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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!