hate a nation? It is men that I love or hate, and in all nations
you will find the noble, the base, and the ordinary man. Yes, and
everywhere are few great or low, while the ordinary abound. Like or
dislike a man for what he is, not for what others are; and if there
is one man who is dear to me in a whole nation, that prevents me from
condemning it. You talk of struggles and hatred between races? Races
are the colours of life's prism; it binds them together, and we have
light. Woe to him who shatters it! I am not of one race, I belong to
life as a whole; I have brothers in every nation, enemy or ally, and
those you would thrust upon me as compatriots are not always the
nearest. The families of our souls are scattered through the world.
Let us re-unite them! Our task is to undo these chaotic nations, and
in their place to bind together more harmonious groups. Nothing can
prevent it; on the anvil of a common suffering, persecution will forge
the common affection of the tortured peoples_.
Clerambault did not pride himself on his logic, but only tried to get
at the popular idol through the joints of his armour. Often he did not
deny the nation-idea, but accepted it as natural, at the same time
attacking national rivalries in the most forcible manner. This
attitude was by no means the least dangerous.
_I cannot interest myself in struggles for supremacy between nations;
it is indifferent which colour comes up, for humanity gains, no matter
who is the winner. It is true, that in the contests of peace, the most
vital, intelligent, and hard-working people, will always excel. But if
the defeated competitors, or those who felt themselves falling behind,
were to resort to violence to eliminate their successful rivals, it
would be a monstrous thing. It would mean the sacrifice of the welfare
of mankind to a commercial interest, and Country is not a business
firm. It is of course unfortunate that when one nation goes up,
another is apt to go down. But when "big business" in my country
interferes with smaller trade, we do not say that it is a crime of
lèse-patriotism, despite the fact that it may be a fight which brings
ruin and death to many innocent victims_.
_The existing economic system of the world is calamitous and bad; it
ought to be remedied; but war, which tries to swindle a more fortunate
and able competitor for the benefit of the inexpert or the lazy,
makes this vicious system worse; it enriches a few, and ruins the
community_.
_All peoples cannot walk abreast on the same road; they are always
passing each other, and being outstripped in their turn. What does it
matter, since we are all in the same column? We should get rid of
our silly self-conceit. The pole of the world's energy is constantly
changing, often in the same country. In France it has passed from
Roman Provence to the Loire of the Valois; now it is at Paris, but it
will not stay there always. The entire creation swings in alternate
rhythm from germinating spring to dying autumn. Commercial methods
are not immutable, any more than the treasures beneath the earth are
inexhaustible. A people spends itself for centuries, without counting
the cost; its very greatness will lead to its decline. It is only by
renouncing the purity of its blood and mixing with other nations that
it can subsist. Our old men today are sending the young ones to death;
it does not make them younger, and they are killing the future_.
_Instead of raging against the laws of life, a wholesome people will
try to understand them and see its real progress, not in a stupid
obstinacy which refuses to grow old, but in a constant effort to
advance with the age, changing and becoming greater. To each epoch its
own task. It is merely sloth and weakness if we cling all our lives
to the same one. Learn to change, for in that is life. The factory of
humanity has work for all of us. Labour for all, peoples of the world,
each man taking pride in the work of all the rest, for the travail,
the genius of the whole earth is ours also!_
These articles appeared here and there, whenever possible, in some
little sheet of advanced literary and anarchistic views, in which
violent attacks on persons took the place of a reasoned-out campaign
against the order of things. They were nearly illegible, defaced as
they were by the censor. Besides, when an article was reprinted in
another paper, he would let pass with a capricious forgetfulness what
he had cut out the day before, and cut what he had passed then. It
took close study to make out the sense of the article after this
treatment, but the remarkable thing was that the adversaries of
Clerambault, not his friends, went to this trouble. Ordinarily, at
Paris, these squalls do not last long. The most vindictive enemies,
trained to wars of the pen, know that silence is a sharper weapon than
insult, and get more out of their animosity by keeping it quiet; but
in the hysterical crisis in which Europe was struggling, there was no
guide, even for hatred. Clerambault was continually being recalled
to the public mind by the violent attacks of Bertin, though he never
failed to conclude each one in which he had discharged his venom, with
a disdainful: "He is not worth speaking of."
Bertin was only too familiar with the weaknesses, defects of mind,
and small absurdities of his former friend; he could not resist the
temptation to touch them with a sure hand, and Clerambault, stung
and not wise enough to hide it, let himself be drawn into the fight,
retaliated, and proved that he too could draw blood from the other.
Thus a fierce enmity arose between the two.
The result might have been foreseen. Up to this time Clerambault
had been inoffensive, confining himself on the whole to moral
dissertations. His polemic did not step outside the circle of ideas.
