at least they now know one another, whereas ignorance
+is the nethermost circle of death. Numerous testimonies from the
+opposing fronts have borne clear witness to the mutual desire of the
+soldiers, though still fighting, to understand one another. Men who from
+trench to enemy trench watch one another while taking aim, may remain
+foes, but they are no longer strangers. At no distant day a union of the
+nations of the west will form a new fatherland, which itself will be but
+a stage upon the road leading to a still greater fatherland, that of
+Europe. Do we not already see the dozen states of Europe, divided into
+two camps, unwittingly attempting to build a federation wherein war
+between nations will be no less sacrilegious than would now be war
+between provinces; a federation in which the duty of to-day will be the
+crime of to-morrow? Has not the need for this future union been affirmed
+by the most conflicting voices: by William II, who spoke of the "United
+States of Europe";[3] by Hanotaux, with his "European Confederation";[4]
+by Ostwald, and Haeckel of lamentable memory, with their "Society of
+States"? Each one, doubtless, worked for his own saint; but all these
+saints served the same master!...
+
+Nay more, the gigantic chaos wherein, as if amid the throes that
+occurred when the earth was still molten, all the human elements from
+the three continents of the Old World are clashing one against another,
+is a racial alchemy preparing, alike by force and by spiritual factors,
+alike by war and by peace, the coming fusion of the two halves of the
+world, of the two hemispheres of thought, of Europe and Asia. I do not
+talk utopia. For some years this drawing together has been preluded by a
+thousand signs, by mutual attraction in the realms of thought and of
+art, in the realms of politics and of commerce. The war has merely
+accelerated the movement; and while the war yet rages, men are at work
+on behalf of this cause. Two years ago, in one of the belligerent
+states, there were founded great institutes for the comparative study of
+the civilisations of Europe and of Asia, and to promote their mutual
+penetration.
+
+"The most striking phenomenon of our day," thus runs the program of one
+of these institutes,[5] "is the formation of a universal civilisation,
+issuing from a number of distinct civilisations handed down from earlier
+days.... No past epoch has ever beheld a more powerful impetus animating
+the human race than that which mankind has known during recent centuries
+and the one we have now entered. There has been nothing comparable to
+this torrential confluence of all the forces to form a resultant, the
+achievement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the state, in
+science, and in art, everywhere, there is now being elaborated the great
+individuality of universal mankind; everywhere there is uprising the new
+life of the universal human spirit.... The three spiritual and social
+worlds, the three mankinds (that of Europe and the Near East, that of
+Hindustan, and that of the Far East) are beginning to be assembled to
+form a single mankind.... Until two generations ago, the individual man
+was member of a single branch of mankind, of one distinct great form of
+life. Now he participates in a vast vital flux constituted by the whole
+of mankind; he must direct his actions in accordance with the laws of
+that flux, and must find his own place in it. Should he fail to do this,
+he will lose the best part of himself.--Doubtless, the most significant
+features of the past, of its religions, of its art, of its thought, are
+not in question. These remain, and will remain. But they will be raised
+to new altitudes, dug to new depths. A wider circle of life is opening
+around us. We need not be surprised that many become giddy and imagine
+that the greatness of the past is decaying. But the helm must be
+entrusted to those who are competent, calmly and firmly, to make things
+ready for the new age.... The completest happiness which can accrue to
+man henceforward, will be derived from the intelligence of mankind as a
+whole, and from the multiple ways which man has discovered of attaining
+happiness.... For a long time to come the intensest joy which man can
+know on earth will derive from supplementing the ideals of Europe by the
+ideals of Asia."
+
+Researches of this nature, characterised by universality and
+objectivity, "formally exclude," continues the program, "everything that
+tends to foster hatred among nations, classes, and races; everything
+that induces disintegration and useless struggle.... Those who are
+engaged in such researches have to fight one thing above all, to fight
+hatred, ignorance, and lack of understanding.... Their splendid and
+urgent task is to bring to light the beauty which exists in every human
+individuality and every nation; their task is the practical one of
+discovering the scientific means of adjusting differences between
+nations, classes, and races. Science, and science alone, is competent,
+by strenuous labour, to win peace...."
+
+Thus amid the warfare of the nations are being laid the foundations of
+spiritual peace between the nations, like a lighthouse which reveals to
+widely separated vessels the distant haven where they will anchor side
+by side. The human mind has reached the gateway leading into a new road.
+The gateway is too narrow, and people are crushing one another as they
+endeavour to get through. But beyond it I see stretching the broad
+highway along which they will move and where there is room for all. Amid
+the encircling horrors, the vision comforts me. My heart suffers, but my
+spirit sees the light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Take courage, brothers! Despite all, there are good reasons for hope.
+Willy-nilly, men are advancing towards our goal; even those who think
+they have turned their backs on it. In 1887, when the ideas of democracy
+and international peace bade fair to triumph, I was talking to Renan,
+who uttered these prophetic words: "You will live to see another great
+reaction. It may seem to you then that all we are defending has been
+destroyed. But rest easy in your mind. Humanity's road is a mountain
+path, winding to and fro among the spurs, so that at times we fancy that
+we are going away from the summit. But we never cease to climb."
+
+Everything is working on behalf of our ideal; even those are working for
+it whose blows are directed towards its ruin. Everything makes for
+unity, the worst no less than the best. Let no one interpret me as
+implying that the worst is as good as the best! Between the misguided
+ones who (poor innocents!) preach the war that will end war (those whom
+we may name the "bellipacifists"), and the unqualified pacifists, those
+who take their stand upon the gospels, there is a difference like that
+between madmen who, desiring to get quickly from the attic into the
+street, would throw furniture and children out of the window--and those
+who walk down the stairs. Progress is achieved; but nature does not
+hurry, and her methods are wasteful. The most trifling advance is
+secured by a terrible squandering of wealth and of lives.[6] When
+Europe, moving reluctantly, haltingly, like a sorry screw, comes at
+length to the conviction that she must unify her forces, the union,
+alas, will be a union of the blind and the paralytic. She will reach the
+goal, but will be bloodless and exhausted.
+
+For our part, however, we have long been awaiting you there; long ago we
+achieved unity, we, the free spirits of all the ages, all the classes,
+and all the races. Those belonging to the remote civilisations of Egypt
+and the east; the Socrates' and the Lucians of the modern age, such as
+Thomas More, Erasmus, and Voltaire; those belonging to a distant future,
+a future which will perchance (looping the loop of time) return to the
+thought of Asia--the great and the simple, but all free spirits and all
+brothers, we are but one people. The centuries of the persecutions, the
+wide world round, have linked us heart and hand. It is this unbreakable
+chain, encompassing the clay image we term civilisation, which keeps the
+frail structure from falling to pieces.
+
+"Le Carmel," Geneva, December, 1916.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+TO THE MURDERED PEOPLES
+
+
+The horrors that have taken place during the last two and a half years
+have given a rude spiritual shock to the western world. No one can ever
+forget the martyrdom of Belgium, Serbia, Poland, of all the unhappy
+lands of the west and of the east trampled by invaders. Yet these
+iniquitous deeds, by which we are revolted because we ourselves are the
+sufferers--for half a century or more, European civilisation has been
+doing them or allowing them to be done.
+
+Who will ever know at what a price the Red Sultan has purchased from his
+mutes of the European press and European diplomacy their silence
+concerning the slaughter of two hundred thousand Armenians during the
+first massacres, those of 1894 to 1896? Who will voice the sufferings of
+the peoples delivered over to rapine during colonial enterprises? When a
+corner of the veil has been lifted, when in Damaraland or the Congo we
+have been given a glimpse of one of these fields of pain, who has been
+able to bear the sight without a shudder? What "civilised" man can think
+without a blush of the massacres of Manchuria and of the expedition to
+China in 1900 and 1901, when the German emperor held up Attila as an
+example to his soldiers, when the allied armies of the "civilised world"
+rivalled one another in acts of vandalism against a civilisation older
+and nobler than that of the west?[7] What help has the western world
+given to the persecuted races of eastern Europe, to the Jews, the
+Poles, the Finns, etc.?[8] What aid to Turkey and to China in their
+efforts towards regeneration? Sixty years ago, China, poisoned by Indian
+opium, wished to free herself from the deadly vice. But after two wars
+and a humiliating peace, she had to accept from England this poison,
+which is said during a century to have brought to the East India Company
+profits amounting to £440,000,000. Even in our own day, when China, by a
+heroic effort, had within ten years cured herself of this disastrous
+sickness, the sustained pressure of public opinion was requisite to
+compel the most highly civilised of the European states to renounce the
+profits derived from the poisoning of a nation. The facts need hardly
+surprise us, seeing that this same western state continues to draw
+revenues from the poisoning of its own subjects.
+
+"On the Gold Coast," writes M. Arnold Porret, "a missionary once told me
+how the negroes account for the European's white skin. God Almighty
+asked him, 'What hast thou done with thy brother?' And he turned white
+with fear."[9]
+
+European civilisation stinks of the dead-house. "Jam foetet...." Europe
+has called in the grave-diggers. Asia is on the watch.
+
+On June 18, 1916, at the Imperial University of Tokyo, Rabindranath
+Tagore, the great Hindu, spoke as follows: "The political civilisation
+which has sprung from the soil of Europe and is overrunning the whole
+world, like some prolific weed, is based upon exclusiveness. It is
+always watchful to keep the aliens at bay or to exterminate them. It is
+carnivorous and cannibalistic in its tendencies, it feeds upon the
+resources of other peoples and tries to swallow their whole future. It
+is always afraid of other races achieving eminence, naming it as a
+peril, and tries to thwart all symptoms of greatness outside its own
+boundaries, forcing down races of men who are weaker, to be eternally
+fixed in their weakness.... This political civilisation is scientific,
+not human. It is powerful because it concentrates all its forces upon
+one purpose, like a millionaire acquiring money at the cost of his soul.
+It betrays its trust, it weaves its meshes of lies without shame, it
+enshrines gigantic idols of greed in its temples, taking great pride in
+the costly ceremonials of its worship, calling this patriotism. And it
+can safely be prophesied that this cannot go on...."[10]
+
+"This cannot go on." Do you hear, Europeans? Are you stopping your ears?
+Listen to the voice within! We ourselves must question ourselves. Let us
+not resemble those who ascribe to their neighbour all the sins of the
+world, and think themselves blameless. For the curse under which we are
+labouring to-day, each one of us must bear his share of responsibility.
+Some have erred by deliberate choice, others through weakness, and it is
+not the weak who are the least guilty. The apathy of the majority, the
+timorousness of the well-meaning, the selfishness and scepticism of
+listless rulers, the ignorance or cynicism of the press, the rapacity of
+profiteers, the faint-hearted servility of the thinkers who make
+themselves the apostles of devastating prejudices which it should be
+their mission to uproot; the ruthless pride of intellectuals who value
+their own ideas more than they value the lives of their fellow-men, and
+who will send millions to death to prove themselves in the right; the
+counsels of expediency of a church that is too Roman, a church in which
+St. Peter the fisherman has become the ferryman of diplomacy; pastors
+with arid souls, with souls keen-edged as a knife, immolating their
+flocks in the hope of purifying them; the blind submission of the silly
+sheep.... Who among us is free from blame? Who among us can wash his
+hands of the blood of a butchered Europe? Let each one admit his fault
+and endeavour to expiate it!--But let us turn to the most immediate
+task.
+
+Here is the outstanding fact: EUROPE IS NOT FREE. The voice of the
+nations is stifled. In the history of the world, these years will be
+looked upon as the years of the great Slavery. One half of Europe is
+fighting the other half, in the name of liberty. That they may fight the
+better, both halves of Europe have renounced liberty. An appeal to the
+will of the nations is fruitless. As individual entities, THE NATIONS NO
+LONGER EXIST. A handful of politicians, a few score journalists, have
+the audacity to speak in the name of this nation or of that. They have
+no right to speak. They represent no one but themselves. They do not
+even represent themselves. As early as 1905, Maurras, denouncing the
+tamed intelligentsia which claims to lead opinion and to represent the
+nation, spoke of it as "ancilla plutocratiae." ... The nation! Who has
+the right to call himself the representative of a nation? Who knows the
+soul, who has ever dared to look into the soul, of a nation at war? It
+is a monster, composed of many myriads of conglomerated lives, of lives
+that are distinct and conflicting, lives that move in all directions and
+are yet joined at the base like the tentacles of an octopus.... It is a
+confused mingling of all the instincts, and of all the reasons, and of
+all the unreasons.... Blasts of wind from the abyss; sightless and
+raging forces issuing from the seething depths of animalism; a mad
+impulse towards destruction and self-destruction; the crude appetites of
+the herd; distorted religion; mystical erections of the soul enamoured
+of the infinite, and seeking the morbid assuagement of joy through
+suffering, through its own suffering, and through the suffering of
+others; the pretentious despotism of reason, claiming the right to
+impose on others the unity it lacks yet desires; romanticist flashes of
+an imagination kindled by memories of the past; the academic
+phantasmagoria of official history, of the patriotic history which is
+ever ready to brandish the "Vae Victis" of Brennus, or the "Gloria
+Victis," as circumstances may dictate.... Helter-skelter there surge
+upon the tide of passion all the lurking fiends which, in times of peace
+and order, society spurns.... Every one of us is entangled in the
+tentacles of the octopus. Every one of us discovers in himself the same
+confusion of good and of bad impulses, knotted and intertwined. A
+tangled skein. Who shall unravel it?... Thence comes the feeling of
+inexorable fate by which, in such crises, men are overwhelmed.
+Nevertheless this feeling derives merely from their own despondency in
+face of the efforts necessary to free themselves, efforts manifold and
+prolonged, but within the compass of their powers. If each one did what
+he could (no more would be required!) fate would not prove inexorable.
+The apparent fatality results from the universal abdication. By
+abandoning himself to fate, each one incurs a share of the guilt.
+
+But the shares in the guilt are unequal. Honour to whom honour is due!
+In the loathsome stew which European politics constitute to-day, money
+is the tit-bit. Society is enchained, and the hand holding the chain is
+the hand of Plutus. He is the real master, the real ruler, of the
+states. It is he who makes of them fraudulent firms, swindling
+enterprises.[11] The reader must not suppose that we wish to fix the
+whole responsibility for the ills we are now enduring upon this or that
+social group, upon this or that individual. We are not such innocents;
+we have no wish to make a scapegoat of anyone! This would be too easy a
+solution. We shall not even say, "Is fecit cui prodest." We shall not
+say that those desired the war who are now shamelessly profiting by the
+war. All that they want is profit, and how the profit is made is of no
+moment to them. They accommodate themselves equally well to war and to
+peace, to peace and to war, for all is grist which comes to their mill.
+Let us give one example among a thousand to show how indifferent these
+men of money become to everything but money. It is a matter of recent
+history that a group of great German capitalists bought mines in
+Normandy and gained possession of a fifth part of the mineral wealth of
+France. Between 1908 and 1913, developing for their own profit the iron
+industry of our country, they helped in the production of the cannons
+whose fire is now sweeping the German lines. Such a man was the fabled
+Midas of antiquity, King Midas of the golden touch.... Do not suppose
+them to entertain hidden but far-reaching designs. They are men of short
+views. Their aim is to pile up as much wealth as they can, as quickly as
+possible. In them we see the climax of that anti-social egoism which is
+the curse of our day. They are merely the most typical figures in an
+epoch enslaved to money. The intellectuals, the press, the politicians,
+the very members of the cabinets (preposterous puppets!), have, whether
+they like it or not, become tools in the hands of the profiteers, and
+act as screens to hide them from the public eye.[12] Meanwhile the
+stupidity of the peoples, their fatalistic submissiveness, the mysticism
+they have inherited from their primitive ancestors, leave them
+defenceless before the hurricane of lying and frenzy which drives them
+to mutual slaughter....
+
+There is a wicked and cruel saying that nations always have the
+governments they deserve. Were this true, we should have reason to
+despair of mankind, for where can we find a government with which a
+decent man would shake hands? It is all too clear that the masses,
+those who work, are unable to exercise due control over the men who rule
+them. Enough for the masses that they invariably have to pay for the
+errors or the crimes of their rulers. It would be too much, in addition,
+to make those who are ruled responsible. The men of the people,
+sacrificing themselves, die for ideas. Those who send others to the
+sacrifice, live for interests. Thus it comes to pass that the interests
+live longer than the ideas. Every prolonged war, even a war which at the
+outset was in a high degree idealistic, tends more and more, as it is
+protracted, to become a business matter, to become, as Flaubert wrote,
+"a war for money."--Let me repeat, there is no suggestion that the war
+is undertaken for money. But as soon as the war is afoot, the milking
+begins; blood flows, money flows, and no one is in a hurry to stop the
+flow. A few thousands of privileged persons, belonging to all castes and
+all nations, a few thousands, men of family, parvenus, junkers,
+ironmasters, syndicated speculators, army contractors, untitled and
+irresponsible kings--hidden in the wings, surrounded by and nourishing a
+swarm of parasites--are able, for the sordid motive of gain, to turn to
+their own account the best and the worst instincts of mankind. They
+profit by human ambition and by human pride; by men's grudges and men's
+hates. They draw equal gains from the bloodthirsty imaginings and from
+the courage of their fellow-mortals; from the thirst for self-sacrifice,
+from the heroism which makes men eager to spill their own blood, from
+the inexhaustible wealth of faith!...
+
+Unhappy peoples! Is it possible to imagine a more tragical destiny than
+theirs? Never consulted, always immolated, thrust into war, forced into
+crimes which they have never wished to commit. Any chance adventurer or
+braggart arrogantly claims the right to cloak with the name of the
+people the follies of his murderous rhetoric or the sordid interests he
+wishes to satisfy. The masses are everlastingly duped, everlastingly
+martyred; they pay for others' misdeeds. Above their heads are exchanged
+challenges for causes of which they know nothing and for stakes which
+are of no interest to them. Across their backs, bleeding and bowed,
+takes place the struggle of ideas and of millions, while they themselves
+have no more share in the former than in the latter. For their part,
+they do not hate. They are the sacrifice; and those only hate who have
+ordered the sacrifice. Peoples poisoned by lies, by the press, by
+alcohol, and by harlots. Toiling masses, who must now unlearn the lesson
+of labour. Generous-hearted masses, who must now unlearn the lesson of
+brotherly love. Masses deliberately demoralised, given over to
+corruption while still alive, slain. Beloved peoples of Europe, dying
+for the last two years on your dying land. Have you at length plumbed
+the depths of woe? Alas, the worst is yet to come. After so much
+anguish, I dread the fatal day when, no longer buoyed by false hopes,
+realising the fruitlessness of their sacrifices, the masses, worn out
+with misery, will blindly wreak their vengeance where they may. They,
+likewise, will then fall into injustice, and through a surfeit of
+misfortune they will forfeit even the sombre halo of self-sacrifice.
+Then, from one end of the chain to the other, all alike will be plunged
+in the same sea of pain and error. Poor crucified wretches, struggling
+on your crosses on either side of the Master's! Betrayed more cruelly
+than He, instead of floating, you will sink like a stone in the ocean of
+your agony. Will no one save you from your two foes, slavery and hatred?
+We wish to, we wish to! But you, too, must wish it. Do you wish it? For
+centuries your reason has been bridled in passive obedience. Are you
+still capable of achieving freedom?
+
+Who is able to-day to stop the war in its progress? Who can recapture
+the wild beast and put it back into its cage? Perhaps not even those who
+first loosed it, the beast-tamers who know that soon will come their
+turn to be devoured. The cup has been filled with blood and must be
+drained to the last drop. Carouse, Civilisation!--But when thou art
+glutted, when peace has come again across ten million corpses and thou
+hast slept off thy drunken debauch, wilt thou be able to regain mastery
+of thyself? Wilt thou dare to contemplate thy own wretchedness stripped
+of the lies with which thou hast veiled it? Will that which can and must
+go on living, have the courage to free itself from the deadly embrace of
+rotten institutions?... Peoples, unite! Peoples of all races, more
+blameworthy or less, all bleeding and all suffering, brothers in
+misfortune, be brothers in forgiveness and in rebirth. Forget your
+rancours, which are leading you to a common doom. Join in your mourning,
+for the losses affect the whole great family of mankind. Through the
+pain, through the deaths, of millions of your brethren, you must have
+been made aware of your intimate oneness. See to it that after the war
+this unity breaks down the barriers which the shamelessness of a few
+selfish interests would fain rebuild more solidly than ever.
+
+If you fail to take this course, if the war should not bring as its
+first fruit a social renascence in all the nations, then farewell
+Europe, queen of thought, guide of mankind. You have lost your way; you
+are marking time in a cemetery. The cemetery is the right place for you.
+Make your bed there. Let others lead the world!
+
+ALL SOULS' DAY, 1916.
+
+"demain," Geneva, November and December, 1916.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+TO THE UNDYING ANTIGONE
+
+
+The most potent action within the competence of us all, men and women
+alike, is individual action, the action of man on man, of soul on soul,
+action by word, by example, by the whole personality. Women of Europe,
+you fail to use this power as you should. You are now attempting to
+extirpate the plague which afflicts the world, to wage war against the
+war. You do well, but your action comes too late. You could have fought,
+you ought to have fought, against this war before it broke out; to have
+fought it in the hearts of men. You do not realise your power over us.
+Mothers, sisters, helpmates, friends, sweethearts, you are able, and you
+will, to mould man's soul. The soul of the child is in your hands; and
+in relation to a woman whom he respects and loves, a man is ever a
+child. Why do you not guide his footsteps? If I may give a personal
+example, let me say that to certain among you I owe what is best or what
+is least bad in my own nature. If, during this whirlwind, I have been
+able to maintain unshaken my faith in human brotherhood, my love of
+love, and my scorn of hate, I owe this to a few women. To name but two
+among them: I owe it to my mother, a true Christian, who in early
+childhood inspired me with a passion for the eternal; and I owe it to
+the great European, Malvida von Meysenbug, the sublime idealist, who in
+her serene old age was the friend of my youth. If a woman can save one
+man's soul, why do not you women save all men's souls? The reason,
+doubtless, is that too few among you have as yet saved your own souls.
+Begin at the beginning! Here is a matter more urgent than the conquest
+of political rights (whose practical importance I am far from
+under-rating). The most urgent matter is the conquest of yourselves.
+Cease to be man's shadow; cease to be the shadow of man's passions, of
+his pride and of his impulse towards destruction. Gain a clear vision of
+the brotherly duty of sympathy, of mutual aid, of the community of all
+beings; these make up the supreme law prescribed to Christians by the
+voice of Christ, and to free spirits by the free reason. Yet how many of
+you in Europe to-day are carried away by the gusts of passion which have
+overpowered the minds of men; how many of you, instead of enlightening
+men, add their own fever to the universal delirium!
+
+Begin by making peace within yourselves. Rid yourselves of the spirit of
+blind combativeness. Do not allow yourselves to be embroiled in the
+struggle. You will not make an end of the war by making war on the war;
+your first step should be to save your own hearts from the war, by
+saving from the general conflagration the FUTURE WHICH IS WITHIN YOU. To
+each word of hatred uttered by the combatants, make answer by an act of
+kindness and love toward all the victims. Let your simple presence show
+a calm disavowal of errant passions; make of yourselves onlookers whose
+luminous and compassionate gaze compels us to blush at our own unreason.
+Amid war, be the living embodiment of peace. Be the undying Antigone,
+who renounces hatred, and who makes no distinction between her suffering
+and warring brethren.
+
+"Jus Suffragii," London, May, 1915; "demain," Geneva,
+January, 1916.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+A WOMAN'S VOICE FROM OUT THE TUMULT[13]
+
+
+A woman with compassion and who dares to avow it; _a woman who dares to
+avow her horror of war, her pity for the victims, for all the victims_;
+a woman who refuses to add her voice to the chorus of murderous
+passions; a woman genuinely French who does not endeavour to ape the
+heroines of Corneille. What a solace!
+
+I wish to avoid saying anything which could hurt wounded souls. I know
+how much grief, how much suppressed tenderness, are hidden, in thousands
+of women, beneath the armour of a dogged enthusiasm. They stiffen their
+sinews for fear of falling. They walk, they talk, they laugh, with an
+open wound in the side through which the heart's blood is gushing. _No
+prophetic faculty is needed to foresee that the time is at hand when
+they will throw off this inhuman constraint, and when the world,
+surfeited with bloody heroism, will not hesitate to proclaim its disgust
+and its execration._
+
+From childhood onwards our minds are distorted by a state education
+which instills into us a rhetorical ideal, a compost of fragments torn
+from the vast field of classical thought, revivified by the genius of
+Corneille and the glories of the revolution. It is an ideal which
+exultantly sacrifices the individual to the state, _which sacrifices
+common sense to crazy ideas_. For the minds of those who have undergone
+this discipline, life becomes a pretentious and cruel syllogism, whose
+premises are obscure but whose conclusion is remorseless. Every one of
+us, in his time, has been subjected to its sway. No one has better
+reason to know than myself how terrible a struggle is required to free
+the spirit from this second nature which tends to stifle the first. The
+history of these struggles is the history of our contradictions. God be
+thanked, this war--nay, it is more than a war, this convulsion of
+mankind--will clear away our doubts, put an end to our hesitations,
+compel us to choose.
+
+Marcelle Capy has chosen. The strength of her book is to be found in
+this, that through her _Woman's Voice from out the Tumult_ there
+breathes the common sense of the French people, which has shaken off the
+sophisms of ideology and rhetoric. This free vision, living, thrilling,
+never deceived, is sensitive to every hint of suffering or ridicule. For
+in the sightless epic which racks the nations of Europe, every type of
+experience abounds: great exploits and great crimes, sublime acts of
+devotion and sordid interests, heroes and grotesques. If to laugh be
+permissible, if it be French to laugh amid the worst trials, how much
+more justifiable is laughter when it becomes a weapon against hypocrisy,
+a weapon employed for the vindication of stifled common sense! Never was
+hypocrisy more widespread and more disastrous than in these days, when
+in every land it is a mask assumed by force. Hypocrisy, it has been
+said, is the homage vice pays to virtue. Well and good; but the homage
+is excessive. Charming comedy, in which instincts, interests, and
+private revenges take shelter beneath the sacred cloak of patriotism.
+These Tartufes of heroism, prepared to offer up a splendid holocaust--of
+others! These poor Orgons, duped and sacrificed, eager to destroy those
+who would defend them and who seek to enlighten them! What a spectacle
+for a Molière or a Ben Jonson. Marcelle Capy's book presents us with a
+fecund collection of these perennial types which teem in our epoch, much
+as poisonous toadstools of unclassified species teem on rotting wood.
+Yet the old stumps on which they batten throw out green shoots. We
+perceive that the heart of the French forest is still sound; that the
+poison has not eaten into our vitals.[14]
+
+Take courage, good friends, all who love France. Rest assured that the
+best way of doing honour to France is to maintain her reputation for
+good sense, geniality, and humour. Let the voice of Marcelle Capy's
+book, tender and valiant, be an example and a guide. Use your eyes, let
+your heart speak. Be not fooled by big words. _Peoples of Europe, throw
+off this herd mentality, the mentality of sheep who would ask the
+shepherds and the sheep-dogs to tell them where to feed._ Take heart!
+Not all the furies in the universe shall prevent the world from hearing
+the cry of faith and hope uttered by a single free spirit, from hearing
+the song of the Gallic lark winging its way heavenward!
+
+_March 21, 1916._
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+FREEDOM
+
+
+The war has shown us how fragile are the treasures of our civilisation.
+Of all our goods, freedom, on which we prided ourselves most, has proved
+the frailest. It had been won by degrees through centuries of sacrifice,
+of patient effort, of suffering, of heroism, and of stubborn faith; we
+inhaled its golden atmosphere; our enjoyment of it seemed as natural as
+our enjoyment of the fresh air which sweeps across the surface of the
+earth and floods our lungs. A few days were enough to steal from us this
+jewel of life; within a few hours, the world over, the quivering wings
+of liberty were enmeshed as in a net. The peoples had delivered her up.
+Nay more, they hailed their own enslavement with acclamations. We have
+relearned the old truth. "No conquest is ever achieved once for all.
+Conquest is a continued action which must be sustained day by day under
+penalty of forfeiture."
+
+Betrayed liberty, take sanctuary in the hearts of the faithful, fold
+your wounded pinions! In days to come you will resume your splendid
+flight. Then you will again be the idol of the multitude. Those who now
+oppress you, will then sing your praises. But in my eyes never have you
+seemed more beautiful than in this time of trial, when you are poor,
+despoiled, and stricken. You have nothing left to offer those who love
+you, nothing but danger and the smile of your undaunted eyes.
+Nevertheless, not all the wealth of the world can be compared with this
+gift. The lackeys of public opinion, the worshippers of success, will
+never compete with us for it. But we shall be true to you, Christ
+despised and rejected, for we know that you will rise again from the
+tomb.
+
+"Avanti," Milan, May 1, 1916.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+FREE RUSSIA, THE LIBERATOR!
+
+
+Russian brothers, who have just achieved your great revolution, we have
+not merely to congratulate you; we have in addition to thank you. In
+your conquest of freedom, you have not been working for yourselves
+alone, but for us likewise, for your brothers of the old west.
+
+Human progress has been a secular evolution. Quickly getting out of
+breath, flagging again and again, progress slackens, jibs at obstacles,
+or lies down in the road like a lazy mule. To bring about a fresh start,
+to ensure movement from stage to stage, there must be renewed awakenings
+of energy, vigorous revolutionary outbursts, which stimulate the will,
+brace the muscles, and blow the obstacle to smithereens. Our revolution
+of 1789 was one of these outbursts of heroic energy, dragging mankind
+out of the rut wherein it had become wedged, and compelling a fresh
+start. But as soon as the effort has been made and the chariot set in
+motion, mankind has been only too ready to stick fast in the mire again.
+Long ago, the French revolution brought all that it could bring to
+Europe. A time comes when ideas which were once fertilising, ideas which
+were once the forces of renewed life, are no longer anything more than
+idols of the past, forces tending to drag us backwards, additional
+obstacles. Such has been the lesson of the world war, in which the
+jacobins of the west have often proved the worst enemies of liberty.
+
+For new times, new paths and new aspirations! Russian brothers, your
+revolution has come to awaken this Europe of ours, drowsing over the
+arrogant memories of whilom revolutions. March onward! We will follow
+in your footsteps. The nations take it in turn to lead humanity. It is
+for you, whose youthful vitality has been hoarded during centuries of
+enforced inactivity, to pick up the axe where we have let it fall. In
+the virgin forest of social injustice and social untruth, the forest in
+which mankind has lost its way, make for us clearings and sunlit glades.
+
+Our revolution was the work of the great bourgeois, of the men whose
+race is now extinct. They had their rude vices and their rude virtues.
+Contemporary civilisation has inherited their vices alone, their
+fanaticism and their greed. It is our hope that your revolution will be
+the uprising of a great people, hale, brotherly, humane, avoiding the
+excesses into which we fell.
+
+Above all, remain united! Learn from our example. Remember how the
+French Convention, like Saturn, devoured its own children. Be more
+tolerant than we proved. Your whole strength will barely suffice for the
+defence of the sacred cause you represent; for its defence against the
+fierce and crafty enemies who at this hour perchance are arching their
+backs and purring like cats, but who are lurking in the jungle, awaiting
+the moment when you will stumble if you should be alone.
+
+Last of all remember, Russian brothers, that you are fighting our
+battles as well as your own. Our fathers of 1792 wished to bring freedom
+to the whole world. They failed; and it may be that they did not choose
+the best way. But they had lofty ambitions. May these ambitions be yours
+likewise. Bring to Europe the gifts of peace and liberty!
+
+"demain," Geneva, May 1, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+TOLSTOY: THE FREE SPIRIT
+
+
+In his diary, of which the first French translation has just been issued
+by Paul Biriukov,[15] Tolstoy gives utterance to the fantasy that in an
+earlier life his personality had been a complex of loved beings. Each
+successive existence, he suggested, enlarged the circle of friends and
+the range and power of the soul.[16]
+
+Speaking generally, we may say that a great personality comprehends
+within itself more souls than one. All these souls are grouped around
+one among them, much as, in a company of friends, the one with the
+strongest character will establish an ascendancy.
+
+In Tolstoy there are more men than one: there is the great artist; there
+is the great Christian; there is the being of uncontrolled instincts and
+passions. But in Tolstoy, as his days lengthened and his kingdom
+extended, it became plain and yet more plain that there was one ruler.
+This ruler was the free reason. It is to the free reason that I wish to
+pay homage here, for it is this above everything that we all need
+to-day.
+
+Our epoch is not poor in the other energies, those energies which
+Tolstoy possessed in so full a measure. Our age is surfeited with
+passions and with heroism; in artistic capacity it is not lacking; the
+fire of religion, even, has not been withheld. God--all the gods there
+be--have cast burning brands into the vast conflagration that rages
+among the nations. Christ not excepted. There is not one among the
+countries, belligerent or neutral, including the two Switzerlands, the
+German and the Romance, which has failed to discover in the gospels
+justification for cursing or for slaughter.
+
+Rarer to-day than heroism, rarer than beauty, rarer than holiness, is a
+free spirit. Free from constraint, free from prejudices, free from every
+idol; free from every dogma, whether of class, caste, or nation; free
+from every religion. A soul which has the courage and the
+straightforwardness to look with its own eyes, to love with its own
+heart, to judge with its own reason; to be no shadow, but a man.
+
+To a surpassing degree, Tolstoy set such an example. He was free.
+Invariably, with steadfast gaze, he looked events and men in the face
+without blinking. His free judgment was unperturbed even by his
+affections. Nothing shows this more plainly than his independence
+towards the one whom he valued the most, towards Christ. This great
+Christian was not a Christian through obedience to Christ. Though he
+devoted a considerable part of his life to studying, expounding, and
+diffusing the gospels, he never said, "This or that is true because the
+gospels say so." Tolstoy's outlook was, "The gospels are true because
+they say this or that." You yourself must be the judge, your free reason
+must be the judge, of truth.
+
+There is a writing known to few, for I believe it is still unpublished.
+It is the _Relation by Mihail Novikov the Peasant, concerning the Night
+of October 21, 1910, spent by him at Yasnaya Polyana_. The date was a
+week before Tolstoy fled from his home. We read how Tolstoy conversed at
+Yasnaya Polyana with a number of peasants. Among these were two village
+lads who had just been called up for military service, and military
+service was the topic of discussion. One of the young men, a social
+democrat, said that he was going to serve, not throne and altar, but
+state and nation. (We see that Tolstoy was fortunate in that he did not
+die before making the acquaintance of the "socialist patriots," before
+hearing a disquisition on "the art of turning the coat.") Some of the
+other peasants protested. Tolstoy enquired what were the limits of the
+state, declaring that for himself the whole world was his fatherland.
+The other conscript quoted texts from the Bible, texts in defence of
+killing. These did not convince Tolstoy, seeing that texts can be found
+apt for every occasion. He spoke as follows:
+
+"Not because Moses or Christ has forbidden us to do ill to our neighbour
+or to ourselves, not for such a reason must we refrain from doing ill.
+It is our duty to refrain because it is contrary to the nature of man to
+do this ill either to himself or to his neighbour. Be careful to note
+that I say it is contrary to the nature of man. I am not speaking of
+beasts.... In yourself you must find God, that he may enable you to see
+what is good and what is evil, what is possible and what is impossible.
+But as long as we allow ourselves to be guided by an external authority,
+be it that of Moses and Christ for one man, that of Mohammed for
+another, and that of the socialist Marx for another, we shall not cease
+to be at enmity one with another."
+
+I wish to make these words of power widely known. As I have repeatedly
+declared, the worst evil with which the world is afflicted is not the
+power of the wicked but the weakness of the good. Now this weakness is
+largely due to the inertia of the will, to the dread of independent
+judgment, to moral cowardice. The boldest, directly they have shaken off
+their chains, are only too ready to assume fresh bonds. Hardly have they
+been freed from one social superstition, than we see them deliberately
+harnessed to the chariot of a new superstition. It is so much easier to
+allow oneself to be guided than it is to think for oneself. This
+abdication is the kernel of the mischief. It is the duty of each one of
+us to refrain from leaving to others, to the best of men, to the most
+trustworthy, to the most dearly loved, the decision of what it is or is
+not good for us to do. We ourselves must seek the solution, seek it all
+through life if needs must, seek it with untiring patience. A half truth
+which we have won for ourselves is worth more than a whole truth learned
+from others, learned by rote as a parrot learns. A truth which we
+accept with closed eyes, submissively, deferentially, servilely--such a
+truth is nothing but a lie.
+
+Stand erect! Open your eyes and look about you! Be not afraid! The
+modicum of truth which you can secure by your own efforts is your safest
+light. Your essential need is not the acquisition of vast knowledge. The
+essential is that the knowledge you gain, be it little or be it much,
+shall be your own, nourished with your own blood, outcome of your own
+untrammelled effort. Freedom of the spirit is the supreme treasure.
+
+Throughout the ages, free men have been few in number. With the
+continued spread of herd mentality the number seems not unlikely to grow
+smaller yet. No matter! For the sake of these very multitudes who
+surrender to the slothful intoxication of collective passion, we must
+cherish the flame of liberty. Let us seek truth everywhere; let us cull
+it wherever we can find its blossom or its seed. Having found the seed
+let us scatter it to the winds of heaven. Whencever it may come,
+whithersoever it may blow, it will be able to germinate. There is no
+lack, in this wide universe, of souls that will form the good ground.
+But these souls must be free. We must learn not to be enslaved even by
+those whom we admire. The best homage we can pay to men like Tolstoy is
+to be free, as Tolstoy was free.
+
+"Les Tablettes," Geneva, May 1, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+TO MAXIM GORKI
+
+     At Geneva, in January, 1917, A. V. Lunacharski delivered a lecture
+     on the life and works of Maxim Gorki. The following tribute to
+     Gorki was read before the lecture.
+
+
+About fifteen years ago, in Paris, Charles Péguy, myself, and a few
+others, used to meet in a little ground-floor shop in the rue de la
+Sorbonne. We had just founded the "Cahiers de la Quinzaine." Our
+editorial office was poorly furnished, neat and clean; the walls were
+lined with books. A photograph was the only ornament. It showed Tolstoy
+and Gorki standing side by side in the garden at Yasnaya Polyana. How
+had Péguy got hold of it? I do not know, but he had had several
+reproductions made, and each of us had on his desk the picture of these
+two distant comrades. Under their eyes part of _Jean Christophe_ was
+written.
+
+One of the two men, the veteran apostle, has gone, on the eve of the
+European catastrophe whose coming he foretold and in which his voice has
+been so greatly needed. The other, Maxim Gorki, is at his post, and his
+free-spirited utterances help to console us for Tolstoy's silence.
+
+Gorki has not proved one of those who succumbed to the vertigo of
+events. Amid the distressing spectacle of the thousands of writers,
+artists, and thinkers who, within a few days, laid down their role as
+guides and defenders of the masses, to follow the maddened herds, to
+drive these herds yet more crazy by their own cries, to hasten the rush
+into the abyss, Maxim Gorki was one of the rare exceptions, one of those
+whose reason and whose love of humanity remained unshaken. He dared to
+speak on behalf of the persecuted, on behalf of the gagged and enslaved
+masses. This great artist, who shared for so long the life of the
+unfortunate, of the humble, of the victims, of the outcasts of society,
+has never denied his sometime companions. Having become famous, he turns
+back to them, throwing the powerful light of his art into the dark
+places where wretchedness and social injustice are hidden away. His
+generous soul has known suffering; he does not close his eyes to the
+sufferings of others.
+
+Haud ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco....
+
+Consequently, in these days of trial (trial which we greet, because it
+has taught us to take stock of ourselves, to estimate the true value of
+hearts and of thoughts), in these days when freedom of the spirit is
+everywhere oppressed, we must cry aloud our homage to Maxim Gorki.
+Across the battlefields, across the trenches, across a bleeding Europe,
+we stretch forth our hands to him. Henceforward, in face of the hatred
+which rages among the nations, we must affirm the union of New Europe.
+To the fighting "Holy Alliances" of the governments, we counterpose the
+brotherhood of the free spirits of the world!
