find them in ruins. They will rise again more beautiful than of old
from the ashes and the shards. We shall know days of heroic poverty;
but we have learnt that poverty is powerless to sadden souls upheld by
a great love and nourished by a noble ideal. We shall return with
heads erect, regenerated in a regenerated Europe, rejuvenated by our
magnificent misfortune, purified by victory and cleansed of the
littleness that obscured the virtues which slumbered within us and of
which we are not aware. We shall have lost all the goods that perish
but as readily come to live again. And in their place we shall have
acquired those riches which shall not again perish within our hearts.
Our eyes were closed to many things; now they have opened upon wider
horizons. Of old we dared not avert our gaze from our wealth, our
petty comforts, our little rooted habits. But now our eyes have been
wrested from the soil; now they have achieved the sight of heights
that were hitherto unnoticed. We did not know ourselves; we used not
to love one another sufficiently; but we have learnt to know ourselves
in the amazement of glory and to love one another in the grievous
ardour of the most stupendous sacrifice that any people has ever
accomplished. We were on the point of forgetting the heroic virtues,
the unfettered thoughts, the eternal ideas that lead humanity. To-day,
not only do we know that they exist: we have taught the world that
they are always triumphant, that nothing is lost while faith is left,
while honour is intact, while love continues, while the soul does not
surrender and that the most monstrous of powers will never prevail
against those ideal forces which are the happiness and the glory of
man and the sole reason for his existence.
* * * * *
ON THE DEATH OF A LITTLE SOLDIER
X
ON THE DEATH OF A LITTLE SOLDIER
1
When I speak of this little soldier who fell a few days ago, up there
in the Vosges, it is not that I may mourn him publicly. It behoves us
in these days to mourn our dead in secret. Personal sorrows no longer
count; and we must learn how to suppress them in the presence of that
greater sorrow which extends over all the world, the particular sorrow
of the mothers who are setting us an example of the most heroic
silence that human suffering has been taught to observe since
suffering first visited womankind. For the admirable silence of the
mothers is one of the great and striking lessons of this war. Amid
that tragic and sublime silence no regret dare make itself heard.
But, though my grief remains dumb, my admiration can still raise its
voice; and in speaking of this young soldier, who had not reached
man's estate and who died as the bravest of men, I speak of all his
brothers-in-arms and hail thousands like him in his name, which name
becomes a great and glorious symbol; for at this time, when a
prodigious wave of unselfishness and courage, surging up from the very
depths of the human race, uplifts the men who are fighting and giving
their lives for its future, they all resemble one another in the same
perfection.
2
My friend Raymond Bon was a sergeant in the 27th battalion of the
Chasseurs Alpins. He left for the front in August, 1914, with the
other recruits of the 1915 class, which means that he was hardly
twenty years of age; and he won his stripes on the battlefield, after
being twice named in dispatches. The second time was on returning from
a murderous assault at Thann, in Upper Alsace, in which he had greatly
distinguished himself. I quote the exact words:
"Corporal Bon is mentioned in the orders of the battalion
for his gallantry under fire and his indifference to danger.
When the leader of his section was killed, Bon took command,
rushed to the front and, shouting to his men to follow him,
gave proofs of the greatest initiative and courage. He was
the first in the enemy's trenches with his section."
That day he was promoted to sergeant and complimented by the general
in front of his battalion in the following terms:
"This is the second time, my friend, that I am told what
you have done; next time you shall be told what I have
done."
To-day men tell of his death, but also of the undying glory which
death alone confers.
"At Hartmannsviller," writes one of Bon's comrades,
"according to his captain's story, our friend's company was
held in reserve, waiting to support the attack delivered by
a regiment of infantry. The order came to support and
reinforce the attack. The company at once leapt from the
trenches, with the captain and Bon at its head. There was a
salvo of artillery; and the bursting of a great shell caught
Raymond almost full in the body, smashing his right leg and
his chest. The captain was hit in the right hand.
Notwithstanding his horrible wounds, Bon did not lose
consciousness; he was able to stammer out a few words and to
press the hand which the captain gave him. In less than two
minutes all was over."