It might as well have been applied to Germany, England, or ancient
Rome, as to the France of today. To tell the truth, like nine-tenths
of his class and profession, he was ignorant of the political facts
about which he declaimed, so that his trumpetings could hardly disturb
the leaders of the day. In the midst of the tumult of the press,
the noisy passage of arms between Clerambault and Bertin had two
consequences; in the first place it forced Clerambault to play with
more care, and choose a less slippery ground than logomachy, and on
the other it brought him in contact with men better informed as to the
facts who furnished him with the necessary information. A short
time before there had been formed in France a little society,
semi-clandestine, for independent study and free criticism on the war,
and the causes that had led up to it. The Government, always vigilant
and ready to crush any attempt at freedom of thought, nevertheless
did not consider this society dangerous. Its members were prudent and
calm, men of letters before all, who avoided notoriety, and contented
themselves with private discussion; it was thought better policy to
keep them under observation, and between four walls.
These calculations proved to be wrong, for truth modestly and
laboriously discovered, though known only to five or six, cannot be
uprooted; it will spring from the earth with irresistible force.
Clerambault now learned for the first time of the existence of these
passionate seekers after truth, who recalled the times of the Dreyfus
case. In the general oppression, their apostolate behind closed doors
took on the appearance of a little early-Christian group in the
catacombs. Thanks to them, he discovered the falsehoods as well as the
injustices of the "Great War." He had had a faint suspicion of them,
but he had not dreamed how far the history that touches us most
closely had been falsified, and the knowledge revolted him. Even in
his most critical moments, his simplicity would never have imagined
the deceptive foundations on which reposes a Crusade for the Right,
and as he was not a man to keep his discovery to himself, he
proclaimed it loudly, first in articles which were forbidden by the
censor, and then in the shape of sarcastic apologues, or little
symbolic tales, touched with irony. The Voltairian apologues slipped
through sometimes, owing to the inattention of the censor, and in this
way Clerambault was marked out to the authorities as a very dangerous
man.
Those who thought they knew him best were surprised. His adversaries
had called him sentimental, and assuredly so he was, but he was aware
of it, and because he was French he could laugh at it, and at himself.
It is all very well for sentimental Germans to have a thick-headed
belief in themselves; deep down in an eloquent and sensitive creature
like Clerambault, the vision of the Gaul--always alert in his thick
woods--observes, lets nothing escape, and is ready for a laugh at
everything. The surprising thing is that this under-spirit will emerge
when you least expect it, during the darkest trials and in the most
pressing danger. The universal sense of humour came as a tonic to
Clerambault, and his character, scarcely freed from the conventions in
which it had been bound, took on suddenly a vital complexity. Good,
tender, combative, irritable, always in extremes--he knew it, and that
made him worse--tearful, sarcastic, sceptical, yet believing, he was
surprised when he saw himself in the mirror of his writings. All his
vitality, hitherto prudently shut into his _bourgeois_ life, now burst
forth, developed by moral solitude and the hygiene of action.
Clerambault saw that he had not known himself; he was, as it were,
new-born, since that night of anguish. He learned to taste a joy of
which he had never before had an idea--the giddy joy of the free
lance in a fight; all his senses strung like a bow, glad in a perfect
well-being.
This improved state, however, brought no advantage to Clerambault's
family; his wife's share of the struggle was only the unpleasantness,
a general animosity that finally made itself felt even among the
small tradespeople of the neighbourhood. Rosine drooped; her secret
heart-ache wore upon her all the more because of her silence; but if
she said nothing her mother complained enough for two. She made no
distinction between the fools who affronted her and the imprudent
Clerambault who caused all the trouble; so that at every meal there
were awkward remarks meant to induce him to keep still. All this was
of no use, reproaches whether spoken or silent, passed over his head;
he was sorry, of course, but he had thrown himself into the thick
of the fight, and with a somewhat childish egotism he thrust aside
anything that interfered with this new interest.
Circumstances, however, came to Madame Clerambault's assistance; an
old relation who had brought her up died, leaving her little property
in Berry to the Clerambaults. The mourning was a good excuse for
quitting Paris, which had now become detestable, and for tearing the
poet from his dangerous surroundings. There was also the question
of money and of Rosine, who would be better for change of air.