+
+_January 30, 1917._
+
+"demain," Geneva, June, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+TWO LETTERS FROM MAXIM GORKI
+
+
+PETROGRAD, _end of December, 1916._
+
+MY DEAR AND VALUED COMRADE ROMAIN ROLLAND,
+
+Will you be good enough to write a biography of Beethoven, suitable for
+children? I am simultaneously writing to H. G. Wells, whom I ask to let
+me have a life of Addison; Fridtjof Nansen will do the life of
+Christopher Columbus; I shall myself deal with the life of Garibaldi;
+the Hebrew poet Bialik will write the life of Moses. With the aid of the
+leading authors of our day I hope to produce a number of books for
+children, containing biographies of the leaders of mankind. The whole
+series will be issued under my editorship....
+
+You know that in these days nothing needs our attention so much as young
+people. We grown-ups, we whose course is nearly run, are leaving a poor
+inheritance to our children, are bequeathing to them a sad life. This
+foolish war is a striking proof of our moral weakness, of the decay of
+civilisation. Let us, then, remind our children that men have not always
+been so weak and so bad as we are. Let us remind them that in all the
+nations there have been and still are great men, fine spirits. Now,
+above all, should we do this, when savagery and brutality are rife.... I
+beseech you, my dear Romain Rolland, to pen this biography of Beethoven,
+for I am convinced that no one can do it better than yourself....
+
+I have read and reread the articles you have published during the war,
+and I take this opportunity of telling you that they have inspired me
+with profound respect and love for you. You are one of the rare persons
+whose soul has remained unaffected by the madness of this war. It is a
+delight to me to know that you have continued to cherish the best
+principles of humanity.... Allow me, from a great distance, to clasp you
+by the hand, dear comrade.
+
+MAXIM GORKI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     At the end of January, Romain Rolland replied, accepting the
+     proposal that he should rewrite the life of Beethoven for young
+     people, and asking Gorki to indicate the length and the method of
+     treatment. Was the book to be a causerie, or a plain statement of
+     facts? Rolland suggested additional names for the series of
+     biographies: Socrates; Francis of Assisi; representative figures of
+     Asia.
+
+...Will you permit me to make a friendly remark? I am a trifle uneasy as
+to some of the names mentioned in your letter, uneasy as to the effect
+upon children's minds. You propose to put before them such formidable
+examples as that of Moses. Your aim, obviously, is to impress on them
+the importance of moral energy, which is the source of all light. But it
+is not a matter of indifference whether this light be turned towards the
+past or towards the future. There is no lack of moral energy to-day. The
+quality abounds, but it is devoted to the service of an obsolete ideal,
+an ideal which oppresses and kills. I must admit that I am somewhat
+estranged from the great men of the past, considered as examples for the
+conduct of life. For the most part I am disappointed in them. I admire
+them on aesthetic grounds, but I cannot endure the intolerance and the
+fanaticism they so often display. Many of the gods whom they worshipped
+have to-day become dangerous idols. Mankind, I fear, will fail to fulfil
+its lofty destiny unless it can transcend these earlier ideals, unless
+it prove able to offer wider horizons to the coming generations. In a
+word, I love and admire the past; but I wish the future to excel the
+past. It can; it must....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Maxim Gorki answered as follows:--
+
+PETROGRAD, _March 18 to 21, 1917._
+
+I hasten to reply, dear Romain Rolland. The book on Beethoven should be
+written for young people from thirteen to eighteen years of age. It
+should be an objective and interesting account of the life of a man of
+genius, of the development of his mind, of the chief incidents in his
+career, of the difficulties he overcame and of the triumphs he achieved.
+It should contain as much as can be learned concerning Beethoven's
+childhood. In young folk we wish to inspire love for life and trust in
+life; to adults we wish to teach heroism. Man has to learn that he is
+the creator and the master of the world; that his is the responsibility
+for all its misfortunes; that his, too, is the credit for all that is
+good in life. We must help man to break the chains of individualism and
+nationalism. Propaganda on behalf of universal union is absolutely
+essential.
+
+I am delighted with your idea of writing the life of Socrates, and I
+hope you will carry it out. I suppose your description of Socrates will
+be placed on a background of classical life, on the background of the
+life of Athens?
+
+Most penetrating are your observations on the question of a life of
+Moses. I am entirely with you as far as concerns the disorganising
+influence which religious fanaticism exercises upon life. But I choose
+Moses simply as a social reformer. This will be the theme of his
+biography. I had thought of Joan of Arc. But I am afraid that the
+treatment of this topic would lead the writer to talk of "the mystical
+soul of the people," and of similar matters, which pass my
+understanding, and which are particularly unwholesome for Russians.
+
+The life of Francis of Assisi is another story. It would be excellent,
+it would be extremely useful, if the writer of this biography were to
+aim at displaying the profound difference between Francis of Assisi and
+the holy men of the east, the saints of Russia. The east is pessimist;
+it is passive. The Russian saints do not love life; they repudiate it
+and execrate it. Francis is an epicure of religion; he is a Hellene; he
+loves God as the work of his own creation, as the fruit of his own soul.
+He is filled with love for life, and he is free from a humiliating fear
+of God. A Russian is a man who does not know how to live, but knows how
+to die.... I am afraid that Russia is even more oriental than China. We
+have a superabundant wealth of mysticism.... What we chiefly need to
+inspire men with is the love of action; we must awaken in them respect
+for the intelligence, for man, for life.
+
+My sincerest thanks for your cordial letter. It is a great solace to
+know that somewhere, afar off, there is one who suffers the same
+sufferings as oneself, a man who loves the same things. It is good to
+know this in these days of violence and madness.... Warmest greetings.
+
+MAXIM GORKI.
+
+_PS._--This letter has been delayed by recent happenings in Russia. Let
+us rejoice, Romain Rolland, let us rejoice with all our hearts, for
+Russia is no longer the mainspring of reaction in Europe. Henceforward
+the Russian people is wedded to liberty, and I trust that this union
+will give birth to many great souls for the glory of mankind.
+
+"demain," Geneva, July, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+TO THE WRITERS OF AMERICA
+
+
+_Letter to "The Seven Arts," New York, October, 1916._
+
+I am delighted to learn of the creation of a magazine in which the
+American soul will become fully aware of its own individuality. I
+believe in the lofty destinies of America, and the events of the hour
+render the realisation of that destiny urgently necessary. In the Old
+World, civilisation is imperilled. America must cherish the flickering
+flame.
+
+You possess one great advantage over us in Europe. You are free from
+traditions; free from the burdens of thought, of sentiments, from
+agelong follies, from the obsessions in the spheres of the intellect, of
+art, and of politics; you are free from all these things which crush the
+Old World. Contemporary Europe is sacrificing her future to quarrels,
+ambitions, rancours, revived again and again. Every endeavour to bring
+these troubles to an end serves but to add a few meshes to the net
+wherein a murderous destiny has snared us. Our fate resembles that of
+the Atrides, vainly awaiting, as in the _Eumenides_, a god's word of
+power which may break the bloody spell. In art, if our writers owe their
+perfection of form and their clarity of thought to the strength of our
+classical traditions, these advantages have been gained at the cost of
+great sacrifices. Too few among our artists are awakened to the manifold
+life of the world. Their minds are mewed within a closed garden. They
+display little interest concerning the spacious regions through which,
+after leaving that garden, the river, a swelling flood, pursues its
+torrential course, watering all the world.
+
+You have been born in a land which is neither encumbered nor enclosed by
+the artificial constructions of the mind. Profit by the fact. Be free.
+Do not enslave yourselves to foreign examples. Your model is in
+yourselves. Begin by knowing yourselves.
+
+This is the first duty. The differing individualities which combine to
+make up your country must not be afraid to express themselves in art; to
+express themselves freely, honestly, integrally; without straining for
+originality, but regardless of what expression may have been found by
+those who have gone before, and fearless of the tyranny of opinion.
+Above all, let them dare to look into their own souls, to look well and
+long, to plumb the depths in silent meditation. Those who do so, must
+then dare to reveal what they have seen. This self-communing is not a
+self-incarceration within an egoistic personality. Those who engage in
+it will strike deep roots in the essential being of the nation to which
+they belong. I urge on you the endeavour to participate to the full in
+its sufferings and its aspirations. Be the light lightening the darkness
+of the great social masses whose mission it is to renew the world. The
+men and women of the common people, those whose want of interest in
+artistic matters is often a trial to you, are mutes. Lacking power of
+expression, they are ignorant of themselves. Become a voice for them. As
+they hear you speak, they will grow aware of themselves. In giving
+expression to your own souls, you will create the soul of your nation.
+
+Your second task, vaster and more distant, will be to form a fraternal
+link between these free individualities, to build a rose window that
+shall concentre their multiple trends, to compose a symphony from out
+their various voices. The United States is made up of elements drawn
+from all the nations of the world. Let the richness of the structure
+help you to understand the essence of all these nations, to realise the
+harmony of their intellectual energies!--To-day, in the Old World, we
+witness the deplorable and foolish antagonism displayed by national
+individualities, near neighbours and close kin, distinguished only by
+trifling shades like France and Germany, repudiating one another,
+longing for one another's destruction. Parochial disputes about which
+the human mind is eager to achieve self-mutilation! For my part I cry
+aloud, not merely that the intellectual ideal of a single nation is too
+narrow for me; I declare that the ideal of a reconciled western world
+would be too narrow for me; I declare that the ideal of a united Europe
+would still be too narrow for me. The hour has come in which man, truly
+healthy and truly alive, must deliberately turn his footsteps towards
+the ideal of a universal humanity, wherein the European races of the Old
+World and of the New will join hands with the representatives of the
+ancient and now rejuvenescent civilisations of Asia--of India and of
+China. A universal humanity with a common spiritual treasury. All these
+splendid types of mankind are mutually complementary. The thought of the
+future must be a synthesis of the great thoughts of the entire universe.
+America lies between the two oceans which lave the two continents;
+America is at the centre of the life of the world. Let it be the mission
+of all that is best in America to cement this fecund union!
+
+To sum up, we ask of you two things, writers and thinkers of America. We
+ask, first of all, that you should defend freedom, that you should
+safeguard its conquests and extend them: political freedom and mental
+freedom, an unceasing renewal of life through freedom, through this
+great and ever-flowing river of the mind.
+
+In the second place, we await from you that you should bring to pass, on
+behalf of the world, a harmony of diverse liberties; a symphonic
+expression of associated individualities, of associated races, of
+associated civilisations, of mankind at once integral and free.
+
+You have splendid opportunities: you have an exuberant young life; you
+have wide areas of virgin land. Your day has just begun. You are not
+wearied by the toil of a previous day. You are unencumbered by the
+heritage of the past. All that comes down to you from the past is a
+voice like the sound of many waters, the voice of a great herald whose
+work seems a homeric foreshadowing of the task that awaits you. I speak
+of the American master, Walt Whitman.--Surge et age.
+
+"Revue mensuelle," Geneva, February, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+FREE VOICES FROM AMERICA
+
+
+I have often deplored that during the war the Swiss press has failed to
+play the great part which was assigned to it. I have not hesitated to
+express my regret to Swiss journalists of my acquaintance. I do not
+reproach the Swiss periodicals for their lack of impartiality. It is
+natural, it is human, to have preferences, and to show them
+passionately. We have all the less reason to complain seeing that (at
+least among the Latin Swiss) the preferences are in our favour.
+
+My chief grievance is that, since the beginning of the war, our Swiss
+friends have failed to keep us fully informed of what is going on around
+us. We do not ask a friend to judge for us; when we are carried away by
+passion, we do not ask him to be wiser than we are. But if he is in a
+position to see and know things that are hidden from us, we have a right
+to reproach him if he leaves us in ignorance. He does us wrong, for
+through his fault we are likely to fall into errors of judgment and are
+likely to act wrongly.
+
+Neutral countries enjoy an inestimable advantage. They can look the
+problems of the war in the face, in a way that is utterly impossible to
+the belligerent nations. Above all, the neutrals enjoy the advantage of
+being able to speak freely, a piece of good fortune which they fail to
+esteem at its true value. Switzerland, in the very centre of the
+battlefield, between the fighting camps, with inhabitants drawn from
+three of the belligerent stocks, is peculiarly favoured. I have had
+occasion to perceive and to profit by the wealth of information at the
+disposal of the Swiss. Hither, from all parts of Europe, comes an
+abundance of news, evidence, printed matter.
+
+Yet the Swiss press makes little use of this abundance. With few
+exceptions, Swiss periodicals are content to reproduce the official
+bulletins from the armies, and the semi-official statements issued by
+agencies that are open to suspicion, statements inspired by the
+governments or by the occult forces which to-day have far more governing
+power than the nominal heads of governments. Rarely do we find that the
+Swiss papers subject these interested statements to critical discussion.
+Hardly ever do we find contrasted views; hardly ever are we enabled to
+listen to independent voices from the opposing trenches.[17] Thus
+official truth, dictated by the powers that be, is imposed upon the
+masses with the potency of a dogma. Thought concerning the war has a
+catholicity which will not permit heresy to exist. Such a development is
+strange in Switzerland, and above all in this republic of Geneva, whose
+historic origins and whose reasons for existence were free opposition
+and fertilising heresy.
+
+I do not propose to study the psychological causes of the suppression of
+thoughts which conflict with official dogma. I am inclined to think that
+partisan feeling is of less effect in this matter than, in some,
+ignorance of the facts and lack of critical faculty, and in others,
+really well-informed persons, failure to verify alleged facts, or an
+unwillingness to correct the errors of an overwrought public
+opinion--errors which, quite unknown to themselves, they really desire
+to believe. It is easier, and at the same time it is safer, to rest
+content with the news supplied from house to house by the great
+purveyors, rather than put oneself to the pains of going to the fountain
+head in order to revise or to supplement current information.
+
+These errors and these lacunae are serious, however they originate, as
+the public is beginning to realise.[18] It is perfectly natural that the
+ideas of this or that social or political party, in one or other of the
+belligerent nations, should conflict with the ideas of this or that
+journal in a neutral land. No one need be surprised that such a neutral
+journal should openly express its dissent. Vigilant criticism would be
+equally in place. But it is not permissible that a neutral journal
+should ignore or distort everything of which it disapproves.
+
+Is it not intolerable, for example, that we should know nothing about
+the Russian revolution except from news items issued from governmental
+sources (non-russian for the most part), or from hostile partisans eager
+to calumniate all the forward groups? Is it not intolerable that the
+great Swiss periodicals should never give an open platform to the
+persons thus vilified, not even in the case of such a man as Maxim
+Gorki, whose genius and intellectual candour are the glory of European
+letters? Once more, is it not intolerable that the French socialist
+minority should be systematically left out of the picture, should be
+regarded as non-existent by the journals of French-speaking Switzerland?
+Is it not monstrous that these same journals, during the last three
+years, have maintained absolute silence concerning the British
+opposition, or, if they have referred to it at all, have done so in the
+most contemptuous terms? For we have to remember that those who voice
+this opposition bear some of the greatest names in British thought, such
+as Bertrand Russell, Bernard Shaw, Israel Zangwill, Norman Angell, and
+E. D. Morel; we have to remember that its views find expression in
+vigorous periodicals, in numerous pamphlets, and in books some of which
+excel in value anything that during the same period has been written in
+Switzerland and in France!
+
+Nevertheless, in the long run, the staying powers of the British
+opposition have got the better of national barriers; the thought of this
+opposition has made its way into France, where some of the leading
+spirits are now fully aware of this English work and of these English
+struggles. With regret I have to record that the Swiss press has played
+no part in promoting the mutual understanding, and I imagine that
+neither the French nor the British will forget the fact.
+
+The same thing has happened in the United States of America. The Swiss
+periodicals have been delighted to publish whatever the powers that be
+have sent them for publication; but, as usual, the opposition has been
+forgotten or scoffed at. When by chance a semi-official telegram from
+New York, meticulously reproduced (unless it has been obligingly
+paraphrased and provided with a sensational headline), makes some
+reference to the opposition, it is only that we may be inspired with
+contempt. It would appear that any one on the other side of the Atlantic
+who proclaims himself a pacifist, even if it be on Christian grounds, is
+looked upon as a traitor, as working in the hire of the enemy. This no
+longer arouses our surprise. The experiences of the last three years
+have been such that nothing can now surprise us. But we have likewise
+lost all power of trust. Having learned that those who desire truth will
+vainly wait for it to come to them, we set out to seek truth for
+ourselves wherever it may be found. When there is no drinking water in
+the house, we must e'en go to the well.
+
+To-day let us listen to the words of the opposition in America, as
+expressed by one of the boldest of the periodicals serving that
+movement, "The Masses" of New York.[19]
+
+Here expression is given to non-official truth, and this, also, is no
+more than part of the truth. But we have the right to know the whole
+truth, be it pleasant or unpleasant. It is even our duty to know it,
+unless we are poltroons who fear to look reality in the face. You need
+not search the files of "The Masses" for records of greatness that has
+been lavished in the war! We know all about this, anyhow, from the
+official reports with which we are deluged. What we do not sufficiently
+know, what people do not wish to know, is the material and moral
+unhappiness, the injustice, the oppression which, as Bertrand Russell
+points out, are for each nation the obverse of every war, however
+just.--That is why, as far as America is concerned, we must consult the
+uncompromising periodical which I am about to quote.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Max Eastman, the editor, is the soul of "The Masses." He fills it with
+his thought and his energy. The two last issues to reach me, those of
+June and July, 1917, contain no less than six articles from his pen. All
+wage implacable warfare against militarism and blind nationalism. Nowise
+duped by official declamations, Eastman declares that this war is not a
+war for democracy. The real struggle for liberty will come after the
+war.[20] In the United States, as in Europe, the war has been the work
+of capitalists, and of a group of intellectuals, clerical and lay.[21]
+Max Eastman insists on the part played by the intellectuals, whilst his
+collaborator John Reed emphasises the part played by the capitalists.
+Similar economic and moral phenomena have been apparent in the Old World
+and in the New. In the United States, as in Europe, many socialists
+support the war. A number of them (notably Upton Sinclair, with whom I
+am personally acquainted, and whose moral sincerity and idealist spirit
+I fully appreciate) have adopted this strange militarism. They champion
+universal conscription, in the hope that after the "war for democracy"
+"the socialist movement will know how to 'employ such a disciplined
+army' in building the co-operative commonwealth."[22]
+
+As for the men of religion, they have rushed headlong into the fray. At
+a meeting of Methodist ministers in New York, one of them, a pastor from
+Bridgeport, Connecticut, straightforwardly declared, "If I must choose
+between my country and my God, I have made up my mind to choose God." He
+was hooted and threatened by the other members of the assembly, five
+hundred in number; was denounced as a traitor. Newel Dwight Hillis,
+preaching in the Henry Ward Beecher church, said: "All God's teachings
+concerning forgiveness must be abrogated as far as Germany is concerned.
+When the Germans have been shot I will forgive them their atrocities.
+But if we agree to forgive Germany after the war, I shall think that the
+world has gone mad."
+
+Billy Sunday, a sort of howling dervish, sprung from heaven knows where,
+brays to huge crowds a militarist gospel. He spouts his sermons like a
+sewer disgorging filth; he calls upon the Good Old God (who is
+apparently to be found in other places besides Berlin), buttonholes him,
+enrols him willy-nilly. A cartoon of Boardman Robinson's shows Billy
+Sunday arrayed as a recruiting sergeant, dragging Christ by a halter and
+shouting: "I got him! He's plumb dippy over going to war." Fashionable
+folk, ladies included, are infatuated with this preacher; they delight
+to debase themselves in God's company. The ministers of religion, too,
+are on Billy Sunday's side. The exceptions may be counted on the fingers
+of one hand. Most notable among the exceptions is the pastor of the
+church of the Messiah in New York, John Haynes Holmes by name, from whom
+I had the honour of receiving a magnificent letter in February, 1917,
+just before the United States entered the war. In its July number "The
+Masses" published an admirable declaration issued by Holmes to his
+flock. It was entitled, What shall I do? He refuses to exclude any
+nation from the human community. The church of the Messiah will not
+respond to any militarist appeal. His conscience constrains him to
+refuse conscription. He will obey his conscience at any cost. "God
+helping me, I can no otherwise."--Those who resist the war madness
+constitute a little Church where persons of all parties make common
+cause, Christians, atheists, Quakers, artists, socialists, etc. Hailing
+from all points of the compass, and holding the most conflicting ideas,
+they share only one article of faith, that of the war against war. This
+common creed suffices to bring them into closer association than the
+associations they had with their friends of yesterday, with their
+brothers by blood, by religion, or by profession.[23] Thus did Christ
+pass to and fro among the men of Judea, detaching those who believed in
+him from their families, from their class, from all their past life.--In
+the United States, as in Europe, young men are far less possessed with
+the war spirit than their elders. A striking example comes from Columbia
+University. Here, while the professors were conferring on General Joffre
+the degree of doctor of literature, the students assembled to pass a
+unanimous resolution against answering the call of military
+conscription.[24] This exposed the voters to the penalty of
+imprisonment. For they manage things with a heavy hand in the classic
+land of liberty. Many American citizens have been thrown into gaol, and
+others, we are informed, have been immured in lunatic asylums, for
+having expressed their disapproval of the war. The recruiting sergeants
+go wherever they please, even forcing their way into meetings of the
+workers and maltreating all who resist them.[25] Under the rubric A
+Week's War "The Masses" records all the brutalities, all the blows,
+wounds, and murders, to which the war has already led in America. We may
+well ask to what extremes of violence these antipacifist repressions
+will some day be carried. The alleged freedom of speech in the United
+States would appear to be pure humbug. "In actual fact," exclaims Max
+Eastman, "freedom of speech has never existed." It is by law
+established. "But in practice there reigns a contempt for law, to the
+advantage of the strong and to the detriment of the weak." We have long
+known this through the revelations of the Italian and Russian socialist
+press, in connection with the scandalous sentences passed on working
+men. Do pacifists give trouble? They are arrested as anarchists! Does a
+periodical refuse to bow to the opinion of the state? It is suppressed
+without parley; or sometimes, by a more refined procedure, it is
+prosecuted for obscenity![26] And so on.
+
+Max Eastman's chief collaborator, John Reed, endeavours to throw light
+on the preponderating role played by American capitalism in the war. In
+an article which adopts as title that of Norman Angell's book _The Great
+Illusion_, Reed declares that the pretence of fighting kings is maudlin,
+and that Money is the true king. Putting his finger on the sore spot, he
+adduces figures showing the colossal profits made by the great American
+companies. Under the bizarre title _The Myth of American Fatness_,[27]
+he shows that it is not, as Europe fancies, the American nation which
+battens on the war, but only two per cent of the population.
+Ninety-eight per cent of the inhabitants of the States are thin folk,
+and grow thinner daily. During the years 1912 to 1916, wages increased
+nine per cent, whilst the cost of food increased seventy-four per cent
+during the years 1915 and 1916. From 1913 to 1917, the general rise in
+prices was 85.32 per cent (flour 69 per cent, eggs 61 per cent, potatoes
+224 per cent! Between January 1915 and January 1917, the rise in the
+price of coal was from $5 to $8.75 per ton). The bulk of the population
+has suffered cruelly, and serious hunger strikes have taken place in New
+York. Of course the European press has either said nothing about these
+or has ascribed them to German plots.
+
+During the years 1914 to 1916, there occurred an increase of five
+hundred per cent in the dividends paid by twenty-four of the largest
+companies (steel, cast iron, leather, sugar, railways, electricity,
+chemical products, etc.). The dividend of the Bethlehem Steel
+Corporation rose from $5,122,703 in 1914 to $43,593,968 in 1916. The
+dividend of the United States Steel Corporation rose from $81,216,985 in
+1914 to $281,531,730 in 1916. During the years 1914 and 1915, the number
+of wealthy persons in the United States increased as follows: From 60 to
+120 in the case of those with a private income exceeding one million
+dollars; from 114 to 209 in the case of those with a private income
+ranging from half a million to one million dollars; while the number of
+those whose income ranged from one hundred thousand to half a million
+dollars was doubled.[28] In incomes below one hundred thousand dollars,
+there has been no notable increase. John Reed adds: "There are limits to
+the patience of the common people. Beware revolts!"
+
+The first article in the July number of "The Masses" is a message to the
+citizens of the United States entitled _War and Individual Liberty_,
+penned by Bertrand Russell, the distinguished English philosopher and
+mathematician. It is dated February 21, 1917, prior to the U.S.
+declaration of war, but could not be published before July. Russell
+recalls the self-sacrifice of the conscientious objectors in Britain,
+and the persecutions to which they have been exposed. He extols their
+faith (a faith for which he himself suffered). The cause of individual
+liberty is, he declares, the highest of all. Since the middle ages, the
+power of the state has grown unceasingly. It is now maintained that the
+state is entitled to dictate opinions to all, men and women. Prisons,
+emptied of criminals, who have been sent to the front in uniform to take
+part in the killing, are filled with honest men who refuse to be
+soldiers and to kill. A tyrannical society which has no place for rebels
+is a society condemned in advance. First of all its progress will be
+arrested, and then it will become retrogressive. The medieval church at
+least had, as counterpoise, the resistance of the Franciscans and of the
+reformers. The modern state has broken everything that resists its
+power; it has made around itself a void, an abyss wherein it will
+perish. Militarism is the modern state's instrument of oppression, just
+as dogma was the instrument of the church.--What is this state, before
+which all cringe? How absurd to speak of it as an impersonal authority,
+to invest it with a quasi-sacred character! The state consists of a few
+elderly gentlemen, for the most part of less than average ability, for
+they are cut off from the new life of the masses. Hitherto, the United
+States has been the freest of the nations. She has reached a critical
+hour, not for herself merely, but for the world at large, which regards
+her with tense anxiety. Let America beware. Even a just war may give
+rise to all possible iniquities. Vestiges of ancient fierceness linger
+within us; the human animal licks its chops as it watches the
+gladiatorial combats. We veil these cannibal appetites under
+highsounding names, speaking of Right and of Liberty. The last hope of
+our day lies in youth. Let youth claim for the future the individual's
+prerogative to judge good and evil for himself, to be the arbiter of his
+own conduct.
+
+Side by side with these serious words, a large place, in the combat of
+thought, is given to humour, that bright and beauteous weapon. Charles
+Scott Wood writes amusing Voltairian dialogues. Here we see Billy Sunday
+in heaven, filling the place with clamour. He preaches a sermon full of
+Billingsgate, a sermon addressed to God, represented as an old gentleman
+with suave and distinguished manners, a little tired, speaking softly.
+St. Peter is instructed to enforce a new divine ordinance, for God,
+weary of the insipid company of simple souls, has decided that only
+persons of intelligence are to be admitted to paradise in future.
+Consequently no one killed in the war will pass the gate, except the
+Poles, who claim no merit for being sacrificed, but say they were
+sacrificed against their will.
+
+Louis Untermeyer contributes poems. A number of excellent book reviews
+and several columns of theatrical criticism deal with questions of the
+hour. Among the works referred to, I may mention two of great
+originality: a book filled with bold paradox by Thorstein Veblen,
+entitled _Peace? An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace_; a Russian play in
+four acts by Artsibashev, _War_, depicting the cycle of the war in a
+family and the wastage of souls which it involves.
+
+Finally we have vigorous drawings, the work of satirists of the pencil.
+R. Kempf, Boardman Robinson, and George Bellows, enliven the magazine
+with their pungent visions and their cutting words. Kempf shows us War
+crushing in his embrace France, England, and Germany, crying out: "Come
+on in, America, the blood's fine!" The four linked figures are dancing
+on a sea of blood in which corpses are floating.--A few pages further
+on, Boardman Robinson shows Liberty in the background weeping. In front
+stands Uncle Sam, wearing handcuffs (censorship) and leg-irons, the
+cannon-ball of conscription drags at the chain. He is described as being
+"All ready to fight for Liberty."--George Bellows' design depicts a
+chained Christ in prison. He is "incarcerated for the use of language
+calculated to dissuade citizens from entering the United States
+armies."--Finally, upon a heap of dead, the two sole survivors are seen
+savagely cutting one another to pieces. They are Turkey and Japan. The
+legend runs: "1920: still fighting for civilisation." This design is by
+H. R. Chamberlain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus fight, across the seas, a few independent spirits. Freedom,
+clearness, courage, and humour, are rare virtues. Still more rarely do
+we find them united, in days of folly and enslavement. In the American
+opposition, these virtues take the palm.
+
+I do not pretend that the opposition is impartial. It, likewise, is
+influenced by passion, so that it fails to recognise the moral forces
+animating the other side. The combined wretchedness and greatness of
+these tragical days lies in the fact that both parties are drawn to the
+fight by lofty, though conflicting ideals, which endeavour to slay one
+another while volleying abuse at one another like Homer's heroes. We, at
+least, claim the right of doing justice even to our adversaries, even to
+the champions of the war which we loath. We know how much idealism, how
+much intense moral feeling, have been poured out on behalf of this
+sinister cause. We are aware that in this respect the United States has
+been no less spendthrift than Britain and France. But we wish people to
+give respectful hearing to the voices from the other side, from the
+peace party. Since the apostles of peace are few in number, since they
+are oppressed, they have all the more right to demand the esteem of the
+world. Everything rages against these bold men: the formidable power of
+the armed states; the baying of the press; the frenzy of blinded and
+drunken public opinion.
+
+The world may howl as it pleases, may stop its ears as much as it likes;
+we shall compel the world to listen to these voices. We shall compel the
+world to pay homage to this heroic struggle, which recalls that of the
+early Christians against the Roman empire. We shall compel it to respect
+the brotherly greeting of such a man as Bertrand Russell, a new apostle
+Paul, "ad Americanos"; we shall compel the world to respect these men
+whose souls have remained free, these men who from their prisons in
+Europe and their prisons in America, clasp hands across the sea, and
+across the ocean that is yet wider than the Atlantic, the ocean of human
+folly.
+
+_August, 1917._
+
+"demain," September, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+ON BEHALF OF E. D. MOREL
+
+
+     E. D. Morel, secretary of the Union of Democratic Control, was
+     arrested in London during August, 1917, and was sentenced to six
+     months' imprisonment in the second division, upon the ridiculous
+     (and incorrect) charge of having _attempted_ to send to Romain
+     Rolland in Switzerland one of his own political pamphlets which was
+     being freely circulated in England.[29] The "Revue mensuelle" of
+     Geneva asked R. R. what he thought of this affair, concerning which
+     at that time little was known on the continent, for all the
+     information hitherto published had been in the form of defamatory
+     articles, attacks upon Morel manufactured in England and
+     disseminated in various tongues. R. R. replied as follows:--
+
+You ask what I think of the arrest of E. D. Morel.
+
+I am not personally acquainted with E. D. Morel. I do not know whether,
+as is asserted, he has sent me some of his works during the war. I never
+received them.
+
+But from all that I know of him, of his activities prior to the war, of
+his crusade against the crimes of civilisation in Africa, of his
+writings upon the war (few of which have been reproduced in Swiss or in
+French journals), I consider him to be a man of high courage and
+vigorous faith. He has always dared to serve truth, to serve truth
+alone, scorning danger, regardless of all the animus he was arousing.
+These things would be little. Morel has displayed rarer qualities, has
+achieved a more difficult task, in that he has been willing to disregard
+his own sympathies, his friendships, and even his country, when the
+truth and his country were at odds.
+
+Thus he is in the succession of all the great believers: Christians of
+the early centuries, the reformers during the epoch of the wars of
+religion, the freethinkers of the heroic age of free thought, all those
+who have prized beyond everything their faith in truth--in whatever form
+truth presented itself to their minds (divine or human, for to them it
+was always sacred). I may add that such a man as E. D. Morel is a great
+citizen even when he is demonstrating to his country the errors which it
+is committing. Nay more, he is preeminently a great citizen when he does
+this and because he does it. Some would draw a veil over the errors of
+their country; they are unprofitable servants, or they are sycophants.
+Every brave man, every straight-forward man, knows best how to honour
+his country.
+
+The state may strike down such a man if it pleases, as the state struck
+down Socrates, as the state has struck down so many others, to whom,
+after they were dead, it raised useless monuments. The state is not our
+country. It is merely the administrator of our country, sometimes a good
+administrator, sometimes a bad one, but always fallible. The state has
+power, and uses power. But since man has been man, this power has
+invariably broken vainly against the threshold of the free soul.
+
+R. R.
+
+_September 15, 1917._
+
+"Revue mensuelle," Geneva, October, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+YOUNG SWITZERLAND
+
+
+If we were to attempt to found our judgment upon Swiss periodical
+literature, we should form a very false opinion regarding the public
+mind of Switzerland. In this land, as everywhere, the press is from ten
+to twenty years behind the intellectual and moral development of the
+people. The Swiss papers and other periodicals are few in number,
+compared with those of neighbouring nations. Most of them are controlled
+by quite a small group of persons, and nearly every one of them serves
+to express the prejudices, the interests, and the routinism of
+middle-aged or elderly persons. Among such as are prominent in this
+journalistic world, even those who are spoken of as young, if they ever
+have been young in mind, are now so only in the eyes of their elders, of
+elders who refuse to admit that they have grown old.... "Young man, hold
+your tongue," as Job said to Magnus.[30]
+
+A man may live a long time in this land before he discovers the
+existence of a young Switzerland free from the trammels of conservative
+liberalism (more conservative than liberal), and free from those of
+sectarian radicalism (preeminently sectarian). Both these trends are
+abundantly represented in the columns of the leading newspapers; the
+adherents of both are attached to the outworn political and social forms
+of the bourgeois regime which is declining from one end of Europe to the
+other.
+
+I was surprised and delighted at what I read in the latest issues of the
+"Revue de la Société de Zofingue." I wish to make my French friends
+acquainted with what I have learned, so that sympathetic relationships
+may be established between them and young Switzerland.
+
+The Zofingia Society is the leading society of Swiss students, and the
+oldest. It was founded in 1818, and will therefore celebrate its
+centenary next year. It comprises twelve sections: nine of these are
+"academic," viz. Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel, Berne, Basle, and Zurich;
+three are "gymnasial," viz. St. Gall, Lucerne, and Bellinzona.[31] The
+membership of the society is steadily increasing. In July, 1916, it was
+575; but now, nearly a year later, it is 700. The organisation has a
+monthly review, "Centralblatt des Zofingervereins," issued in French,
+German, and Italian. This periodical is now in its fifty-seventh year.
+It publishes lectures, reports of discussions, and other matters of
+interest to the association.
+
+The essential distinction between this body and the other societies of
+Swiss students is that the Zofingia, as explained in the first article
+of its constitution, "places itself above and outside all political
+parties, but takes its stand on democratic principles.... It abstains
+entirely from party politics." Thus, as its president writes, it affords
+to the students of Switzerland a permanent possibility of creating anew
+and ever anew their conception of "the true national spirit of
+Switzerland.... In it, each generation can freely think out for itself
+fresh ideals, can construct new forms of life. Thus the history of the
+Zofingerverein is something more than a history of a Swiss students'
+club; it is a miniature history of the moral and political evolution of
+Switzerland since 1815."--But it has always been in the vanguard.
+
+This society, drawing its members from three races and nine cantons,
+exhibits, as may be imagined, multiplicity in unity. The "Centralblatt"
+for November, 1916, contains a report of the year 1915-16, compiled by
+Louis Micheli. It gives an account of the activities of the various
+sections, and skilfully indicates the peculiar characteristics of each
+section.
+
+The most important section, the one which leads the Zofingia, is that of
+Zurich. Here the problems of the hour are discussed with especial
+eagerness. Centring round opposite poles, there are two parties,
+substantially equal in numbers, and inspired with equal enthusiasm. On
+the one hand we see conservatives, authoritarian and centralist in
+trend, the devotees of "Studententum" of the old style. At the other
+pole are the young Zofingians whose outlook is socialistic, idealistic,
+and revolutionary. For a time there was a fierce struggle between these
+two groups. The parties succeeded one another in power, and those who
+gained control in one term would seek to undo everything which during
+the preceding term had been done by the members of the late committee.
+Now, a more conciliatory spirit prevails.[32] The progressive party,
+reinforced by a number of youthful recruits, has gained the upper hand.
+It is endeavouring to secure wider support by attracting additional
+elements through breadth of view and a policy of toleration.[33] But we
+are told that "the Zurichers, at bottom, are not strongly individualist,
+for they are apt to immolate their individuality on the altar of party.
+Hence there is danger, from time to time, that a revival of absolutism
+may take place."
+
+At Basle, it would seem, there is no such danger. This section, the
+largest, extremely alert, is perhaps the least united and the most
+discordant. During the last few years it has been torn by dissensions
+aroused by the question of patriotism, but its members are not, like
+those of the Zurich section, grouped in two armies. There are a number
+of little factions, circumscribed and mutually suspicious. Its most
+conspicuous traits are the following. Its discussions are conducted with
+much bitterness, so that "there is a strong tendency for differences in
+the realm of ideas to culminate in personal hostility." The Baslers have
+little inclination towards practical activities; they prefer abstract
+discussions; they aim at the development of character and individuality.
+"In these respects, Basle and Lausanne are the sections containing the
+most original and individual types." But, in contrast with Lausanne, the
+Basle section has little interest in literary and artistic questions.
+
+In the Lausanne section, individual types abound. Here we find students
+of the most various temperaments, and interested in the most diverse
+questions, in politics, sociology, literature, and the arts. But
+Lausanne is pugnacious, and is on bad terms with the other sections. It
+is itself broken up into factions, and it exhibits separatist trends,
+which led to a crisis early in 1916. After the manner of Vaud, it keeps
+itself to itself.
+
+Lausanne, Basle, and Zurich are the three largest sections.
+
+Lucerne and Berne are the smallest. In the former, which is of little
+importance, a "slothful cordiality" prevails. The Berne section is
+sleepy as well as small, with very few new adherents. One of its members
+has stigmatised Berne as a "Beamtenstadt" (civil servants' town). The
+Berne section has little interest in the problems of modern life, its
+attachments are to common sense; it is material and unemotional; it
+favours the established order. "The Bernese, by nature, distrusts
+innovators and idealists, regarding them as dreamers or
+revolutionists.... The state of mind of the Berne students recalls that
+which prevails in official circles."
+
+St. Gall, hard-working, enthusiastic, and independent, occupies an
+intermediate position. "In St. Gall, every one can express his opinion
+frankly"; but the section is unimportant compared with Zurich or
+Basle.--Neuchâtel displays fitful energy, and "is fundamentally
+characterised by a certain natural inertia."--Geneva, finally, is
+amorphous. "The bulk of the members of this section make up a slumbrous,
+irresolute mass of persons who never utter any definite opinions," and
+perhaps have no definite opinions. Such activities as it displays are
+the work of a few exceptions. "No section has greater need of a
+masterful president." Having no leader, it is vague, somnolent, and
+takes little interest in current events. It lacks the corporate spirit.
+"The Genevese are strongly individualistic, and yet, unfortunately, we
+rarely find among them a strong individuality." We may add that they
+continue to display certain characteristics of the Genevese of old.
+Dreading criticism and ironical comment, they are afraid to let
+themselves go, to show what they really feel; their sensibilities are
+easily wounded, and they therefore invest themselves with coldness as
+with a cuirass; their attitude is one of perpetual mistrust; they are
+ever on the defensive, as if the duke of Savoy were always on the point
+of storming the walls.[34]
+
+I pass no judgments. I am merely registering, in brief, the opinions of
+those among the students who are best qualified to judge. Taking them
+all in all, these opinions harmonise with my own observations.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The latest issues of the "Centralblatt des Zofingervereins" manifest a
+free spirit. The issue for May, 1917, contains a frankly
+internationalist article by Jules Humbert-Droz entitled _National
+Defence_. Special mention must be made of a broad-minded lecture,
+_Socialism and the War_, delivered in February, 1917, by Ernest Gloor of
+Lausanne at the spring festival in Yverdon, and published in the
+"Centralblatt" for April and May. I must also refer to Gloor's lecture
+_What is our Country?_, delivered at Grütli in the canton of Lausanne.