And the captain adds:
"Always ready to sacrifice himself; a brave among the
brave."
These are modest and yet glorious details: modest because they are so
very common, because they are constantly being repeated in their noble
monotony and springing up from every side, numberless as the essential
actions of our daily life; and glorious because before this war they
seemed so rare and almost legendary and incomprehensible.
3
Raymond Bon was a child of the south, of that Provence which, day
after day, is shedding torrents of its blood to wipe out slanders
which we can no longer remember without turning pale with anger and
indignation. He was born at Avignon, the old city of the Popes and the
cicadas, where men have louder accents and lighter hearts than
elsewhere. He was a little boxing-master, who earned a livelihood at
Nice for himself and his destitute parents by giving lessons in the
noble art of self-defence with the good, ever-ready weapons which
nature has bestowed upon us. He boasted no other education than that
which a lad picks up at the primary school; but, almost illiterate as
he was, he possessed all the refinement, the innate culture, the
unconscious delicacy and tact, the kindliness of speech and feeling
and the beautiful heart of that comely race whose foremost sons seem
to be purified and spiritualized from their first childish steps by
the most radiant sunshine in the world. One would say that they were
directly related to those exquisite ephebes of ancient Greece who
sprang into existence ready to understand all things and to
experience life's purest emotions before they themselves had lived. My
reason for insisting upon the point is that, in this respect above
all, he represented thousands and thousands of young men from that
wonderful region where all the best and most lovable qualities of
mankind lie hidden all around beneath the indifferent surface of
everyday existence, only awaiting a favourable occasion to blossom
into astonishing flowers of grace and generosity and heroism.
4
When I heard that he had gone to the front, I felt a melancholy
certainty that I should never set eyes on him again. He was of those
whose fate there is no mistaking. He was one of those predestined
heroes whose courage marks them out beforehand for death and laurels.
I but too well knew his eagerness, his unbounded sincerity and
single-mindedness and his great heart: that admirable heart devoid of
all caution or ulterior motive or calculation, that heart turned, at
all times and with all its might, purely towards honour and duty. He
was bound to be in the trenches and in the bayonet-charge the same man
that I had so often seen in the ring, taking risks from the start,
taking them wholesale, unremittingly, blindly and cheerfully and
always ready with his pleasant smile, like that of a shy child, at any
time to face whatever giant might have challenged him.
I remember that one day in the year 1914, he was training Georges
Carpentier, who was to meet some negro heavy-weight or other. The
disproportion in the strength of the two men struck my friends and me
as rather alarming; and we took the champion of the world aside and
begged him not to hit too hard and to spare our little instructor as
much as he could. That good fellow Carpentier, who is full of
chivalrous gentleness, promised to do what we asked; but after the
first round he came back to us and said:
"I can't let him off just as lightly as I should like. The little chap
is too plucky and too sensitive; and I have to hit out in earnest.
Besides, he overheard you and what he says is, 'Never mind what the
gentlemen say; they are much too considerate and are always afraid of
my getting smashed up. There's no fear of that. You go for me hard,
else we sha'n't be doing good work.'"
5
"Good work." That is evidently what he did down at the front and what
all of them there are doing. It is indeed fine work, the most glorious
that a man can perform, to die like that for a cause whose triumph he
will not behold, for benefits which he does not reap and which will
accrue solely to his fellow-men whom he will never see again. For,
apart from those benefits, like so many other men, like almost all the
others, he had nothing to gain and nothing to lose by this war. All
that he possessed in the world was the strength of his two arms; and
that strength finds a country everywhere.
But we are no longer concerned with the personal and immediate
interests that guide nearly all the actions of everyday life. A
loftier ideal has visited men's minds and occupies them wholly; and
the least prepared, the humblest, the minds that seemed to understand
hardly anything of the existence that came before the tremendous
trial, now feel it and live it as thoroughly and with the same
infinite ampleness as do those minds which thought themselves alone
capable of grasping it, of considering it from above or contemplating
it from every side. Never did a sheer ideal sink so deeply into so
many hearts or abide there for so long without wavering or faltering.
