truth on its side.... We know that what New Switzerland has hitherto
done is inadequate.... But a sacred fire is beginning to burn in our
land.... Switzerland is a highway leading towards the future.... We are
animated and united by a sublime conviction, by the feeling that we are
the bearers of a great truth" (Schmidhauser).
PART FIVE.
The Mission of Switzerland.
"Switzerland can achieve greatness through principle alone. The only
conquests permissible to Switzerland, are conquests in the realm of
ideas" (Clottu).
We are not concerned here solely with the duty of a choice group of
intellectuals. The questions at issue affect the people at large, those
to whose service these young men have devoted themselves. A new spirit,
an active faith, are requisite. The war has brought to light the weak
spot in the Swiss character. Touching is the shame felt by these
truehearted youths owing to the attitude of their country at the outset
of the war. They are personally hurt by such surrenders of principle.
In the strongest terms they censure the abdication of the Swiss soul at
the time when Belgium was being invaded, noting with pain the absence of
any national and public protest. But now there is a change of spirit.
"We have a young and virile movement, the movement of those who are not
satisfied with the mere existence of Switzerland, but who desire that
Switzerland should prove herself worthy to exist, by her moral greatness
and by helping to bring salvation to other peoples" (Schmidhauser). "The
recognition of this duty will regenerate our national life" (Genevese
section).
The practical difficulties are enormous, and must be frankly faced.
Switzerland is in danger of being crushed in twofold fashion--military
and economic. The fate of Belgium and the fate of Greece are plain
warnings. She cannot forego her army, for this is a necessary safeguard
of the ideal she represents. But this army, however large, does not and
cannot suffice to avert economic pressure, which is an inevitable
outcome of the existing system of society. We have, therefore, to draw
the fatal conclusion that Switzerland is doomed should capitalist
imperialism endure. For Switzerland neither can nor ought to come to
terms with either group of allied powers. To take such a step would be
to pass sentence of death upon herself. "Her existence is inseparably
associated with the victory of the ideas of supra-national solidarity,
of world-wide socialism, world-wide individualism, world-wide
democracy." Grob boldly affirms: "To imperialist immoralism, with the
device, 'Our interest is our right,' we counterpose, 'Right is our
interest.'"
What are the leading tasks of Switzerland?
They are three: the universalisation of socialism; the universalisation
of individualism; the universalisation of democracy.
1. World-wide Socialism.--The germ of this appears in the supra-national
union which is the essential characteristic of Switzerland. But the
young Zofingians are under no illusions, and they frankly denounce the
faults of their own people. "We are far from being a nation of
brothers....Our nation is divided: it is rent asunder by egoisms and
imperialisms.... For every strong man who misuses his strength and his
wealth, displays the spirit of imperialism" (A. de Mestral). This
scourge must be vigorously combated. How? "By direct struggle with
capitalism," says one (Alexander Jaques of Lausanne). "By organising
solidarity," says another (Ernest Gloor of Lausanne). But the Swiss are
fast bound, willy-nilly, to the social system of other nations, "to the
international system of economic imperialism, the most abominable of all
the internationalisms." It is therefore categorically incumbent upon the
Swiss to devote themselves to furthering an active internationalism of
social solidarity. They must enter into an understanding with
anti-imperialists throughout the world. "It is necessary to promote the
formation of an international group organised for the struggle against
imperialist, absolutist, and materialist principles, simultaneously, in
every land" (Châtenay).
2. World-wide Individualism.--We require a counterpoise to sociocracy.
We must beware of any organisation, be it internationalist or pacifist,
which claims to subjugate and atrophy the living forces of man. The
political ideal is a genuine federalism which shall respect
individualisms. As the old saying has it: Let everything be after its
kind!
3. World-wide Democracy.--In this matter the students display perfect
unanimity, for they have absolute faith in democracy. But with their
customary scrupulousness, their dread of pharisaism, they admit that
Switzerland is still far from being a true democracy. "To-day democracy
is purely formal; in our own time the principle of true democracy is, in
a sense, revolutionary."
They tell us some of their aspirations. They desire the democratic
control of foreign policy. They want pacifism on a democratic basis.
Almost universally in Europe, political power is in the control of a
handful of men who embody imperialist egoism. The people must share this
power. Each nation has the right to control its own destinies, in
accordance with its own ideas and the dictates of its own will.