+Another noteworthy lecture is that of Serge Bonhôte, delivered at Grütli
+in the canton of Neuchâtel, entitled _Fatherland_, and heralding the
+days to come. These lectures were respectively published in December,
+1916, and January, 1917. I should have liked to give extracts from
+various appreciative articles upon _The Russian Revolution_. Above all,
+I should like to quote, from the April issue, Max Gerber's enthusiastic
+welcome to the revolution. But space is limited, and the best way of
+expounding the ideas of these young people will be to summarise a
+detailed discussion in which they have recently been engaged concerning
+_The Imperialism of the Great Powers and the Role of Switzerland_. The
+topic was suggested to the sections by Julius Schmidhauser of Zurich,
+"cand. jur.," president of the central section. Schmidhauser has edited
+the report of these discussions, bringing to the task a broad and
+tolerant synthetic spirit. The work is all the more remarkable seeing
+that it was penned during an arduous term of military service, when the
+man who signs himself "cand. jur." (law student) was playing the part of
+infantry lieutenant.
+
+I shall merely follow his report, and shall allow the young men to speak
+for themselves. (Issues of March, April, and May, 1917).
+
+The discussion comprises a preamble and six parts:
+
+    =Preamble: How shall we envisage the Problem?=
+    =I. The Essence of Imperialism;=
+    =II. The Imperialism of the Great Powers to-day;=
+    =III. Can Imperialism be Justified?=
+    =IV. Opposition between the genuinely Swiss Outlook=
+    =and the Imperialist Outlook.=
+    =V. The Mission of Switzerland;=
+    =VI. The new Education.=
+
+=Preamble: How shall we envisage the Problem?=
+
+
+A. FROM THE REALIST OUTLOOK?
+
+_a._ Can we explain imperialism as a historical product? This method is
+too easy-going; it is slothful and dangerous. "Should man be the
+creation of history? No; he should be its creator."--The condemnation of
+historical fatalism.
+
+_b._ Can we explain imperialism by "Realpolitik"? Even if it be thus
+explicable, it must be no less energetically condemned. "I am inclined
+to define the 'real politicians' as persons who are marching along with
+their eyes closed to the essential realities of the world and of
+mankind.... 'Real politics' may often seem to be right for a season; but
+in the long run it always proves to have been wrong.... The war that
+rages to-day is the outcome of the deadly falsehood of 'real politics.'
+The motto of 'real politics,' which is 'si vis pacem, para bellum,' has
+been pushed to an absurdity, and has thus brought disaster upon our
+race. It is depressing to find that we are still afflicted with this
+curse. The only possible explanation of the sway which the doctrine of
+'real politics' holds over so many minds is that such persons are
+fundamentally sceptical as to the reality of the good, the divine, in
+man" (Schmidhauser).
+
+
+B. FROM THE UTILITARIAN OUTLOOK?
+
+Certain persons are willing to fight some particular imperialism because
+it is or may be dangerous to Switzerland, while none the less they
+favour other imperialisms. The Zofingia must censure such a trend in the
+strongest terms. It is doubtless of urgent importance that we should
+take our stand against the first-named imperialism, but we must
+proscribe all the imperialisms. "Our aim is the attainment of a
+universally human outlook" (H. W. Lôw, of Basle).
+
+
+C. FROM THE IDEALIST OUTLOOK??
+
+This is no better than the others. The Zofingia denounces the
+hypocritical ideology of to-day, an ideology which serves to cloak a
+policy of brute interest. It desires to issue a warning against the
+other dangers of an abstract idealism, against the idealism of those who
+fail to derive their ideas from the unbiassed study of reality. One who
+locks himself up within the circle of his own ideas, one who opposes
+empty thought to life, one who claims the right of issuing absolute
+judgments (all or nothing) without regard to circumstances and ignoring
+the manifold shades of reality, exhibits dangerous pride and culpable
+levity.
+
+
+D. SYNTHESIS OF THE FOREGOING OUTLOOKS.
+
+Realism without idealism has no sense. Idealism without realism has no
+blood. Genuine idealism wants life as a whole, desires its integral
+realisation. It is the deepest possible knowledge of living reality,
+simultaneously embracing human consciousness and facts. Such knowledge
+is our best weapon.
+
+
+PART ONE.
+
+The Essence of Imperialism.
+
+
+The chief characteristic of imperialism is the will to power, the desire
+for expansion, the longing for domination. It is based upon a belief
+that might is right; it tends to impose itself by force. One of its
+mainsprings is the nationalist spirit, the mystical cult of nationality,
+of the chosen people; the sacred egoism of the fatherland. Never before
+has imperialism been so savage and unscrupulous as it has become to-day,
+owing to the economic conditions of contemporary society. "Imperialism
+is the inseparable companion of capitalism. In each country, capitalism
+requires as its main prop a vigorous and powerful state which can enter
+into successful competition with the capitalism of any other country. We
+give the name of imperialism to the tendency towards capitalistic and
+political expansion, which strides across frontiers" (Guggenheim).
+"Modern imperialism issues from the capitalist system dominating
+contemporary politics and society to-day. It is the cause of the world
+war" (Grob).
+
+
+PART TWO.
+
+The Imperialism of the Great Powers To-Day.
+
+
+The central section of the Zofingia declares: "The imperialist character
+of the great powers engaged in the present struggle is indisputable." No
+objections are raised by the other sections. They unite in the view that
+"all the great powers pursue an imperialist policy."
+
+Schmidhauser, presiding over the discussion, asks for justice towards
+the nations, for every one of them is, as it were, entangled in the net
+of the imperialist policy of Europe. He protests against the prejudiced
+and superficial outlook of those who can see nothing but the worst of
+any nation: of those who in the case of Germany concentrate attention on
+the spirit of a Treitschke or a Bernhardi and on the crime of the
+occupation of Belgium; of those who in the case of England can see
+nothing but the policy of Joseph Chamberlain and Cecil Rhodes, nothing
+but the Boer War. The mission of Switzerland is to realise the tragedy
+of mankind as a whole, and not to identify herself with any particular
+section of humanity. "Childish and stupid are the views of those for
+whom half of Europe should be placed in the pillory, while the other
+half should wear the aureole of all the virtues and all the heroisms"
+(Patry).
+
+
+PART THREE.
+
+Can Imperialism be Justified?
+
+
+A. THE CHAMPIONS OF IMPERIALISM.
+
+In only one section, that of Basle, does imperialism find defenders.
+Walterlin takes up his parable on its behalf, glorifying it in the
+spirit and the style of Nietzsche. "Imperialism," he declares, "is the
+artery of the world, the sole source of greatness, the creator of all
+progress." ...
+
+
+B. THE OPPONENTS OF IMPERIALISM.
+
+Opposition to imperialism is voiced by all the other sections. Most of
+them are content to show that imperialism is a menace to Switzerland,
+but Schmidhauser is by no means satisfied with this narrow and selfish
+outlook. He explains the material and moral disasters which necessarily
+result from imperialism, and from its offspring, the world war.
+Imperialism destroys civilisation. It saps morality and law, the two
+things upon which human society is founded. It is hostile to three
+fundamental ideas: to the idea of the unity of mankind; to the idea of
+individuality; to the idea that every individual should have the right
+of self-determination.
+
+
+PART FOUR.
+
+Opposition between the genuinely Swiss Outlook and the Imperialist
+Outlook.
+
+
+The existence of this opposition is admitted, as a matter of principle,
+by all the participants in the discussion. But difficulties arise when
+they come to consider the policy which Switzerland should in particular
+pursue. "What are we entitled to speak of as peculiarly and primitively
+Swiss?" (Patry).
+
+A beginning is made by defining the political essence of Switzerland,
+stress being laid, first upon the basic neutrality of the country, and
+secondly upon its supra-national character. "The ideal of Switzerland,"
+says Clottu, "is that of a nation established above and outside the
+principle of nationality." Thirdly, stress is laid upon the right to the
+free development of every individual and of every social group. A fourth
+characteristic of Switzerland is that in that country, before authority
+and before the law, there exists a democratic equality of all citizens,
+communities, cantons, nationalities, languages, etc. By its very
+essence, therefore, Switzerland is absolutely opposed to the imperialism
+of the great powers. "The victory of the imperialist principle would be
+the political death of Switzerland" (Guggenheim).
+
+What is to be done? These young men are convinced that Switzerland has a
+mission, and are none the less aware that Switzerland lacks capacity to
+fulfil that mission. With ingratiating modesty, they disclaim any desire
+"to play the pharisees to Europe." Whilst they believe in the excellence
+of the principles which underlie the Switzerland of their dreams (though
+not Switzerland as she exists to-day), "we must not suppose," says
+Patry, "that this is a fresh instance of the monopolisation of the Good
+and the Beautiful by a single country, which will become the only
+fatherland of these graces." We must be content with knowing that the
+ground is made ready for building, and that there is still plenty of
+work to be done.
+
+"Now, at this very hour, the destiny of Switzerland stands revealed. At
+a time when the principle of nationality dominates the European
+situation with the strength of demoniacal possession, at a time when
+opposing civilisations are rending one another, our little state claims
+the honour of possessing a national ideal which dominates the
+nationalities and takes them all to its bosom. Does this seem like
+madness? Perhaps it does, to the sapient sceptic for whom the vision of
+the present masks the vision of the future. But it is not madness for
+those who are truly wise, for those who know that the great causes of
+the world have ever at the outset been nailed to the cross. The
+principle of nationality was a power for good in its own day. But if it
+has ceased to be a factor of freedom and toleration, if it has become
+the source of hatred, the source of blind and limitless national
+selfishness, then it is working for its own destruction. It is the
+mission of Switzerland to pave the way for a saner application of the
+principle of nationality" (Clottu).
+
+"In this domain we can and should be conquerors. Owing to the
+historical origin of our country, owing to the fact that Switzerland
+comprises three races and three tongues, we foreshadow on a small scale
+the United States of Europe; in a word, we practise internationalism"
+(Patry).
+
+Switzerland champions the right of the nations and champions democratic
+thought, as against imperialism, which is, fundamentally, an
+aristocratic reaction. Imperialism makes use of democracy, but enslaves
+it; it undermines the democratic pillars of modern states; it
+centralises all power in the hands of a single government. "We are
+reviving the age of the dictators, and there is a tragic irony in this
+at a time when the whole world is speaking of liberty and when the whole
+world is enslaved.... Down with imperialism, which turns the nations
+aside from their true destinies!"
+
+"The size of our country matters little, provided that it has right and
+truth on its side.... We know that what New Switzerland has hitherto
+done is inadequate.... But a sacred fire is beginning to burn in our
+land.... Switzerland is a highway leading towards the future.... We are
+animated and united by a sublime conviction, by the feeling that we are
+the bearers of a great truth" (Schmidhauser).
+
+
+PART FIVE.
+
+The Mission of Switzerland.
+
+
+"Switzerland can achieve greatness through principle alone. The only
+conquests permissible to Switzerland, are conquests in the realm of
+ideas" (Clottu).
+
+We are not concerned here solely with the duty of a choice group of
+intellectuals. The questions at issue affect the people at large, those
+to whose service these young men have devoted themselves. A new spirit,
+an active faith, are requisite. The war has brought to light the weak
+spot in the Swiss character. Touching is the shame felt by these
+truehearted youths owing to the attitude of their country at the outset
+of the war. They are personally hurt by such surrenders of principle.
+In the strongest terms they censure the abdication of the Swiss soul at
+the time when Belgium was being invaded, noting with pain the absence of
+any national and public protest. But now there is a change of spirit.
+"We have a young and virile movement, the movement of those who are not
+satisfied with the mere existence of Switzerland, but who desire that
+Switzerland should prove herself worthy to exist, by her moral greatness
+and by helping to bring salvation to other peoples" (Schmidhauser). "The
+recognition of this duty will regenerate our national life" (Genevese
+section).
+
+The practical difficulties are enormous, and must be frankly faced.
+Switzerland is in danger of being crushed in twofold fashion--military
+and economic. The fate of Belgium and the fate of Greece are plain
+warnings. She cannot forego her army, for this is a necessary safeguard
+of the ideal she represents. But this army, however large, does not and
+cannot suffice to avert economic pressure, which is an inevitable
+outcome of the existing system of society. We have, therefore, to draw
+the fatal conclusion that Switzerland is doomed should capitalist
+imperialism endure. For Switzerland neither can nor ought to come to
+terms with either group of allied powers. To take such a step would be
+to pass sentence of death upon herself. "Her existence is inseparably
+associated with the victory of the ideas of supra-national solidarity,
+of world-wide socialism, world-wide individualism, world-wide
+democracy." Grob boldly affirms: "To imperialist immoralism, with the
+device, 'Our interest is our right,' we counterpose, 'Right is our
+interest.'"
+
+What are the leading tasks of Switzerland?
+
+They are three: the universalisation of socialism; the universalisation
+of individualism; the universalisation of democracy.
+
+1. World-wide Socialism.--The germ of this appears in the supra-national
+union which is the essential characteristic of Switzerland. But the
+young Zofingians are under no illusions, and they frankly denounce the
+faults of their own people. "We are far from being a nation of
+brothers....Our nation is divided: it is rent asunder by egoisms and
+imperialisms.... For every strong man who misuses his strength and his
+wealth, displays the spirit of imperialism" (A. de Mestral). This
+scourge must be vigorously combated. How? "By direct struggle with
+capitalism," says one (Alexander Jaques of Lausanne). "By organising
+solidarity," says another (Ernest Gloor of Lausanne). But the Swiss are
+fast bound, willy-nilly, to the social system of other nations, "to the
+international system of economic imperialism, the most abominable of all
+the internationalisms." It is therefore categorically incumbent upon the
+Swiss to devote themselves to furthering an active internationalism of
+social solidarity. They must enter into an understanding with
+anti-imperialists throughout the world. "It is necessary to promote the
+formation of an international group organised for the struggle against
+imperialist, absolutist, and materialist principles, simultaneously, in
+every land" (Châtenay).
+
+2. World-wide Individualism.--We require a counterpoise to sociocracy.
+We must beware of any organisation, be it internationalist or pacifist,
+which claims to subjugate and atrophy the living forces of man. The
+political ideal is a genuine federalism which shall respect
+individualisms. As the old saying has it: Let everything be after its
+kind!
+
+3. World-wide Democracy.--In this matter the students display perfect
+unanimity, for they have absolute faith in democracy. But with their
+customary scrupulousness, their dread of pharisaism, they admit that
+Switzerland is still far from being a true democracy. "To-day democracy
+is purely formal; in our own time the principle of true democracy is, in
+a sense, revolutionary."
+
+They tell us some of their aspirations. They desire the democratic
+control of foreign policy. They want pacifism on a democratic basis.
+Almost universally in Europe, political power is in the control of a
+handful of men who embody imperialist egoism. The people must share this
+power. Each nation has the right to control its own destinies, in
+accordance with its own ideas and the dictates of its own will.
+
+But once more, no illusions! With a clear-sightedness which is rare at
+this hour, these young men point out that "imperialism has become
+democratic," saying: "The western democracies, closely examined, are
+nothing more than the sovereignty of a capitalist and landowning caste."
+
+The Russian revolution arouses new hopes. "The spectacle of the struggle
+between the two democratic revolutions in Russia, one capitalist and
+imperialist, the other anti-imperialist and socialist, illuminates the
+problem of democracy and imperialism. This spectacle shows the Swiss
+democracy its path and its mission." Above all, let Switzerland reject
+the new evangel, made in Germany, of a democracy supine before the will
+of a politico-economic power, a democracy which tends in home policy to
+class rule, and in foreign policy to imperialism! "We need a new
+orientation which shall deliver democratic thought from national
+restrictions, and from the sinister contemporary trend towards the reign
+of material force." True democracy, supra-national democracy, must take
+its stand against "imperialism masquerading as democracy."
+
+
+PART SIX.
+
+The New Education.
+
+
+This lengthy discussion leads up in the end to practical conclusions.
+Public education must be reorganised and must work in a new direction.
+The extant educational system suffers from a threefold inadequacy. 1.
+From the humanist point of view, it immures the mind in the study of
+remote epochs and past civilisations, and does nothing to prepare the
+pupil for the fulfilment of contemporary duties. 2. From the
+specifically Swiss point of view, it aims at creating a blind
+patriotism, which can neither enlighten nor guide the understanding; it
+monotonously reiterates the story of wars, victories, and brute force,
+instead of teaching liberty, instead of inculcating the lofty Swiss
+ideal; it cares nothing for the moral and material needs of the people
+of to-day. 3. From the technical point of view, it is abjectly
+materialist and militarist, and has no ideals. True, that there is a
+contemporary movement, and a strong one, in favour of what is called
+"national education," in favour of "the teaching of civics." But we must
+be on our guard! Here is a new peril. They would make a sort of state
+idol, despotic and soulless; they would make a state superstition, a
+state egoism, to which our minds are to be enslaved. Do not let us stoop
+to the lure. An immense task lies before us, and the Zofingerverein must
+lead the way. It must play its part in the fulfilment of the moral and
+intellectual mission of Switzerland. But not by isolating itself. It
+must never lose its feeling of solidarity of thought and action with
+other lands. It sends forth deeply-felt greeting to the
+"Gesinnungsfreunde," to the friends and companions in belligerent lands,
+to those young men who have fallen in France and in Germany, and to those
+who yet live. It must make common cause with them; it must work shoulder
+to shoulder with the free youth of the world. Julius Schmidhauser,
+president of the Zofingia, who chaired these discussions and subsequently
+summarised them, concludes with an Appeal to Brothers, an appeal to them
+that they shall have faith, that they shall act, that they shall seek
+new roads for a new Switzerland--for a new humanity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have thought well to efface myself behind these students. Were I to
+substitute my thought for theirs, I should lay myself open to the
+reproach which I so often address to my generation. I have let them
+speak for themselves. Any commentary would detract from the beauty of
+the sight of these enthusiastic and serious young people, in this most
+tragical hour of history, discussing their duties ardently and at great
+length, taking stock of their faith, and solemnly affirming that faith
+in a sort of oath of the tennis court.[35] We see them affirming their
+faith in liberty; in the solidarity of the peoples; in their moral
+mission; in their duty to destroy the hydra of imperialism, both
+militarist and capitalist, whether at home or abroad; in their duty to
+construct a juster and more humane society.
+
+I give them fraternal greetings. They do not speak alone. Everywhere the
+echoes answer. Everywhere I see young people resembling them, and
+stretching forth friendly hands to their fellows in Switzerland. The
+vicissitudes of this war--a war which, endeavouring to crush free
+spirits, has but succeeded in making them feel the need for seeking one
+another out and for cementing unity--has brought me into close
+relationships with the young of all countries, in Europe, in America,
+and even in the east and the far east. Everywhere I have found the same
+communion of sufferings and hopes, the same aspirations, the same
+revolts, the same determination to break with the past whose malevolence
+and stupidity have been so plainly proved. I have found them all
+animated with the same ambition to rebuild human society upon new
+foundations, wider and more firmly laid than those which sustain the
+quaking edifice of this old world of rapine and fanaticism, of savage
+nationalities scorched by the war, rearing heavenward frames blackened
+by the fire.
+
+_June, 1917._
+
+"demain," Geneva, July, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+UNDER FIRE
+
+BY HENRI BARBUSSE[36]
+
+
+Here we have a pitiless mirror of the war. In that mirror the war is
+reflected day by day for sixteen months. It is a mirror of two eyes;
+they are clear, shrewd, perspicacious, and bold; they are the eyes of a
+Frenchman. The author, Henri Barbusse, dedicates his book: "To the
+memory of the comrades who fell by my side at Crouy and on Hill 119,"
+during December, 1915. In Paris _Le Feu_ was honoured with the Goncourt
+prize.
+
+By what miracle has so truth-telling a work been able to appear
+unmutilated, at a time when so many free words, infinitely less free,
+have been censored? I shall not attempt to explain the fact, but I shall
+profit by it. The voice of this witness drives back into the shadow all
+the interested falsehoods which during the last three years have served
+to idealise the European slaughter-house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The work is of the first rank, and is so full of matter that more than
+one article would be requisite to present its whole scope. All that I
+shall attempt to deal with here will be the chief aspects--its artistry
+and its thought.
+
+The dominant impression it conveys is one of extreme objectivity. Save
+in the last chapter, wherein Barbusse expounds his ideas on social
+questions, we do not make the author's acquaintance. He is there among
+his obscure companions; he struggles and suffers with them, and from one
+moment to another his disappearance seems imminent; but he has the
+spiritual strength which enables him to withdraw himself from the
+picture and to veil his ego. He contemplates the moving spectacle, he
+listens, he feels, he touches; he seizes it, with all his senses on the
+stretch. Marvellous is the assured grasp displayed by this French
+spirit, for no emotion affects the sharpness of the outline or the
+precision of the technique. We discern here manifold touches, lively,
+vibrant, crude, well fitted to reproduce the shocks and starts of the
+poor human machines as they pass from a weary torpor to the
+hyperaesthesia of hallucination--but these juxtaposed touches are placed
+and combined by an intelligence that is ever master of itself. The style
+is impressionist. The author is prone, unduly prone in my opinion, to
+make use of visual word-plays after the manner of Jules Renard. He is
+fond of "artistic writing," a typically Parisian product, a style which
+in ordinary times seems to "powder puff" the emotions, but which, amid
+the convulsions of the war, exhibits a certain heroic elegance. The
+narrative is terse, gloomy, stifling; but there come episodes of repose,
+which break its unity, and by these the tension is relieved for a
+moment. Few readers will fail to appreciate the charm, the discreet
+emotion, of these episodes, as for instance in the chapter "On Leave."
+But three-fourths of the book deal with the trenches of Picardy, under
+the "muddy skies," under fire and under water--visions now of hell, now
+of the flood.
+
+There the armies remain buried for years, at the bottom of an eternal
+battlefield, closely packed, "chained shoulder to shoulder," huddling
+together "against the rain which descends from the skies, against the
+mud which oozes from the ground, against the cold, an emanation from the
+infinite which is all-pervading." The soldiers uncouthly rigged out in
+skins, rolls of blanket, ... cardigans, and more cardigans, squares of
+oilcloth, fur caps, ... hoods of tarpaulin, rubber, weatherproof cloth
+... look like cave men, gorillas, troglodytes. One of them, while
+digging, has turned up an axe made by quaternary man, a piece of pointed
+stone with a bone handle, and he is using it. Others, like savages, are
+making rough ornaments. Three generations side by side; all the races,
+but not all the classes. Sons of the soil and artisans for the most
+part. Small farmers, agricultural labourers, carters, porters and
+messengers, factory foremen, saloon keepers, newspaper sellers,
+ironmongers' assistants, miners--very few liberal professions are
+represented. This amalgam has a common speech, "made up of workshop and
+barrack slang and of rural dialects seasoned with a few neologisms."
+Each one is shown to us as a silhouette, a sharp and admirable likeness;
+once we have seen them we shall always know them apart. But the method
+of depiction is very different from that of Tolstoi. The Russian cannot
+meet with a soul without plumbing it to the depths. Here we look and
+pass on. The individual soul hardly exists; it is a mere shell. Beneath
+that shell, the collective soul, suffering, overwhelmed with fatigue,
+brutalised by the noise, poisoned by the smoke, endures infinite
+boredom, drowses, waits, waits unendingly. It is a "waiting-machine." It
+no longer tries to think; "it has given up the attempt to understand, it
+has renounced being itself." These are not soldiers, they don't wish to
+be soldiers, they are men. "They are men, good fellows of all kinds,
+rudely torn away from life; they are ignorant, not easily carried away,
+men of narrow outlook, but full of common sense which sometimes gets out
+of gear. They are inclined to go where they are led and to do as they
+are bid. They are tough, and able to bear a great deal. Simple men who
+have been artificially simplified yet more, and in whom, by the force of
+circumstances, the primitive instincts have become accentuated: the
+instinct of self-preservation, egoism, the dogged hope of living
+through, the lust of eating, drinking, and sleeping." Even amid the
+dangers of an artillery attack, within a few hours they get bored, yawn,
+play cards, talk nonsense, "snatch forty winks"--in a word, they are
+bored. "The overwhelming vastness of these great bombardments wearies
+the mind." They pass through a hell of suffering and forget all about
+it. "We've seen too much, and everything we saw was too much. We are not
+built to take all that in. It escapes from us in every direction; we are
+too small. We are forgetting-machines. Men are beings which think
+little; above all, they forget." In Napoleon's day every soldier had a
+marshal's baton in his knapsack, and every soldier had in his brain the
+ambitious image of the little Corsican officer. There are no longer any
+individuals now, there is a human mass which is itself lost amid
+elemental forces. "More than six thousand miles of French trenches, more
+than six thousand miles of such miseries or of worse; and the French
+front is only one-eighth of the whole." Instinctively the narrator is
+compelled to borrow his images from the rough mythology of primitive
+peoples, or from cosmic convulsions. He speaks of "rivers of wounded
+torn from the bowels of the earth which bleeds and rots
+unendingly"--"glaciers of corpses"--"gloomy immensities of Styx"--"Valley
+of Jehoshaphat"--prehistoric spectacles. What does the individual man
+amount to in all this? What does his suffering mean? "What's the use
+of complaining?" says one wounded man to another. "That's what war is,
+not the battles, but the terrible unnatural weariness; water up to the
+middle, mud, filth, infinite monotony of wretchedness, interrupted by
+acute tragedies."--At intervals, human groans, profound shudders, issue
+from the silence and the night.
+
+Here and there, in the course of this long narration, peaks emerge from
+the grey and bloody uniformity: the attack ("under fire"); "the field
+hospital"; "the dawn." I wish I had space to quote the admirable picture
+of the men awaiting the order to attack; they are motionless; an assumed
+calm masks such dreams, such fears, such farewell thoughts! Without any
+illusions, without enthusiasm, without excitement, "despite the busy
+propaganda of the authorities, without intoxication either material or
+moral," fully aware of what they are doing, they await the signal to
+hurl themselves "once more into this madman's role imposed on each of
+them by the madness of mankind." Then comes the "headlong rush to the
+abyss," where blindly, amid shell-splinters hissing like red-hot iron
+plunged into water, amid the stench of sulphur, they race forward. Next
+comes the butchery in the trenches, where "at first the men do not know
+what to do," but where a frenzy soon seizes them, so that "they hardly
+recognise those whom they know best, and it seems as if all their
+previous life had suddenly retreated to a vast distance...." Then the
+exultation passes, and "nothing remains but infinite fatigue and
+infinite waiting."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But I must cut these descriptions short, for I have to consider the
+leading content of the work, its thought.
+
+In _War and Peace_ the profound sense of the destiny which guides
+mankind is ardently sought, and is found from time to time by the light
+of some flash of suffering or of genius, found by those few who, through
+breed or individual sensibility, have exceptional insight: for instance
+Prince Andrew, Peter Besuhov. But a great roller seems to have passed
+over the peoples of to-day, reducing all to a level. The most that can
+happen is that for a moment, now and again, there may rise from the huge
+flock the isolated bleating of one of the beasts about to die. Thus we
+have the ethereal figure of Corporal Bertrand, "with his thoughtful
+smile"--the merest sketch--"a man of few words, never talking of
+himself"; a man who could once only deliver up the secret of his
+anguished thoughts--in the twilight hour which follows the killing, just
+before he himself is killed. He thinks of those whom he has slain in the
+frenzy of the hand-to-hand fighting:
+
+"It had to be done," he said. "It had to be done, for the sake of the
+future."
+
+He folded his arms and threw up his head.
+
+"The future!" he cried, all of a sudden. "Those who live after us--what
+will they think of these killings, ... these exploits, concerning which
+we who do them do not even know if they are to be compared with those of
+the heroes of Plutarch and Corneille or with the deeds of apaches!...
+For all that, mind you, there is one figure that has risen above the
+war, a figure which will shine with the beauty and the greatness of its
+courage."
+
+I listened, writes Barbusse, bending towards him, leaning on a stick. I
+drank in the words that came, in the twilit silence, from lips which
+rarely broke silence. His voice rang out as he said:
+
+"Liebknecht!"
+
+The same evening, Marthereau, a humble territorial, whose face,
+bristling with hair, recalled that of a water-spaniel, is listening to a
+comrade who says: "William is a foul beast, but Napoleon is a great
+man." This same soldier, after groaning about the war, goes on to speak
+with delight of the martial ardour displayed by the only son left to
+him, a boy of five. Marthereau shakes his weary head, his fine eyes
+shining like those of a puzzled and thoughtful hound. He sighs, saying:
+"Oh, we're none of us so bad, but we're unlucky, poor devils all of us.
+But we're too stupid, we're too stupid!"
+
+As a rule, however, the human cry from these lowly fellows is anonymous.
+We hardly know who has been speaking, for, often enough, all share in a
+common thought. Born out of common trials, this thought brings them much
+closer to the other unfortunates in the enemy trenches than to the rest
+of the world away there in the rear. For visitors from the rear, "trench
+tourists," for people in the rear, journalists "who exploit the public
+misery," bellicose intellectuals, the soldiers unite in showing a
+contempt which is free from violence but knows no bounds. To them has
+come "the revelation of the great reality": a difference between human
+beings, a difference far profounder and with far more impassable
+barriers than those of race: the sharp, glaring, and inalterable
+distinction, in the population of every country, between those who
+profit and those who suffer, those who have been compelled to sacrifice
+everything, those who give to the uttermost of their numbers, of their
+strength, and of their martyrdom, those over whom the others march
+forward smiling and successful.
+
+One to whom this revelation has come, says bitterly: "That sort of thing
+does not encourage one to die!"
+
+But none the less this man meets his death bravely, meekly, like the
+others.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The climax of the work is the last chapter, "The Dawn." It is like an
+epilogue, the thought in which returns to join the thought in the
+prologue, "The Vision," but enlarges upon that opening thought, just as
+in a symphony the promise of the outset is fulfilled at the close.
+
+"The Vision" describes the coming of the declaration of war, shows how
+the tidings reached a sanatorium in Savoy, facing Mont Blanc. There,
+these sick men, drawn thither from all the ends of the earth, "detached
+from the affairs of the world and almost from life itself, ... as remote
+from their fellow-men as if they already belonged to a future age, look
+away into the distance, towards the incomprehensible land of the living
+and the mad." They contemplate the flood below; they watch the
+shipwrecked nations, grasping at straws. "These thirty millions of
+slaves, hurled against one another by guilt and by mistake, hurled into
+war and mud, uplift their human faces whose expression reveals at last a
+nascent will. The future is in the hands of these slaves, and it is
+plain that the old world will be transformed by the alliance one day to
+be made between those whose numbers and whose miseries are infinite."
+
+The concluding chapter, "The Dawn," is a picture of the "flood below,"
+of the lowland inundated by the rain, a picture of the crumbling
+trenches. The spectacle resembles a scene from the book of Genesis.
+Germans and French are fleeing together from the scourge of the
+elements, or are sinking pell-mell into a common grave. Some of these
+castaways, taking refuge on ridges of mud that stand up amid the waters,
+begin to awaken from their passivity, and a striking dialogue ensues
+between the sufferers, like the strophe and antistrophe in a Greek
+chorus. They are overwhelmed by excess of suffering. Even more are they
+overwhelmed, "as if by a yet greater disaster," by the thought that in
+days to come the survivors will be able to forget these ills.
+
+"If only people would remember! If they would only remember, there would
+be no more wars."
+
+Suddenly, from all sides, rises the cry: "There must never be another
+war."
+
+Each in turn heaps insults upon war.
+
+"Two armies fighting each other--that's like one great army committing
+suicide."
+
+One suggests, "It's all right if you win." But the others make answer:
+"That's no good.--To win settles nothing.--What we need is to kill war."
+
+"Then we shall have to go on fighting after the war?"--"Praps we
+shall."--"But praps it won't be foreigners we shall be fighting?"--"May
+be so. The peoples are fighting to-day to get rid of their
+masters."--"Then one works for the Prussians too?"--"Oh well, we may
+hope...."--"But we oughtn't to interfere with other folks'
+business."--"Yes, yes, we ought to, for what you call other folks'
+business is our own."
+
+"What do people fight for?"--"No one knows what they fight for, but we
+know whom they fight for. They fight for the pleasure of the few."
+
+The soldiers reckon up these few: "the fighters, those born to power";
+those who say, "the races hate one another"; those who say, "I grow fat
+on the war"; those who say, "there always has been war and there always
+will be"; those who say, "bow your head, and trust in God"; the
+sabre-rattlers, the profiteers, the ghouls who batten on the spoils;
+"the slaves of the past, the traditionalists, for whom an abuse has the
+force of law because it is of old date."
+
+"Such as these are your enemies quite as much as any of the German
+soldiers who now share your wretchedness. The German soldiers are no
+more than poor dupes odiously betrayed and brutalised, domesticated
+beasts.... But the others are your enemies wherever they were born,
+whatever the fashion in which they utter their names, and whatever the
+language in which they lie. Look at them in the heavens above and on the
+earth beneath! Look at them everywhere! Look well, till you know them,
+that you may never forget their faces!"
+
+Such is the wail of these armies. But the book closes with a note of
+hope, with the unspoken oath of international brotherhood, what time a
+rift forms in the black skies and a calm ray of light falls upon the
+flooded plain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One ray of sunlight does not make the sky clear, nor is the voice of one
+soldier the voice of an army. The armies of to-day are nations; and in
+such armies, as in every nation, there must doubtless conflict and
+mingle many different currents. Barbusse's story is that of a single
+squad, almost entirely composed of workers and peasants. But the fact
+that among these humble folk, among those who, like the third estate in
+'89, are nothing and shall be all,--that in this proletariat of the
+armies there is obscurely forming an awareness of universal
+humanity,--that so bold a voice can be raised from France,--that those
+who are actually fighting can make a heroic effort to ignore environing
+wretchedness and imminent death, to dream of the fraternal union of the
+warring peoples,--I find in this a greatness which surpasses that of all
+the victories, I find something whose poignant splendour will survive
+the splendour of battle. I find something which will, I hope, put an end
+to war.
+
+_February, 1917._
+
+"Journal de Genève," March 19, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+AVE, CÆSAR, MORITURI TE SALUTANT
+
+_Dedicated to the Heroic Onlookers in Safe Places._
+
+
+In one of the scenes of his terrible and admirable book, _Under Fire_, a
+record of experiences in the trenches of Picardy, dedicated "To the
+memory of the comrades who fell by my side at Crouy and on Hill 119,"
+Henri Barbusse depicts two privates going on leave to the neighbouring
+town. They quit the hell of mud and blood; for months they have been
+suffering unnamable tortures of body and mind; they now find themselves
+among comfortable bourgeois who, being at a safe distance from the
+front, are, of course, bursting with warlike enthusiasm. These
+carpet-heroes welcome the two men as if they had just returned from a
+wedding feast. No questions are asked concerning what goes on at the
+front. The soldiers are told all about it. "It must be splendid, an
+attack! These masses of men marching forward as to a revel; there's no
+holding them; they die laughing!" All that our poilus can do is to hold
+their tongues. One of them says resignedly to his companion: "_They_
+know more than you do about war and all that goes on at the front. When
+you get back, if you ever do, with your little bit of truth you will be
+quite out of it amid that crowd of chatterers."
+
+I do not believe that when the war is over, when all the soldiers have
+returned home, they will so readily submit to being put in their places
+by these braggarts of the rear. Already the real fighters are beginning
+to speak in a singularly bitter and vengeful tone. Barbusse's book bears
+powerful witness to the fact.
+
+We have other testimonies from the front, less known but no less moving.
+All of those to which I shall refer have been published. It is my rule,
+as long as the war lasts, to make no use of personal confidences, oral
+or written. Things I have been told by friends, known or unknown, are a
+sacred trust. I shall not use them without special permission, nor until
+the conditions make it safe. The testimonies I reproduce here have been
+published in Paris, under a censorship which is extremely strict in the
+case of the few newspapers that have remained independent. This proves
+that they describe things that are widely known, things which it is
+useless or impossible to conceal.
+
+I leave the authors to speak for themselves. Comment is superfluous. The
+tones are sufficiently clear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Paul Husson, _L'Holocauste_ (a collection entitled _Vers et Prose_,
+published by F. Lacroix, 19 rue de Tournon, Paris, January 10,
+1917).--This is the note book of a soldier from the Ile de France. The
+author "went to the front without enthusiasm, detesting war and devoid
+of martial ardour. As a soldier he did what all the others did."
+
+p. 19. "In the name of what superior moral principle are these struggles
+imposed on us? Is it for the triumph of a race? What remains of the
+glory of Alexander's soldiers or of Cæsar's? To fight, one must have
+faith. A man must have faith that he is fighting in God's cause, in the
+cause of some great justice; or else he must love war for its own sake.
+But we have no faith; we do not love war and we know nothing about it.
+Yet men fight and die believing neither in the cause of God nor in the
+great justice; men who do not love war, and who die none the less with
+their faces to the enemy.... Many, unawakened, go to their deaths
+without thinking; but others die with anguish in their hearts, anguish
+at the futile sacrifice and at their realisation of the madness of
+men."
+
+p. 20. In the trenches. "Everyone was cursing the war, everyone hated
+it. Some were saying: 'Frenchmen or Germans, they are men like
+ourselves, they suffer as we do in body and in mind. Do not they, too,
+dream of the home-coming?' Passing through a village and seeing a man
+unfit for service because he had lost two fingers, the soldiers had said
+to him: 'You lucky devil; you needn't go to the war!'"
+
+p. 21. "I am not one of those who believe in the coming of Beauty,
+Goodness, and Justice.... Nor am I one of those who regild the idols of
+the past, symbols of obscure forces which it behoves us to worship in
+silence. I am neither submissive nor a believer.--I love Pity, for we
+are unfortunates, and it does us good to be solaced, even if we be
+executioners and butchers. If we do not need consolation for the ills we
+are suffering, we need consolation for the ills we have done or shall
+do. We need solace because we have to make others suffer, to kill and be
+killed."
+
+p. 22. "Lying prone, while the shells whistle overhead, I think. Die!
+Why should we die on this battlefield?... Die for civilisation, for the
+freedom of the nations? Words, words, words. We are dying because men
+are wild beasts killing one another. We are dying for bales of
+merchandise; we are dying for squabbles about money.--Art, civilisation,
+and culture are equally beautiful, be they Romance, Teutonic, or Slav.
+We should love them all!"
+
+p. 59. "With Baudelaire, we detest the weapons of warriors.... The great
+epoch was the one in which we were living before the war. The flapping
+of the banners, the long files of soldiers, the roaring of the guns, and
+the blare of the bugles--these things cannot inspire us with admiration
+for collective murder and for the monstrous enslavement of the
+peoples.... Young men lying to-day in your graves, they strew flowers on
+your tombs and proclaim you immortal. What to you are empty words? They
+will pass even more quickly than you have passed! It is true that, in
+any case, within a few years you would have ceased to be. But these few
+years of life would have been your universe and your strength."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+André Delemer, _Waiting_ (leading article in the fourth issue, dated
+March, 1917, of the review "Vivre," edited by André Delemer and Marcel
+Millet, 68 boulevard Rochechouart, Paris).
+
+"If the patriarch of Yasnaya Polyana had been granted a few additional
+years, superadded to a life already long and full of grief, he would
+have shuddered before the tragedy of the younger generations. Tolstoi
+was a man of infinite compassion, and his heart would have been torn
+with suffering as he contemplated our fate, the fate of those who were
+suddenly thrust into this colossal war, those who had proclaimed their
+love for life, those whose faith in the future had seemed an infallible
+talisman, those who had fervently uttered this great cry of vital
+affirmation:
+
+"'To live out our youth'--how poignant is the irony of these words; what
+vistas do they suddenly evoke! All the happiness we have failed to
+secure, the joys of which we have been deprived, because one evening the
+order came to us to shoulder our rifles! In twenty years' time people
+will write about what we have suffered, a suffering which may be
+compared with the Passion; but we die daily. One galling privilege is
+ours, that we have lived through a convulsion, that we have been the
+ransom of past errors and a pledge for the tranquillity of the future.