And therefore, beyond a doubt, somewhere on high, in the heart of the
unknown powers that rule us, there is being piled up at this moment
the most wonderful treasure of immaterial forces that man has ever
possessed, one upon which he will draw until the end of time; for in
that superhuman treasure-house nothing is lost and we are still living
day by day on the virtues stored in it long centuries ago by the
heroes of Greece and Rome, by the saints and martyrs of the primitive
Church and by the flower of mediæval chivalry.
* * * * *
THE HOUR OF DESTINY
XI
THE HOUR OF DESTINY
1
We are already free to speak of this war as if it were ended and of
victory as if it were assured. In principle, in the region of moral
certainties, Germany has been beaten since the battle of the Marne;
and reality, which is always slower, because it goes burdened beneath
the weight of matter, must needs come obediently to join the ranks of
those certainties. The last agony may be prolonged for weeks and
months, for the animal is endowed with the stubborn and almost
inextinguishable vitality of the beasts of prey; but it is wounded to
the death; and we have only to wait patiently, weapon in hand, for the
final convulsions that announce the end. The historic event, the
greatest beyond doubt since man possessed a history, is therefore
accomplished; and, strange to say, it seems as though it had been
accomplished in spite of history, against its laws and contrary to its
wishes. It is rash, I know, to speak of such things; and it behoves us
to be very cautious in these speculations which pass the scope of
human understanding; but, when we consider what the annals of this
earth of ours have taught us, it seemed written in the book of the
world's destinies that Germany was bound to win. It was not only, as
we are too ready at the first glance to believe, the megalomania of an
autocrat drunk with vanity, the gross vanity of some brainless
buffoon; it was not the warlike impulses, the blind infatuation and
egoism of a feudal caste; it was not even the impatient and
deliberately fanned envy and covetousness of a too prolific race
close-cramped on a dreary and ungrateful soil: it was none of these
that let loose the hateful war. All these causes, adventitious or
fortuitous as they were, only settled the hour of the decision; but
the decision itself was taken and written, probably ages ago, in other
spheres which cannot be reached by the conscious will of man, spheres
in which dark and mighty laws hold sway over illimitable time and
space. The whole line, the whole huge curve of history showed to the
mind of whosoever tried to read its sacred and fearful hieroglyphics
that the day of a new, a formidable and inexorable event was at hand.
The theories built up on this point in the last sixty years by the
German professors, notably by Giesbrecht, the historian of the Ottos
and the Hohenstaufens, and Treitschke, the historian of the
Hohenzollerns, do not necessarily carry conviction but are at least
impressive; and the work of these two writers, which we do not know
as well as we should, and of Treitschke in particular possessed in
Germany an influence that sank deep into every mind, far exceeding
that of Nietzsche, which we looked upon as preponderant.
But let us ignore for the moment all that belongs to a remote past,
the study of which would call for more space than we have at our
disposal. Let us not question the empire of the Ottos, the
Hohenstaufens or the Hapsburgs, in which Germany, at least as a nation
and a race, played but a secondary part and was still unconscious of
her existence. Let us rather see what is happening nearer to us and,
so to speak, before our very eyes.
2
A hundred years ago, under Napoleon, France enjoyed her spell of
hegemony, which she was not able to prolong because this hegemony was
more the work of a prodigious but accidental genius than the fruit of
a real and intrinsic power. Next came the turn of England, who to-day
possesses the greatest empire that the world has seen since the days
of ancient Rome, that is to say, more than a fifth part of the
habitable globe. But this vast empire rests no more than did
Napoleon's upon an incontestible force, inasmuch as up to this day it
was defended only by an army less numerous and less well-equipped than
that of many a smaller nation, thus almost inevitably inviting war, as
Professor Cramb pointed out a year or two ago in his prophetic book,
_Germany and England_, which has only recently aroused the interest
which it deserves.