But once more, no illusions! With a clear-sightedness which is rare at
this hour, these young men point out that "imperialism has become
democratic," saying: "The western democracies, closely examined, are
nothing more than the sovereignty of a capitalist and landowning caste."
The Russian revolution arouses new hopes. "The spectacle of the struggle
between the two democratic revolutions in Russia, one capitalist and
imperialist, the other anti-imperialist and socialist, illuminates the
problem of democracy and imperialism. This spectacle shows the Swiss
democracy its path and its mission." Above all, let Switzerland reject
the new evangel, made in Germany, of a democracy supine before the will
of a politico-economic power, a democracy which tends in home policy to
class rule, and in foreign policy to imperialism! "We need a new
orientation which shall deliver democratic thought from national
restrictions, and from the sinister contemporary trend towards the reign
of material force." True democracy, supra-national democracy, must take
its stand against "imperialism masquerading as democracy."
PART SIX.
The New Education.
This lengthy discussion leads up in the end to practical conclusions.
Public education must be reorganised and must work in a new direction.
The extant educational system suffers from a threefold inadequacy. 1.
From the humanist point of view, it immures the mind in the study of
remote epochs and past civilisations, and does nothing to prepare the
pupil for the fulfilment of contemporary duties. 2. From the
specifically Swiss point of view, it aims at creating a blind
patriotism, which can neither enlighten nor guide the understanding; it
monotonously reiterates the story of wars, victories, and brute force,
instead of teaching liberty, instead of inculcating the lofty Swiss
ideal; it cares nothing for the moral and material needs of the people
of to-day. 3. From the technical point of view, it is abjectly
materialist and militarist, and has no ideals. True, that there is a
contemporary movement, and a strong one, in favour of what is called
"national education," in favour of "the teaching of civics." But we must
be on our guard! Here is a new peril. They would make a sort of state
idol, despotic and soulless; they would make a state superstition, a
state egoism, to which our minds are to be enslaved. Do not let us stoop
to the lure. An immense task lies before us, and the Zofingerverein must
lead the way. It must play its part in the fulfilment of the moral and
intellectual mission of Switzerland. But not by isolating itself. It
must never lose its feeling of solidarity of thought and action with
other lands. It sends forth deeply-felt greeting to the
"Gesinnungsfreunde," to the friends and companions in belligerent lands,
to those young men who have fallen in France and in Germany, and to those
who yet live. It must make common cause with them; it must work shoulder
to shoulder with the free youth of the world. Julius Schmidhauser,
president of the Zofingia, who chaired these discussions and subsequently
summarised them, concludes with an Appeal to Brothers, an appeal to them
that they shall have faith, that they shall act, that they shall seek
new roads for a new Switzerland--for a new humanity.
* * * * *
I have thought well to efface myself behind these students. Were I to
substitute my thought for theirs, I should lay myself open to the
reproach which I so often address to my generation. I have let them
speak for themselves. Any commentary would detract from the beauty of
the sight of these enthusiastic and serious young people, in this most
tragical hour of history, discussing their duties ardently and at great
length, taking stock of their faith, and solemnly affirming that faith
in a sort of oath of the tennis court.[35] We see them affirming their
faith in liberty; in the solidarity of the peoples; in their moral
mission; in their duty to destroy the hydra of imperialism, both
militarist and capitalist, whether at home or abroad; in their duty to
construct a juster and more humane society.
I give them fraternal greetings. They do not speak alone. Everywhere the
echoes answer. Everywhere I see young people resembling them, and
stretching forth friendly hands to their fellows in Switzerland. The
vicissitudes of this war--a war which, endeavouring to crush free
spirits, has but succeeded in making them feel the need for seeking one
another out and for cementing unity--has brought me into close
relationships with the young of all countries, in Europe, in America,
and even in the east and the far east. Everywhere I have found the same
communion of sufferings and hopes, the same aspirations, the same
revolts, the same determination to break with the past whose malevolence
and stupidity have been so plainly proved. I have found them all
animated with the same ambition to rebuild human society upon new
foundations, wider and more firmly laid than those which sustain the
quaking edifice of this old world of rapine and fanaticism, of savage
nationalities scorched by the war, rearing heavenward frames blackened
by the fire.
_June, 1917._
"demain," Geneva, July, 1917.