+This mission is at once splendid and cruel; simultaneously it exalts and
+revolts; for the spasm through which we are passing wounds us and
+immolates us!... To-day the poor quivering refuse raked from the furnace
+knows all the bitterness of the laurels. Such pride as we retain makes
+it impossible for us to accept an illusory and transient glory. We know
+the falsity of attitudinising, and we have probed the emptiness of
+certain dreams. The fire has licked up the scenery, has reduced the
+tinsel to ashes. We are now face to face with ourselves, perhaps more
+fully awakened, certainly more sincere and more disillusioned, for we
+have secret wounds to heal and great sufferings to lull in the shade!
+The passing of the days is like wormwood in the mouth.... How painful
+will be the transition, and how numerous will be the waifs! Already a
+fresh anguish oppresses our minds; it is this that will afflict when the
+day comes for the return of those who are still fighting. Terrible will
+be the anguish as we gaze upon the ruins and the dead encumbering the
+battlefields! How it will cramp the young wills and annihilate the fine
+courage of their souls! Troubled and confused epoch, wherein men will be
+doggedly seeking safer roads and less cruel idols!...
+
+"Young man of my generation, it is you of whom I think as I write these
+lines, you whom I do not know, though I know that you are still fighting
+or that you have returned broken from the trenches. I have met you in
+the street, wearing an almost shamefaced air, doing your best to conceal
+some infirmity; but in your eyes I have read the intensity of your
+inward agony. I know the terrible hours through which you have lived,
+and I know that those who have endured like trials end by having like
+souls.... I know your doubts; I share your uneasiness. I know how you
+are obsessed with the question, 'What next?' You, too, are asking what
+can be seen from the heights, and what is going to happen. I understand
+your 'What next?'--'To live!' You sing this straight to the hearts of
+all of us. 'To live!' You embody the cry of our cruel epoch. I have
+heard this cry, simple yet tremendous, from the lips of the wounded who
+were aware of the oncoming footsteps of victorious death. I have heard
+it in the trenches, murmured low like a prayer.--Young man, this is a
+grievous hour. You are a survivor from the ghastly war; your vitality
+must affirm itself; you must live. Stripped of all falsehoods, freed
+from every mirage, you find yourself alone in your nakedness; before you
+stretches the great white road. Onward, the distance beckons. Leave
+behind you the old world, and the idols of yesterday. March forward
+without turning to listen to the outworn voices of the past!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the name of these young men and their brothers who have been
+sacrificed in all the lands of the world engaged in mutual slaughter, I
+throw these cries of pain in the faces of the sacrificers. May the blood
+sting their faces!
+
+"Revue mensuelle," Geneva, May, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+AVE, CÆSAR ...
+
+THOSE WHO WISH TO LIVE SALUTE THEE
+
+
+In an earlier article I referred to the writings of certain French
+soldiers. After _Under Fire_, by Henri Barbusse, _L'Holocauste_ by Paul
+Husson and the poignant meditations of André Delemer gave expression to
+their touching and profoundly human cry. In place of the scandalous
+idealisations of the war, manufactured far from the front--crude Epinal
+images, grotesque and false--they give us the stern face of truth, they
+show us the martyrdom of young men slaughtering one another to gratify
+the frenzy of criminal elders.
+
+I wish to-day to make known another of these voices, more acerb, more
+virile, more vengeful, than the stoical bitterness of Husson and the
+despairing tenderness of Delemer. It is that of our friend Maurice
+Wullens, editor of "Les Humbles, the literary review of the primary
+school teachers."
+
+He was severely wounded, and has just been given the war cross with the
+following honourable mention:
+
+"Wullens (Maurice), soldier of the second class in the eighth company of
+the seventy-third infantry regiment, a good soldier to whom fear was
+unknown, dangerously wounded during the defence, against a superior
+force, of a post which had been entrusted to him."
+
+In "demain," for August, 1917, we find the wonderful story of the fight
+in which this man was wounded and was then given brotherly help by the
+German soldiers. As he lay gasping, in expectation of the death-blow, a
+lad leaned over him smiling, holding out a hand, and saying in German,
+"Comrade, how do you feel?" And when the wounded man doubted his enemy's
+sincerity, the latter went on: "Oh, it's all right, comrade! We'll be
+good comrades! Yes, yes, good comrades." The tale is dedicated:
+
+"To my brother, the anonymous Würtemberg soldier who, in Grurie Wood, on
+December 30, 1914, withheld his hand when about to slay me, generously
+saved my life;
+
+"To the (enemy) friend who, in Darmstadt hospital, cared for me like a
+father;
+
+"And to the comrades E., K., and B., who spoke to me as man to man."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This soldier without fear and without reproach, returning to France,
+discovered there the braggart army of the scribblers at the rear. Their
+venom and their stupidity infuriated him. But instead of taking refuge,
+like many of his comrades, in disdainful silence, he did what he had
+always done, and turned bravely to the attack upon "a superior force."
+In May, 1916, he became editor of a small magazine, entitled "Les
+Humbles," but which somewhat belies its name by the ruggedness of its
+accents and by its refusal to allow its voice to be stifled. He boldly
+declares:
+
+"Emerged from the whirlwind of the war, but still struggling in its
+eddies, we do not propose to resign ourselves to the environing
+mediocrity, to content ourselves with the servile utterance of official
+platitudes.... We are weary of the daily and systematic stuffing of
+people's heads with official pabulum.... We have not abdicated any of
+our rights, not even our hopes."[37]
+
+Each issue of the magazine was a fresh proof of his independence. At
+this juncture, reviews edited by young thinkers were springing up
+everywhere from among the ruins. That of Wullens took the leading place,
+owing to his force of character and his indomitable frankness.
+
+He found a great friend in Han Ryner, who amid the European barbarians,
+amid the prevailing chaos, exhibits the calm of an exiled Socrates.
+Gabriel Belot, the engraver, another sage, who, knowing nothing of
+mental discord or ill-will, dwells on the Ile St. Louis as if the two
+beautiful arms of the Seine sheltered him from the troubles of the
+world, lights up the most sombre of articles with the peace of his
+radiant designs.[38] Other friends, younger men, soldiers like Wullens,
+rallied to support him in the struggle for the truth. For instance,
+Marcel Lebarbier, poet and critic.
+
+The most recent issue of "Les Humbles" contains excellent work. Wullens
+begins with a tribute to the rare French writers who have shown
+themselves during the last three years to be free-spirited humanists: to
+Henri Guilbeaux and his periodical "demain";[39] to P. J. Jouve, author
+of _Vous êtes des hommes_ and of _Poème contre le grand crime_, whose
+sympathetic spirit vibrates and trembles like a tree to the wind of all
+the pains and all the angers of mankind; to Marcel Martinet, one of the
+greatest lyricists whom the war (the horror of the war) has brought
+forth, the writer of _Temps maudits_, a poem which will for ever bear
+witness to the suffering and the revolt of a free spirit; to Delemer,
+that moving writer; and to a few recently founded magazines. The editor
+of "Les Humbles" goes on to clear the ground of what he terms "the false
+literary vanguard," telling the chauvinist writers what he thinks of
+them. This lettered poilu, a blunt fellow, does not mince matters:
+
+"I have come from this war whose praises you are singing--I who
+write.... I have my honourable mention, my war cross: I never wear it. I
+spent seven months as a war prisoner, before being sent home
+incapacitated by my wound. I could flood you with war anecdotes. I have
+no desire to do anything of the kind. Nevertheless I am writing a book
+on the war. I compress into it all that my heart has felt, all that one
+man has suffered during these months of unspeakable horror, and likewise
+all the joy he experienced when he came to perceive, by rare flashes of
+light, that humanity still lives, that kindliness still exists, on both
+sides of the Rhine, the world over. You, M. B., sing 'The war in which
+it is beautiful and sweet to die for our country!' All those who have
+faced this death will tell you that while it may have been necessary, it
+was neither beautiful nor sweet.--You glorify the sublime and tattered
+tricolour: blue is the blouse of our workmen; white is the cornette of
+our splendid sisters of charity.... You will excuse me for cutting you
+short before coming to the red, for my unaided memory here suffices me:
+the red blood of my wounds flowing and clotting on the frozen mud of
+Argonne that terrible morning in December, 1914; the red mud of
+pestilential slaughter-houses; the shattered heads of dead comrades;
+mangled stumps irrigated with peroxide solution so that the living
+corruption was half hidden by bloodstained foam; red visions glimpsed
+everywhere in these ghastly and tragical days, you chase one another
+through the mind tumultuous and hateful. Like the poet, I would fain
+say, 'A very little more and my heart would break!'"
+
+To bring his philippic to a close he quotes another soldier-author, G.
+Thuriot-Franchi, who, in the same fighting style, with no pretty phrases
+and with no concealments, compels these Hectors of the study to swallow
+their boasts:[40]
+
+"Men who are too young or too old, poets in pyjamas, jealous doubtless
+of the strategists in slippers, regard it as their duty to be lavish in
+patriotic song. The trumpets of rhetoric blare; invective has become the
+chosen method of argument; a thousand blue-stockings, under cover of the
+Red Cross, when one chats with them out strolling, make a parade of
+spartan sentiments, amazonian impulses. Whence the plethora of sonnets,
+odes, stanzas, etc., in which, to speak the jargon of the ordinary
+critic 'the most exquisite sensibility is happily wedded to the purest
+patriotism.'--For God's sake leave us alone; you know nothing about it;
+shut up!"
+
+Thus does a soldier from the front imperiously impose silence upon the
+false warriors of the rear. If they are fond of the "poilu" style, they
+will find plenty of it here. Those who have just been looking death in
+the face have certainly earned the right to speak the plain truth to
+these "amateurs" of death--the death of others.
+
+"Revue mensuelle," Geneva, October, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+MEN IN BATTLE[41]
+
+[_THE MAN OF SORROWS_]
+
+
+Art is stained with blood. French blood, German blood, it is always the
+Man of Sorrows. Yesterday we were listening to the sublime and gloomy
+plaint which breathes from Barbusse's _Under Fire_. To-day come the yet
+more heartrending accents of _Menschen im Krieg_ (Men in Battle).
+Although they hail from the other camp, I will wager that most of our
+bellicose readers in France and Navarre will flee from them with stopped
+ears. For these tones would be a shock to their sensibilities.
+
+_Under Fire_ is more tolerable to these carpet-warriors. There reigns
+over Barbusse's book a specious impersonality. Despite the multitude and
+the sharp outline of the figures on his stage, not one of them has a
+commanding role. We see no hero of romance. Consequently, the reader
+feels less intimately associated with the hardships recounted on every
+page; and these hardships, like their causes, have an elemental
+character. The immensity of the fate which crushes, lessens the agony of
+those who are crushed. This war fresco resembles the vision of a
+universal deluge. The human masses execrate the scourge, but accept it
+passively. _Under Fire_ growls forth a threat for the future, but has no
+menace for the present. Settling-day is postponed until after peace has
+been signed.
+
+In _Men in Battle_, the court is sitting; mankind is in the witness-box,
+giving testimony against the butchers. Mankind? Not so. A few men, a few
+chance victims, whose sufferings, since they are individual, appeal to
+us more strongly than those of the crowd. We follow the ravages these
+sufferings make in tortured body and lacerated heart; we wed these
+sufferings; they become our own. Nor does the witness strain after
+objectivity. He is the impassioned pleader who, just delivered panting
+from the rack, cries for vengeance. The writer of the book now under
+review is newly come from hell; he gasps for breath; his visions chase
+him; pain's claws have left their mark upon him. Andreas Latzko[42]
+will, in future days, keep his place in the first rank among the
+witnesses who have left a truthful record of Man's Passion during 1914,
+the year of shame.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The work is written in the form of six separate stories, united only by
+a common sentiment of suffering and revolt. There is no logical plan in
+the arrangement of the six war episodes. The first is entitled "Off to
+War"; the last, "Home Again." Between, we have "Baptism of Fire," a
+picture of wounded men; and "A Hero's Death." The centre piece is
+devoted to "The Victor," the great general, the master of the feast, the
+responsible and beflattered chief. In the last three stories, physical
+pain exposes its hideous countenance like that of Medusa mutilated. The
+two opening stories deal with mental pain. The hero of the centre piece
+sees neither the one nor the other; his glory is throned on both; he
+finds life good, and war even better. From the first page to the last,
+revolt mutters. But on the last page revolt culminates in a murder; a
+soldier, back from the front, kills a war profiteer.
+
+I give an analysis of the six stories.
+
+"Off to War" (Der Abmarsch) has for its scene the garden of a war
+hospital in a quiet little Austrian town thirty miles from the front. It
+is an evening late in autumn. The tattoo has just sounded. All is quiet.
+From afar comes the sound of heavy guns, as if huge dogs were baying
+underground. Some young wounded officers are enjoying the peace of the
+evening. Three of them are talking gaily with two ladies. The fourth, a
+Landsturm lieutenant, in civil life a well-known composer, sits gloomily
+apart. He has had a severe nervous shock, and is utterly prostrated, so
+that not even the arrival of his fair young wife enables him to pull
+himself together. When she speaks to him, he is unmoved. When she tries
+to touch him, he draws irritably away. She suffers, and cannot
+understand his enmity. The other woman takes the lead in the
+conversation. She is a Frau Major, a major's wife, who spends all her
+time at the hospital and has acquired there "a peculiar, garrulous
+cold-bloodedness." She is surfeited with horrors; her endless curiosity
+gives the impression of hardness and hysterical cruelty. The men are
+discussing, what is "the finest thing" in the war. According to one of
+them the finest thing is to find oneself, as this evening, in women's
+company.
+
+"....For five months to see nothing but men--and then all of a sudden to
+hear a dear woman's clear voice! That's the finest thing of all. It's
+worth going to war for."
+
+One of the others rejoins that the finest thing is to have a bath, a
+clean bandage, to get into a nice white bed, to know that for a few
+weeks you are going to have a rest. Number three says:
+
+"The finest thing of all, I think, is the quiet--when you've been lying
+up there in the mountains where every shot is echoed five times, and all
+of a sudden it turns absolutely quiet, no whistling, no howling, no
+thundering--nothing but a glorious quiet that you can listen to as to a
+piece of music! The first few nights I sat up the whole time and kept my
+ears cocked for the quiet, the way you try to catch a tune at a
+distance. I believe I even shed a tear or two--it was so delightful to
+listen to no sound."
+
+The three young men tease the last speaker good-naturedly, and they all
+laugh together. Every one of them is intoxicated by the peace of the
+sleeping town and the autumn garden. Every one of them wants to make the
+most of his time, to lose nothing, "to take everything easily with his
+eyes tight shut, like a child before it enters a dark room."
+
+Now the Frau Major breaks in, breathing more quickly as she speaks:
+
+"...But, tell me, what was the most awful thing you went through out
+there?"
+
+The men purse up their lips. This theme does not enter into their
+program. Suddenly a strident voice speaks out of the darkness:
+
+"Awful? The only awful thing is the going off. You go off to war--and
+they let you go. That's the awful thing."
+
+A glacial silence follows. The Frau Major makes a bolt for it, to escape
+hearing the sequel. On the pretext that she has got to get back into the
+town, and that the last tram is just leaving, she takes with her the
+unhappy little wife, to whom the husband's words have come as a veiled
+reproach. The officers are left alone, and one of them, hoping to change
+the current of thought in the sick man's mind, passes a friendly
+compliment upon the wife's appearance. The other springs to his feet and
+says in a fury: "Chic wife? Oh, yes. Very dashing!... She didn't shed a
+tear when I left on the train. Oh, they were all very dashing when we
+went off. Poor Dill's wife was, too. Very plucky. She threw roses at him
+in the train, and she'd been his wife for only two months.... Roses! He,
+he! 'See you soon again!' They were all so patriotic!..."
+
+He goes on to recount what happened to Dill. Poor Dill was showing to
+his comrades the new photograph his wife had sent him, when an exploding
+shell sent a boot flying against his head. In the boot was the leg of a
+cavalryman who had been blown to pieces many yards away. On the boot was
+a great spur which stuck into Dill's brain. It took four of them to
+pull the boot out, and a piece of brain came away with the spur, looking
+"just like a grey jellyfish." One of the officers, horrified by the
+tale, rushed away for the doctor. The latter, on arrival, tried to coax
+the sick man to go in:
+
+"You must go to bed now, Lieutenant...."
+
+"Must go, of course," repeated the lieutenant emphatically, heaving a
+profound sigh. "We must all go. The man who doesn't go is a coward, and
+they have no use for a coward. That's how it is. Don't you understand?
+Heroes are in fashion now. The chic Madame Dill wanted a hero to match
+her new hat. Ha, ha! That's why poor Dill had to have his brains
+spilled. I must go; you must go; we must all go to die.... The women
+look on, plucky, because that's the fashion now...."
+
+He gazed round questioningly.
+
+"Isn't it sad?" he asked softly. Then, in a fury once more, he cried:
+
+"Weren't they humbugging us?... Was I an assassin? Was I a swashbuckler?
+Didn't I suit her when I sat at the piano playing? We were expected to
+be gentle and considerate! Considerate! And all at once, because the
+fashion changed, they wanted us to be murderers. Do you understand?
+Murderers!"
+
+Speaking now in a lower tone, he went on plaintively:
+
+"My wife was in the fashion too, of course. Not a tear! I kept waiting,
+waiting for her to begin to weep, to beg me to get out of the train, not
+to go with the others--beg me to be a coward for her sake. But none of
+them had the pluck to do that. They all wanted to be in the fashion.
+Mine too! Mine too! She waved her handkerchief, just like the others."
+
+His twitching arms writhed upwards, as though he were calling the
+heavens to witness.
+
+"You want to know what was the most awful thing? The disillusionment was
+the most awful thing--the going off. The war wasn't. The war is what it
+has to be. Did it surprise you to find out that war is horrible? The
+only surprising thing was the going off. To find out that women are
+cruel--that was the surprising thing. That they can smile and throw
+roses; that they can give up their husbands, their children, the little
+boys they have put to bed a thousand times, tucked up a thousand times,
+have fondled, have created from their own flesh and blood. That was the
+surprise. That they gave us up--that they sent us--actually sent us. For
+every one of them would have been ashamed to stand there without a hero.
+That was the great disillusionment.... Do you think we should have gone
+if they had not sent us? Do you think so?... No general could have done
+anything if the women hadn't allowed us to be packed into the trains, if
+they had screamed out that they would never look at us again if we
+became murderers. Not a man would have gone if they had sworn never to
+give themselves to one who had split open other men's skulls or shot and
+bayoneted his fellows. Not one man, I tell you, would have gone. I
+didn't want to believe that they could stand it like that. 'They're only
+pretending,' I thought. 'They're just holding themselves in. But when
+the whistle blows they'll begin to scream, and tear us out of the train,
+and rescue us.' That one time they had the chance to protect us. But all
+they cared about was to be in the fashion!..."
+
+He broke down, and collapsed once more on to the bench. He began to
+weep. A little circle of people had formed round him. The doctor said
+gently:
+
+"Come, come, Lieutenant, let's get along to bed. Women are like that,
+you know, and we can't help it."
+
+The sick man leapt to his feet in a rage.
+
+"Women are like that? Women are like that? Since when? Since when? Have
+you never heard of the suffragettes who boxed the ears of ministers of
+state, who set museums on fire, who chained themselves to lamp-posts,
+all for the sake of the vote? For the sake of the vote, do you hear? But
+for the sake of their men? Nothing!"
+
+He paused to take breath, overwhelmed with a throttling despair. Then,
+fighting with sobs, like a hunted beast, he cried out:
+
+"Have you heard of one woman throwing herself in front of the train for
+the sake of her husband? Has a single one of them slapped a statesman's
+face, or tied herself to the railway lines, for our sake? Not one has
+had to be saved from such desperate courses.... The whole world over,
+not one of them has moved a finger for us. They drove us forth! They
+gagged us! They gave us the spur, like poor Dill. They sent us to
+murder, they sent us to die--for their vanity. Are you going to defend
+them? No! They must be plucked out. Like weeds, they must be torn up by
+the roots! You must pull four at a time, as we had to do with Dill. Four
+of you together, then you'll get her up. Are you the doctor? There! Do
+it to my head! I don't want a wife! Pull--pull her out!"
+
+He struck himself on the head with his fist. He was dragged into the
+house, howling at the top of his voice. Soon the garden was empty. By
+degrees the lights were extinguished and the noise was stilled, except
+for the distant artillery fire. The patrol which had helped to take the
+madman back into the hospital repassed, with the old corporal in the
+rear, hanging his head. From afar off came the flash of an explosion,
+followed by a prolonged rumbling. The old man stood still, listened,
+shook his fist, spat disgustedly, and muttered:
+
+"Oh, Hell!"
+
+I have given lengthy extracts from this story, for I wished to convey a
+notion of the author's pulsating, vibrant, and impassioned style. There
+is more of the drama here than of the novel, and an elemental fierceness
+like that of Shakespearean drama. It would be well if these pages, so
+profound in the bitterness of their injustice, were to become widely
+known. It would be well if the poor women who, in all love as a rule,
+adopt a superhuman pose, could be made to realise, by means of this
+madman's outpourings, the secret thoughts which no man will dare to tell
+them, to understand the mute and almost shamefaced appeal to their poor
+human kindliness, to their simple and motherly compassion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall deal more briefly with the other episodes.
+
+The second, "Baptism of Fire" (Feuertaufe), is long, perhaps too long,
+but full of pity and of pain. Almost the whole scene is played within
+the soul of Captain Marschner, a man of fifty, who is leading his
+company to the front-line trench under the enemy's fire. He is not a
+professional soldier. As a young man he had been an officer, but at the
+age of thirty he had gone to school again, wishing to quit the trade of
+war and to become a civil engineer. Now the war had brought him back to
+the army. He had been in Vienna only the day before yesterday. His men
+were fathers of families, stonemasons, peasants, factory hands, and so
+on. None of them had any patriotic enthusiasm. He read their minds, and
+felt ashamed of himself because he was leading to certain death these
+poor fellows who trusted him. Beside him marched Weixler, a young
+lieutenant, cold, ruthless, inhuman--as one so often is at twenty years
+of age "when one has had no time yet to learn the value of life." The
+hardness of this man (an irreproachable officer) arouses in Marschner
+mingled anger and suffering. By degrees a fierce but unspoken feud
+arises between them. At the very end, just when open war is about to
+break out between the two, a huge shell bursts in their trench and both
+are buried under the wreckage. The captain comes to himself with a
+shattered skull. At a few paces' distance lies the implacable
+lieutenant, his entrails trailing on the ground beside him. They
+exchange a last look. Marschner sees a face that is almost strange to
+him, pale and sad, with timid eyes. The whole expression is gentle and
+plaintive; there is an unforgettable air of tender, anxious resignation.
+
+"He is suffering!" flashed through the captain's mind. "He is
+suffering!" Marschner is transported with joy. And therewith he dies.
+
+"My Comrade" (Der Kamarad) is the diary of a soldier in hospital. This
+man has been driven mad by the terrible sights at the front, and above
+all by the vision of a wounded man in the death agony, a poor wretch
+whose face had been torn away by a grapnel. The sight was seared upon
+his brain. The image never left him by day or by night. It sat down
+beside him at meals; went to bed with him; got up with him in the
+morning. It had become "My Comrade." The description is positively
+hallucinating, and this story contains some of the most forceful
+passages in the book, directed against the warmongers and against the
+humbugs of the press.
+
+"A Hero's Death" (Heldentod) describes the death in hospital of First
+Lieutenant Otto Kadar. He has a fractured skull. While the regimental
+officers were listening to a gramophone playing the Rakoczy march, a
+bomb exploded among them. The dying man never stops talking of the
+Rakoczy march. He imagines that he is looking at the corpse of a young
+officer whose head has been carried away, and in place of the head,
+screwed into the neck, is the gramophone disc. In his growing delirium,
+he fancies that the same thing has happened to all the common soldiers,
+to all the officers, to himself; that in each one the head has been
+replaced by a gramophone disc. That is why it is so easy to lead them to
+the slaughter. The dying man makes a frantic effort to tear away the
+disc from his own neck, and as he does so all is over. The old major
+looking on says in a voice vibrating with respect: "He died like a true
+Hungarian--singing the Rakoczy march."
+
+"Home Again" (Heimkehr) tells of the homecoming of Johann Bogdan, who
+had been the handsomest man in his native village. He returns from the
+war hopelessly disfigured. In hospital his face has been remade for him
+by means of a number of plastic operations. But when he looks at himself
+in the glass he is horror-stricken. No one in the village recognises
+him. The only exception is a hunchback whom he had looked on with
+contempt, and who now greets him familiarly. The countryside has been
+transformed by the building of a munition factory. Marcsa, Bogdan's
+betrothed, works there, and has become the factory owner's mistress.
+Bogdan sees red, and stabs the man, to be struck down dead himself a
+moment later.--In this story the growth of the revolutionary spirit is
+manifest. Bogdan, a dull conservative by nature, is inspired with it
+against his will. We have a threatening vision of the return of the
+soldiers from all the armies, and of how they will take vengeance upon
+those who sent others to death while remaining at home to enjoy life and
+to grow rich by speculation.
+
+I have kept the third story to the last, for it contrasts with the
+others by the sobriety of its emotion. It is entitled "The Victor" (Der
+Sieger). In the other episodes, the tragic element is nude and bleeding.
+Here tragedy is veiled with irony, and is all the more formidable.
+Revolt simmers beneath the calm words; the butchers are pilloried by the
+bitter satire.
+
+The victor is His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief, the renowned
+Generalissimo X., universally known in the press as "The Victor of * *
+*." He is there in all his glory, in the principal square of the town
+which is now the military headquarters. Here he is absolute master. Here
+there is nothing which he cannot do or undo at his will. The band is
+playing, on a fine autumn afternoon. His Excellency sits out of doors in
+front of a café, amid smart officers and elegantly dressed ladies. It is
+nearly forty miles from the front. Strict orders have been given that no
+wounded or convalescent soldier, or any man whose appearance might have
+a depressing effect on the general war enthusiasm or might trouble the
+comfort of those who are at ease, shall be allowed out of hospital. We
+are told how much His Excellency is enjoying himself. He finds the war
+splendid. People have never had a jollier time. "Did you notice the
+young fellows back from the front? Sunburnt, healthy, happy!... I assure
+you the world has never been so healthy as it is now." The whole company
+chimes in to celebrate the beneficial effects of the war. His Excellency
+meditates upon his good luck, his titles, his decorations, harvested in
+a single year of war, after he had vegetated for nine-and-thirty years
+in peace and mediocrity. It has been a perfect miracle. He is now a
+national hero. He has his motor, his country mansion, his chef, delicate
+fare, a lordly retinue of servants--and he has not to pay a penny for
+it. Only one thing troubles his reflections, the thought that the whole
+fairy tale may vanish as suddenly as it came, and that he may relapse
+into obscurity. What if the enemy were to break through? But he
+reassures himself. All is going well. The great enemy offensive, which
+has been expected for the last three months, and which actually began
+twenty-four hours ago, hurls itself vainly against a wall of iron. "The
+human reservoir is full to overflowing. Two hundred thousand young
+stalwarts of exactly the right age are ready to be caught up in the
+whirl of the dance, until they sink in a marish of blood and bones." His
+Excellency's agreeable reverie is interrupted by an aide-de-camp, who
+informs him that the correspondent of an influential foreign newspaper
+has requested an interview. This scene is brilliantly described. The
+general does not allow the journalist to get a word in. He has his
+speech ready:
+
+"He delivered it now, speaking with emphasis, and pausing occasionally
+to recall what came next. First of all, he referred to his gallant
+soldiers, lauding their courage, their contempt for death, their doings
+glorious beyond description. He went on to express regret that it was
+impossible to reward all these heroes according to their deserts.
+Raising his voice, he invoked the fatherland's eternal gratitude for
+such loyalty and self-renunciation even unto death. Pointing to the
+heavy crop of medals on his chest, he explained that the distinctions
+conferred on him were really a tribute to his men. Finally he interwove
+a few well-chosen remarks anent the military calibre of the enemy and
+the skilled generalship displayed by the other side. His last words
+conveyed his inviolable confidence in ultimate victory."
+
+When the oration was finished, the general became the man of the world.
+
+"You are going to the front now?" he asked with a courteous smile, and
+responded to the journalist's enthusiastic "yes" with a melancholy sigh.
+
+"Lucky man! I envy you. You see, the tragedy in the life of the modern
+general is that he cannot lead his men personally into the fray. He
+spends his whole life making ready for war; he is a soldier in body and
+mind, and yet he knows the excitement of battle only from hearsay."
+
+Of course the correspondent is delighted that he will be able to depict
+this all-powerful warrior in the sympathetic role of renunciation.
+
+The agreeable scene is disturbed by the intrusion of an infantry captain
+who is out of his mind and has escaped from hospital. His Excellency,
+though in a towering rage, controls his temper for the sake of
+appearances, and has the inconvenient visitor sent back in his own car.
+He turns the incident to account by uttering a few touching phrases
+concerning the impossibility for a general to do his duty if he had to
+witness all the misery at the front. He evades the correspondent's final
+question, "When does Your Excellency hope for peace?" by pointing across
+the square to the old cathedral, saying, "The only advice I can give you
+is to go over there and ask our Heavenly Father. No one else can answer
+that question."--Then His Excellency descends upon the hospital like a
+whirlwind, blusters at the old staff-surgeon, and reiterates the order
+to keep all the patients safely under lock and key. His wrath by now is
+slightly assuaged, but it is revived by a message from the front. A
+brigadier-general reports terrible losses, and declares that he cannot
+hold the line without reinforcements. It was part of His Excellency's
+plan that this brigade should be wiped out, after resisting the attack
+as long as possible. But he is angry that his victims should have any
+advice to offer, and sends curt orders, "The sector is to be held."--At
+length, the day's work being over, the great man drives home in his
+motor, still fiercely excogitating the correspondent's idiotic question,
+"When does Your Excellency hope for peace?"
+
+"Hope!... How tactless!... Hope for peace! What good has a general to
+expect from peace? Could not this civilian understand that a
+commander-in-chief is only a commander-in-chief in war-time, and that in
+peace-time he is nothing more than a professor with a collar of gold
+braid?"
+
+The general is annoyed once more when the car pulls up because it is
+necessary to close the hood on account of the rain. But during the pause
+His Excellency hears the sound of distant firing. His eyes
+brighten.--Thank God, there was still war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My quotations have been enough to show the emotional force and the
+trenchant irony of Latzko's book. It scorches. It is a torch of
+suffering and revolt. Both its merits and its defects are sib to this
+frenzy. The author is master of the writer's art, but he is not always
+master of his own feelings. His memories are still open wounds. He is
+possessed by his visions. His nerves vibrate like violin strings. Almost
+without exception, his analyses of emotion are tremulous monologues. His
+shattered spirit cannot find repose.
+
+Doubtless he will be criticised for the preponderant place assumed in
+his book by physical pain. The work is full of it. Pain monopolises the
+reader's mind and wearies his eyes. Not until we have read _Men in
+Battle_ do we fully appreciate Barbusse's chariness in the use of
+material effects. If Latzko is persistent in their employment, this is
+not merely because he is haunted by memories of pain. He wishes,
+deliberately wishes, to communicate these impressions to others, for he
+has suffered greatly from others' insensibility.
+
+In very truth, such insensibility has been the saddest of all our
+experiences during this war. We knew man to be stupid, mediocre,
+selfish: we knew that on occasions man could be extremely cruel. But
+though we had few illusions, we had never believed that man could
+remain so monstrously indifferent to the cries of millions of victims.
+We had never believed that there could be a smile such as we have
+witnessed upon the lips of the young fanatics and of the old demoniacs
+who, from their safe seats, are never weary of looking on at the mutual
+slaughter of the nations, of those who kill one another for the
+pleasure, the pride, the ideas, and the interests of the onlookers. All
+the rest, all the crimes, we can tolerate; but this aridity of soul is
+the worst of all, and we feel that Latzko has been overwhelmed by it.
+Like one of his own characters, who is regarded as a sick man because he
+cannot forget the sufferings he has witnessed, Latzko cries to the
+apathetic public:
+
+"Sick!... No! It is the others that are sick. They are sick who gloat
+over news of victories and see conquered miles of territory arise
+resplendent above mountains of corpses. They are sick who stretch a
+barrier of many-coloured bunting between themselves and their better
+feelings, lest they should see what crimes are being committed against
+their brothers in the beyond that they call 'the front.' Every man is
+sick who can still think, talk, argue, sleep, knowing that other men,
+holding their own entrails in their hands, are crawling like
+half-crushed worms across the furrows in the fields, and are dying like
+animals before they can reach the ambulance station, while somewhere,
+far away, a woman with longing in her heart is dreaming beside an empty
+bed. All those are sick who fail to hear the moaning, the gnashing of
+teeth, the howling, the crashing and bursting, the wailing and cursing
+and agonising in death, because their ears are filled with the murmur of
+everyday affairs. These blind and deaf ones are sick, not I. Sick are
+those dumb beings whose soul can give voice neither to compassion nor to
+anger...." ("My Comrade").
+
+The author's aim is to arouse these sick beings from their torpor, to
+treat them with the actual cautery of pain. This aim is portrayed in the
+person of Captain Marschner ("Baptism of Fire"), who, when his company
+is in the thick of the slaughter, suffers from nothing so intensely as
+from the harsh impassivity of his lieutenant, but who, himself at the
+point of death, finds it a positive solace to see on Weixler's stern
+face a shadow of pain, brotherly pain.
+
+"Thank God," he thinks. "At last he knows what suffering is!"
+
+"Through sympathy to knowledge," sings the mystical chorus of
+_Parsifal_.
+
+This "suffering with others" (sympathy, Mitleid), this "pain which
+unites," overflows from the work of Andreas Latzko.
+
+_November 15, 1917._
+
+"Les Tablettes," Geneva, December, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+VOX CLAMANTIS....[43]
+
+
+After the glacial torpor of the early days of the war, mutilated art
+begins to bloom anew. The irrepressible song of the soul wells up out of
+suffering. Man is not merely, as he is apt to boast, a reasoning animal
+(he might, with better ground, term himself an unreasoning one); he is a
+singing animal; he can no more get on without singing than without
+bread. We learn it amid the very trials through which we are passing
+to-day. Although the general suppression of liberty in Europe has
+doubtless deprived us of the deeper music, of the most intimate
+confessions, we nevertheless hear great voices rising from every land.
+Some of these, coming from the armies, sing in sad and epic strains.
+See, for example, _Under Fire_ by Henri Barbusse, and the heart-rending
+tales issued by Andreas Latzko under the collective title of _Men in
+Battle_. Others express the pain and horror of those who, remaining at
+home, look on at the butchery without taking part in it, and who, being
+inactive, suffer all the more from the torments of thought. To this
+category belong the impassioned poems of Marcel Martinet[44] and P. J.
+Jouve.[45] Paying less attention to suffering and more concerned with
+understanding, the English novelists, H. G. Wells[46] and Douglas
+Goldring,[47] give a faithful analysis of the distressing errors amid
+which they move and which they themselves by no means escape. Yet
+others, finally, taking refuge in the contemplation of the past,
+rediscover there the same circle of misfortunes and of hopes--rediscover
+the "eternal cycle." They cloak their grief in the fashions of other
+days, thus ennobling it and despoiling it of its poisoned dart. From the
+lofty eyrie of the ages, set free by art, the soul contemplates
+suffering as in a vision, no longer aware whether that suffering belongs
+to the present or to the past. Stefan Zweig's _Jeremias_ is the finest
+contemporary specimen known to me of this august melancholy which,
+looking beyond the bloody drama of to-day, is able to see in it the
+eternal tragedy of mankind.
+
+Not without struggle can such serene regions be attained. A friend of
+Zweig before the war, his friend to-day, I have witnessed all that was
+endured by this free European spirit whom the war robbed of that which
+he had held most dear; robbed him of his artistic and humanist faith,
+thereby depriving him of any reason for existence. The letters he wrote
+me during the first year of the war reveal his agonising torments in all
+their tragical beauty. By degrees, however, the immensity of the
+catastrophe, communion with the universal sorrow, restored to him the
+calm which resigns itself to destiny; for he came to see that destiny
+leads to God, who is the union of souls. Of the Hebrew race, he has
+drawn his inspiration from the Bible. It was easy to find there
+analogous instances of national madness, of the fall of empires, and of
+heroic patience. One figure, above all, attracted him, that of the great
+forerunner, Jeremiah the persecuted prophet, foretelling the woeful
+peace which was to flourish upon the ruins.
+
+Zweig devotes to Jeremiah a dramatic poem, which I propose to analyse,
+making extensive quotations. The work consists of nine scenes. It is
+written in prose mingled with verse, sometimes free, sometimes rhymed,
+the transition from prose to verse occurring when emotion breaks from
+control. The form is ample and rhetorical. There is a majestic balance
+in the exposition of the thought; but the poem would perhaps have been
+better for condensation, for this would have left more to the reader's
+imagination. The common people play a leading part in the action. Their
+sallies and counter-sallies jostle one another; but at the close their
+voices unite in measured choruses, breathing the thoughts of the
+prophet, the guardian of Israel. Zweig has steered his course skilfully
+between the dangers of archaism and anachronism. We rediscover our
+preoccupations of the moment in this epic of the fall of Jerusalem; but
+we find them as the faithful of recent centuries found day by day in
+their Bible the light which lightened their road in hours of
+difficulty--sub specie aeternitatis.
+
+"Jeremiah is our prophet," Stefan Zweig said to me. "He has spoken for
+us, for our Europe. The other prophets came at their due time. Moses
+spoke and acted. Jesus died and acted. Jeremiah spoke in vain. His
+people failed to understand him. The times were not ripe. He could only
+prophesy, and bewail the approaching doom. He could do nothing to
+prevent what was to happen. Ours is a like fate."
+
+But there are defeats more fruitful than victories; there are griefs
+more illuminating than joys. Zweig's poem shows this magnificently. At
+the end of the drama, Israel has been crushed. The Jews, leaving their
+ruined city, going into exile, pass towards the future filled with an
+inward radiance never known to them before, strong by reason of the
+sacrifices which have revealed to them their mission.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+SCENE ONE
+
+THE PROPHET'S AWAKENING.
+
+A night in early spring. All is quiet. Jeremiah, awakened with a start
+by a vision of Jerusalem in flames, goes up to the terrace which
+overlooks his dwelling and the town. He is "poisoned" by dreams,
+obsessed by the oncoming storm, although peace still broods over the
+scene. He does not understand the fierce energy which surges up in him;
+but he knows that it comes from God and he awaits his orders, uneasy and
+under the spell of hallucination. His mother calls to him, and at first
+he imagines her voice to be the voice of God. To the terrified woman he
+foretells the ruin of Jerusalem. She implores him to be silent; his
+words seem to her sacrilegious and arouse her anger; to close his mouth,
+she tells him he will have her curse if he makes his sinister dreams
+known to others. But Jeremiah is no longer his own man. He follows the
+unseen Master.
+
+
+SCENE TWO
+
+THE WARNING.
+
+In the great square of Jerusalem, in front of the temple and the king's
+palace, the people acclaim the Egyptian envoys who have brought with
+them a daughter of the Pharaoh to wed King Zedekiah, and who are to
+cement an alliance against the Chaldeans. Abimelech the general, Pashur
+the high priest, Hananiah the official prophet who prophesies falsely in
+order to inflame the passion of the people, incite the crowd to frenzy.
+Young Baruch is one of the most violent among those who clamour for war.
+Jeremiah resists the stream of fury. He condemns the war. He is
+immediately charged with having been bought by Chaldean gold. Hananiah,
+the false prophet, sings the praises of "the holy war, the war of God."
+
+JEREMIAH. Do not bring God's name into the war. Men make war, not God.
+No war is holy; no death is holy; life alone is holy.
+
+BARUCH. Thou liest, thou liest! Life is given us solely that we may
+sacrifice it to God.
+
+The crowd is carried away by the hope of an easy victory. A woman spits
+upon Jeremiah the pacifist. Jeremiah curses her.
+
+JEREMIAH. Cursed be the man who thirsts for blood! But seven times
+cursed be the woman who thirsts for war. War will devour the fruit of
+her body.
+
+His violence is terrifying. He is charged to hold his peace. He refuses,
+for Jerusalem is within him, and Jerusalem does not wish to die.