It seemed, therefore, as if between these two Powers, which were more
illusory than real, pending the advent of Russia, whose hour had not
yet struck; in this gap in history, between a nation on the verge of
its decline, or at least seemingly incapable of defending itself, and
a nation that was still too young and incapable of attack, fate
offered a magnificent place to whoso cared to take it. This is what
Germany felt, at first instinctively, urged by all the ill-defined
forces that impel mankind, and subsequently, in these latter years,
with a consciousness that became ever clearer and more persistent. She
grasped the fact that her turn had come to reign over the earth, that
she must take her chance and seize the opportunity that comes but
once. She prepared to answer the call of fate and, supported by the
mysterious aid which it lends to those whom it summons, she did
answer, we must admit, in an astonishing and most formidable manner.
She was within a hair's breadth of succeeding. A little less prolonged
and less gallant resistance on the part of Belgium, a suspicious
movement from Italy, a false step made upon the banks of the Marne;
and we can picture Paris falling; France overrun and fighting
heroically to her last gasp; Russia, not crushed, but weary of seeking
victory and making terms for good or ill with a conqueror impotent to
harm her; the neutral nations more or less reluctantly siding with the
strongest; England isolated, giving up her colonies to staunch the
wounds of her invaded isle; the fasces of justice broken asunder by a
separate peace here, a separate peace there, each equally humiliating;
and Germany, monstrous, ferocious, implacable, finally towering alone
over the ruins of Europe.
3
Now it seems that we have turned aside the inflexible decree. It seems
that we have averted the fate that was about to be accomplished. It
was bearing down upon us with the weight of the ages, with all the
weight of all the vague but irresistible aspirations of the past and,
perhaps, the future. Thanks to the greatest effort which mankind has
ever opposed to the unknown gods that rule it, we are entitled to
believe that the decree has broken down and that we have driven it
into the evil cave where never human force before had compelled it to
hide its defeat.
I say, "It seems;" I say, "We are entitled to believe." The fact is
that the ordeal is not yet past. Even on the day when the war is ended
and when victory is in our hands, destiny will not yet be conquered.
It has happened--seldom, it is true, but still it has happened twice
or thrice--that a nation has compelled the course of fate to turn
aside or to fall back. The nation congratulated herself, even as we
believe that we have the right to do. But events were not slow in
proving that she had congratulated herself too soon. Fatality, that is
to say, the enormous mass of causes and effects of which we have no
understanding, was not overcome; it was only delayed, it awaited its
revenge and its day, or at least what we call its day, which may
extend over a hundred years and more where nations are concerned, for
fatality does not reckon in the manner of men, but after the fashion
of the great movements of nature. It is important at this time to know
whether we shall be able to escape that revenge and that day. If men
and nations were swayed only by reason, if, after being so often the
absolute masters of their happiness and their future, they had not so
often destroyed that which they had just achieved, then we might
say--and indeed ought to say--that our escape depends only upon
ourselves. In point of fact, three-quarters of the risk are run and
the fourth is in our power; we have only to keep it so. Almost all the
chances of the fight are on our side at last; and, when the war is
over, there will be nothing but our wisdom and our will confronting a
destiny which from that time onward will be powerless to take its
course, unless it first succeed in blinding and perverting them.
In this hour all that lies hidden under that mysterious word will be
waiting on our decision, waiting to know if victory is with us or with
it. It is after we have won that we must really vanquish; it is in the
hour of peace that the actual war will begin against an invisible foe,
a hundred times as dangerous as the one of whom we have seen too much.
If at that hour we do not profit by all our advantages; if we do not
destroy, root and branch, the military power of an enemy who is in
secret alliance with the evil influences of the earth; if we do not
here and now, by an irrevocable compact, forearm ourselves against
our sense of pity and generosity, our weakness, our imprudence, our
future rivalries and discords; if we leave a single outlet to the
beast at bay; if, through our negligence, we give it a single hope, a
single opportunity of coming to the surface and taking breath, then
the vigilant fatality which has but one fixed idea will resume its
progress and pursue its way, dragging history with it and laughing
over its shoulder at man once more tricked and discomfited. Everything
that we have done and suffered, the ruins, the sacrifices, the
nameless tortures and the numberless dead, will have served no purpose
and will be lost beyond redemption. Everything will not have to be
done over again, for nothing is ever done over again and fortunate
opportunities do not occur twice; but everything except our woes and
all their consequences will be as though it had never been.