Clerambault gave in, and they all three went to take possession of
their small inheritance, and remained in Berry during the rest of the
summer and autumn. It was in the country, a respectable old house just
outside a village. From the agitation of Paris Clerambault passed at
once to a stagnant calm, and in the long silent days all that broke
the monotony was a cock crowing in a farm-yard or a cow lowing in the
meadow. Clerambault was too much wrought up to adapt himself to the
slow and placid rhythm of nature; formerly he had adored it and was in
harmony with the country people from whom his family had come. Now,
however, the peasants with whom he tried to talk seemed to him
creatures from another planet. Certainly, they were not infected by
the virus of war; they showed no emotion, and no hatred for the enemy;
but then they had no animosity either against war, which they accepted
as a fact. Certain keen, good-natured observations showed that they
were not taken in as to the merits of the case, but since the war was
there they made the most they could out of it. They might lose
their sons, but they did not mean to lose money; not that they were
heartless, grief had marked them deeply, though they spoke little of
it; but after all, men pass away,--the land is always there. They at
least had not, like the _bourgeois_ in cities, sent their children to
death through national fanaticism. Only they knew how to get something
in exchange for what they gave; and it is probable that their sons
would have thought this perfectly natural. Because you have lost
someone you love, must you lose your head too? Our peasants did not
lose theirs; it is said that in the country districts of France more
than a million new proprietors have been made by the war.
The mind of Clerambault was alien to all this; he and these people did
not speak the same language. They exchanged some vague condolences,
but when he is talking to a _bourgeois_ a peasant always complains; it
is a habit, a way of defending himself against a possible appeal
to his pocketbook; they would have talked in the same way about an
epidemic of fever. Clerambault was always the Parisian in their eyes;
he belonged to another tribe, and if they had thoughts, they would not
tell them to him.
This lack of response stifled Clerambault's words; impressionable
as he was, he could no longer hear himself. All was silence; he had
friends unknown, and at a distance, who tried to communicate with
him, but their voices were intercepted by postal spies--one of
the disgraces of our time. On the pretext of suppressing foreign
espionage, our Government made spies of its own citizens, and not
content with a watch on politics, it violated a man's thoughts, and
taught its agents how to listen at doors like lackeys. The premium
thus put on baseness filled this country--and all the others--with
volunteer detectives, gentlemen, men of letters, many of them
slackers, who bought their own security with the safety of others,
calling their denunciations by the name of patriotism.
Thanks to these informers, those of liberal opinions could not get in
touch with one another; that great monster, the State--pricked by
its bad conscience--suspected and feared half a dozen liberal-minded
people, alone, weak, and destitute; and each one of these liberals
surrounded by spies, ate his heart out in his jail, and ignorant that
others suffered with him, felt himself slowly dying, freezing in the
polar ice of his despair.
Clerambault was too hot-blooded to let himself be buried under this
snowy shroud; but the soul is not all, the body is a plant which
needs human soil, Deprived of sympathy, reduced to feed on itself,
it perishes. In vain did Clerambault try to prove to himself that
millions of other minds were in agreement with his own; it could not
replace the actual contact with one living heart. Faith is sufficient
for the spirit, but the heart is like Thomas, it must touch to be
convinced.
Clerambault had not foreseen this physical weakness; he felt stifled,
his body seemed on fire, his skin burning, his life seemed to be
drying up at the source. It was as if he were under an exhausted
vacuum-bell. A wall kept him from the air.
One evening, like a consumptive after a bad day, he had been wandering
about the house from room to room, as if in search of a breath of
fresh air, when a letter came that had somehow slipped through the
meshes of the net. An old man like himself, a village schoolmaster in
a remote valley of Dauphiny wrote thus:
"The war has taken everything from me; of those whom I used to know,
some have been killed, and the rest are so altered that I hardly
recognise them. They have trampled on all that made life worth having
to me; my hope of progress, my faith in a future of brotherly reason.
"I was ready to die in my despair, when a paper in which you were
spoken of insultingly, drew my attention to your articles: _To the
Dead_ and _To Her Whom We Loved_. I wept with joy as I read them; I
am not then left alone to suffer? I am not solitary?--You do believe;
then, my dear Sir, tell me that you still have faith in these things.
They really exist, and cannot be destroyed? I must tell you how much
good it does me to know that; for I had begun to doubt. You must
forgive me, but I am old and alone and very weary.... God bless you,
Sir! I can die in peace, now that, thanks to you, I know that I have
not been deceived."
Instantly it was as if a window had been opened to the air;
Clerambault's lungs were filled, his heart beat strongly again, life
seemed to be renewed, and to flow once more in a full channel. How
deep is the need we have of love from one another!... A hand stretched
out in the hour of my agony makes me feel that I am not a branch torn
from the tree, but a living part of it; we save each other. I give my
strength, which would be nothing if it were not taken. Truth alone is
like a spark struck from a stone; dry, harsh, ephemeral. Will it die
out? No, for it has kindled another soul, and a new star has risen on
the horizon.
The new star was seen but for a few moments, then a cloud covered it,
and it vanished forever.
Clerambault wrote the same day to his unknown friend, telling him
effusively of all his trials and dangerous opinions, but no answer
came. Some weeks later, Clerambault wrote again, but without success.