XV
UNDER FIRE
BY HENRI BARBUSSE[36]
Here we have a pitiless mirror of the war. In that mirror the war is
reflected day by day for sixteen months. It is a mirror of two eyes;
they are clear, shrewd, perspicacious, and bold; they are the eyes of a
Frenchman. The author, Henri Barbusse, dedicates his book: "To the
memory of the comrades who fell by my side at Crouy and on Hill 119,"
during December, 1915. In Paris _Le Feu_ was honoured with the Goncourt
prize.
By what miracle has so truth-telling a work been able to appear
unmutilated, at a time when so many free words, infinitely less free,
have been censored? I shall not attempt to explain the fact, but I shall
profit by it. The voice of this witness drives back into the shadow all
the interested falsehoods which during the last three years have served
to idealise the European slaughter-house.
* * * * *
The work is of the first rank, and is so full of matter that more than
one article would be requisite to present its whole scope. All that I
shall attempt to deal with here will be the chief aspects--its artistry
and its thought.
The dominant impression it conveys is one of extreme objectivity. Save
in the last chapter, wherein Barbusse expounds his ideas on social
questions, we do not make the author's acquaintance. He is there among
his obscure companions; he struggles and suffers with them, and from one
moment to another his disappearance seems imminent; but he has the
spiritual strength which enables him to withdraw himself from the
picture and to veil his ego. He contemplates the moving spectacle, he
listens, he feels, he touches; he seizes it, with all his senses on the
stretch. Marvellous is the assured grasp displayed by this French
spirit, for no emotion affects the sharpness of the outline or the
precision of the technique. We discern here manifold touches, lively,
vibrant, crude, well fitted to reproduce the shocks and starts of the
poor human machines as they pass from a weary torpor to the
hyperaesthesia of hallucination--but these juxtaposed touches are placed
and combined by an intelligence that is ever master of itself. The style
is impressionist. The author is prone, unduly prone in my opinion, to
make use of visual word-plays after the manner of Jules Renard. He is
fond of "artistic writing," a typically Parisian product, a style which
in ordinary times seems to "powder puff" the emotions, but which, amid
the convulsions of the war, exhibits a certain heroic elegance. The
narrative is terse, gloomy, stifling; but there come episodes of repose,
which break its unity, and by these the tension is relieved for a
moment. Few readers will fail to appreciate the charm, the discreet
emotion, of these episodes, as for instance in the chapter "On Leave."
But three-fourths of the book deal with the trenches of Picardy, under
the "muddy skies," under fire and under water--visions now of hell, now
of the flood.
There the armies remain buried for years, at the bottom of an eternal
battlefield, closely packed, "chained shoulder to shoulder," huddling
together "against the rain which descends from the skies, against the
mud which oozes from the ground, against the cold, an emanation from the
infinite which is all-pervading." The soldiers uncouthly rigged out in
skins, rolls of blanket, ... cardigans, and more cardigans, squares of
oilcloth, fur caps, ... hoods of tarpaulin, rubber, weatherproof cloth
... look like cave men, gorillas, troglodytes. One of them, while
digging, has turned up an axe made by quaternary man, a piece of pointed
stone with a bone handle, and he is using it. Others, like savages, are
making rough ornaments. Three generations side by side; all the races,
but not all the classes. Sons of the soil and artisans for the most
part. Small farmers, agricultural labourers, carters, porters and
messengers, factory foremen, saloon keepers, newspaper sellers,
ironmongers' assistants, miners--very few liberal professions are
represented. This amalgam has a common speech, "made up of workshop and
barrack slang and of rural dialects seasoned with a few neologisms."