+
+JEREMIAH. The walls of Jerusalem stand erect in my heart, and they do
+not wish to fall.... Safeguard peace!
+
+The fickle crowd, despite itself, is being swayed by his words, when
+General Abimelech returns in a fury. He has just left the king's
+council, where a majority has voted against the alliance with Egypt. In
+his wrath, he has thrown away his sword. Young Israel, through the voice
+of Baruch, acclaims him as a national hero. The high priest blesses him.
+Hananiah, prophet and demagogue, fires the crowd to flock to the palace
+that they may force the king to declare war. Jeremiah tries to stop the
+yelling mob. He is knocked down. Young Baruch strikes him with a sword.
+The crowd passes on.
+
+But Baruch, appalled, stays with his victim, staunches the blood which
+flows from the wound, and begs for pardon. Jeremiah, helped to his feet,
+thinks only of rejoining the maddened crowd, to cry his message of
+peace. This inviolable energy astounds Baruch, who had regarded as a
+coward anyone who should condemn action or preach peace.
+
+JEREMIAH. Dost thou imagine that peace is not action, that peace is not
+the action of all actions? Day by day thou shouldst wrest it from the
+mouth of the liars and from the heart of the crowd. Thou shouldst stand
+alone against all.... Those who desire peace are for ever fighting.
+
+Baruch is overcome.
+
+BARUCH. I believe in thee, for I have seen thy blood poured forth for
+thy words.
+
+Jeremiah vainly endeavours to dissuade him. The prophet is unwilling
+that Baruch should share in his dreams and his awesome fate. But Baruch
+insists upon joining Jeremiah, and the young man's ardent faith is
+superadded to and redoubles that of the prophet.
+
+JEREMIAH. Thou believest in me when I myself scarcely believe in my own
+dreams.... Thou hast made my blood flow and hast mingled thy will with
+mine.... Thou art the first to believe in me, the first-born of my
+faith, the son of my anguish.
+
+The crowd flocks back into the square, uttering cries of delight, for
+war has been decided on. Heading a solemn procession, the king appears,
+gloomy, with naked sword. Hananiah dances before him, like David.
+Jeremiah cries out to the king, "Throw down the sword. Save Jerusalem!
+Peace! God's peace!" His words are drowned by the shouting, and he is
+pushed aside. But the king has heard. He halts for a moment, looking
+round and trying to find the speaker. Then, sword in hand, he marches
+forward, and goes up into the temple.
+
+
+SCENE THREE
+
+RUMOURS.
+
+The war has begun. The crowd is awaiting news. They talk at random,
+catching at the words which please them, or shaping utterances which
+express their wishes. Longing for victory, they imagine it won. In
+masterly fashion, Zweig shows how a vague rumour spreads in the
+hallucinated mind of the multitude, to attain in an instant a certainty
+surpassing that of truth. Details pass from mouth to mouth; precise
+figures of the false victory are given. Jeremiah, the defeatist prophet,
+is mocked. The bird of ill-omen is informed that the Chaldeans have been
+crushed, and that King Nebuchadnezzar has been slain. Jeremiah, at first
+dumb with astonishment, thanks God for having turned to derision his
+gloomy forebodings. Then, pricked by the foolish pride of the people,
+who become brutishly intoxicated with the victory and have learned
+nothing from their trials, he scourges them with new threats.
+
+JEREMIAH. Your joy will be brief.... God will rend it asunder like a
+curtain.... Already the messenger is afoot, the bearer of evil tidings,
+he is running, he is running; his swift footsteps lead towards
+Jerusalem. Already, already, he is at hand, the messenger of fear, the
+messenger of terror, already the messenger is at hand.
+
+And lo, the messenger enters, panting for breath. Before he speaks,
+Jeremiah trembles with fear.
+
+MESSENGER. The enemy is victorious. The Egyptians have come to terms
+with the Chaldeans. Nebuchadnezzar is marching on Jerusalem.
+
+The crowd utters cries of terror. In the king's name a herald issues the
+call to arms. Jeremiah, the seer whose visions have been too faithfully
+fulfilled, Jeremiah from whose neighbourhood the panic-stricken folk
+withdraw, vainly implores God to convict him of falsehood.
+
+
+SCENE FOUR
+
+THE WATCH ON THE RAMPARTS.
+
+Moonlight. On the walls of Jerusalem. The enemy is at work. In the
+distance Samaria and Gilgal are seen in flames. Two sentinels are
+conversing. One, a professional soldier, neither can nor will see
+anything beyond his orders. The other, who seems one of our brothers of
+to-day, is trying to understand, and his heart is racked.
+
+SECOND SOLDIER. Why does God hurl the nations against one another? Is
+there not room for all beneath the heavens? What are nations?... What
+puts death between the nations? What is it which sows hatred when there
+is room and to spare for life, and when there is abundance of scope for
+love? I can't understand, I can't understand.... This crime cannot be
+God's will. He has given us our lives that we may live them.... War does
+not come from God. Whence comes it then?
+
+He thinks that if he could talk matters over with a Chaldean, they would
+come to an understanding. Why should not they talk things over? He
+would like to summon one, to hold out a friendly hand. The other soldier
+grows angry.
+
+FIRST SOLDIER. You shall not do that. They are our enemies, and it is
+our duty to hate them.
+
+SECOND SOLDIER. Why should I hate them if my heart knows no reason for
+hatred?
+
+FIRST SOLDIER. They began the war; they were the aggressors.
+
+SECOND SOLDIER. Yes, that is what we say in Jerusalem. In Babylon,
+perchance, they use the same words of us. If we could talk things over
+with them, we might get some light on the question.... Whom do we serve
+by compassing their death?
+
+FIRST SOLDIER. We serve God and the king our master.
+
+SECOND SOLDIER. But God said, and it is written, Thou shalt not kill.
+
+FIRST SOLDIER. It is likewise written, An eye for an eye and a tooth for
+a tooth.
+
+SECOND SOLDIER (sighs). Many things are written. Who can understand them
+all?
+
+He continues to bewail himself aloud. The first soldier urges him to be
+silent.
+
+SECOND SOLDIER. How can a man help questioning himself, how can he be
+other than uneasy, at such an hour? Do I know where I am and how long I
+have still to stand on guard?... How can I fail, while I live, to
+question the meaning of life?... Maybe death is already within me;
+perchance the questioner is no longer life, but death.
+
+FIRST SOLDIER. You are only tormenting yourself about nothings.
+
+SECOND SOLDIER. God has given us a heart precisely that it may torment
+us.
+
+Jeremiah and Baruch appear on the ramparts. Jeremiah leans over the
+parapet and gazes down. All that he is now looking at, these fires,
+these myriad tents, this first night of the siege, are things with which
+he is already familiar from his visions. There is not a star in heaven
+which he has not seen in this place. He can no longer deny that God has
+chosen him. He must give his message to the king, for he knows the end;
+he sees it; he describes it in prophetic verses.
+
+King Zedekiah, full of fear, making his rounds with Abimelech, hears the
+voice of Jeremiah, and recognises it as the voice of the one who wished
+to hold him back on the threshold of the declaration of war. He would
+pay heed now, could the decision be made over again. Jeremiah assures
+him that it is never too late to ask peace. Zedekiah is unwilling to be
+the first to move. What if his proposals were rejected?
+
+JEREMIAH. Happy are they who are rejected for justice' sake.
+
+But what if people laugh at him? asks Zedekiah.
+
+JEREMIAH. It is better to be followed by the laughter of fools than by
+the tears of widows.
+
+Zedekiah refuses. He would rather die than humble himself. Jeremiah
+curses him and calls him the murderer of his people. The soldiers wish
+to throw him from the wall. Zedekiah restrains them. His calm, his
+forbearance, perplex Jeremiah, who lets the king depart without making
+any further effort to save him. The decisive moment has been lost.
+Jeremiah accuses himself of weakness; he feels himself impotent, and he
+despairs; he knows only how to cry aloud and to utter curses. He does
+not know how to do good. Baruch consoles him. At Jeremiah's suggestion,
+Baruch decides to climb down the walls into the Chaldean camp, that he
+may parley with Nebuchadnezzar.
+
+
+SCENE FIVE
+
+THE PROPHET'S ORDEAL.
+
+Jeremiah's mother is dying. The sick woman knows nothing of what is
+happening outside. Since she drove her son from home she has been
+suffering and waiting. Both mother and son are proud, and neither will
+make the first advance. Ahab, the old servitor, has taken it upon
+himself to fetch Jeremiah. The sick woman awakens and calls her son. He
+appears, but dares not draw near, because of the curse which weighs on
+him. His mother stretches out her arms. They embrace one another. In
+affectionate dialogue, versified, they recount their love and their
+grief. The mother rejoices at seeing her son once more. She believes him
+to be convinced that he was mistaken in the past, that his visions were
+false. "I was certain," says she, "that the enemy would never, never
+besiege Jerusalem." Jeremiah cannot hide his uneasiness. She notices it,
+grows uneasy herself, asks questions, guesses, "There is war in Israel!"
+Panic seizes her; she tries to leave her bed. Jeremiah endeavours to
+quiet her. She begs him to swear that there is no enemy, no danger. The
+attendants whisper to Jeremiah, "Swear! swear!" Jeremiah cannot lie. The
+mother dies terror-stricken. Hardly has she breathed her last when
+Jeremiah swears the falsehood. But the oath comes too late. The enraged
+witnesses chase forth the unfeeling son who has killed his mother. An
+angry crowd wishes to stone him. The high priest has him thrown into
+prison, to gag his prophecies. Jeremiah accepts the sentence
+unrepiningly. He wishes to live under shadow of night, he is eager to be
+delivered from this world, to be brother of the dead.
+
+
+SCENE SIX
+
+MIDNIGHT VOICES.
+
+The king's room. Zedekiah, at the window, is looking out over the
+moonlit town. He envies other kings, who can hold counsel with their
+gods, or who can learn the will of the gods from soothsayers. "It is
+terrible to be the servant of a God who is always silent; whom no one
+has ever seen." The king has to advise others; but who will advise the
+king?
+
+Nevertheless, here are his five closest counsellors, whom he has
+summoned to his presence: Pashur the high priest; Hananiah the prophet;
+Imri the elder; Abimelech the general; Nahum the steward. For eleven
+months Jerusalem has been besieged. No help is coming. What is to be
+done? All agree that it is essential to hold out. Nahum alone is gloomy;
+there remains food for three weeks only. Zedekiah asks their opinion
+concerning the opening of negotiations with Nebuchadnezzar. They are
+opposed to it, save Imri and Nahum. The king tells them that an envoy
+from Nebuchadnezzar has already come. He is summoned. Baruch is the
+envoy. He states the terms of the Chaldeans. Nebuchadnezzar, admiring
+the courageous resistance of the Jews, agrees to spare their lives if
+they open their gates. All that he demands is the humiliation of
+Zedekiah, who was king by his grace and who shall be king once more, by
+Nebuchadnezzar's grace, when his fault has been atoned. Let Zedekiah
+abase himself before the victor, yoke on neck and crown in hand!
+Zedekiah is indignant, and Abimelech supports his objection. But the
+others, who think that the Jews are getting off cheaply, explain to the
+king how splendid will be his sacrifice. Zedekiah, overborne, agrees; he
+will resign the crown to his son.--But Nebuchadnezzar has additional
+demands. He wishes to look upon the One who is Master in Israel; he
+wishes to enter the temple. Pashur and Hananiah are outraged by this
+sacrilegious suggestion. The matter is put to the vote. Abimelech
+abstains, saying that his business is to act, not to discuss. The others
+are two for and two against. It devolves on the king to give the casting
+vote. He tells the advisers to leave him to himself that he may think
+the matter over. He is on the point of constraining himself to accept
+the Chaldeans' terms, when Baruch admits that the visit to
+Nebuchadnezzar to sue for peace was made at Jeremiah's instigation.
+Zedekiah is enraged at this name which he thought he had heard the last
+of. He has immured Jeremiah's body, but the prophet's thought continues
+to act, and to cry "Peace!" The king's pride is wounded, and he refuses
+to yield to the ascendancy of the prophet. He despatches Baruch to the
+Chaldeans with an insulting answer. But hardly has Baruch departed, when
+Zedekiah regrets his precipitancy. He vainly tries to sleep. Jeremiah's
+voice fills his thoughts, seems to break the silence of the night.
+Sending for the prophet, the king quietly recounts Nebuchadnezzar's
+terms, but does not say that they have been refused. He endeavours to
+secure Jeremiah's approval for the course he has chosen, hoping thus to
+appease his conscience. But the prophet reads his hidden thoughts, and
+utters lamentations upon Jerusalem. Soon, seized with frenzy, Jeremiah
+portrays the destruction of the city. He foretells Zedekiah's
+punishment; the king's eyes will be put out after he has witnessed the
+death of his three sons. Zedekiah, furious at first and then quailing,
+throws himself on his bed, weeping, and pleading for mercy. Jeremiah
+goes on unheeding, down to the final curse. Then he awakens from his
+trance, no less shattered than his victim. Zedekiah, no longer angry, no
+longer in revolt, recognises the prophet's power; he believes in
+Jeremiah, believes in the terrible predictions.
+
+ZEDEKIAH. Jeremiah, I did not want war. I was forced to declare war, but
+I loved peace. And I loved thee because of thy love for peace. Not with
+a light heart did I take up arms.... I have suffered greatly, as thou
+canst testify when the time comes. Be thou near me if thy words are
+fulfilled.
+
+JEREMIAH. I shall be near thee, Zedekiah my brother. The prophet is
+leaving, when the king recalls him.
+
+ZEDEKIAH. Death is upon me, and I see thee for the last time. Thou hast
+cursed me, Jeremiah. Bless me, now, ere we part.
+
+JEREMIAH. The Lord bless thee, and keep thee in all thy ways. May the
+light of His countenance shine upon thee, and may He give thee peace.
+
+ZEDEKIAH (as in a dream). May He give us peace.
+
+
+SCENE SEVEN
+
+THE SUPREME AFFLICTION.
+
+The following morning, in the great square before the temple. The
+famished crowd clamours for bread, prepares to attack the palace,
+threatens Nahum the forestaller. Abimelech, to rescue him, sends
+soldiers to the attack. Amid the riot, a voice is heard crying that the
+enemy has forced one of the gates. The people utter wails of terror,
+cursing king, priests, and prophets. Their thoughts fly to Jeremiah, who
+alone foretold the truth. He is their only hope. They break into his
+prison, and bring him forth, in triumph, shouting: "Saint! Master!
+Samuel! Elijah!... Save us!"--Jeremiah, heavy-hearted, does not at first
+understand. When he hears them accuse the king of having sold the
+people, he exclaims, "It is false!"
+
+THE CROWD. They have sacrificed us. We wanted peace.
+
+JEREMIAH. Too late!... Why do you put your transgressions on the king's
+shoulders? You wanted war.
+
+THE CROWD. No!... Not I!... No!... Not I!... It was the king!... Not
+I!... Not one of us!
+
+JEREMIAH. You all wanted the war, all, all! Your hearts are fickle....
+The very ones who are now clamouring for peace, I have myself heard
+howling for war.... Woe unto you, O people! You drive before every wind.
+You have fornicated with war, and shall now bear the fruit of war! You
+have played with the sword, and shall now taste its edge!
+
+The crowd, terrified, clamours for a miracle. Jeremiah refuses. He
+speaks.
+
+JEREMIAH. Humble yourselves!... Let Jerusalem fall, if God will. Let the
+temple fall. Let Israel be utterly destroyed and her name wiped out!...
+Humble yourselves!
+
+The people call him traitor. Jeremiah is seized with a fresh trance. In
+a transport of love and faith, he welcomes the sufferings inflicted by
+the beloved hand; he blesses trial, fire, death, shame, the enemy. The
+people cry aloud: "Stone him! Crucify him!"--Jeremiah stretches out his
+arms as on the cross. Hungry for martyrdom, he prophesies the Crucified.
+He wishes to be crucified. And crucified he would be, did not fugitives
+rush into the square, shouting: "The walls have fallen, the enemy is in
+the town!"--The mob flees into the temple.
+
+
+SCENE EIGHT
+
+THE CONVERSION.
+
+In the gloom of a huge crypt we see a prostrate crowd. Here and there
+groups are formed round an elder reading the Scriptures. Jeremiah stands
+apart, motionless and as if petrified.--It is on the night following the
+fall of Jerusalem. Death and destruction are everywhere. The tombs have
+been violated; the temple has been profaned; all the nobles have been
+killed, save the king, who has been blinded. Jeremiah groans with horror
+when he learns that his prophecies have been fulfilled. People draw away
+from him, as from one accursed. In vain does he, with anguish, defend
+himself from the charge of having wrought all the evil.
+
+JEREMIAH. I did not will it! You have no right to accuse me. The word
+came from my mouth as fire from flint. My word is not my will. Force is
+greater than I. Above me stands He, He, the Terrible One, the Merciless!
+I am no more than His instrument, His breath, the servant of His
+malice.... Woe upon the hands of God! Whom He, the Terrible One seizes,
+He will never loose.... Let Him set me free! No longer will I speak His
+words, I will not, I will not....
+
+Trumpets sound without, and the will of Nebuchadnezzar is declared. The
+city is to disappear from the earth. The survivors may have one night to
+bury the dead; then they will be carried into captivity. The people
+lament, refusing to go. But a wounded man, who is in pain, wishes to
+live, to live! A young woman echoes his words. She does not want to go
+into the cold, to go to death. Bear anything, suffer anything; but
+live!--Disputes occur among the crowd. Some say that it is impossible to
+leave the land where God is. Others maintain that God will be with them
+wherever they may go. Jeremiah cries despairingly.
+
+JEREMIAH. He is nowhere! Neither in heaven nor in earth, nor in the
+souls of men!
+
+These sacrilegious words arouse horror. But Jeremiah continues.
+
+JEREMIAH. Who has sinned against Him, if not Himself? He has broken His
+covenant.... He denies Himself.
+
+Jeremiah recalls all the sacrifices he has made for God. House, mother,
+friends, he has abandoned all, lost all. He gave himself up wholly to
+God, serving God because he hoped that God would avert the threatened
+misfortune. He cursed in the hope that the curse would turn into a
+blessing. He prophesied in the hope that he was lying, and that
+Jerusalem would be saved. But his prophecies came true, and God was the
+liar. He has faithfully served the Faithless One. He refuses to continue
+this service. He cuts himself off from the God who hates, to join his
+brothers who suffer. He speaks.
+
+JEREMIAH. I hate Thee, God, and I love them only.
+
+The crowd strikes him, wishing to close his mouth, believing him to be
+dangerous. He throws himself on his knees, asking pardon for his pride
+and for his imprecations; he desires to be nothing more than the
+humblest servitor of his people. But all repulse him as a blasphemer.
+
+At this moment there is a violent knocking at the door. Three envoys
+from Nebuchadnezzar enter and prostrate themselves before Jeremiah.
+Nebuchadnezzar, who admires him, wishes to make him chief of the magi.
+Jeremiah refuses, in disdainful terms. Gradually growing warm as he
+speaks, he prophecies the fall of Nebuchadnezzar. The great king's hour
+is at hand, and with fierce joy the prophet heaps curses upon him.
+
+JEREMIAH. The avenger has awakened; He is coming; He draws nigh;
+terrible are the hands with which He smites.... We are His children, His
+first-born. He has chastised us, but He will have pity on us. He has
+thrown us down, but He will set us up again.
+
+The Chaldean envoys flee, affrighted. The people surround Jeremiah and
+acclaim him. They drink in his frenzied words. God is speaking through
+his mouth. He unrolls before their eyes the vision of the New
+Jerusalem, towards which the dispersed tribes will flock from all the
+quarters of the earth. Peace shines on the city. The peace of the Lord,
+the peace of Israel. With exclamations of delight, the people, already
+looking forward to the days of the return, embrace the feet and knees of
+Jeremiah. The prophet awakens from his trance. He no longer knows what
+he has said. He is interpenetrated with the love of those around him; he
+endeavours to restrain their enthusiasm, which is yet further inflamed
+by a miracle of healing. The true miracle, says Jeremiah, is that he has
+cursed God and that God has blessed him. God has torn out his hard
+heart, and has replaced it with a compassionate heart, enabling him to
+share all suffering and to understand its meaning. "I have been long in
+finding it; I have been long in finding you, my brothers! No more
+curses! Sad is our fate; but let us take hope, for life is wonderful,
+the world is holy. I wish to embrace in my love those whom I have
+attacked in my anger." He utters thanksgivings for death and for life.
+Baruch begs him to carry the healing message to the people assembled in
+the square. Jeremiah agrees to do so, saying: "I have been consoled by
+God; now let me be the consoler." He wishes to build the undying
+Jerusalem in the hearts of men.--The people follow him out, calling him
+God's Master-Builder.
+
+
+SCENE NINE
+
+THE EVERLASTING ROAD.
+
+The great square of Jerusalem, as in Scene Two, but after the
+destruction. The half-light of a moon partially veiled by clouds. In the
+obscurity there can be seen carts, mules, groups of those ready to
+depart. Voices are heard of persons calling one another and checking
+their numbers. The people are confused and leaderless. No one pays any
+attention to the unfortunate Zedekiah, who has been blinded, and whom
+all curse. Songs are heard, drawing nearer. The singers are in the
+train of Jeremiah. The prophet speaks to the people, who are at first
+incredulous and hostile. He consoles them, announcing their divine
+mission. Their heritage is grief; they are the people of suffering
+(Leidensvolk), but they are the people of God (Gottesvolk). Happy the
+vanquished, happy those that have lost all, that they may find God!
+Glory to the time of trial! From the people, now inspired with
+enthusiasm, arise choral chants, celebrating the ordeals of ancient
+days; celebrating Mizraim and Moses.... The choirs break up into groups
+of voices, now solemn, now gay, now exultant. The whole epic of Israel
+marches by in these songs, which Jeremiah directs as a skilful driver
+manages a team. The people, gradually becoming enkindled, wish to
+suffer, wish to set out for exile, and they call upon Jeremiah to lead
+them forth. Jeremiah prostrates himself before the unhappy Zedekiah, who
+has been thrust aside by the crowd. Zedekiah imagines that the prophet
+is mocking him.
+
+JEREMIAH. Thou hast become the king of sorrows, and never hast thou been
+more regal.... Anointed by suffering, lead us forth! Thou, who now seest
+God only, who no longer seest the world, guide thy people!
+
+Turning to the people, Jeremiah shows to them the leader sent by God,
+the "Crowned-by-Suffering" (Schmerzengekrönte). The people bow before
+the stricken king.
+
+Day dawns. A tucket sounds. Jeremiah, from the perron of the temple,
+summons Israel to set out. Let the people fill their eyes with their
+fatherland, for the last time! "Drink your fill of the walls, drink your
+fill of the towers, drink your fill of Jerusalem!"--They prostrate
+themselves, kissing the earth, and lifting a handful to take with them.
+Addressing the "wandering people" (Wandervolk), Jeremiah tells them to
+arise, to leave the dead who have found peace, to look not backward but
+forward, to look out into the distance, to the highways of the world.
+These highways are theirs. An impassioned dialogue ensues between the
+prophet and his people.
+
+THE PEOPLE. Shall we ever see Jerusalem again?
+
+JEREMIAH. He who believes, looks always on Jerusalem.
+
+THE PEOPLE. Who shall rebuild the city?
+
+JEREMIAH. The ardour of desire, the night of prison, and the suffering
+which brings counsel.
+
+THE PEOPLE. Will it endure?
+
+JEREMIAH. Yes. Stones fall, but that which the soul builds in suffering,
+endureth for ever.
+
+The trumpet sounds once more. The people are now eager to depart. The
+huge procession ranges itself in silence. At the head is the king, borne
+in a litter. The tribes follow, singing as they march, with the solemn
+joy of sacrifice. There is neither haste nor lagging. An infinite on the
+march. As they pass, the Chaldeans gaze at them with astonishment.
+Strange folk, whom no one can understand, whether in their dejection or
+their exultation!
+
+CHORUS OF JEWS. We move among the nations, we move athwart the ages, by
+the unending roads of suffering. For ever and for ever. Eternally we are
+vanquished.... But cities fall, nations vanish, oppressors go down into
+shame. We move onward, through the eternities, towards our country,
+towards God.
+
+THE CHALDEANS. Their God? Have we not conquered him?... Who can conquer
+the invisible? Men we can slay, but the God who lives in them we cannot
+slay. A nation can be controlled by force; its spirit, never.
+
+For the third time the tucket sounds. The sun, breaking forth, shines on
+the procession of God's people, beginning their march athwart the ages.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus does a great artist exemplify the supreme liberty of the spirit.
+Others have made a frontal attack upon the follies and crimes of to-day.
+At grips with the force which wounds them, their bitter words of revolt
+bruise themselves against the obstacles they are endeavouring to break
+down. Here, the soul which has won to peace, sees passing before it the
+tragical flood of the present. Unperturbed, it torments itself no
+longer, for its gaze takes in the whole course of the stream, absorbing
+into itself the secular energies of that stream and the tranquil destiny
+which leads the flow onward towards the infinite.
+
+     _November 20, 1917._
+
+     Written for the review "Coenobium," edited by Enrico Bignami, at
+     Lugano.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+A GREAT EUROPEAN: G. F. NICOLAI[48]
+
+
+I
+
+Art and science have bent the knee to war. Art has become war's
+sycophant; science, war's hand-maiden. Few have had the strength or
+inclination to resist. In art, rare works, sombre French works, have
+blossomed on the blood-drenched soil. In science, the greatest product
+during these three criminal years has been the one we owe to G. F.
+Nicolai, a German whose spirit is free and whose thought has an enormous
+range.
+
+The book is, as it were, a symbol of that unconquerable Freedom whom all
+the tyrannies of this age of force have vainly endeavoured to gag. It
+was written behind prison walls, but these walls were not thick enough
+to stifle the voice which judges the oppressors and will survive them.
+
+Dr. Nicolai, professor of physiology at Berlin University and physician
+to the imperial household, found himself, when the war broke out, in the
+very focus of the madness which seized the flower of his nation. Not
+merely did he refuse to share that madness. Yet more daring, he openly
+resisted it. In reply to the manifesto of the 93 intellectuals,
+published in the beginning of October, 1914, he wrote a
+counter-manifesto, _An Appeal to Europeans_, which was endorsed by two
+other distinguished professors at the university of Berlin, Albert
+Einstein, the celebrated physicist, and Wilhelm Foerster, president of
+the international bureau of weights and measures, the father of
+Professor F. W. Foerster. This manifesto was not published, for Nicolai
+was unable to collect a sufficient number of signatures. In the summer
+term of 1915 he incorporated it in the opening of a series of lectures
+he planned to deliver upon the war. Thus, for the fulfilment of what he
+deemed his duty as an honest thinker, he deliberately risked his social
+position, his academic career, his distinctions, his comfort, and his
+friendships. He was arrested, and was interned in Graudenz fortress.
+There, unaided, and almost without books, he penned his admirable
+_Biology of War_, and managed to have the manuscript sent to
+Switzerland, where the first German edition has just been published. The
+circumstances in which the book was written have an atmosphere of
+mystery and heroism recalling that of the days when the Holy Inquisition
+was endeavouring to stifle the thought of Galileo. In the modern world,
+the Inquisition of the United States of Europe and America is no less
+crushing than was the Holy Inquisition of old. But Nicolai, firmer of
+spirit than Galileo, has refused to recant. Last month (September,
+1917), the journals of German Switzerland announced that he had been
+once more brought to trial, and had been sentenced to five months'
+imprisonment by the Danzig court-martial. Thus again does force manifest
+its ludicrous weakness, for its unjust decrees merely help to raise a
+statue to the man whom force would fain strike down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The leading characteristic of book and writer is their universality. The
+publisher, in a note prefixed to the first edition, tells us that
+Nicolai "has a world-wide reputation as a physician, more especially in
+the field of cardiac disease"; that "he is a thinker the universality of
+whose culture seems almost fabulous in these days of specialisation,
+for, while distinguished for his knowledge of neokantian philosophy, he
+is equally at home in literature and in dealing with social problems";
+that "he is an explorer who has wandered afoot in China, Malaysia, and
+even the solitudes of Lapland." Nothing human is foreign to him. In his
+book, the chapters on universal history, religious history, and
+philosophical criticism, are closely linked with the chapters on
+ethnology and biology. What a contrast between this encyclopædic
+thought, with its reminiscences of our eighteenth century France, and
+the German savant of caricature, specialist to absurdity--a type which
+is often enough encountered in real life!
+
+His vast learning is vivified by a captivating and brilliant
+personality, overflowing with feeling and humour. He makes no attempt to
+conceal himself behind the mask of a false objectivity. In the
+Introduction he hastens to tear off this mask, with which the insincere
+thought of our epoch is covered. He treats with contempt what he calls
+"the eternal straining for all-round treatment
+(Einerseits-Andererseits), the perpetual compromise which, under the
+hypocritical pretext of "justice," weds incompatibles, the carp and the
+hare, "war and humanity, beauty and fashion, internationalism and
+nationalism." Method alone should be objective. The conclusions
+inevitably retain a subjective element, and it is well that this should
+be so. "As long as we refuse to renounce the right of individuality and
+the right of striving towards goals of our own choosing, so long must we
+judge human deeds from the outlook of our own individuality. War is one
+of the deeds of man, and as such we have to pass judgment on it
+categorically. Any compromise on this point would obscure the issues;
+nay, it would be almost immoral.... War, like everything else, should
+have light thrown upon it from every side before we pass judgment on it;
+but only to persons of second-rate intelligence can it seem that we
+should actually pass our judgment on war from all sides at once, or even
+from two sides only."
+
+Such is the objectivity which we have to expect from this book. Not the
+soft, flabby, indifferent, contradictory objectivity of the scientific
+dilettante, of the arch-eunuch: but a mettlesome objectivity which is
+appropriate in this fighting age, the objectivity of one who honestly
+attempts to see everything and to know everything; but who, having done
+so, endeavours to organise his data in accordance with a hypothesis, an
+intuition tinged with passion.
+
+Such a system is worth precisely what the intuition is worth, precisely
+what the man who has the intuition is worth. For, in a great thinker,
+the hypothesis is the man. His hypothesis is the concentrated essence of
+his energy, his observation, his thought, his imaginative powers, and
+even of his passions. Nicolai's hypothesis is vigorous, and it takes
+risks. The central idea of his book may be summed up as follows: "There
+exists a genus humanum, and there is only one such genus. The human
+race, humanity as a whole, is but a single organism, and has a common
+consciousness."
+
+Whoever speaks of a living organism, speaks of transformation and of
+unceasing movement. This perpetuum mobile gives its peculiar colour to
+Nicolai's reflections. In general, we who are advocates or opponents of
+the war tend to pass judgment on it almost exclusively in abstracto. We
+conceive it as static and absolute. It may almost be said that as soon
+as a thinker concentrates upon a subject in order to study it, his first
+step is to kill it. To a great biologist all is movement, and movement
+is the material of his study. The social or moral question that concerns
+us is not whether war is good or bad in the sphere of the eternal; but
+whether war is good or bad for us in our own moment of time. Now, for
+Nicolai, war is a stage in human evolution which man has long outgrown.
+His book depicts for us this evolutionary flux of instincts and ideas,
+an irresistible current in which there is never a backwash.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The work is divided into two main parts, of unequal length. The first,
+occupying three-fourths of the book, is an attack upon the masters of
+the hour, war, fatherland, and race; an attack upon the reigning
+sophisms. It is entitled "The Evolution of War." The criticism of the
+present, in part one, is followed, in part two, by constructive ideas
+for the future. This second part is entitled "How War may be abolished."
+It outlines the coming society; sketches its morality and its faith. So
+abundant, in this book, are data and ideas, that selection is a
+difficult matter. Apart from the extraordinary richness of its elements,
+the work may be considered from two outlooks, specifically German, and
+universally human, respectively. Straightforwardly, at the outset,
+Nicolai tells his readers that although, in his opinion, all the nations
+must share responsibility for the war, he proposes to concern himself
+with the responsibility of Germany alone. He leaves it to the thinkers
+of other lands, each in his own country, to settle their country's
+accounts. "It is not my business," he says, "to know whether others have
+sinned extra muros, but to prevent people from sinning intra muros." If
+he chooses his instances from Germany above all, this is not because
+instances are lacking elsewhere, but because he writes, above all, for
+Germans. A large proportion of his historical and philosophical
+criticism deals with Germany ancient and modern. The point is well
+worthy of special analysis. No one, henceforward, will have any right to
+speak of the German spirit, unless he has read the profound chapters in
+which Nicolai, endeavouring to define national individuality, analyses
+the characteristics of German Kultur, analyses its virtues and its
+vices, its excessive faculty for adaptation, the struggle which the old
+Teutonic idealism has waged in its conflict with militarism, and
+elucidates the manner in which idealism was vanquished by militarism.
+The unfortunate influence of Kant (for whom, none the less, Nicolai has
+a great admiration) is stressed by him on account of the part it has
+played in this crisis of a nation's soul. Or rather, we may say, Nicolai
+stresses the influence of Kant's dualism of the reasons. This dualism of
+the pure reason and the practical reason (which Kant, despite the best
+efforts of his later years, was never able to associate in a
+satisfactory manner) is a brilliant symbol of the contradictory dualism
+to which modern Germany has accommodated herself all too easily. For
+Germany, preserving full liberty in the world of thought, has trampled
+under foot liberty in the world of action, or at least has surrendered
+this liberty without ever a regret (Chapter Ten, passim).
+
+These analyses of the German soul are of great interest to the
+psychologist, the historian, and the statesmen. But, since I am
+compelled to select, I shall choose for description those parts of the
+book which are addressed to everyone, which touch us all, which are
+truly universal. I shall speak of the general problem of war and peace
+in human evolution. I shall have to resign myself to yet further
+sacrifices. Ignoring the chapters which discuss this topic from a
+historical and from a literary point of view,[49] I shall confine myself
+to the biological studies, for it is in these that the author's
+individuality finds its most original self-expression.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At grips with the hydra of war, Nicolai attacks the evil at the root. He
+opens with a vigorous analysis of instinct in general, for he is careful
+to avoid denying the innate character of war.
+
+War, he says, is an instinct which springs from the deeps of mankind, an
+instinct which influences even those who condemn it. It is an
+intoxication which is carefully fostered in time of peace; when it
+breaks forth, it takes possession of all alike. But because it is an
+instinct, it does not follow that this instinct is sacred. Rousseau has
+popularised the idea that instinct is always good and trustworthy.
+Nothing of the kind. Instinct may be mistaken. When it is mistaken, the
+race dies out, and we can therefore easily understand that, in races
+which do not die out, instinct has a valid reason for existence.
+Nevertheless, an animal endowed with sound instincts, may be deceived
+by these instincts when it leaves its primitive environment. We see an
+example of this in the moth which burns itself in the flame. The
+instinct was sound in the days when the sun was the only luminary, but
+no evolution has taken place to adapt this instinct to the existence of
+lamps. We may admit that every instinct had its use at the time when it
+first came into existence. This may be true of the fighting instinct,
+but it does not follow that the combative instinct is useful to man
+to-day. Instinct is extremely conservative, and survives the
+circumstances that produced it. For instance, the wolf, wishing to cover
+up its tracks, buries its excrement; the dog, a town dweller, stupidly
+scrapes the pavement. In the latter case instinct has become senseless,
+purposeless.
+
+Man has retained many rudimentary and functionless instincts. He is able
+to modify them, but in his case the task is peculiarly complex. Man is
+distinguished from other animals by his incomparably greater power of
+modifying the natural environment to suit his own purposes. But this
+being so, man should transform his instincts to adapt them to the
+changed circumstances. Now these instincts are tenacious, and the
+struggle is hard. All the more, therefore, is it necessary. Whole
+species of lower animals became extinct because they were unable to
+modify their instincts as the environment changed. "Is man also to die
+out from want of the will to change his instincts? He can change them,
+or he could if he would. Man alone has the power of choice, and
+consequently can err. But this curse of the liability to error is the
+necessary consequence of freedom, and it gives birth to the blessed
+power man possesses to learn and to transform himself." Yet man makes
+very little use of this power. He is still encumbered with archaic
+instincts. He accepts them complacently. He has an excessive esteem for
+what is old precisely because he is swayed by hereditary instincts which
+he has unconsciously come to revere.
+
+In the kingdom of the one-eyed, we ought not to make the blind man king.
+Because we all have combative instincts, it does not follow that we
+should give these instincts free rein. To-day, when we are realising
+the advantages of world-wide organisation, it is assuredly time that
+such instincts should be put under restraint. Nicolai, seeing his
+contemporaries giving themselves up to their enthusiasm for war, is
+reminded of dogs which persist in scraping the pavement after relieving
+nature.
+
+What, precisely, are the combative instincts? Are they essential
+attributes of the human species? In Nicolai's opinion, they are nothing
+of the sort. He inclines, rather, to regard them as aberrations, for man
+was originally a pacific and social animal. His anatomical structure
+proves it. Man is one of the most defenceless of animals, having neither
+claws, nor horns, nor hoofs, nor carapace. His ape-like ancestors had no
+other resource but to seek safety among the branches. When man came down
+to the ground and took to walking, his hand was freed for other uses.
+This five-fingered hand, which in most animals has become a weapon
+(clawed or hoofed), has in the apes alone remained a prehensile organ.
+Essentially pacific, ill-constructed for striking or tearing, its
+natural function was to seize and to take.[50] "The hand ... was
+superfluous as an aid to locomotion on the ground, and thus became free
+and able to lay hold of something besides trees. Consequently it grasped
+tools, thus becoming the means and the symbol of man's future
+greatness." But the hand would not have sufficed for man's defence. Had
+he been a solitary animal, he would have been destroyed by foes stronger
+and better equipped than himself. His strength lay in his being
+gregarious. The social state existed for mankind long before family life
+began. Men did not voluntarily unite to form a community (the family
+first, for instance, then the tribe, then a class, then a commune,
+etc.); it was the existence of the primitive community which rendered
+possible the advance from the prehuman to the human stage.[51] By
+nature, as Aristotle said, man is a sociable animal. The drawing
+together of men is older and more primitive than war.
+
+Look, again, at the lower animals. War is rare between members of the
+same species. The animals that wage war (stags, ants, bees, and certain
+birds), have always reached a stage of development in which proprietary
+rights exist, it may be over booty or it may be over a female. Ownership
+and war go hand in hand. War is merely one of the innumerable
+consequences of ownership at a certain stage of evolution. Whatever the
+declared aim of war, its real purpose always is to despoil man of his
+labour or of the fruit of his labour. Unless a war be utterly futile,
+its necessary result will be the enslavement of a part of humanity.
+Shamefacedly we may change the name, but let us avoid being duped by the
+new name! A war indemnity is nothing else than part of the labour of the
+vanquished enemy. Modern war hypocritically pretends to protect private
+property; but in its effect on the conquered nation as a whole, it
+indirectly attacks the rights of every individual. Let us be frank. Let
+us, when we defend war, dare to admit and to proclaim that we are
+defending slavery.