4
It will therefore be a matter of holding our own against the enemy
whom we do not see and mastering him until the turn or chance of the
accursed race is past. How long will that be? We cannot tell; but, in
the swift-moving history of to-day, it seems probable that the waiting
and the struggle will be much shorter than they would have been in
former times. Is it possible that fatality--by which I mean what
perhaps for a moment was the unacknowledged desire of the
planet--shall not regain the upper hand? At the stage which man has
reached, I hope and believe so. He had never conquered it before; but
also he had not yet risen to the height which he has now attained.
There is no reason why that which has never happened should not take
place one day; and everything seems to tell us that man is approaching
the day whereon, seizing the most glorious opportunity that has ever
presented itself since he acquired a consciousness, he will at last
learn that he is able, when he pleases, to control his whole fate in
this world.
* * * * *
IN ITALY
XII
IN ITALY
1
A few days before Italy formed her great resolve, the following lines
appeared in one of the leading Pangermanic organs of the peoples
beyond the Rhine, the _Kreuzzeitung_:
"We have already observed that it will not do to be too
optimistic as to Italy's decision; in point of fact, the
situation is very serious. If none but moderate
considerations had ruled Italy's intentions, there is little
doubt as to which path she would choose; but we know the
height which the wave of Germanophobia has attained in that
country, a significant mark of the popular sentiment being
the declaration of the Italian Socialists upon the reasons
of their inability to oppose the war. An equal source of
danger is the fact that the government feels that it no
longer controls the current of public opinion."
The whole drama of Italian intervention is summed up in these lines,
which explain it better than would the longest and most learned
commentaries.
The Italian government, restrained by a politic wisdom and prudence,
excessive, perhaps, but very excusable, did not wish for war. To the
utmost limits of patience, until its dignity and its sense of security
could bear no more, it did all that could be done to spare its people
the greatest calamity that can befall a land. It held out until it was
literally submerged and carried away by the flood of Germanophobia of
which the passage which I have quoted speaks. I witnessed the rising
of this flood. When I arrived in Milan, at the end of November, 1914,
to speak a few sentences at a charity-fête organized for the benefit
of the Belgian refugees, the hatred of Germany was already storing
itself up in men's hearts, but had not as yet come to the surface.
Here and there it did break out, but it was still fearful, circumspect
and hesitating. One felt it brewing, seething in the depths of men's
souls, but it seemed as yet to be feeling its way, to be reckoning
itself up, to be painfully attaining self-consciousness. When I
returned to Italy in March, 1915, I was amazed to behold the
unhoped-for height to which the invading flood had so swiftly risen.
That pious hatred, that necessary hatred, which in this case is merely
a magnificent passion for justice and humanity, had swept over
everything. It had come out into the full sunlight; it thrilled and
quivered at the least appeal, proud and happy to assert itself, to
manifest itself with the beautiful tumultuous ostentation of the
South; and it was the "neutrals" that now hid themselves after the
manner of unspeakable insects. That species had all but disappeared,
annihilated by the storm that was gathering on every hand. The Germans
themselves had gone to earth, no one knew where; and from that moment
it was certain that war was imminent and inevitable.
In the space of three months a stupendous work had been accomplished.
It is impossible for the moment to weigh and determine the part of
each of those who performed it. But we can even now say that in Italy,
which is governed preeminently by public opinion and which, more than
any other nation, has in its blood the traditions and the habits of
the forum and the ancient republics, it is above all the spoken word
that changes men's hearts and urges them to action.
2
From this point of view, the admirable campaign of agitation and
propaganda undertaken by M. Jules Destrée, author of _En Italie_, was
of an importance and possessed consequences which are beyond
comparison with anything else accomplished and which are difficult to
realize by those who were not present at one or other of the meetings
at which, for more than six months, indefatigably, travelling from
town to town, from the smallest to the most populous, he uttered the
distressful complaint of martyred Belgium, unveiling the lies, the
felonies, the monstrosities and the acts of devastation perpetrated by
the barbarian horde and making heard, with sovran eloquence, the
august voice of outraged justice and of baffled right.