Such was his longing for a friend with whom to share his troubles and
his hopes that he took the train to Grenoble, and from there made his
way on foot to the village of which he had the address; but when,
joyful with the surprise he brought, he knocked at the door of the
schoolhouse, the man who opened it evidently understood nothing of his
errand. After some explanation it appeared that this was a newcomer
in the village; that his predecessor had been dismissed in disgrace a
month before and ordered to a distance, but that the trouble of the
journey had been spared him, for he had died of pneumonia the day
before he was to have left the place where he had lived for thirty
years. He was there still, but under the ground. Clerambault saw the
cross over the newly-made mound, but he never knew if his lost friend
had at least received his words of sympathy. It was better for him to
remain in doubt, for the letters had never reached their destination;
even this gleam of light had been denied to the poor old schoolmaster.
The end of this summer in Berry was one of the most arid periods in
Clerambault's life. He talked with no one, he wrote nothing and he
had no way of communicating directly with the working people. He had
always made himself liked on the rare occasions on which he had
come into contact with them--in a crowd, on holidays, or in the
workingmen's schools; but shyness on both sides held him back. Each
felt his inferiority; with pride on the one hand, and awkwardness on
the other, for Clerambault knew that in many essential respects he
was inferior to the intelligent workman. He was right; for from their
ranks will be recruited the leaders of the future. The best class of
these men contained many honest and virile minds able to understand
Clerambault. With an untouched idealism they still kept a firm hold on
reality, and though their daily life had accustomed them to struggles,
disappointments, and treachery, they were trained to patience; young
as some of them were, they were veterans of the social war, and there
was much that they could have taught Clerambault. They knew that
everything is for sale, that nothing is to be had for nothing, that
those who desire the future happiness of men must pay the price now,
in their own sufferings; that the smallest progress is gained step by
step and is lost often twenty times before it is finally conquered.
There is nothing final in this world. These men, solid and patient as
the earth, would have been of great use to Clerambault, and his vivid
intelligence would have been like a ray of sunshine to them.
Unfortunately both he and they had to bear the results of the archaic
caste system; injurious as it is and fatal to the community not less
than to the individual, raising between the pretended equals of
our so-called "democracies" the excessive inequality of fortune,
education, and life. Journalists supply the only means of
communication between caste and caste, and they form a caste by
themselves, representing neither the one side nor the other. The
voice of the newspapers alone now broke the silence that surrounded
Clerambault, and nothing could stop their "Brekekekex, coax, coax."
The disastrous results of a new offensive found them, as always,
bravely at their post. Once more the optimist oracles of the pontiffs
of the rear-guard were proved to be wrong, but no one seemed to notice
it. Other prophecies succeeded, and were given out and swallowed with
the same assurance. Neither those who wrote, nor those who read, saw
that they had deceived themselves; in all sincerity they did not know
it; they did not remember what they had written the day before. What
can you expect from such feather-headed creatures who do not know if
they are on their heads or their heels? But it must be allowed that
they know how to fall on their feet after one of their somersaults.
One conviction a day is enough for them; and what does the quality
matter, since they are fresh every hour?
Towards the end of the autumn, in order to keep up the morale which
sank before the sadness of the coming winter, the press started a new
propaganda against German atrocities; it "went across" perfectly, and
the thermometer of public opinion rose to fever heat. Even in the
placid Berry village for several weeks all sorts of cruel things
were said; the curé took part and preached a sermon on vengeance.
Clerambault heard this from his wife at breakfast and said plainly
what he thought of it before the servant who was waiting at table. The
whole village knew that he was a boche before night; and every morning
after that he could read it written up on his front door. Madame
Clerambault's temper was not improved by this, and Rosine, who had
taken to religion in the disappointment of her young love, was too
much occupied with her unhappy soul and its experiences to think of
the troubles of others. The sweetest natures have times when they are
simply and absolutely selfish.
Left to himself alone, deprived of the means of action, Clerambault
turned his heated thoughts back on himself. Nothing now held him from
the path of harsh truth; there was nothing between him and its cold
light. His soul was shrivelled like those _fuorusciti_ who, thrown
from the walls of the cruel city, gaze at it from without with
faithless eyes. It was no longer the sad vision of the first night of
his trials, when his bleeding wounds still linked him with other men;
all ties were now broken, as with open eyes his spirit sank down
whirling into the abyss; the slow descent into hell, from circle to
circle, alone in the silence.
"I see you, you myriads of herded peoples, hugging together perforce
in shoals to spawn and to think! Each group of you, like the bees, has
a special sacred odour of its own. The stench of the queen-bee makes
the unity of the hive and gives joy to the labour of the bees. As with
the ants, whosoever does not stink like me, I kill! O you bee-hives of
men! each of you has its own peculiar smell of race, religion, morals
and approved tradition; it impregnates your bodies, your wax, the
brood-comb of your hives; it permeates your entire lives from birth to
death; and woe to him who would wash himself clean of it.