+
+There is no question of denying that both war and slavery may have been
+useful, and indeed indispensable, during a certain phase of human
+evolution. Primitive man, like the lower animals, had all his energies
+monopolised by the attaining of nutriment. When spiritual needs began to
+demand their rights, it was necessary that the masses should work to
+excess in order that a small minority might pass lives of learned
+leisure. The marvellous civilisations of antiquity could not have
+existed without slavery. But the time has now arrived when a new
+organisation has rendered slavery superfluous. In a modern national
+society a community voluntarily renounces part of its earnings (and will
+have to renounce an increasingly large part of its earnings) for social
+purposes. Machines produce about ten times as much as unaided human
+labour. Were they intelligently used, the social problem would be
+greatly simplified. A sophism of the political economists assures us
+that national wellbeing increases proportionally with the increase in
+the consumption of commodities. The principle is unsound. Its outcome is
+that it inoculates people with artificial needs. But it is this
+artificially excited greed which, in the last resort, continues to
+bolster up slavery in the shape of exploitation and war. Property
+created war, and property maintains war. For the weak only, is property
+a source of virtue, since the weak will not make efforts without the
+stimulus afforded by the desire for possession. Throughout history, war
+has been for property. Nicolai does not believe that there has ever been
+a war for a purely ideal object, and without any thought of material
+domination. People may perhaps fight for the pure ideal of country, in
+the endeavour to express to the full the genius of their own nation. But
+the guns will not really help the ideal forward. Such material arguments
+as guns and bayonets will seem valuable only when the abstract idea has
+become intertwined with the lusts for power and property. Thus, war,
+property, and slavery, are close associates. Goethe wrote:
+
+    Krieg, Handel und Piraterie
+    Dreieinig sind sie, nicht zu trennen.[52]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nicolai then proceeds to criticise the pseudo-scientific notions from
+which our modern intellectuals deduce justifications for war. Above all
+he disposes of fallacious Darwinism and of the misuse of the idea of the
+struggle for existence. These notions, imperfectly understood and
+speciously interpreted, are by many regarded as furnishing a sanction
+for war. Or, it is held, war is a method of selection, and is therefore
+a natural right. To such conceptions Nicolai opposes genuine science,
+the fundamental law of the increase in living beings,[53] and the law
+that there is a natural limit to growth.[54] It is obvious that the
+existence of these limitations imposes struggle upon individual beings
+and upon species, seeing that the world contains only a restricted
+quantity of energy, that is to say of nutriment. But Nicolai shows that
+war is the most paltry, the stupidest, one may even say the most
+ruinous, among all forms of struggle. Modern science, which enables us
+to estimate the amount of solar energy reaching our planet, shows us
+that the entire animal world does not as yet make use of more than one
+twenty thousandth part of the available supply. It is obvious that in
+these conditions war, that is to say the murder of another accompanied
+by the theft of that other's share of energy, is an inexcusable crime.
+It is, says Nicolai, as if loaves were lying about by the thousand, and
+we were nevertheless to kill a beggar in order to steal his crust.
+Mankind has an almost boundless field to exploit, and man's proper
+struggle is the struggle with nature. All other forms of struggle bring
+impoverishment and ruin, by distracting our attention from our main
+purposes. The creative method is based upon the harnessing of new and
+ever new sources of energy. The starting point was the prehistoric
+discovery of fire, when man for the first time was able to effect the
+explosive liberation of the solar energy stored up by plants. The
+discovery marked a new turn in human affairs, and was the dawn of man's
+supremacy over nature. During the last hundred years this new principle
+has been developed to such an enormous extent that human evolution has
+been entirely transformed. Nearly all the chief problems may be said to
+have been solved, and what remains requisite is the practical
+application. Thermo-electricity renders possible the direct and
+purposive utilisation of solar energy. Modern chemical researches point
+to the possibility of artificially manufacturing foodstuffs, and so on.
+Were man to apply all his combative energy to the utilisation of the
+forces of nature, not merely could he live at ease, but there would be
+room in the world for milliards of additional human beings. When
+compared with this splendid struggle, how puny seems the great war! What
+has that war to do with the real struggle for existence? It is a product
+of degeneration. War is justifiable. Not war between human beings. But
+creative war for man's mastery over natural forces, the young war of
+which hardly a millionth part has yet been waged. In this war we can
+foresee victories such as no human being has ever yet won.
+
+Nicolai, contrasting this creative struggle with the destructive
+struggle, symbolises them in the persons of two German men of science.
+One of these is Professor Haber, who has turned his knowledge to account
+for the manufacture of asphyxiating bombs, and who will doubtless not be
+forgotten. The other is Emil Fischer, the brilliant chemist who has
+achieved the synthetic production of sugar, and who will perhaps achieve
+the synthesis of albumen. Fischer is the founder, or at any rate the
+forerunner, of the new era of humanity. Future generations will
+gratefully refer to him as one of the supreme conquerors in the
+victorious struggle for the sources of life. He is in very truth a
+practitioner of the "divine art" of which Archimedes spoke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nicolai's arguments, showing that war is antagonistic to human progress,
+are confronted with an indisputable fact, a fact which has to be
+explained--the actual existence of war, and its monstrous expansion.
+Never has war been more powerful, more brutal, more widespread. Never
+has war been more glorified. In an interesting chapter (Chapter
+Fourteen), which introduces a number of debatable points, Nicolai shows
+that in earlier days apologists for war were exceptional. Even among the
+epic poets of war, those whose song was of heroism, the direct
+references to war convey fear and disapproval. Delight in war
+(Kriegslust), love of war for its own sake, is peculiar to modern
+literature. We have to come down to the writings of Moltke, Steinmetz,
+Lasson, Bernhardi, and Roosevelt, to find apotheoses of war, pæans of
+war whose jubilation is quasi-religious. Nor was it until the outbreak
+of the present struggle that such huge armies as those of to-day were
+witnessed. The Greek armies in classical antiquity did not exceed
+20,000. Those of imperial Rome, ranged from 100,000 to 200,000. In the
+eighteenth century, armies of 150,000 were known; while Napoleon had an
+army of 750,000. In 1870, there were armies of two and a half millions.
+But in the present war there are ten million fighting men in each camp
+(Chapter Five and Chapter Six). The increase is colossal, and quite
+recent. Even if we take into account the possibility of a struggle in
+the near future between Europeans and Mongols, a proportional increase
+could not continue beyond a generation or two, for the whole population
+of the globe would not suffice to furnish such armies.
+
+But Nicolai is not appalled by the titanic dimensions of the monster he
+is fighting. Indeed, this very fact gives him confidence in the ultimate
+victory of his cause. For biology has revealed to him the mysterious law
+of giganthanasia. One of the most important principles of paleontology
+teaches that all animals (with the exception of insects, which, for this
+very reason, are, with the brachiopods, the oldest families on the
+globe), all species, tend throughout the centuries to grow larger and
+larger until, of a sudden, when they seem greatest and strongest, their
+forms disappear from the geological record. In nature it is always the
+large forms that die. That which is large must die for the reason that,
+in conformity with the imperious law of growth, the day comes when it
+exceeds the limits of its primordial possibilities. Thus is it, writes
+Nicolai, with war. Along the boundless field-grey battle lines, thrills
+the warning of the coming Twilight of the Gods. Everything beautiful and
+characteristic in the war of ancient days has vanished. Gone is the gay
+camp life, gone are the motley uniforms, gone is single combat--gone, in
+a word, are the show features. The battlefield, now, has become little
+more than an accessory. In former days the scene of battle used to be
+selected with care, for then the rival armies manoeuvred for position.
+To-day the soldiers settle down haphazard and dig themselves in. The
+essential work is carried on elsewhere, by the provision of finance,
+munitions, food supply, railways, etc. In place of the one man of genius
+as general, we have now the impersonal machinery of the general staff.
+The old lively, joyous war is dead.--It may be that even yet war has not
+attained its zenith. In the present war there are still neutrals, and
+perhaps Freiligrath was right in holding that there must first be some
+battle in which the whole world will share. But if so, that will be the
+very last. The final war will be the greatest and the most terrible of
+all, just as the last of the great saurians was the most gigantic. Our
+technique has swelled war to its extremest limits, and will then slay
+war.[55]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At bottom, behind its fearsome exterior, the war monster lacks
+confidence, and feels that its life is threatened. Never before have
+warmongers appealed, as they appeal to-day, to such a compost of
+arguments, mystico-scientifico-politico-murderous, to justify the
+existence of war. No one would dream of such arguments were it not that
+the days of war are numbered, were it not that the most enthusiastic
+disciples of war are shaken in their faith. But Nicolai is ruthless in
+attack, and part of his book is a pitiless satire upon all the sophisms
+wherewith in our folly we attempt to justify war--the executioner's axe
+poised over our heads. These sophisms are: the sophism that war is a
+biological means for ensuring the survival of the fittest; the sophism
+of defensive war; the sophism of the humanisation of war; the sophism of
+the alleged solidarity created by war, the so-called party truce; the
+sophism of the fatherland--for the fatherland, in practical application,
+becomes the narrowly conceived and artificially constructed political
+state; the sophism of race; and so on.
+
+I should have been glad to quote numerous extracts from these ironical
+and severely critical passages. Of exceptional interest are the
+paragraphs in which he castigates the most impudent and the most
+flourishing of current sophisms, the sophism of race, for whose sake
+thousands of poor simpletons of all nations are slaughtering one
+another. He writes as follows:
+
+"The race problem is one of the most melancholy chapters in the history
+of human thought. Nowhere else has knowledge, supposedly impartial,
+consciously or unconsciously placed itself so unscrupulously at the
+service of ambitious and self-seeking politicians. Indeed, it might
+almost be said that the various theories of race have never been put
+forward save with the object of advancing some claim or other. The
+writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Anglo-German, afford perhaps
+the most repulsive example. As we all know, this author has endeavoured
+to claim as German everyone of outstanding importance in the history of
+the world, Christ and Dante not excepted. It would be strange if this
+demagogic example found so [many] imitators.... Recently Paul Souday has
+attempted to show that all the notable men of Germany belong to the
+Keltic race ('Le Temps,' August 7, 1915)."
+
+Nicolai replies to these extravagances with the following definite
+assertions:
+
+1. Proof is lacking that a pure race is better than a mixed race.
+(Examples are adduced from animal species and from human history.)
+
+2. It is impossible to define the term race as applied to the
+subdivisions of mankind, for valid criteria are lacking. Such
+classifications as have been attempted, now upon a historical, now upon
+a linguistic, and now upon an anthropological basis, are extremely
+inconsistent one with another, and have been almost complete failures.
+
+3. There are no pure races in Europe. Less than any other nation have
+the Germans a right to claim racial purity.[56] Anyone who seeks a true
+Teuton to-day had better go to Sweden, the Netherlands, or England.
+
+4. If to the term race we attach a definite biological meaning, we can
+hardly say that there is any such thing as a European race.
+
+Patriotism based on race is impossible, and in most cases it is utterly
+absurd. There is no such thing as ethnic homogeneity in any extant
+nation. The cohesion of contemporary nations does not come down to them
+as a heritage of which they can dispose at will. From day to day this
+cohesion must be rewon. Unremittingly the members of each nation must
+fortify their community of thought, feeling, and will. This is meet and
+right. As Renan said, "The existence of a nation should be a daily
+plebiscite." In a word, what unites people to form a nation is not the
+force of history; it is the desire to be together, and the mutual need
+felt by the members of the nation. Our thoughts and our feelings are not
+guided by the vows that others have made for us, but by our own free
+will.
+
+Is it so to-day? What place does free will hold among the nations of
+to-day? Patriotism has assumed an extraordinarily oppressive form.
+During no other age in history has it been so tyrannical and so
+exclusive. It devours everything. Our country, to-day, claims to rank
+above religion, above art, science, thought, above civilisation. This
+monstrous hypertrophy cannot be explained as an efflux from the natural
+sources of patriotic instincts, as an efflux of love of the native soil,
+of tribal sentiment, of the social need for forming vast communities.
+Its colossal effects are the outcome of a pathological phenomenon; they
+are the outcome of mass suggestion. Nicolai tersely analyses this
+conception. It is remarkable, he says, that whenever several animals or
+several human beings do anything together, the mere fact of cooperation
+causes each individual's action to be modified. We have scientific proof
+that two men can carry far more than twice as much as one. In like
+manner, a number of human beings react in a very different way from
+these same beings in isolation. Every cavalryman knows that his horse
+will do more in the troop than it will do alone, will cover more ground
+and will suffer less fatigue. Forel has pointed out that an ant which,
+surrounded by companions, will readily face death, shows fear and runs
+away from a much weaker ant when she is alone and some way from the
+ant-hill. Among men, in like manner, the feeling of the crowd greatly
+intensifies the reactions of each individual. "This is most evident at a
+public meeting. In many cases the speaker has hardly opened his mouth
+before he communicates some of his own emotion to every one of his
+hearers. Suppose it to be only the hundredth part on the average, and
+suppose that the audience numbers one thousand, then the speaker's
+emotion has already been multiplied tenfold, as will speedily appear
+from the reactions of the audience." This in turn reacts on the speaker,
+who is carried away by the emotions of his hearers. And so it goes on.
+
+Now in our day the audience is of enormous size, and the world war has
+made it gigantic. Thanks to powerful and rapid means of communication,
+thanks to the telegraph and the press, the huge groups of allied states
+have become, as it were, single publics numbered by millions. Imagine,
+in this vibrant and sonorous mass, the effect of the least cry, of the
+slightest tremor. They assume the aspect of cosmic convulsions. The
+entire mass of humanity is shaken as by an earthquake. Under these
+conditions what happens to such a sentiment as the love of country,
+originally natural and healthy? In normal times, says Nicolai, a good
+man loves his country just as he should love his wife, while well aware
+that there may be other women more beautiful, more intelligent, or
+better, than she. But one's country to-day is like a hysterically
+jealous woman who is in a fury when anyone recognises another woman's
+merits. In normal times the true patriot is (or should be) the man who
+loves what is good in his country and resists what is evil. But nowadays
+anyone who acts thus is deemed an enemy of his country. A patriot, in
+the contemporary sense of the word, loves both what is good and what is
+bad in his country; he is ready to do evil for the sake of his country;
+carried away by the stream of mass suggestion, he is positively eager to
+do evil for his country's sake. The weaker a man's character, the more
+inflammatory his patriotism. He has no power to resist collective
+suggestion; and is indeed passionately attracted by it, for every weak
+man looks for others' support, and believes himself stronger if he does
+what others are doing. Now, these persons of weak character have no
+common bond of profound culture. What they need to unite them is an
+external bond, and what can suit them better than national feeling!
+"Every blockhead," writes Nicolai, "feels several inches taller if he
+and a few dozen millions of his kind can only unite to form a
+majority.... The fewer independent personalities a nation possesses, the
+fiercer is that nation's patriotism."
+
+This mass attraction, which works like a magnet, is the positive side of
+jingoism. The negative side is hatred of foreign countries. War is the
+biological culture-medium. War hurls upon the world sufferings mountain
+high; it crushes the world by material and spiritual privations. If
+people are to endure it, there must be a supreme exaltation of mass
+sentiment, to support the weak by herding them more closely together.
+This is artificially effected by the newspaper press. The result is
+appalling. Patriotism concentrates all the energies of the human mind
+upon love for one's own country and upon hatred for the enemy. Hatred
+becomes a religion. Hatred without reason, without common sense, and
+absolutely without foundation. No room is left for any other faculty.
+Intelligence and morality have abdicated. Nicolai quotes a number of
+almost incredible examples from the Germany of 1914 and 1915, and
+equally striking instances could be given in the case of every
+belligerent nation. There was no resistance to these suggestions. In
+the collective aberration, all differences of class, education,
+intellectual or moral value, are reduced to one level; all are
+equalised. The entire human race, from base to summit, is delivered over
+to the Furies. If the least sparkle of free will shows itself, it is
+trampled under foot, and the isolated independent is torn to pieces as
+Pentheus was torn to pieces by the Bacchantes.
+
+But this frenzy does not disturb the calm vision of the thinker. To
+Nicolai, the paroxysm he contemplates seems the last flicker of the
+torch. Just as, he declares, horse-racing and yachting are undergoing
+their fullest development in our own day, when horses and sails are
+ceasing to have any practical use, so likewise patriotism has become a
+fanatical cult at the very moment when it has ceased to be a factor in
+civilisation. It is the fate of the Epigoni. In remote ages it was good,
+it was needful, that individual egoism should be broken by the grouping
+of human beings in tribes and clans. The patriotism of the towns was
+justified when it victoriously resisted the egoism of the robber barons.
+The patriotism of the state was justified when it concentrated all the
+energies of a nation. The national conflicts of the nineteenth century
+had useful work to do. But to-day the work of the national states is
+done. New tasks call us. Patriotism is no longer a suitable aim for
+humanity; its influence is retrograde. But the retrogressive efforts of
+patriotism are fruitless. No one can arrest the progress of evolution,
+and people are merely committing suicide by throwing themselves beneath
+the iron wheels of the chariot. The sage is unperturbed by the frenzied
+resistance of the forces of the past, for he knows them to be the forces
+of despair. He leaves the dead to bury their dead; and, looking forward,
+he already contemplates the living unity of mankind that is to be. Among
+the trials and disasters of the present, he realises within himself the
+serene harmony of the "great body" whereof all men are members, as in
+the profound saying of Seneca: Membra sumus corporis magni.
+
+In a subsequent article we shall learn how Nicolai describes this corpus
+magnum and the mens magna which animates it, the Weltorganismus, the
+organism of universal humanity, whose coming is already heralded to-day.
+
+_October 1, 1917._
+
+"demain," Geneva, October, 1917.
+
+
+II
+
+We have seen with how much energy G. F. Nicolai condemns the absurdity
+of war and the sophisms which serve for its support. Nevertheless the
+sinister madness triumphs for the time. In 1914, reason went bankrupt.
+Spreading from nation to nation, this bankruptcy, this madness,
+subsequently involved all the peoples of the world. There was no lack of
+established ethical systems and established religions which, had they
+done their duty, would have opposed a barrier to this contagion of
+murder and folly. But all the ethical systems, all the religions, now in
+existence, proved hopelessly inadequate. We have seen it for ourselves
+in the case of Christianity; and Nicolai shows, following Tolstoi, that
+Buddhism is in no better case.
+
+As far as Christianity is concerned, its abdication is of old date.
+After the great compromise under Constantine, in the fourth century of
+our era, when the emperor made the church of Christ a state church, the
+essential thought of Jesus was betrayed by the official representatives
+of the creed, and was delivered over to Cæsar. Only among certain free
+religious individualities, most of whom were charged with heresy, was
+this essential thought preserved (to a degree) until our own time. But
+its last defenders have lately denied it. The Christian sects which up
+to now have invariably refused military service, for example the
+Mennonites in Germany, the Dukhobors in Russia, the Paulicians, the
+Nazarenes, etc., are participating in the war to-day.[57] "Simon Menno,
+the founder of the Mennonites, who died in 1561, condemned war and
+vengeance.... As late as 1813, the strength of moral conviction in the
+members of this sect was still so great that, despite the patriotic
+excitement of that year, so ruthless a soldier as York actually exempted
+them from Landwehr service, by a decree dated February 18th. But in
+1915, H. G. Mannhardt, Mennonite preacher in Danzig, delivered an
+address glorifying feats of arms and martial heroes."
+
+"There was a time," writes Nicolai, "when it was believed that Islam was
+inferior to Christianity. At that date the Turkish armies were
+threatening the heart of Europe. To-day the Turk has almost been driven
+out of Europe, but morally he has conquered Europe. Unseen, the green
+flag of the Prophet floats over every house in which there is talk of
+the 'holy war.'"
+
+German religious poems depict the fight in the trenches as "a test of
+piety instituted by God." No one is now astonished at the absurd
+contradiction in terms involved in speaking of "Christian warfare." Few
+theologians or churchmen have dared to swim against the stream. In his
+admirable book _La Guerre infernale_,[58] Gustave Dupin has pilloried
+gruesome specimens of militarist Christianity. Nicolai gives other
+samples, which it would be a pity to leave unrecorded. In 1915,
+Professor Baumgarten, a Kiel theologian, placidly pointed out that there
+is opposition between the morality of bellicose nationalism and the
+morality of the Sermon on the Mount, but "at present," he went on to
+say, "we ought to pay more attention to Old Testament texts"; thus
+deliberately, and with a smile, throwing Christianity overboard. Arthur
+Brausewetter, another theologian, made a remarkable discovery. War
+revealed to him the Holy Spirit. "Never, till this year of war, 1914,
+did we really know the nature of the Holy Ghost...."
+
+While Christianity was thus publicly denied by its priests and its
+pastors, the religions of Asia were no less ready to jettison the
+inconvenient thoughts of their founders. Tolstoi had already pointed
+this out. "The Buddhists of to-day do not merely tolerate murder; they
+positively justify it. During the war between Japan and Russia, Soyen
+Shaku, one of the leading Buddhist dignitaries in Japan, wrote a defence
+of war.[59] Buddha had uttered this beautiful word of afflicted love:
+'All things are my children, all are images of myself, all flow from a
+single source, and all are parts of my own body. That is why I cannot
+rest as long as the least particle of what is has failed to reach its
+destination.' In this sigh of mystical love, which aspires towards the
+fusion of all beings, the Buddhist of to-day has safely discovered an
+appeal to a war of extermination. For, he declares, inasmuch as the
+world has failed to reach its destination, has failed owing to the
+perversity of many men, we must make war on these men and must
+annihilate them. 'Thus shall we extirpate the roots of evil.'"--This
+bloodthirsty Buddhist recalls to my mind the guillotine-idealism of our
+Jacobins in '93. Their monstrous faith is summed up in the words of
+Saint-Just which close my tragedy _Danton_:
+
+    "The nations slay one another that God may live."[60]
+
+When religions are so weak, it is not surprising that mere ethical
+systems should prove unavailing. Nicolai shows us what a travesty Kant's
+disciples have made of their master's teaching. Willy-nilly, the author
+of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ has been compelled to put on the
+field-grey uniform. Have not his German commentators insisted that the
+Prussian army is the most perfect realisation of Kant's thought? For,
+they tell us, in the Prussian army the sentiment of Kantian duty has
+become a living reality.
+
+Let us waste no more time over these inanities, which differ only in
+shade from those made use of in every land by the national guard of the
+intelligentsia, to exalt their cause and to glorify war. Enough to
+recognise, with Nicolai, that European idealism crashed to ruin in 1914.
+The German writer's conclusion (which I am content to record without
+comment), is that "we have proof that ordinary idealistic morality,
+whether Kantian or Christian, is absolutely useless, for it is unable to
+lead any of those who profess it to act morally." In view of the
+manifest impossibility of founding moral action upon a purely idealistic
+basis, Nicolai considers that our first duty is to seek some other
+basis. He wishes that Germany, schooled by her ignominious fall, by her
+"moral Jena," should work at this task whose fulfilment is so
+indispensable to mankind--should work at it for herself even more than
+for any other nation, seeing that her need is the greatest. "Let us
+see," he says, "if it be not possible to find in nature, scientifically
+studied, the conditions of an objective ethic, of an ethic that shall be
+independent of our personal sentiments, good or bad, always
+vacillating."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the first part of the volume we have learned that war is a
+transitional phenomenon in human evolution. What, then, is the true and
+eternal principle of humanity? Is there such a principle? Is there a
+higher imperative, valid for all men alike?
+
+Yes, answers Nicolai. This higher imperative is the very law of life,
+which governs the entire organism of humanity. Natural law has only two
+bases, only two which can never be shaken: the individual, separately
+considered; and the human universality. All intermediaries, like the
+family and the state, are organised groupings,[61] subject to change,
+and they do actually change with changing customs; they are not natural
+organisms. Egoism and altruism, the two powerful sentiments which give
+life to our moral world, acting therein like the contrasted forces of
+positive and negative electricity, are the respective expressions of the
+individual and of the collectivity. Egoism is the natural outflow of our
+individuality. Altruism owes its existence to the obscure recognition
+that we are parts of a united organism, humanity.
+
+In the second half of his book Nicolai undertakes to throw light upon
+this obscure realisation, and to establish it upon a scientific
+foundation. He undertakes to show that humanity is no mere abstraction,
+but a living reality, an organism that can be subjected to scientific
+observation.
+
+In this study, the poetical intuition of the ancient philosophers is
+interestingly linked with the experimental spirit and the analytical
+method of modern science. The latest biological and embryological
+theories are invoked to help in the comment on the hylozoism of the
+seven sages and the mysticism of the early Christians. Janicki and de
+Vries shake hands with Heraclitus and Saint Paul. The upshot is a
+strange vision of materialistic and dynamistic pantheism--a vision of
+humanity considered as a body and a soul in unceasing motion.
+
+Nicolai begins by reminding us that this idea has existed in all ages.
+He summarises the history of the doctrine. We have the "fire" of
+Heraclitus, which for the sage of Ephesus was also the universal
+intelligence of the world. We have the same thing in the "pneuma" of the
+stoics and in the "pneuma agion" of the primitive Christians, the sacred
+energy, the vivifying force, which is the concentrated essence of all
+the souls. It is what Origen speaks of as "universum mundum velut animal
+quoddam immensum." We encounter the idea once more in the fertile
+fancies of Cardanus, Giordano Bruno, Paracelsus, and Campanella.
+Animistic ideas are mingled with the science of Newton, and permeate his
+hypothesis of universal gravitation. Indeed, Musschenbroek, his
+immediate disciple, describes the gravitative principle as "amicitia";
+while Lichtenberg tells us that it is the "longing of the heavenly
+bodies for one another!" In a word, through the whole development of
+human thought runs the belief that our world is a single organism with a
+consciousness of its own. Nicolai tells us how it would interest him to
+write the history of this idea; and he outlines that history in his
+fascinating fourteenth chapter, "The Evolution of the Idea of the World
+as Organism."[62]
+
+He then passes to scientific demonstration. Is there, he asks, a
+material bond, a bodily, living, and enduring tie, between human beings
+of all lands and all ages?[63] He finds a proof that there is such a
+bond in the researches of Weismann and in that writer's theory of the
+germ plasm, which has now become classic.[64] In each individual, the
+cells of the germ plasm continue the life of the parents, of which, in
+the fullest sense of the word, they are living portions. They are
+undying. They pass, changeless, to our children and to our children's
+children. Thus there really persists throughout the whole genealogical
+tree a part of the same living substance. A portion of this organic
+unity lives in each individual and thereby we are physically connected
+with the universal community. Nicolai points out, in passing, the
+remarkable relationships between these scientific hypotheses of the last
+thirty years and certain mystical intuitions of the Greeks and the early
+Christians--"the spirit (pneuma) that quickeneth" (Saint John, vi, 63),
+the generative spirit, which is not only distinguished from the flesh,
+as Saint John declares, but is likewise distinguished from the soul, as
+appears from a passage in Saint Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians
+(xv, 44), where the "spiritual body" (soma pneumatikon) is contrasted
+with the "natural body" (soma psuchikon). The spiritual body is declared
+to be more essential than the natural body (the psychical or
+intellectual body); and the former really and materially penetrates the
+bodies of all men.
+
+Nor is this all. The studies made by contemporary biologists, and
+notably by the Russian biologist Janicki, on sexual reproduction[65]
+have explained how this method of reproduction safeguards the
+homogeneity of the germ plasm in an animal species, and how it
+unceasingly renews the mutual contacts among the individual members of a
+race. Janicki writes: "The world, if I may say so, has not been broken
+up into a mass of independent fragments, which then, for ever isolated
+one from another, ... must strike out for themselves on straight
+courses, with only side branches. On the contrary, owing to bi-sexual
+reproduction (amphimixis), the image of the macrocosm is ... reflected
+as a microcosm in each part; and the macrocosm resolves itself into a
+thousand microcosms.... Thus the individuals, while remaining
+independent, are materially and continuously interconnected, like
+strawberry plants whose runners are joined together.... Each separate
+individual develops, as it were, through an invisible system of rhizomes
+(subterranean roots) which unite the germ substances of countless
+individualities."--Thus it has been calculated that in the twenty-first
+generation, in five hundred years let us say, and supposing an average
+of three children to each couple, the posterity of a single couple will
+be equal in number to the entire human race. It may, therefore, be said
+that each one of us has within him a small portion of the living
+substance belonging to every one of the human beings that were living
+five hundred years ago. Consequently it is absurd that anyone should
+wish to restrict an individual, be he whom he may, within the category
+of a separate nation or race.
+
+Let us add that thought, too, propagates itself throughout mankind, in
+like manner with the germ plasm.
+
+Every thought, once expressed, leads in the human community a life
+independent of its creator; undergoes development in other minds; and
+has, like the germ plasm, an immortal life. So that, in humanity, there
+is neither true birth nor true death, whether material or spiritual.
+Empedocles, of old, realised this, for he said:
+
+"Yet another truth will I tell unto thee. Not a mortal thing is truly
+born, and death the destroyer is not the end. There is nought but
+intermixture and exchange of what is intermixed. But among men it is
+customary to term this 'birth.'"
+
+Humanity, therefore, materially and spiritually, is a single organism;
+all its parts are intimately connected and share in a common
+development.
+
+Upon these ideas there must now be grafted the concept of mutation and
+the observations of Hugo de Vries.--If this living substance which is
+common to all humanity should, at any time and owing to any influence,
+have acquired the capacity for changing[66] after a certain lapse of
+time, for instance a thousand years, then all those beings which have in
+them a share of this substance may suddenly undergo identical changes.
+It is well known that Hugo de Vries has observed such sudden variations
+in plants.[67] After centuries of stability in the characteristics of a
+species, quite suddenly, in a great number of individuals belonging to
+this species, there will one year occur a modification, the leaves
+becoming longer, or shorter, etc. Thenceforward this modification will
+be propagated as a constant feature, so that, by the following year, a
+new species will have come into existence.--The same thing happens among
+human beings, especially in the human brain; for, as far as man is
+concerned, the most striking instances of variation are found in the
+psychic domain. In each year, certain human beings present brain
+variations. Such abnormal individuals are sometimes regarded as madmen
+and sometimes as men of genius. They herald the coming variations of the
+species, variations of which they are the forerunners. At due date, the
+same peculiarities will suddenly manifest themselves throughout the
+species. Experience shows that transformations, or moral and social
+discoveries, appear at the same moment in the most widely separated and
+the most various countries. I have myself often been struck by this
+fact, both when studying history and when observing the men of my own
+day. Contemporary societies, at a great distance one from another and
+having no means of rapid intercommunication, will simultaneously exhibit
+the same moral and social phenomena. Hardly ever is a discovery born in
+the brain of a single inventor. At the same instant, other inventors
+happen upon it, anticipate it, or are hot upon the trail. The popular
+phrase runs, "the idea is in the air." When an idea is in the air, a
+mutation is about to occur in the human brain. We are, says Nicolai, on
+the eve of a "mutation of war." Moltke and Tolstoi represent the two
+great contrasted variations in human thought. Moltke extolled the
+ethical value of war; Tolstoi passed unqualified condemnation on war.
+Which of these two minds represents the variation of genius and which
+the variation of madness? In the light of contemporary events, most
+people would be inclined to give the palm to Moltke. But when an
+organism is about to undergo mutation, the change is often preluded by
+frequent and extensive variations. Of these divergent variations, those
+only persist which are best suited to the conditions of existence. Thus,
+in Nicolai's view, the ideas of Moltke and his disciples are a
+favourable presage that mutation is imminent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Whatever we may think of this hope that within the near future a
+mutation will occur leading to the formation of a humanity radically
+opposed to war, it is enough to watch the biological development of the
+extant world to acquire the belief that a new organisation, vaster and
+more peaceful, is at hand. In proportion as humanity evolves,
+communications between men are multiplied. During the last century there
+occurred a sudden and enormous improvement in the technical means for
+the exchange of ideas. To give one example only. In former days the
+circulation of letters throughout the whole world did not exceed one
+hundred thousand a year. To-day, the postal correspondence in Germany
+amounts to a milliard letters a year (15 per head), whereas formerly the
+number was 1 per 1,000 of the population. About forty years ago, in the
+countries which now form parts of the postal union, three milliards of
+letters, etc., were posted annually. By the year 1906 the number had
+increased to thirty-five milliards; and by 1914, to fifty milliards. (In
+Germany, 1 per head every 10 days; in Great Britain, 1 per head every 3
+days.) We have further to consider the increased speed of communication.
+Distance no longer exists for the telegraph; "the entire civilised world
+has become a large room in which we can all talk with one another."
+
+Such changes cannot fail to influence social life. In earlier times, any
+thought of union or federation between the various states of Europe
+remained utopian, were it only on account of the difficulty and slowness
+of communications. As Nicolai says, a state cannot extend to infinite
+proportions; it must be able to act promptly upon the different parts of
+its organism. To a certain extent, therefore, its size is a function of
+the rapidity of communications. In prehistoric times, a traveller could
+cover only about 12 miles a day; when wheeled traffic became
+established, the daily postal journey extended to 60 miles, and in the
+later days of mail-coach development, this distance was more than
+doubled; towards 1850, the railway service was able to cover 375 miles a
+day; modern trains range to 1,250 miles a day; an express service
+covering 6,000 miles or more a day is already within the scope of
+technical possibilities. For barbarians, the country was limited to a
+mountain valley. The states that existed at the close of the middle
+ages, states which have not greatly varied down to our times, were
+adapted in size to the possibilities of the mail coach. Now, such petty
+states are far too small. The modern man will no longer consent to be
+restricted in this way. He is continually crossing frontiers. He wants
+vast states, like those of America, Australia, Russia, or South Africa.
+We look forward to the days when, be it only for material reasons like
+the foregoing, the whole world will be a single state. Nothing that we
+can do will check this evolution; the change will come whether we like
+it or not. We can now understand that all earlier attempts to unite the
+nations of Europe, all those initiated in the middle ages and continued
+down to the nineteenth century, were rendered impossible of achievement
+by the lack of suitable material conditions. With the best will in the
+world, their realisation was impossible. But the requisite conditions
+exist to-day, and we may say that the organisation of contemporary
+Europe no longer corresponds to its biological development. Willy-nilly,
+Europe will have to adapt itself to the new conditions. The days of
+European unity have come. And the days of world-wide unity are at
+hand.[68]
+
+The new body of humanity, the "corpus magnum" of which Seneca spoke,
+needs a soul, and it needs a new faith. This faith, while retaining the
+absolute character of the old religions, must be wider and more plastic
+than they; it must not merely be adapted to the existing needs of the
+human mind, but must take into account the possibilities of future
+development. All previous religions, rooted in tradition and wishing to
+bind man to the past, were encased in dogmatism; and they one and all,
+as time passed, became hindrances to natural evolution. Where can we
+find a basis for faith and morals which shall be simultaneously absolute
+and mutable; shall be above man, and none the less human; shall be
+ideal, and none the less real?--We shall find what we want, says
+Nicolai, in humanity itself. For us, humanity is a reality which
+develops throughout the ages, but which at every moment represents for
+us an absolute entity. It evolves in a direction which may be
+fortuitous, but which, once taken, cannot be changed. It simultaneously
+embraces the past, the present, and the future. It is a unity in time, a
+vast synthesis of which we are but fragments. To be human, means to
+understand this development, to love it, to trust one's hopes to it, and
+to endeavour to participate in it consciously. Herein we find an ethical
+system, which Nicolai sums up as follows:
+
+1. The community of mankind is the divine upon earth, and is the
+foundation of morals.
+
+2. To be a man is to feel within one's self the reality of humanity at
+large. It is to feel, like a living law, that we are elements of that
+greater organism, in which (to quote Saint Paul's admirable intuition)
+we are all parts of one body and every one members one of another.
+
+3. The love of our neighbour is a feeling of good health. A general love
+for humanity is the feeling of organic health in humanity at large,
+reflected in one of its members. Therefore we should love and honour the
+human community and everything which sustains and fortifies it--work,
+truth, good and sound instincts.
+
+4. Fight everything which injures it. Above all, fight bad traditions,
+instincts that have become useless or harmful.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Scio et volo me esse hominem," writes Nicolai at the close of his book.
+"I know that I am a man, and I wish to be one."
+
+Man--he understands by this a being aware of the ties which attach him
+to the great human family, and aware of the evolution which carries him
+along with it--a spirit which understands and loves these ties and these
+laws, and which, submitting to them with delight, thereby becomes free
+and creative.[69] Man--the term applies to Nicolai himself in the sense
+of the character in Terence's play who said, "Homo sum; humani nihil a
+me alienum puto." Herein lies the great merit of his work; and herein,
+too, we find its defect. In his eagerness to include everything, he has
+attempted the impossible. He speaks in one place with an unjust
+contempt, and with a contempt which he above all should have been slow
+to express, of the "Vielwisser," the polyhistor.[70] But he himself is a
+Vielwisser, one of the finest specimens of this genus, too rare in our
+day. In all domains, art, science, history, religion, and politics, his
+insight is penetrating, but at the same time rapid and incisive.
+Everywhere his opinions are lively, often original, and often debatable.
+The wealth of his glimpses "de omni re scibili," the abundance of his
+intuitions and his reasonings, have a brilliant and at times a
+venturesome character. The historical chapters are not above reproach.
+Unquestionably the lack of books accounts for certain insufficiencies,
+but I think the peculiarities of the author's own genius are partly
+responsible. He is headlong and impulsive. These qualities give charm to
+his writing, but they are dangerous. What he loves, he sees beautifully.
+But woe to what he does not love! Take, for instance, his disdainful and
+hasty judgments upon the recent imaginative writers of
+Germany--judgments passed wholesale.[71]
+
+It is a remarkable fact that this German biologist resembles no one
+living or dead so much as he resembles one of our French encyclopedists
+of the eighteenth century. I know no one in contemporary France who
+can, to the same degree, be compared with him. Diderot and Dalembert
+would have opened their arms to this man of science, who humanises
+science, who boldly limns a picture instinct with life, a brilliant
+synthesis of the human mind, of its evolution, of its manifold
+activities, and of the results it has achieved; who throws wide the
+doors of his laboratory to intelligent men of the world; and who
+deliberately wishes to make of science an instrument of struggle and
+emancipation in the war of the nations on behalf of liberty. Like
+Dalembert and Diderot, he is "in the thick of the fight." He marches in
+the vanguard of modern thought, but he does not go further ahead than
+the due distance between a leader and his followers; he is never
+isolated, as were those great forerunners who remained throughout life
+cloistered in prophetic visions, centuries away from realisation; his
+ideals are no more than a day in advance of those cherished by his
+contemporaries.
+
+A German republican, he looks no higher for the moment than the
+political ideals of Young America, the America of 1917, in which
+(according to Nicolai) "we can see, not merely what this new, so to
+speak, cosmopolitan, patriotism means, but also the limits which must
+still be imposed on it.... The day for the brotherhood of man has not
+yet come [we quote Nicolai, remember]; the time is not yet ripe. There
+is still too profound a cleavage between White, Yellow, and Black. It is
+in America that European patriotism has awakened, the sentiment which
+will undoubtedly be the patriotism of the near future, and whose heralds
+we would fain be.... The new Europe is already born, though not in
+Europe."[72]
+
+In these lines we discern Nicolai's limitations, which any eighteenth
+century cosmopolitan would have over-stepped. In the practical domain,
+our author is essentially, uniquely, but absolutely, a European. It was
+to Europeans that he addressed his Manifesto of October, 1914, and his
+book of 1915.
+
+"It seems to us necessary before everything else," he writes, "that
+there should be a union of all who are in any way attached to European
+civilisation, that is to say, who are what Goethe once almost
+prophetically called 'good Europeans.'" And in a note he adds: "By
+European civilisation I mean every endeavour, in the broadest sense of
+the word, throughout the world, the origin of which can ultimately be
+traced back to Europe."
+
+Much might be said concerning this curtailment. For my own part, I
+consider it neither right nor useful that humanity should draw a line of
+demarcation between civilisation of European origin and the lofty
+civilisations of Asia. In my view, the harmonious realisation of
+humanity can be secured in no other way than by the union of these great
+complementary forces. Nay more; I believe that the European soul,
+unaided, impoverished and scorched by centuries of spendthrift
+existence, would be likely to flicker and even to go out, unless
+regenerated by an influx of the thought of other races.--But to each day
+its own task. Nicolai, at once thinker and man of action, turns to the
+most immediate duty. Concentrating all his energies upon a single aim,
+he accelerates the moment of attainment. "Just as certain of our
+forefathers, in advance of their time, enthusiastically advocated a
+united Germany, even so do we mean to fight for a united Europe. That is
+the hope inspiring this book."[73]--Nor does he merely hope for the
+victory of this cause. He already enjoys the victory, by anticipation.
+Immured in Graudenz fortress, near the room where Fritz Reuter, the
+German patriot, spent years in captivity because he believed in Germany,
+Nicolai notes that the Reuter room has been converted into a sanctuary
+by his erstwhile gaolers, "which is a living instance of the fact that
+reaction cannot endure for ever." His mind reverting to his own case, he
+declares: "We may be quite sure that the very same persons who to-day
+still continue to decry as high treason Goethe's conception of the
+citizen of Europe, will in a few years' time themselves subscribe to
+it."
+
+This confidence radiates from every page of the book. It is Nicolai's
+faith in the future which influences us even more than the writer's
+ideas. That faith is a stimulant and a moral tonic. It awakens us and
+sets us free. Those of kindred spirit group themselves round him
+because, in the dark places of the earth where they wander chilled and
+with faltering steps, he is a focus of joy and fervid optimism. This
+prisoner, this man under sentence, smiles as he contemplates the force
+which thinks it has conquered him, the force of reaction let loose, and
+of unreason, overthrowing that which he knows to be right and true.
+Precisely because his faith is violated, he desires to proclaim it.
+"Precisely because war is in progress, I wish to write a book of peace."
+Thinking of his brothers in the faith, weaker and more broken, he
+dedicates to them this book "to assure them that the war is but a
+passing phase; that we must be careful not to attach too much importance
+to it." He speaks, he tells us, "to inspire fair-minded and
+right-thinking men with my own triumphant assurance."[74]
+
+May he be a model to us! May the small and persecuted band of those who
+refuse to share the general hatred, and whom therefore hate persecutes,
+be ever warmed by this inward joy! Nothing can deprive them of it.
+Nothing can harm them. For, amid the horror and the shames of the
+present, they are the contemporaries of the future.
+
+_October 15, 1917._
+
+"demain," Geneva, November, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+REFLECTIONS ON READING AUGUSTE FOREL
+
+
+The name of Auguste Forel is renowned in the world of European science,
+but within the confines of his own land his writings are perhaps less
+well known than they should be. Every one is familiar with the social
+activities of this splendid personality, of this man whose indefatigable
+energies and ardent convictions have not been affected either by his age
+or by ill-health. But Latin Switzerland, which justly admires the
+writings of the naturalist J. H. Fabre, hardly seems to realise that in
+Forel it is fortunate enough to possess an observer of nature whose
+insight is no less keen than that of Fabre, and whose scientific
+endowments are perchance even richer and more unerring. I have recently
+been reading some of Auguste Forel's studies of ant life, and I have
+been profoundly impressed by the wide scope of his experimental
+researches, carried on for a whole lifetime.[75] While patiently
+observing and faithfully describing the life of these insects, day by
+day, hour by hour, and year after year, his thoughts have been
+simultaneously directed towards the ultimate recesses of nature, so
+that he has been able from time to time to raise for a moment a corner
+of that veil of mystery which covers our own instincts.
+
+Here is a strange fact. J. H. Fabre believes in providence, "le bon
+Dieu"; Auguste Forel is a monist, a psycho-physicist. Nevertheless,
+Forel's observations suggest to the reader a conception of nature which
+is far less crushing than that suggested by the observations of Fabre.
+The latter, untroubled by anxieties concerning the human soul, sees in
+the little insects he is studying nothing more than marvellous machines.
+But Forel discerns here and there sparks of reflective consciousness,
+germs of individual will. These are no more than widely separated
+luminous points, piercing the darkness. But the phenomenon is all the
+more impressive for its rarity. I have amused myself by selecting from
+out this wealth of observations a group of facts wherein are displayed
+the secular instincts, the "anagke," of the species--oppugned,
+shattered, vanquished. Wherefore should a combat of this sort be less
+dramatic when waged by these humble ants than when it is waged by the
+Atrides in _Orestes_? In all cases alike, we have the same waves of
+force, blind or conscious; the same interplay of light and shade. And
+the analogy of certain social phenomena, as we observe them among these
+myriads of tiny beings, and as we observe them among ourselves, may help
+us to understand ourselves--and perhaps to achieve self-command.
+
+I shall be content, here, to cull from the vast experimental repertory
+of Auguste Forel, those of his observations which bear upon certain
+psychopathological collective states, and those which bear upon the
+formidable problem which faces us to-day, the problem of war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ants, says Forel, are to other insects what man is to other mammals.
+Their brain surpasses that of all other insects in its relative size and
+in the complexity of its structure. Even if they fail to attain the
+level of individual intelligence characteristic of the higher mammals,
+nevertheless they excel all animals without exception in the development
+of their social instincts. It is not surprising therefore, that in many
+respects their social life should resemble that of the human species.
+Like the most advanced human communities, the ant societies are
+democracies, fighting democracies. Let us contemplate them at work.
+
+The Ant State is not restricted to the single ant-hill; it has its
+territory, its domain, its colonies. Like our colonising powers, it has
+its ports of call, its revictualling stations. The territory is a single
+meadow, a few trees, or a hedge. The domain of exploitation consists of
+the ground and the subsoil, together with the aphis-bearing trees whence
+the ants take the aphides they keep under domestication. Their colonies
+are detached nests more or less distant from the metropolis and more or
+less numerous (there may be as many as two hundred), communicating with
+the primary nest by open roads or by underground passages. The depots
+are small nests or dug-outs for the use of ants on long expeditions,
+ants that require a rest or those that are overtaken by bad weather.
+
+Naturally these communities tend to grow, and they thus come into
+conflict one with another. "Territorial disputes, along the frontier
+between two great ant communities, are the usual cause of embittered
+struggles. The aphis-bearing shrubs are the most fiercely contested.
+But, in the case of certain species, subterranean domains (the roots of
+plants) are likewise the region of savage warfare." Some species live
+solely by war and plunder. Polyergus rufescens (Huber's "amazon")
+disdains work, and has indeed lost the power. The members of this
+species live as slave-owners, served, tended, fed, by troops of slaves,
+the latter being recruited (in the larval or pupal stage) by slave raids
+upon neighbouring ant-hills.
+
+Thus war is endemic, and every citizen of these democracies, every
+worker ant, has to take part in the fighting. In certain species
+(Pheidole pallidula), the military caste is distinct from the working
+caste. The soldier takes no part in domestic work, but idles away the
+days in barracks, with nothing to do save at the times when life has to
+be staked for the defence of the community.[76] There are no leaders, or
+at any rate no permanent leaders. We see neither kings nor generals. The
+expeditionary armies of Polyergus rufescens, which may vary from one
+hundred thousand to two hundred thousand ants, act in obedience to
+streams of influence which appear to emanate from small and scattered
+groups, sometimes in the van and sometimes in the rear. When the army is
+on the march, the entire column will suddenly halt, remaining indecisive
+and motionless, as if paralysed. Of a sudden, the initiative will be
+taken by some small group of ants whose members rush about among the
+others, striking these on the head; then the temporary leaders start
+off, and the whole army is in motion once more.
+
+Formica sanguinea is an able tactician. Forel follows Huber in his
+description of the fighting methods of this species. The insects do not
+advance in close formation, à la Hindenburg, but in platoons,
+communicating one with another by orderlies. They do not make a frontal
+attack; but, after watching the enemy's movements, attempt to take him
+by surprise on the flank. Their aim, like that of Napoleon, is to
+concentrate upon a given point at a particular time, to secure there and
+then the advantage of numbers. Like Napoleon, too, they know how to
+lower the adversary's morale. Seizing the psychological moment when the
+enemy's courage or confidence flags, they hurl themselves upon him with
+irresistible fury, now recking nought of numbers, for they know that at
+such a time one fighter on their own side is worth a hundred on the
+other, where panic is rife. Moreover, like good soldiers, their aim is
+not to kill, so much as to gain the victory and to harvest its fruits.
+When the battle is won they post a guard at each exit of the conquered
+nest. The members of this guard allow the enemy ants to escape, provided
+these carry nothing away. The victors pillage to the uttermost, but do
+as little killing as possible.
+
+Between species of equal strength, fighting for frontiers, war is not
+perennial. After many days of battle and glorious hecatombs, the rival
+states would appear to recognise that their respective ambitions are
+unattainable. As if by common consent, the armies withdraw within either
+side of a frontier, which is accepted by both parties with or without
+treaty. This frontier is respected much more perfectly than among men,
+bound merely by "scraps of paper." The citizen ants of the two
+communities always keep strictly within their borders.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A matter of even greater interest is to note how this war-making
+instinct originates among our brothers the insects; to study how it
+develops; and to ascertain whether it is fixed or modifiable. Here
+Forel's observations and experiments lead to the most remarkable
+deductions.
+
+J. H. Fabre, in a famous passage of _Insect Life_,[77] tells us that
+"brigandage is the law in the struggle among living beings.... In
+nature, murder is universal. Everywhere we encounter a hook, a dagger, a
+spear, a tooth, nippers, pincers, a saw, horrible clamps, ..." But he
+exaggerates. He has a keen eye for the facts of mutual slaughter and
+mutual devouring, but he fails to see the facts of mutual aid and
+associated effort. Kropotkin has devoted an admirable book to the study
+of phenomena of the latter class, as manifested throughout nature.[78]
+Furthermore, the careful observations of Forel show that in ants the
+instincts of war and plunder may be modified or overcome by instincts of
+a contrary character.
+
+First of all, Forel proves that the war-making instinct is not
+fundamental. This instinct does not exist in the early stages of ant
+life. Putting together newly hatched ants belonging to three different
+species, Forel obtained a mixed ant community whose members lived in
+perfect harmony. The only primitive instinct of newly hatched ants is
+that for domestic work and the care of larvae. "Not until later do ants
+learn to distinguish between friend and foe; not until later do they
+realise that they are members of a single ant community on behalf of
+which they have to fight."[79]
+
+Forel next presents the fact, even more surprising, that the intensity
+of the warrior instinct is directly proportional to the size of the
+collectivity. Two ants of enemy species meeting at a distance from their
+respective nests or from their own folk, will avoid one another and run
+away in opposite directions. Even if you come across the armies in full
+combat, and you remove from the ranks an ant belonging to either side
+and shut the two by themselves in a small box, they will do one another
+no harm. If, instead of taking merely two, you shut up a moderate number
+from either side within a narrow space, they will fight half-heartedly
+for a while, but soon cease to struggle, and often end by making
+friends. In such circumstances, says Forel, they will never resume the
+struggle. But put these same ants back among the fighting forces of
+their respective sides, and separate them by a reasonable distance, so
+that they might live at peace, and you will see them return to the
+attack; the individuals which a moment before were avoiding one another
+with repugnance or fear, will now furiously engage in mutual
+slaughter.[80] It thus appears that the combative instinct is a
+collective contagion.
+
+Sometimes this epidemic assumes unmistakably morbid attributes.[81] In
+proportion as it extends and in proportion as the struggle is prolonged,
+the fighting rage becomes a positive frenzy. The very same ant, which at
+the outset was timid, will now be affected with a paroxysm of furious
+madness. She no longer knows what she is about. She throws herself upon
+her own companions, kills the slaves that are endeavouring to calm her,
+bites everything she touches, bites fragments of wood, can no longer
+find her way. Other members of the community, slaves as a rule, have to
+surround such a frenzied worker by twos and threes; they seize her by
+the legs and caress her with their antennae until she comes to herself,
+has recovered as I might say "her reason." Why not? Had she not lost it?
+
+We have hitherto been dealing exclusively with general phenomena, those
+which obey fairly rigid laws. Now we are faced with special phenomena
+wherein initiative conflicts in the most peculiar way with the instinct
+of the species, and, which is yet more curious, in the end causes
+instinct to stray from its appointed path, and even to die out
+altogether.
+
+Forel places in a jar some ants of enemy species, the sanguinea and the
+pratensis. After a few days of warfare, followed by a sullen armistice,
+he introduces a newly hatched pratensis which is very hungry. She runs
+to those of her own species begging them to feed her. The pratenses fob
+her off. Then the poor innocent appeals to the enemies of her species,
+the sanguineae, and, after the manner of ants, she licks the mouth of
+two among them. The two sanguineae are so touched by this gesture, which
+turns their instinct topsy-turvy, that they disgorge their honeyed store
+and feed the young enemy. Thenceforward all is well. An offensive and
+defensive alliance is formed between the little pratensis and the
+sanguineae against the ants of the young one's own species. The alliance
+becomes irrevocable.
+
+Let me adduce another example; the results of a common danger. Forel
+places in a bag a nest of sanguineae and another of pratenses. He shakes
+them together, and leaves them in the bag for an hour. Thereafter he
+opens the bag and places it in direct contact with an artificial nest.
+At first we witness a general state of confusion, a delirium of fear.
+The ants cannot recognise one another apart; they show their mandibles,
+and then sidle away in a panic. But by degrees calm is restored. The
+sanguineae begin by removing the pupae, taking indifferently those of
+both species. Some of the pratenses follow their example. From time to
+time fights take place, but these are merely single combats, and they
+grow less and less fierce. From the next day onwards, all work
+together. In four days the pact is sealed; the pratenses disgorge food
+to the sanguineae. At the end of a week, Forel transports them to the
+neighbourhood of an abandoned ant-hill. They settle in, helping one
+another in the house-moving, carrying one another, and so forth. No more
+than a few isolated individuals of the respective species,
+irreconcilable nationalists no doubt, keep up their sacred enmity, and
+end by killing one another. A fortnight later, the mixed community is
+flourishing; perfect concord prevails. The summit of the ant-hill, which
+at ordinary times is covered with pratenses for the most part, reddens
+with the martial sanguineae directly danger threatens the common state.
+Next month, Forel, carrying the experiment a stage further, went to the
+old nest for a number of the pratenses and put them down just outside
+the hill of the mixed community. The newcomers promptly fell upon the
+sanguineae. But these latter defended themselves without animosity,
+merely knocking the aggressors head over heels, and then letting them
+alone. The pratenses could not make it out. As for the other pratenses,
+those belonging to the mixed community, they avoided their sometime
+sisters, would not fight with them, but carried the pupae into the nest.
+The hostility was all on the side of the newcomers. Next day some of
+them had been admitted as members of the mixed community, and ere long
+relations were permanently established on a peace footing. Not in a
+single instance did the pratenses of the mixed community join with the
+newcomers to attack the sanguineae. The alliance between pratenses and
+sanguineae was stronger than the racial brotherhood of the pratenses;
+the enmity between the two hostile species had been permanently
+overcome.[82]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such examples suffice to show how grave is the mistake of those who
+believe that instincts are quasi-sacred, and who, after they have
+included the fighting instinct in this category, regard it as imposed
+by fate upon all living animals from the lowest to the highest. For, in
+the first place, instinct varies greatly in its cogency. We find it to
+be non-modifiable or modifiable, absolute or relative, permanent or
+transient, not merely as we pass from one genus to another, but within
+the same genus as we pass from species to species,[83] and within the
+same species as we pass from group to group. Instinct is not a starting
+point, but is itself a product of evolution. Like evolution in general,
+it is progressive. The most ingrained instinct is merely an instinct of
+great antiquity. The observations quoted above suffice to show that the
+war-making instinct is less ingrained, less primitive, than people are
+apt to suppose, for even among the most combative species of ants, it
+can be resisted, modified, and restrained. If these humble insects are
+able to react against it, if they can modify their natures, if they can
+replace wars of conquest by peaceful cooperation, if they can substitute
+allied states (or, yet more remarkable, mixed and united states) for
+enemy states--should man be willing to avow himself more enslaved than
+they by his worst instincts, and less able than they to master these
+instincts? It is sometimes said that war lowers us to the level of
+beasts. War reduces us below that level, if we show ourselves less
+capable of freeing ourselves from the fighting spirit than are certain
+animal societies. It would be rather humiliating to be compelled to
+admit their superiority. Chi lo sa?... For my part I am far from certain
+that man is, as he is said to be, the lord of creation; more often, man
+is the destructive tyrant. I am sure that in many things he could learn
+wisdom from these animal societies, older than his own and infinitely
+diversified.
+
+I do not propose to prophesy whether humanity will succeed (any more
+than the ant communities) in gaining the mastery over blind instinct.
+But what strikes me, as I read Auguste Forel, is the conviction that no
+more in man than in the ants is such a victory radically impossible. To
+recognize that a particular advance is not impracticable even though we
+should fail to realise that advance, seems to me more encouraging than
+the belief that, whatever we attempt, we shall run our heads against a
+stone wall. The window is closed. It is thick with grime. Perhaps we
+shall never be able to open it. But between us and the sunlit air there
+is nothing but a pane of glass, which we can break if we will.[84]
+
+_June 1, 1918._
+
+"Revue Mensuelle," Geneva, August, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+ON BEHALF OF THE INTERNATIONAL OF THE MIND
+
+     This chapter relates to the plan for an Institute of the Nations,
+     suggested by Gerhard Gran, professor at the University of
+     Christiania, writing in the "Revue Politique Internationale" of
+     Lausanne. My reply was first published in the same periodical,
+     under the title "Pour une culture universelle" (On behalf of a
+     universal civilisation).
+
+
+Gerhard Gran's broad-minded appeal cannot fail to arouse echoes. I have
+read it with lively sympathy. He displays the virtue of modesty, so rare
+in our day. At a time when all the nations are making an arrogant parade
+of a superior mission of order or justice, organisation or liberty, a
+mission which authorises them to impose on other nations their own
+hallowed individuality (for each looks upon itself as the chosen
+people), we draw a breath of relief when we hear one of them, by the
+voice of Gerhard Gran, speaking not of its rights, but of its "debts."
+How noble, too, are his tones of frankness and gratitude!
+
+"Among all the nations, ours is perhaps the one which has the greatest
+duty to perform, for our nation owes most to the others. What we have
+gained from international science is incalculable.... Our debts are
+manifest in all directions.... When we draw up our scientific
+balance-sheet in account with the rest of the world, the credit side is
+meagre. In this respect we have to speak chiefly of our passive
+advantages, and our modesty forbids us to refer to our active
+contributions."
+
+How refreshing is such modesty! How refreshing is it in this
+world-crisis of delirious vanity! Nevertheless Ibsen's fellow-countrymen
+are entitled to hold their heads high among their European brethren;
+for more than any other writer the great Norwegian recluse has stamped
+with his seal both the drama and modern thought. The eyes of Young
+France turned towards him; the writer of these lines asked counsel of
+him.
+
+All the nations are debtors one to another. Let us pool our debts and
+our possessions.
+
+If there are any to-day for whom modesty is befitting, it is the
+intellectuals. The part they have played in this war has been
+abominable, unpardonable. Not merely did they do nothing to lessen the
+mutual lack of understanding, to limit the spread of hatred; with rare
+exceptions, they did everything in their power to disseminate hatred and
+to envenom it. To a considerable extent, this war was their war.
+Thousands of brains were poisoned by their murderous ideologies.
+Overweeningly self-confident, proud, implacable, they sacrificed
+millions of young lives to the triumph of the phantoms of their
+imagination. History will not forget.
+
+Gerhard Gran expresses the fear that personal cooperation between
+intellectuals of the belligerent lands may prove impossible for many
+years. If he is thinking of the generation of those who are over fifty,
+of those who stayed at home and waged a war of words in the learned
+societies, the universities, and the editorial offices, I fancy that the
+Norwegian writer is not mistaken. There is little chance that these
+intellectuals will ever join hands. I should say that none of them will
+do so, were I not familiar with the brain's astounding faculty for
+forgetting, were I not familiar with this pitiful and yet salutary
+weakness, by which the mind is not deceived, but which is essential to
+its continued existence. But in the present case, oblivion will be
+difficult. The intellectuals have burned their boats. At the outset of
+the war it was still possible to hope that some of those who had been
+carried away by the blind passion of the opening days, would be able
+within a few months frankly to admit their mistake. They would not do
+so. Not one of them has done so on either side of the frontier. It was
+even possible to note that in proportion as the disastrous consequences
+to European civilisation became apparent, those whose mission it was to
+act as guardians of that civilisation, those upon whose shoulders part
+of the responsibility weighed, instead of admitting their mistake, did
+all they could to increase their own infatuation. How, then, can we
+hope, when the war is over, and when the disasters to which it will have
+led will have become unmistakable, that the intellectuals will curb
+their pride and will constrain themselves to say, "We were wrong"?--To
+ask this would be to ask too much. The older generation, I fear, will
+have to endure to the last its sickness of mind and its obstinacy. On
+this side there is little hope. We can only wait until the older
+generation has died out.
+
+Those who wish to reknit the relations among the peoples, must turn
+their hopes towards the other generation, that of those who bleed in the
+armies. May they be preserved! They have been ruthlessly thinned out by
+the sickle of war. They might even be annihilated if the war should be
+prolonged and extended, as may happen, for all things are possible.
+Mankind stands, like Hercules, at the parting of the ways. One of these
+ways leads (if Asia takes a hand in the game, and accentuates yet
+further the characteristics of hideous destruction in which Germany has
+set an example inevitably followed by the other combatants) to the
+suicide of Europe.--But at the present hour we have still the right to
+hope that the young men of Europe, now enrolled in the armies, will
+survive in sufficient numbers to fulfil the mission that will devolve on
+them after the war, the mission of reconciling the thoughts of the enemy
+nations. In either camp, I know a number of independent spirits, who
+look forward, when peace is signed, to realising this intellectual
+communion. They propose to except from this communion none but those
+who, be it in their own or be it in the other camp, have prostituted
+thought to the work of hatred. When I reflect on these young men, I am
+firmly convinced (and herein I differ from Gerhard Gran) that after the
+war the minds of all lands will inter-penetrate one another far more
+effectively than they have ever done before. The nations which knew
+nothing of one another, or which saw one another only in the form of
+contemptuous caricatures, have learned during the last four years, in
+the mud of the trenches, and at grips with death, that they are the same
+suffering flesh. All are enduring the same ordeal, and in it they become
+brothers. This sentiment continues to grow. For when we attempt to
+foresee the changes which, after the war, will occur in the
+relationships between the nations, we do not sufficiently realise the
+extent to which the war will lead to other upheavals, which may well
+modify the very essence of the nations. Whatever may be the immediate
+upshot of happenings in Russia, the example of the New Russia will not
+fail to have its influence upon the other peoples. An intimate unity is
+becoming established in the soul of the peoples. It is as if they were
+connected by gigantic roots, spreading underground regardless of
+frontiers.--As for the intellectuals who, sitting apart from the common
+people, are not directly swept along by this social current, they none
+the less feel its influence by intuition and sympathy. Notwithstanding
+the efforts which, during these four years, have been made to break off
+all contact between the writers in the two camps, I know that in both,
+on the morrow of the peace, international magazines and other
+publications will be founded. I have first-hand information concerning
+such schemes, initiated by young writers, soldiers at the front, men
+permeated with the European spirit. Among those of my own generation,
+there are a few who will give wholehearted assistance to their younger
+brethren. In our view, we shall in this way serve, not merely the cause
+of mankind, but the cause of our own land, far better than that cause
+will be served by the evil counsellors who preach armed isolation. Every
+country which shuts itself apart pronounces its own death-sentence. Gone
+for ever are the days when the young and tumultuous energies of the
+European nations needed, for their clarification, to be surrounded by
+partition walls.--Let me quote a few words uttered by Jean Christophe in
+his riper age:
+
+"I neither admire nor dread the nationalism of the present time. It will
+pass away with the present time; it is passing, it has already passed.
+It is but a rung in the ladder. Climb to the top.... Every nation felt
+[before the war] the imperious necessity of gathering its forces and
+making up its balance-sheet. For the last hundred years all the nations
+have been transformed by their mutual intercourse and the immense
+contributions of all the brains of the universe, building up new
+morality, new knowledge, new faith. Every man must examine his
+conscience, and know exactly what he is and what he has, before he can
+enter with the rest into the new age. A new age is coming. Humanity is
+on the point of signing a new lease of life. Society is on the point of
+springing into vigour with new laws. It is Sunday to-morrow. We are all
+balancing our accounts for the week, setting our houses in order, making
+them clean and tidy, so that, joining together, we may go into the
+presence of our common God and enter into a new covenant with Him."
+
+The war will prove (even against our will) to have been the anvil upon
+which will have been forged the unity of the European soul.
+
+It is my hope that this intellectual communion will not be restricted to
+the European peninsula, but will extend to Asia, to the two Americas,
+and to the great islets of civilisation spread over the rest of the
+globe. It is absurd that the nations of western Europe should pride
+themselves upon the discovery of profound differences, at the very time
+when they have never resembled one another more closely in merits and
+defects; at a time when their thought and their literature are least
+notable for distinctive characteristics; when everywhere there becomes
+sensible a monotonous levelling of intelligence; when on all hands we
+discern individualities that are dishevelled, threadbare, limp. I will
+venture to say that all of them, with their united efforts, are
+incompetent to give us the hope of that mental renovation to which the
+world is entitled after this formidable convulsion. We must go to
+Russia, which has doors thrown wide open towards the eastern world, for
+there only will our faces be freshened by the new currents which are
+blowing in every department of thought.
+
+Let us widen the concept of humanism, dear to our forefathers, though
+its meaning has been narrowed down to the signification of Greek and
+Latin manuals. In every age, states, universities, academies, all the
+conservative forces of the mind, have endeavoured to make humanism in
+this narrower sense a dike against the onslaughts of the new spirit, in
+philosophy, in morals, in aesthetics. The dike has burst. The framework
+of a privileged culture has been broken. To-day we have to accept
+humanism in its widest signification, embracing all the spiritual forces
+of the whole world. What we need is, panhumanism.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is our hope that this ideal, formulated here and there by a few
+leading minds, or heralded by the foundation while the war is yet in
+progress of centres for the study of universal civilisation,[85] shall
+be boldly adopted as its ensign by the international academy, in the
+foundation of which I hope (with Gerhard Gran) that Norway will take the
+initiative.
+
+I note that Gerhard Gran seems, like Professor Fredrik Stang, to limit
+his ambitions to the foundation of an institute for scientific research,
+for in his view science is in its essence more international than art
+and letters. He writes:
+
+"In art and literature we may, in case of need, discuss the advantages
+and disadvantages resulting from the isolation of one nation from the
+rest, or from the antagonism of human groups. In science, such a
+discussion is absurd. The kingdom of science is the whole world.... The
+atmosphere indispensable to science has nothing whatever to do with
+national conflicts."
+
+I think that this distinction is not so well founded as it may seem. No
+domain of mental activity has been more disastrously involved in the war
+than the domain of science. Whereas art and letters have only too often
+been accessory stimulants of the crime, science furnished the war with
+its weapons, did its utmost to render them more atrocious, to widen the
+bounds of suffering and cruelty. I may add that even in time of peace I
+have always been struck by the bitterness of national sentiment
+displayed by men of science. Those of every nation are fond of accusing
+their foreign colleagues of stealing their best discoveries and
+forgetting to acknowledge the source. In a word, science shares in the
+evil passions which corrode art and letters.
+
+On the other hand, if science needs the collaboration of all the
+nations, to art and letters to-day it is no less advantageous that they
+should abandon a position of "splendid isolation." Without speaking of
+the technical advances which, in painting and music, have during the
+course of the nineteenth century and of the one which has begun so badly
+brought such sudden and enormous enrichment to the aesthetics of sight
+and hearing--apart from such considerations--the influence of one
+philosopher, one thinker, one writer, can modify the whole literature of
+an epoch, switching the mind on to a new road in psychological, moral,
+aesthetic, or social research. If any one wish to be isolated, isolated
+let him be! But the republic of the mind tends to enlarge its frontiers
+day by day. The greatest men are those who know how to embrace and fuse
+in a single vigorous personality the wealth that is dispersed or latent
+in the soul of all mankind.
+
+Let us refrain, therefore, from limiting the idea of internationalism to
+the field of science. Let us give the fullest possible amplitude to the
+scheme. Let us form a world-wide Institute of Art, Letters and Science.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Moreover, I do not think that this foundation could continue isolated.
+No longer, to-day, can the internationalism of culture remain the luxury
+of a few privileged persons. The practical value of an Institute of
+Nations would be small, unless the masters were associated with their
+disciples in the same stream, unless all the levels of culture were
+permeated with the same spirit.
+
+That is why I greet, as a fruitful initiative and a happy symptom, the
+recent foundation in Zurich, by the university students of that city, of
+an International Association of Students (Internationaler
+Studentenbund). Let me quote from its program.
+
+"Painfully affected by the great ordeal of the war, academic youth has
+realised the peculiar social responsibilities enjoined by the privileges
+of a studious life, and desires to find a remedy for the deeper causes
+of the evil.... The Association will endeavour to bring together those
+of all countries who are in close touch with university life, to unite
+them in a common faith in the advantages of the free development of the
+mind. It groups them for the struggle against the growing empery of
+mechanism and militarism in all the manifestations of life.... It hopes
+to realise the ideal of universities which shall remain centres of
+higher culture, in the service of truth alone, unsullied shrines of
+scientific research, absolutely independent in matters of opinion,
+paying no attention to selfish aims or to class interests."
+
+This demand for the freedom of scientific research and for independence
+of thought, this organisation of young intellectuals for the defence of
+a right so essential and hitherto so incessantly violated, seem to me
+matters of primary necessity. If you desire that the cooperation between
+the teachers in different countries should not remain purely
+speculative, it is not enough that the teachers should associate their
+efforts. It is further essential that their thoughts shall be able to
+spread freely and to fructify in the minds of the young intellectuals
+throughout the world. Let us have no more of these barriers erected by
+the states between the two classes, between the two ages, of those who
+are engaged in the search for truth--teachers and students.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My dream goes further. I should like the seed of universal culture to be
+scattered, from the very beginning of education, among the pupils of the
+primary and secondary schools. Above all let me suggest that throughout
+the countries of Europe an international language should be one of the
+compulsory subjects of study. Such international languages (Esperanto,
+Ido) have already attained something very near perfection; and with the
+minimum of effort the international language could be mastered by all
+the children of the civilised world. Not merely would this language be
+of unrivalled practical value throughout life. It would further serve as
+an introduction to the study of foreign languages and of their own
+national tongue; for it would make them realise, far better than any
+express instruction, the common elements in the European languages and
+the unity of European thought.
+
+I would further insist that both in primary and secondary education
+there should be given a sketch of the history of universal thought,
+universal literature, universal art. I consider it utterly erroneous
+that the syllabus of instruction should concern itself only with these
+subjects as manifested within the limits of a single nation, and that
+within those limits there should be a further restriction to a period of
+two or three centuries. Despite all that has been done to modernise
+education, its spirit still remains essentially archaic. It perpetuates
+among us the atmosphere of extinct epochs. Let not this criticism be
+misunderstood. All my own education was classical. I passed through
+every stage of university instruction. In my student days we were still
+taught to write Latin speeches and Latin verses. I am impregnated with
+the ideas of classical art and classical thought. Far from desiring to
+sweep these things away, I should wish such treasures, like those of our
+Louvre, to be made accessible to the great mass of mankind. But I must
+point out that we should remain free in relation to that which we
+admire, and that we are not free in relation to classical thought. The
+Greco-Roman mental formulas, which our education has made as it were
+second nature, are nowise suited for application to modern problems.
+Those into whose minds such formulas have been instilled in childhood
+have acquired overwhelming prejudices which they are rarely, if ever,
+able to shake off, prejudices which weigh heavily upon contemporary
+society. I am inclined to believe that one of the moral errors from
+which Europe is chiefly suffering to-day, the Europe whose members are
+tearing one another to pieces, is that we have preserved the heroic and
+rhetorical idol of the Greco-Roman fatherland, which corresponds no
+better to the natural sentiment of the fatherland to-day than the
+deities of Homer correspond to the true religious needs of our time.
+
+Humanity grows older, but does not ripen. It is still enmeshed in the
+teachings of childhood. Its greatest fault is its slothful unwillingness
+to seek renewal. But humanity must seek renewal and growth. For
+centuries it has condemned itself to use no more than a modicum of its
+spiritual resources. It is like a half-paralysed colossus. It allows
+some of its organs to atrophy. Are we not weary of these infirm nations,
+of these scattered members of a great body, which might dominate our
+planet!
+
+Membra sumus corporis magni.
+
+Let these members unite; let Humanity, the New Adam, arise!
+
+     VILLENEUVE, _March 15, 1918._
+
+     "Revue Politique Internationale," Lausanne, March and April, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+A CALL TO EUROPEANS
+
+
+In the downfall of imperial Germany, there stand out the great names of
+a few free spirits of Germany, the names of those who during the last
+four years have strenuously defended the rights of conscience and reason
+against the abuses of force. The name of G. F. Nicolai is one of the
+most illustrious among these. I devoted two articles[86] to the study of
+his excellent work, _The Biology of War_, and have recorded the
+conditions under which it was written. This distinguished professor of
+physiology at the university of Berlin, a celebrated physician,
+appointed at the outbreak of the war as chief of one of the army medical
+departments, was cashiered because he had expressed his disapproval of
+the misdeeds committed by the statesmen and the high military commanders
+of Germany. Suffering humiliation after humiliation, degraded to the
+rank of private, sentenced to five months' imprisonment by the Danzig
+court-martial, he at length fled from Germany in order to escape yet
+severer punishment. A few months ago we learned from the newspapers of
+his daring escape in an aeroplane. He has secured asylum in Denmark, and
+in that country he has just published the first number of a review, to
+whose historical and human interest I now wish to call attention.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This periodical is entitled "Das werdende Europa,--Blätter für
+zukunftsfrohe Menschen,--neutral gegenüber den kriegführenden
+Ländern,--leidenschaftlich Partei ergreifend für das Recht gegen die
+Macht." (The Coming Europe,--a review for men who look joyously towards
+the future,--neutral as regards the belligerent lands,--but taking sides
+passionately on behalf of right against might.)[87]
+
+Looking joyously towards the future! This is one of Nicolai's most
+salient characteristics, and I have alluded to it at the close of my
+critique of his _Biology of War_. How many in his place would have been
+disheartened by all that he has seen, heard, and endured in the way of
+human malice; of cowardice, which is worse; and of folly, which is yet
+more intolerable--the folly that rules the world! But Nicolai is a man
+of extraordinary elasticity. "Nicht weinen!" as his little girl of two
+says to him when he is about to leave her and everything he loves. "Not
+cry!" Looking joyously towards the future. To uphold him in this joyance
+he has his wonderful vitality, the inviolable strength of his
+convictions, his triumphant assurance (meine triumphierende Sicherheit).
+He displays an apostolic zeal which we should hardly have expected in a
+scientific observer; but Nicolai, of a sudden, becomes from time to time
+a seer, an idealist, a prophet, like the religious heroes of old. With
+all his equipment of modern science, he is a strange instance of
+reincarnation. The Old Germany of Goethe, Herder, and Kant, speaks to us
+through his voice. To use his own words, he claims his rights as against
+the right of Ludendorff and other usurpers to adopt the political
+methods of the Tatars.
+
+The aim of "Coming Europe" is, he tells us, to "awaken love for our new,
+our greater fatherland, Europe.... We wish that all the peoples of
+Europe shall become useful and happy members of this new organism."--Now
+the future of Europe mainly depends upon the condition of Germany, a
+country which, by its brutal disregard of European principles, supports
+the old policy of armed isolation. The primary aim, therefore, must be
+the liberation of Germany.
+
+The first issue of the magazine contains an inaugural article by
+Professor Kristoffer Nyrop, member of the Royal Academy of Denmark. It
+further includes interesting pages written by Dr. Alfred H. Fried, and
+by Carl Lindhagen, burgomaster of Stockholm. But the main contribution,
+filling three-fourths of the number, is a long article by Nicolai,
+entitled "Warum ich aus Deutschland ging. Offener Brief an denjenigen
+Unbekannten, der die Macht hat in Deutschland."[88] These words are the
+confession of a great spirit, of one whom the oppressors have wished to
+enslave, but who has broken his chains.
+
+Nicolai opens by explaining what has led him to an act which has cost
+him dear, the abandonment of his country in the hour of danger. In
+touching terms he expresses his love for the motherland (which he
+contrasts with Europe, his fatherland), his love for Germany and for all
+that he owes it. He tore himself away only because there was no other
+means of working for the liberation of his country. While he remained in
+Germany, he could do nothing; for years of tribulation had been the
+proof. Right was shackled. Germany was no longer a Rechtsstaat.
+Oppression was universal; and, still worse, it was anonymous. The power
+of the sword, irresponsible, was supreme. Parliament no longer existed.
+The press no longer existed. The chancellor, the emperor himself, were
+subject to the mysterious "Unknown who rules Germany." Nicolai tells us
+that he had long waited for others better qualified than himself to
+speak. He had waited in vain. Fear, corruption, lack of determination,
+stifled all attempts at revolt. The soul of Germany was dumb.--Even he,
+Nicolai, would perhaps have held his peace to the end, constrained to
+silence by the sentiment of chivalrous loyalty which influences everyone
+in time of war, had he not been driven to extremities, had he not been
+brought to bay, by the unknown power. After everything had been taken
+from him, after he had been despoiled of his honours, of his official
+position, of the comforts and even the necessaries of life, those in
+authority wished to wrest from him the one thing that still remained,
+his right to obey, his convictions. This was too much, and he fled. "I
+was compelled to leave the German empire; I left, because I believe
+myself to be a good German."
+
+To enable us to understand his decision, he describes for us the four
+years of daily struggle which had been his lot in Germany before he made
+up his mind to leave.--Notwithstanding his views on the war, when it
+actually broke out he put himself at the disposal of the military
+authorities, but only as a civilian medical man (vertraglich
+verpflichteter Zivilarzt). He was appointed principal medical officer in
+the new Tempelhof hospital, a post which permitted him to continue his
+public lectures at the university of Berlin. But in October, 1914, in
+conjunction with Professor W. Foerster, Professor A. Einstein, and Dr.
+Buek, he issued a protest, couched in very strong terms, against the
+notorious manifesto of the 93. Punishment did not tarry. He was at once
+relieved of his post, and was appointed medical assistant at the
+isolation hospital in the little fortress of Graudenz. Being under no
+illusions as to the reasons for this arbitrary and absurd measure, he
+devoted his spare time to the preparation of his book, _The Biology of
+War_. Now came the sinking of the Lusitania, which was a terrible shock
+to Nicolai, affecting him as if he had been struck with a whip. At
+dinner with a few of his comrades, he declared that the violation of
+Belgian neutrality, the use of poison gas, and the torpedoing of
+merchantmen, were not merely immoral actions, but were acts of
+incredible stupidity, which would sooner or later ruin the German
+empire. One of those present, his colleague Dr. Knoll, could find
+nothing better to do than to inform against him. Anew dismissed from his
+post, Nicolai was sent in disgrace to one of the most out-of-the-way
+corners of Germany. He protested in the name of justice. He appealed to
+the emperor. The latter, he was given to understand, wrote on the margin
+of the report of his case: "Der Mann ist ein Idealist, man soll ihn
+gewähren lassen!" (The man is an idealist. Let him alone!)
+
+He was sent back to Berlin in the winter of 1915-16, with instructions
+to be on his good behaviour. Ignoring these instructions, immediately
+after his return to the university he began a course of lectures upon
+"War as an evolutionary Factor in human History." The lectures were
+promptly prohibited, and Nicolai was sent to Danzig, where he was
+strictly forbidden to speak or write on political topics. Nicolai took
+exception to this order, on the ground that he was a civilian. Thereupon
+an attempt was made to administer to him the oath of loyalty and
+obedience. He refused. Summoned before a court-martial, and warned of
+the consequences of refusal, he persisted. He was thereupon reduced to
+the ranks, and for two and a half years was engaged in futile clerical
+work as a private in the army medical corps. Nevertheless, he finished
+his book, and it went to press in Germany. The first two hundred pages
+had been set up when an information against it was lodged by the chief
+clerk of a great submarine dockyard, who said indignantly, "We earn our
+money arduously in the war, and this fellow is writing in favour of
+peace!" Nicolai was arrested and his manuscript was seized. After a
+lengthy trial, he was sentenced to five months' imprisonment. The
+newspapers were forbidden to mention his name. The "Danziger Zeitung"
+was suspended for having published an account of the trial. His troubles
+began afresh immediately he came out of prison. The commandant of
+Eilenburg wished to force Nicolai to accept combatant service. Nicolai
+refused, and was given twenty-four hours to think the matter over. He
+thought of Socrates, and of the Greek philosopher's obedience to his
+country's laws, bad though they were. But he thought also of Luther, who
+fled to the Wartburg to finish his work. And Nicolai left that night.
+Not even yet, however, did he quit Germany, for he wished to make a last
+appeal to the justice of his country. He wrote to the minister for war,
+relating the infractions of law to which he had been exposed, and asking
+for protection against the arbitrary proceedings of the military
+authorities. While awaiting an answer, he took refuge with friends,
+first in Munich, then in Grunewald near Berlin. But no answer was
+received. He had, therefore, to expatriate himself. We know how he
+crossed the frontier, "in an aeroplane, two miles above the earth amid
+clouds formed by bursting shrapnel."[89] At dawn after Saint John's
+night, he saw the distant gleam of the sea of freedom. He reached
+Copenhagen. For the last time he addressed himself to the German
+government, offering to return upon guarantees that his rights should be
+respected, and that he should be reinstated. After eight weeks, he was
+declared to be a deserter. A raid was made upon his house in Berlin, and
+upon the houses of some of his friends. His goods were sequestrated. A
+demand was made for his extradition, upon the charge of stealing an
+aeroplane.--Then it was that, resuming freedom of speech, Nicolai wrote
+his "Open Letter" to the "Unknown" despot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What particularly strikes me in this narrative is, in the first place,
+the man's invincible tenacity, the way in which he stands upon his right
+as upon a fortress--"eine feste Burg." ...But I am also greatly
+impressed by the secret aid which was furnished him by so many of his
+compatriots.
+
+People are astonished to-day at the sudden collapse of the German
+colossus. A hundred different reasons are given. We are told that the
+army is ravaged by epidemic disease; that the morale of the Germans has
+been undermined by bolshevist propaganda; and so on. These influences
+have played their part. But another cause has been forgotten. It is that
+the entire edifice, despite its imposing front, has been mined. Behind
+the façade of passive obedience, widespread disillusionment prevails.
+Nothing is more striking in Nicolai's story (notwithstanding all his
+precautions lest anything he may say should betray his friends to the
+vengeance of the authorities) than the way in which he has again and
+again been supported and encouraged by the devotion or by the tacit
+complicity of those with whom he came into contact. "Men of science,
+working men, rankers, and officers," he writes, "begged me to say what
+they did not dare to utter themselves." When he was arrested and when
+his book was seized, the manuscript was rescued and was smuggled into
+Switzerland. By whom? By an official German courier!--When, having fled
+from his post, he wished to leave Germany, and when, in the first
+instance, he thought of getting out of the country on foot, he was
+arrested a hundred yards short of the frontier and was taken before an
+elderly captain. "When he asked me my name, and I said, 'I am Professor
+Nicolai,' he looked at me long and quizzically. I am doubtful whether he
+knew that I was being hunted, but I have the impression that he did
+know.... He advised me, in friendly fashion, not again to attempt
+crossing the frontier by night, for the frontier patrols were
+accompanied by bloodhounds--then he let me go."--Seeing no other way of
+escape than by the air route, Nicolai turned--to whom? To an officer in
+the flying corps, asking the loan of an aeroplane, for a journey to
+Holland or Switzerland. The officer, without turning a hair, replied
+that the thing could be done, and that if Nicolai should decide to make
+his way to Denmark (which would be much easier) they could start with a
+whole air-squadron. In the end, as we know, there was no squadron; but
+two aeroplanes and a number of officers participated in the flight from
+Neurippin to Copenhagen.--Many similar incidents, though perhaps less
+striking than those quoted, serve to show the dissolution of the bonds
+between the citizens and the state. The publication of Nicolai's book in
+Switzerland, and the subsequent clandestine circulation in Germany of
+one hundred copies, brought him into relationships with persons
+belonging to all parties in Germany, and enabled him to realise how deep
+and passionate was the feeling of hatred diffused throughout all strata
+of the population. He adds: "I am convinced that Germany and the world
+would be liberated to-morrow, if only all the Germans were to say to-day
+without reserve that which, at the bottom of their hearts, they wish and
+ardently desire."
+
+Herein lies the force of his protest. It is not the protest of one
+individual, but that of an entire nation. Nicolai is merely the
+spokesman.
+
+Thus, having told his tale, he turns to the people, he turns to those
+who inspired him to speak. By a sudden transformation, the "Unknown" to
+whom he addresses his "Open Letter"--derjenige Unbekannte, der die Macht
+hat--is no longer the military authority. Sovereign power seems already
+to have passed into the hands of the real master, the German people. He
+invites the German people to enter into a union with the other peoples.
+In the tone of an inspired evangelist, he reminds the German people of
+its true destiny, its spiritual mission, a thousandfold more important
+than any empty victory. To all the peoples of Europe, he points out the
+duty of the hour, the pressing task: to achieve the unity of Europe and
+the organisation of the world.
+
+"Come, then, kindred spirits!... I am a free man, freed from everything
+in the world, free from the state [staatenlos], ein deutscher Weltbürger
+[a German citizen of the world].... I have peace! [Ich habe Frieden]....
+Come! Cry aloud what you already know and feel!... We do not wish to
+_make_ peace; we simply wish to realise that we _have_ peace...."
+
+Reiterating his cry of October, 1914, the Call to Europeans[90] which
+he, in conjunction with his friends Albert Einstein, Wilhelm Foerster,
+and Otto Buek, issued as a counterblast to the insane utterances of the
+93, he reaffirms his act of faith in the spirit of Europe, one and
+brotherly; and he launches his appeal to all the free spirits, to those
+whom Goethe long ago termed: "Good Europeans."
+
+_October 20, 1918._
+
+"Wissen und Leben," Zurich, November, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT WILSON
+
+
+MONSIEUR LE PRÉSIDENT,
+
+The peoples are breaking their chains. The hour foreseen by you and
+desired by you is at hand. May it not come in vain! From one end of
+Europe to the other, there is rising among the peoples the will to
+resume control of their destinies, and to unite, that they may form a
+regenerated Europe. Across the frontiers, they are holding out their
+hands to one another for a friendly clasp. But between them there still
+remain abysses of mistrust and misunderstanding. These abysses must be
+bridged. We must break the fetters of ancient destiny which shackle
+these peoples to nationalist wars; which have compelled them, century
+after century, to rush blindly upon one another for their mutual
+destruction. Unaided, they cannot break their chains. They are calling
+for help. But whither can they turn for help?
+
+You alone, Monsieur le Président, among all those whose dread duty it
+now is to guide the policy of the nations, you alone enjoy a world-wide
+moral authority. You inspire universal confidence. Answer the appeal of
+these passionate hopes! Take the hands which are stretched forth, help
+them to clasp one another. Help these peoples, groping in the dark, to
+find their way, to establish the new charter of freedom and union whose
+principles they are seeking earnestly but confusedly.
+
+Reflect: Europe is in danger of falling back into the circles of hell
+through which she has been toiling for more than four years, drenching
+the soil with her blood. In all lands, the peoples have lost confidence
+in the ruling classes. At this hour, you are the only one who can speak
+to all alike--to the common people and to the bourgeoisies of the
+nations. You alone can be sure of an attentive hearing. None but you can
+act as mediator to-day (and will even you still be able to act as
+mediator to-morrow?). Should this mediator fail to appear, the human
+masses, disarrayed and unbalanced, will almost inevitably break forth
+into excesses. The common people will welter in bloody chaos, while the
+parties of traditional order will fly to bloody reaction. Class wars,
+racial wars, wars between the nations of yesterday, wars between the
+nations which have just been formed, blind social convulsions, with no
+further aim than the gratification of the hatreds, the envies, the crazy
+dreams of an hour of life looking forward to no morrow....
+
+Heir of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, take up the cause, not of
+a party, not of a single people, but of all! Summon the representatives
+of the peoples to the Congress of Mankind! Preside over it with the full
+authority which you hold in virtue of your lofty moral consciousness and
+in virtue of the great future of America! Speak, speak to all! The world
+hungers for a voice which will overleap the frontiers of nations and of
+classes. Be the arbiter of the free peoples! Thus may the future hail
+you by the name of Reconciler!
+
+ROMAIN ROLLAND.
+
+VILLENEUVE, _November 9, 1918._
+
+"Le Populaire," Paris, November 18, 1918.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     A few days later (December 4, 1918), "Le Populaire" published a
+     letter from Romain Rolland to Jean Longuet, wherein Romain Rolland
+     laid bare his most intimate thought and gave the reasons for his
+     attitude towards Wilson. The letter was reprinted by "L'Humanité"
+     in the issue of December 14, 1918, a special "Wilson Number."
+
+I am no Wilsonian. I see all too plainly that the president's message,
+as clever as it is generous, aims (in good faith) at realising
+throughout the world the ideal of the bourgeois republic of the
+Franco-American type.
+
+This is a conservative ideal and it no longer satisfies me.
+
+Nevertheless, despite our personal predilections and our reserves for
+the future, I believe that the best thing we can do for the moment is to
+support the action of President Wilson. He alone will be able to curb
+the greedy appetites, the ambitions, and the fierce instincts, which
+will seat themselves at the peace banquet. Through his action alone is
+there any chance of bringing about a modus vivendi in Europe, one which
+provisionally at least shall be fairly just. This great bourgeois
+embodies what is purest, most disinterested, most humane, in the
+mentality of his class.[91] No one is better fitted than he to act as
+Arbiter.
+
+R. R.
+
+_June, 1919._
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+AGAINST VICTORIOUS BISMARCKISM
+
+     "Le Populaire" asked Romain Rolland to write an article on the
+     occasion of President Wilson's arrival in France. Romain Rolland,
+     who was ill at the time, wrote from Villeneuve as follows.
+
+
+THURSDAY, _December 12, 1918._
+
+DEAR LONGUET,
+
+Your letter of the 6th inst. did not reach me until to-day, of course
+after being opened by the military censorship. It finds me in bed, where
+I have been for a fortnight, suffering from an obstinate attack of
+influenza. It is therefore impossible for me to write the article you
+want.
+
+All that I will say is that, during the last fortnight, the news from
+France has often made me more uneasy than my fever. The Allies believe
+themselves victorious. In my view (if they fail to pull themselves
+together) they are vanquished, beaten, infected, by Bismarckism.
+
+Unless there is an extensive turn in events, I foresee a century of
+hatreds, of new wars of revenge, and the destruction of European
+civilisation. Let me add that the destruction of European civilisation
+is hardly to be regretted if the victorious nations prove thus incapable
+of guiding their destinies.
+
+It is my hope that, amid the intoxicating but deceptive triumphs of the
+present, they may regain the consciousness of their crushing
+responsibilities towards the future! It is my hope that they will
+remember that every one of their mistakes or their sins of omission
+will have to be paid for by their children and their children's
+children!
+
+Excuse these lines, scribbled by a convalescent, and believe me, my dear
+Longuet,
+
+Yours as always,
+
+ROMAIN ROLLAND.
+
+"Le Populaire," Paris, December 21, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE MIND
+
+
+Brain workers, comrades, scattered throughout the world, kept apart for
+five years by the armies, the censorship and the mutual hatred of the
+warring nations, now that barriers are falling and frontiers are being
+reopened, we issue to you a call to reconstitute our brotherly union,
+but to make of it a new union more firmly founded and more strongly
+built than that which previously existed.
+
+The war has disordered our ranks. Most of the intellectuals placed their
+science, their art, their reason, at the service of the governments. We
+do not wish to formulate any accusations, to launch any reproaches. We
+know the weakness of the individual mind and the elemental strength of
+great collective currents. The latter, in a moment, swept the former
+away, for nothing had been prepared to help in the work of resistance.
+Let this experience, at least, be a lesson to us for the future!
+
+First of all, let us point out the disasters that have resulted from the
+almost complete abdication of intelligence throughout the world, and
+from its voluntary enslavement to the unchained forces. Thinkers,
+artists, have added an incalculable quantity of envenomed hate to the
+plague which devours the flesh and the spirit of Europe. In the arsenal
+of their knowledge, their memory, their imagination, they have sought
+reasons for hatred, reasons old and new, reasons historical, scientific,
+logical, and poetical. They have worked to destroy mutual understanding
+and mutual love among men. So doing, they have disfigured, defiled,
+debased, degraded Thought, of which they were the representatives. They
+have made it an instrument of the passions; and (unwittingly, perchance)
+they have made it a tool of the selfish interests of a political or
+social clique, of a state, a country, or a class. Now, when, from the
+fierce conflict in which the nations have been at grips, the victors and
+the vanquished emerge equally stricken, impoverished, and at the bottom
+of their hearts (though they will not admit it) utterly ashamed of their
+access of mania--now, Thought, which has been entangled in their
+struggles, emerges, like them, fallen from her high estate.
+
+Arise! Let us free the mind from these compromises, from these unworthy
+alliances, from these veiled slaveries! Mind is no one's servitor. It is
+we who are the servitors of mind. We have no other master. We exist to
+bear its light, to defend its light, to rally round it all the strayed
+sheep of mankind. Our role, our duty, is to be a centre of stability, to
+point out the pole star, amid the whirlwind of passions in the night.
+Among these passions of pride and mutual destruction, we make no choice;
+we reject them all. Truth only do we honour; truth that is free,
+frontierless, limitless; truth that knows nought of the prejudices of
+race or caste. Not that we lack interest in humanity. For humanity we
+work, but for humanity as a whole. We know nothing of peoples. We know
+the People, unique and universal; the People which suffers, which
+struggles, which falls and rises to its feet once more, and which
+continues to advance along the rough road drenched with its sweat and
+its blood; the People, all men, all alike our brothers. In order that
+they may, like ourselves, realise this brotherhood, we raise above their
+blind struggles the Ark of the Covenant--Mind which is free, one and
+manifold, eternal.
+
+R. R.
+
+VILLENEUVE, _Spring, 1919._
+
+
+[This manifesto was published in "L'Humanité," June 26, 1919.]
+
+By the end of 1919, the following signatures had been received to the
+above declaration.
+
+    Addams, Jane (U.S.A.).
+    Alain [Chartier] (France).
+    Alexandre, Raoul (on the staff of "L'Humanité," France).
+    Arco, G. von (Germany).
+    Arcos, René (France).
+    Barbusse, Henri (France).
+    Baudouin, Charles (editor of "Le Carmel," France).
+    Bazalgette, Léon (France).
+    Bernaert, Edouard (France).
+    Besnard, Lucien (France).
+    Bignami, Enrico (editor of "Coenobium," Italy).
+    Biriukov, Paul (Russia).
+    Bloch, Ernest (Switzerland).
+    Bloch, Jean-Richard (France).
+    Bodin, Louise (editor of "La Voix des Femmes," France).
+    Bracco, Roberto (Italy).
+    Brooks, Van Wyck (U.S.A.).
+    Brouwer, L. J. (Holland).
+    Buchet, Samuel (France).
+    Burnet, E. (of the Pasteur Institute, France).
+    Carpenter, Edward (England).
+    Chateaubriant, A. de (France).
+    Chenevière, Georges (France).
+    Colin, Paul (editor of "L'Art Libre," Belgium).
+    Coomaraswamy, Ananda (Hindustan).
+    Costa, Benedicto (Brazil).
+    Croce, Benedetto (Italy).
+    Crucy, François (on the staff of "L'Humanité," France).
+    Desanges, Paul (on the staff of "La Forge," France).
+    Desprès, Fernand (France).
+    Dickinson, G. Lowes (England).
+    Donvalis, Georges (Greece).
+    Doyen, Albert (France).
+    Duhamel, Georges (France).
+    Dujardin, Edouard (editor of "Cahiers Idéalistes," France).
+    Dunois, Amédée (on the staff of "L'Humanité, France).
+    Dupin, Gustave (France).
+    Dy, Melot du (Belgium).
+    Eder, Robert (Switzerland).
+    Eeckhoud, Georges (Belgium).
+    Eeden, Frederick van (Holland).
+    Einstein, Albert (Germany).
+    Eslander, J. F. (Belgium).
+    Fiévez, Joseph (France).
+    Foerster, W. (Germany).
+    Forel, Auguste (Switzerland).
+    Frank, Leonhard (Germany).
+    Frank, Waldo (U.S.A.).
+    Fried, A. H. (German-Austria).
+    Fry, R. (England).
+    George, Waldemar (on the staff of "La Forge," France).
+    Georges-Bazille, G. (editor of "Cahiers Britanniques et
+    Américains," France).
+    Gerlach, H. von (Germany).
+    Goll, Ivan (Germany).
+    Hamon, Augustin (France).
+    Heidenstam, Verner von (Sweden).
+    Hellens, Franz (Belgium).
+    Herzog, Wilhelm (Germany).
+    Hesse, Hermann (Germany).
+    Hier, Frederick P. (U.S.A.).
+    Hilbert, David (Germany).
+    Hofer, Charles (Switzerland).
+    Holmes, John Haynes (U.S.A.).
+    Huebsch, B. W. (U.S.A.).
+    Jouve, P. J. (France).
+    Kapteyn, J. C. (Holland).
+    Key, Ellen (Sweden).
+    Khnopff, Georges (Belgium).
+    Kollwitz, Käte (Germany).
+    Labouré, A. M. (France).
+    Lagerlöf, Selma (Sweden).
+    Laisant, C. A. (France).
+    Latzko, Andreas (Hungary).
+    Lefebvre, Raymond (France).
+    Lehmann, Max (Germany).
+    Lindhagen, Carl (Sweden).
+    Liveright, Horace B. (U.S.A.).
+    Lopez-Pico, M. (Spain).
+    Lucci, Arnaldo (Italy).
+    Mann, Heinrich (Germany).
+    Martinet, Marcel (France).
+    Maseras, Alfons (Spain).
+    Masereel, Frans (Belgium).
+    Masson, Émile (France).
+    Masters, Edgar Lee (U.S.A.).
+    Matisse, Georges (France).
+    Matisse, Madeline (France).
+    Mercereau, Alexandre (France).
+    Mériga, Lue (editor of "La Forge," France).
+    Mesnil, Jacques (Belgium).
+    Michaelis, Sophus (Denmark).
+    Moissi, A. (Germany).
+    Morhardt, Mathias (France).
+    Natorp, Paul (Germany).
+    Nearing, Scott (U.S.A.).
+    Nicolai, Georg Friedrich (Germany).
+    Nithack-Stahn (Germany).
+    Ors, Eugenio d' (Spain).
+    Paasche, H. (Germany).
+    Picard, Edmond (Belgium).
+    Pierre, A. (on the staff of "L'Humanité," France).
+    Prenant, A. (France).
+    Ragaz (Switzerland).
+    Reuillard, Gabriel (France).
+    Rolland, Romain (France).
+    Romains, Jules (France).
+    Roorda van Eysinga, H. (Switzerland).
+    Roussel, Nelly (France).
+    Rubakin, Nicholas (Russia).
+    Rusiecka, M. de (Poland).
+    Russell, Bertrand (England).
+    Ryner, Han (France).
+    Schirardin, (professor in Metz, France).
+    Schneider, Edouard (France).
+    Schoen, Edouard (professor in Metz, France).
+    Schultz, P. (professor in Metz, France).
+    Sévérine (France).
+    Signac, Paul (France).
+    Sinclair, Upton (U.S.A.).
+    Sorel, Robert (France).
+    Stieglitz, Alfred (U.S.A.).
+    Stocker, Helene (Germany).
+    Suchenno, Jean (France).
+    Tagore, Rabindranath (Hindustan).
+    Thiessou, Gaston (France).
+    Uhry, Jules (on the staff of "L'Humanité," France).
+    Unruh, Fritz von (Germany).
+    Vaillant-Couturier, Paul (France).
+    Velde, Henry van de (Belgium).
+    Vildrac, Charles (France).
+    Villard, Oswald Garrison (U.S.A.).
+    Viskovatov, L. de (Russia).
+    Wacker (professor at Metz, France).
+    Wehberg, H. (Germany).
+    Werfel, Franz (Germany).
+    Werth, Léon (France).
+    Yannios (Greece).
+    Zangwill, Israel (England).
+    Zweig, Stefan (German-Austria).
+
+Emilio H. del Villar, editor of "Archive Geografico de la Peninsula
+Iberica," of Madrid, has sent me a manifesto _Por la causa de la
+civilizacion_, published in the Madrid newspapers in June, 1919, and
+inspired with sentiments analogous to those of the above declaration.
+This manifesto is signed by about one hundred Spanish writers and men of
+science, university professors, etc. Emilio H. del Villar sends his own
+adhesion, together with that of all the signatories of the Spanish
+manifesto, to the Declaration of the Independence of the Mind.
+
+It is a matter for regret that we have not been able to add to the list
+the signatures of our Russian friends from whom we are still cut off by
+the governmental blockade. We keep their places open. Russian thought is
+in the vanguard of the thought of the world.
+
+R. R.
+
+_August, 1919._
+
+
+
+
+SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE TO CHAPTER XX
+
+A GREAT EUROPEAN: G. F. NICOLAI
+
+
+Comment is requisite upon the reproaches addressed by G. F. Nicolai to
+certain Christian sects. In the various countries of Europe, opposition
+to the war, on the part of those he names, was far more vigorous than
+has been commonly supposed. Inasmuch as the authorities ruthlessly but
+silently suppressed all opposition, it is only since the close of the
+war that we have been able to glean information concerning these
+conscientious revolts and sacrifices. Without dwelling upon the story of
+the thousands of conscientious objectors in the United States and in
+England (where Bertrand Russell has been their defender and
+interpreter), I wish to mention that Paul Birinkov has drawn my
+attention to the attitude of the Nazarenes in Hungary and Serbia, where
+large numbers of them were shot. He has also given me information
+concerning the doings of the Tolstoyans, the Dukhobors, the Adventists,
+the Young Baptists, etc., in Russia. As for the Mennonites, according to
+the reports of Dr. Pierre Kennel, in the United States most of them
+refused to subscribe to the war loans. They were not compelled to
+undertake combatant duties, but they accepted service in the battalions
+for the reconstruction of the devastated regions in northern France. In
+tsarist Russia, and in a number of the German states, they were granted
+exemption from combatant service, and did duty in the medical corps or
+other auxiliary drafts. In France, by a decree of the Convention
+(respected by Napoleon) they were likewise assigned to non-combatant
+service. But the Third Republic disregarded this decree.
+
+R. R.
+
+
+_Printed in Great Britain by_ UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM
+PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Published in pamphlet form by La Maison Française, Paris, 1918.
+
+[2] Except the last two stanzas, which were composed in the autumn of
+the same year.
+
+[3] Conversation with L. Mabilleau, "Opinion," June 20, 1908.
+
+[4] In a recent issue of the "Revue des Deux Mondes."
+
+[5] Institut für Kulturforschung (Institute for the Study of
+Civilisation), founded at Vienna in February, 1915, by Dr. Erwin
+Hanslick. So rapid was its success that in February, 1916, it gave birth
+to the Institute for the Study of the East and the Orient.
+
+[6] "Nature," writes Voltaire in _L'Homme aux quarante écus_, "is like
+those great princes who think nothing of the loss of 400,000 men,
+provided they can fulfil their own august designs."
+
+The princes of to-day, great and small alike, are more spendthrift!
+
+[7] Cf. Victor Bérard's brief account of the Manchurian campaign in _La
+révolte de l'Asie_. Cf. also _Les derniers jours de Pékin_, where Pierre
+Loti describes the destruction of Tung-Chow, "the City of Celestial
+Purity."
+
+[8] Numerous issues of "Cahiers de la Quinzaine" have been devoted to
+castigating the crimes of civilisation. I may mention:
+
+    (_a_) Sur le Congo, by E. D. Morel, Pierre Mille, and Félicien Challaye
+    ("Cahiers de la Quinzaine," vii, 6, 12, 16).
+    (_b_) Sur les Juifs en Russie et en Roumanie, by Bernard Lazare, Elie
+    Eberlin, and Georges Delahache (iii, 8; vi, 6).
+    (_c_) Sur la Pologne, by Edmond Bernus (viii, 10, 12, 14).
+    (_d_) Sur l'Arménie, by Pierre Quillard (iii, 19).
+    (_e_) Sur la Finlande, by Jean Deck (iii, 21).
+
+[9] Arnold Porret, _Les causes profondes de la guerre_, Lausanne, 1916.
+
+[10] From a lecture entitled Nationalism in Japan, since republished in
+the volume _Nationalism_, Macmillan, London, 1917 (pp. 59 and 60). This
+address marks a turning-point in the history of the world.
+
+[11] Consult a number of shrewd articles published during the last
+decade by Francis Delaisi. One in particular may be mentioned, that
+which appeared in "Pages libres" on January 1, 1907, dealing with
+foreign affairs in 1906 (the Algeciras year). He gives striking examples
+of what he terms "industrialised diplomacy." As a complement to Delaisi,
+read the financial articles of the "Revue" (issues for November and
+December, 1906) signed Lysis, and the commentary on these articles by P.
+G. La Chesnais in "Pages libres" (January 19, 1907). In these writings
+we find a plain demonstration of the power of the financial oligarchies
+over the governments of the European states, alike republics and
+monarchies--a power that is "collective, mysterious in its workings, and
+independent of control."
+
+[12] Let me quote a few lines from Maurras, so lucid a writer when not
+under the spell of his fixed idea. "The Money State governs, gilds, and
+decorates Intelligence: but muzzles it and puts it to sleep. The Money
+State, at will, can prevent Intelligence from becoming aware of a
+political truth; and if Intelligence utters a political truth, the Money
+State can prevent that truth from being heard and understood. How can a
+country realise its own needs if those who know them can be condemned to
+silence, to falsehood, or to isolation?" (L'Avenir de l'Intelligence.)--A
+true picture of the present day.
+
+[13] Introduction to Marcelle Capy's book _Une voix de femme dans la
+mêlée_, Ollendorff, Paris, 1916. The italicised passages were suppressed
+by the censor in the original publication.
+
+[14] On page 26 of Marcelle Capy's book we learn how touching a response
+these utterances of stalwart sympathy have called forth from the
+generous hearts of our soldiers.
+
+[15] Published at Geneva by J. H. Jeheber, 1917; English translation
+_The Journal of Leo Tolstoi_ (1895-1899), Knopf, New York, 1917.
+
+[16] December 7, 1895.
+
+[17] An exception must be made as regards certain voices from Germany,
+among which that of Professor Foerster speaks in the clearest tones. But
+we should err were we to allow ourselves to be persuaded that such
+unbiassed persons are a German monopoly, should we fail to realise that
+similar voices are raised in the other camp.
+
+[18] This is shown by the recent establishment and the success of Swiss
+periodicals which embody a reaction against the tendencies described in
+the text. Moreover, regrets similar to those voiced above have been
+repeatedly expressed by Swiss writers of independent mind. I may mention
+H. Hodler ("La Voix de L'Humanité"); E. Platzhoff-Lejeune ("Coenobium"
+and the "Revue mensuelle"); Adolphe Ferrière ("Coenobium" for March and
+April, 1917, in an article entitled The Effect of the Press and of the
+Censorship in Promoting Mutual Hatred among the Nations).
+
+[19] "The Masses, a free magazine," 34 Union Square East, New York.--All
+the items in the text are quoted from the issues of June and July, 1917.
+
+[20] Advertising Democracy, June, 1917, p. 5.
+
+[21] Who wanted War, June, 1917, p. 23.
+
+[22] Socialists and War, June, 1917, p. 25.
+
+[23] The Religion of Patriotism, July, 1917.
+
+[24] On Not Going to the War, July, 1917.
+
+[25] Patriotism in the Middle West, June, 1917.
+
+[26] This is said to have happened in the case of "Pearson's Magazine."
+(Consult the article on Free Speech, "The Masses," July, 1917.)--It is
+hardly necessary to refer to the masterly manner in which all
+independent persons who displease the authorities are implicated in
+imaginary plots.
+
+[27] Issue of July, 1917.
+
+[28] Since the article above quoted was published, the American Senate
+has imposed heavy taxation on war profits.
+
+[29] E. D. Morel, having served his sentence, has given a number of
+lectures in various parts of Britain, arousing the sympathetic
+indignation of his audiences by his account of the illegalities in his
+trial and of the undercurrents in the whole business. He was able to
+show that there were influences at work emanating from certain persons
+whose interests had been injuriously affected prior to the war by
+Morel's press campaign against the Congo atrocities.--Cf. _The
+Persecution of E. D. Morel_, Reformer's Series, Glasgow, 1919.
+
+[30] The allusion is to Victor Hugo's _Les Burgraves_. Burgrave Job is
+eighty years of age; Burgrave Magnus, his son, is sixty.--Translators'
+Note.
+
+[31] The section of Bellinzona, or of Ticino, was founded quite
+recently, in November, 1916. At the inaugural ceremony, the president,
+Julius Schmidhauser, delivered a speech in which he sounded an excellent
+European note. He contrasted the union of the three races of Switzerland
+with the spectacle of contemporary Europe still living in the
+prehistoric age, a Europe "wherein the Frenchman can see in the German
+nothing but an enemy, wherein the German can see in the Frenchman
+nothing but an enemy, and wherein neither can regard the other as a
+human being. For our part, we have a way in Switzerland of discovering
+the human element in all mankind."--"Centralblatt des Zofingervereins,"
+December, 1916.
+
+[32] The text was written in the summer of 1917. Shortly afterwards,
+fresh dissensions arose in the Zofingia. These discords have been
+accentuated by the Russian revolution.
+
+[33] The program of the new committee (Der Centralausschuss an die
+Sektionen), published in the "Centralblatt" for October, 1916, was
+reproduced, in part, in the "Journal de Genève" for October 19th, under
+the caption Le programme de la Jeunesse. This program affirms the
+"supernationalist" and anti-imperialist faith on the lines expounded in
+the discussion of which a summary will shortly be given in the text. I
+quote from the program: "We do not live upon the worship of our warlike
+past.... Placed as we are in the centre of a system of great imperialist
+powers which aim at domination through force, at material greatness, and
+at glory, it is our task to fight openly, boldly, trusting in the
+future, against imperialism and on behalf of the ideal of humanity."
+
+A keen interest in social questions, solidarity with the common people,
+with the disinherited of the earth, are likewise plainly manifested.
+
+[34] None the less I am impressed by the bold and perspicuous idealism
+displayed by some of these young Latin Swiss in the discussions
+summarised in the sequel.
+
+[35] Serment du Jeu de Paume, Versailles, June 20, 1789.--Translators'
+Note.
+
+[36] Le Feu, Journal d'une Escouade, par Henri Barbusse, Flammarion,
+Paris, 1916. English translation, Under Fire, The Story of a Squad,
+Dent, London, 1917.
+
+[37] Words of Farewell (issue of May, 1917).
+
+[38] Among these I may mention my article, To the Murdered Nations
+(Chapter III, above) from which the censorship deleted one hundred
+lines. The gaps were filled by Wullens with Belot's fine engravings
+(issue of May, 1917).
+
+[39] Notwithstanding the sentence passed upon Guilbeaux since the
+passage in the text was written, my confidence in him is unshaken. I
+differ from him in many respects, but I admire his courage. To those who
+have known Guilbeaux intimately, his good faith is above suspicion.--R.
+R., August, 1919.
+
+[40] G. Thuriot-Franchi, Les Marches de France.
+
+[41] Andreas Latzko, _Menschen im Krieg_, Rascher, Zurich, 1917; English
+translation, _Men in Battle_, Cassell, London, 1918.
+
+[42] Andreas Latzko is a Hungarian officer. He was wounded on the
+Italian front during the fighting of 1915-16.
+
+[43] Stefan Zweig, _Jeremias, eine dramatische Dichtung in neun
+Bildern_, Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, 1917.
+
+[44] _Les Temps maudits_, "demain," Geneva.
+
+[45] _Vous êtes des hommes_, "Nouvelle Revue Française," Paris; and
+_Poème contre le grand crime_, "demain," Geneva; above all the admirable
+_Danse des Morts_, "Les Tablettes," Geneva, republished by "L'Action
+Sociale," La-Chaux-de-Fonds.
+
+[46] _Mr. Britling sees it Through_, Cassell, London, 1916.
+
+[47] _The Fortune, a Romance of Friendship_, Maunsel, Dublin and London,
+1917.
+
+[48] G. F. Nicolai, M.D., sometime professor of physiology at Berlin
+University, _Die Biologie des Krieges, Betrachtungen eines
+Naturforschers den Deutschen zur Besinnung_, Orell Füssli, Zurich, 1917;
+English translation, _The Biology of War_, Dent, London, 1919.
+
+[49] Cf. especially Chapter Six, an interesting account of the
+development of armies from ancient times down to to-day, when we have
+the armed nation. Also Chapter Fourteen, which deals with war and peace
+as reflected in the writings of ancient and modern poets and
+philosophers.
+
+[50] Erfassen. Nicolai points out that the figurative meaning of the
+word "erfassen" like that of "apprehend" and "comprehend" [or of the
+native "grasp"] is a metaphysical extension of the primitive
+"prehension" by the hand.
+
+[51] I ignore, in the text, the abundant proofs Nicolai draws from
+ethnology and from the history of the lower animals. He shows, for
+example, that the most primitive peoples, the Bushmen, the Fuegians, the
+Eskimos, etc., live in hordes even when they display no tendency towards
+family life. All savages are gregarious in the extreme; solitude is
+disastrous to them alike physically and mentally. Even civilised man
+finds solitude hard to bear.
+
+[52] _Faust_, Part II, 5. Mephistopheles' words, when he hands over to
+Faust the proceeds of a voyage. [War, trade, and piracy are trinity in
+unity--inseparable.]
+
+[53] "Everything which exists, above all everything which lives, tends
+towards immeasurable increase."
+
+[54] For unicellular organisms, osmosis imposes a limit; for
+multicellular organisms there is a mechanical limit to size; for the
+groupings of individuals to form collectivities, social communities,
+there is a limit fixed by the amount of available energy.
+
+[55] Pp. 160 to 163 [English edition].
+
+[56] On p. 255 [of the English edition] will be found an ethnographical
+chart of Germany. It is distinctly humorous.
+
+[57] This statement requires qualification. The reader is referred to a
+note at the end of the volume.
+
+[58] Jeheber, Geneva, 1915.
+
+[59] Buddhist Views of War, "The Open Court," May, 1904.
+
+[60] The actual words in my play are: "The nations die that God may
+live."
+
+[61] Nicolai terms them "chance products" (sind nur zufällige Produkte).
+
+[62] It is surprising that there is but one mention of Auguste Comte in
+Nicolai's book; for Comte's Great Human Being is certainly akin to the
+German biologist's Humanity.
+
+[63] We shall do well to note that Nicolai practically considers himself
+exempt from the need for these material demonstrations. As far as he is
+concerned, it would suffice him, as it sufficed Aristotle, to observe
+the play of forces among men. This simple observation would convince him
+that humanity must be regarded as an organism. "But moderns, although
+they will generally deny it, are for the most part infected with the
+belief that all solid fact must be material.... Even though it be not
+absolutely necessary to demonstrate that there exists between human
+beings a bridge of real substance (eine Brücke realer Substanz), even
+though the dynamic ties suffice us, it is desirable to satisfy the
+materialistic demands of our day, and to show that there does actually
+exist between the men of all ages and all lands an effective
+interconnection, which is uniform, persistent, nay eternal" [pp.
+392-393, English edition].
+
+[64] According to this theory, which was initiated by Gustav Jaeger in
+1878, there occurs an eternal transmission of an inheritable germ plasm,
+this being temporarily housed within the perishable soma of the
+individual living being. The hypothesis of the undying plasma has given
+rise to lively discussions which are still in progress.
+
+[65] Ueber Ursprung und Bedeutung der Amphimixis, "Biolog.
+Zentralblatt," xxvi, No. 22, 1906.
+
+[66] This seems to me the weak point in the theory. How can we reconcile
+the mutation and the variability of the germ plasm, with its immortality
+and its eternal transmission?
+
+[67] Species and Varieties: their Origin by Mutation, Kegan Paul,
+London, 1905.
+
+[68] Closing sections of Chapter Thirteen.
+
+[69] I should like to give an account here of Nicolai's solution of the
+problem of liberty. He discusses the matter in one of the most important
+sections of his book.--How can a biologist, filled with a feeling of
+universal necessity, find place, amid that necessity and without
+prejudice to it, for human freedom? One of the most notable
+characteristics of this great mind, is Nicolai's power of associating
+within himself two rival and complementary forces. He makes a suggestive
+study, at once philosophic and physiological, of the anatomy of the
+brain and of the almost infinite possibilities the brain holds for the
+future (all unknown to us to-day), of the thousands of roads which are
+marked out in the brain many centuries before humanity dreams of using
+them.--But to follow up this study would lead us beyond the scope of the
+present article. I must refer the reader to pp. 58-68 of _The Biology of
+War_ [English edition]. These pages are a model of scientific intuition.
+
+[70] Chapter Ten, p. 309 [English edition].
+
+[71] Chapter Fourteen.
+
+[72] Chapter Ten, pp. 270-271 [English edition].
+
+[73] Introduction, p. 11 [English edition].
+
+[74] "Um dem guten und gerechten Menschen meine triumphierende
+Sicherheit zu geben." Introduction [p. 10, English edition].
+
+[75] The most important of these studies have been collected in the
+great work _Les Fourmis de la Suisse_ (Nouveaux mémoires de la Société
+helvétique des Sciences naturelles, vol. xxvi, Zurich, 1874), and in the
+admirable series _Expériences et remarques pratiques sur les sensations
+des insectes_, published in five parts in the "Rivista di Scienze
+biologiche," Como, 1900-1901. [Two only of Forel's writings on insects
+are available in the English language: _The Senses of Insects_, Methuen,
+London, 1908; and _Ants and some other Insects_, Kegan Paul, London,
+1904.] But these works form no more than a fraction of the author's
+studies written on this subject. Dr. Forel recently told me that since
+the publication in 1874 of the work which has become a classic, he has
+penned no less than 226 essays upon ants.
+
+[76] Some of these soldier ants function also as butchers, cutting up
+the prey into small fragments.
+
+[77] _Insect Life_, Macmillan, London, 1901.
+
+[78] _Mutual Aid_, Heinemann, London, 1915.
+
+[79] Auguste Forel, _Les Fourmis de la Suisse_, pp. 261-263.
+
+[80] Op. cit. p. 249.
+
+[81] Polyergus rufescens.
+
+[82] Op. cit. pp. 266-273.
+
+[83] A great cause of error, among those who study insects, is to apply
+uncritically to an entire genus, observations made upon one or upon a
+few species. The species of insects are very numerous. Among ants alone,
+so Forel informs me, there are more than 7,500 species. These species
+exhibit all shades, all degrees, of instinct.
+
+[84] I am well aware that the concluding statement in the text is in
+total contradiction with the thought of Auguste Forel, who denies free
+will. I do not propose here to reopen the agelong dispute between free
+will and determinism, which seems to me largely verbal. I shall consider
+the question elsewhere.
+
+[85] For instance, the Institut für Kulturforschung (Institute for the
+Study of Civilisation) of Vienna (see above p. 19). This Institute has
+just founded a Society for the Study of World Civilisation, which issues
+a periodical entitled "Erde, a journal for the intellectual life of the
+whole of mankind." The first number, which comes to hand while I am
+correcting the proof of these pages, is throughout an ardent confession
+of "panhumanist" faith.
+
+[86] A Great European, G. F. Nicolai ("demain," October and November
+1917).--See Chapter XX above.
+
+[87] Steen Hasselbach, Copenhagen. First issue, October 1, 1918.
+
+[88] Why I left Germany. An open letter to the Unknown who rules
+Germany.--The German article has been republished in pamphlet form by A.
+G. Benteli, Bümpliz-Bern, Switzerland, 1918.
+
+[89] In telling this part of the story, Nicolai conceals most of the
+details of his flight. Too many are implicated, and they would suffer if
+he were explicit. Already, he tells us, an innocent person, the
+betrothed of one of his companions, has been imprisoned.--Some day he
+will write a memoir of his military experiences.
+
+[90] This Aufruf an die Europäer is reprinted, in the first issue of
+"Das werdende Europa" immediately after the article I have just been
+analysing, and Nicolai appeals to all readers who sympathise with it to
+send him their signatures.
+
+[91] Subsequent events have shown that this did not amount to much,
+after all. The moral abdication of President Wilson, abandoning his own
+principles without having the honesty to admit the fact, signalises the
+ruin of that lofty bourgeois idealism which, for a century and a half,
+gave to the ruling class, notwithstanding many mistakes, both strength
+and prestige. The consequences of such an act are incalculable.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Forerunners, by Romain Rolland
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