Each one is shown to us as a silhouette, a sharp and admirable likeness;
once we have seen them we shall always know them apart. But the method
of depiction is very different from that of Tolstoi. The Russian cannot
meet with a soul without plumbing it to the depths. Here we look and
pass on. The individual soul hardly exists; it is a mere shell. Beneath
that shell, the collective soul, suffering, overwhelmed with fatigue,
brutalised by the noise, poisoned by the smoke, endures infinite
boredom, drowses, waits, waits unendingly. It is a "waiting-machine." It
no longer tries to think; "it has given up the attempt to understand, it
has renounced being itself." These are not soldiers, they don't wish to
be soldiers, they are men. "They are men, good fellows of all kinds,
rudely torn away from life; they are ignorant, not easily carried away,
men of narrow outlook, but full of common sense which sometimes gets out
of gear. They are inclined to go where they are led and to do as they
are bid. They are tough, and able to bear a great deal. Simple men who
have been artificially simplified yet more, and in whom, by the force of
circumstances, the primitive instincts have become accentuated: the
instinct of self-preservation, egoism, the dogged hope of living
through, the lust of eating, drinking, and sleeping." Even amid the
dangers of an artillery attack, within a few hours they get bored, yawn,
play cards, talk nonsense, "snatch forty winks"--in a word, they are
bored. "The overwhelming vastness of these great bombardments wearies
the mind." They pass through a hell of suffering and forget all about
it. "We've seen too much, and everything we saw was too much. We are not
built to take all that in. It escapes from us in every direction; we are
too small. We are forgetting-machines. Men are beings which think
little; above all, they forget." In Napoleon's day every soldier had a
marshal's baton in his knapsack, and every soldier had in his brain the
ambitious image of the little Corsican officer. There are no longer any
individuals now, there is a human mass which is itself lost amid
elemental forces. "More than six thousand miles of French trenches, more
than six thousand miles of such miseries or of worse; and the French
front is only one-eighth of the whole." Instinctively the narrator is
compelled to borrow his images from the rough mythology of primitive
peoples, or from cosmic convulsions. He speaks of "rivers of wounded
torn from the bowels of the earth which bleeds and rots
unendingly"--"glaciers of corpses"--"gloomy immensities of Styx"--"Valley
of Jehoshaphat"--prehistoric spectacles. What does the individual man
amount to in all this? What does his suffering mean? "What's the use
of complaining?" says one wounded man to another. "That's what war is,
not the battles, but the terrible unnatural weariness; water up to the
middle, mud, filth, infinite monotony of wretchedness, interrupted by
acute tragedies."--At intervals, human groans, profound shudders, issue
from the silence and the night.
Here and there, in the course of this long narration, peaks emerge from
the grey and bloody uniformity: the attack ("under fire"); "the field
hospital"; "the dawn." I wish I had space to quote the admirable picture
of the men awaiting the order to attack; they are motionless; an assumed
calm masks such dreams, such fears, such farewell thoughts! Without any
illusions, without enthusiasm, without excitement, "despite the busy
propaganda of the authorities, without intoxication either material or
moral," fully aware of what they are doing, they await the signal to
hurl themselves "once more into this madman's role imposed on each of
them by the madness of mankind." Then comes the "headlong rush to the
abyss," where blindly, amid shell-splinters hissing like red-hot iron
plunged into water, amid the stench of sulphur, they race forward. Next
comes the butchery in the trenches, where "at first the men do not know
what to do," but where a frenzy soon seizes them, so that "they hardly
recognise those whom they know best, and it seems as if all their
previous life had suddenly retreated to a vast distance...." Then the
exultation passes, and "nothing remains but infinite fatigue and
infinite waiting."
* * * * *
But I must cut these descriptions short, for I have to consider the
leading content of the work, its thought.
In _War and Peace_ the profound sense of the destiny which guides
mankind is ardently sought, and is found from time to time by the light
of some flash of suffering or of genius, found by those few who, through
breed or individual sensibility, have exceptional insight: for instance
Prince Andrew, Peter Besuhov. But a great roller seems to have passed
over the peoples of to-day, reducing all to a level. The most that can
happen is that for a moment, now and again, there may rise from the huge
flock the isolated bleating of one of the beasts about to die. Thus we
have the ethereal figure of Corporal Bertrand, "with his thoughtful
smile"--the merest sketch--"a man of few words, never talking of
himself"; a man who could once only deliver up the secret of his
anguished thoughts--in the twilight hour which follows the killing, just
before he himself is killed. He thinks of those whom he has slain in the
frenzy of the hand-to-hand fighting:
"It had to be done," he said. "It had to be done, for the sake of the
future."
He folded his arms and threw up his head.
"The future!" he cried, all of a sudden. "Those who live after us--what
will they think of these killings, ... these exploits, concerning which
we who do them do not even know if they are to be compared with those of
the heroes of Plutarch and Corneille or with the deeds of apaches!...
For all that, mind you, there is one figure that has risen above the
war, a figure which will shine with the beauty and the greatness of its
courage."
I listened, writes Barbusse, bending towards him, leaning on a stick. I
drank in the words that came, in the twilit silence, from lips which
rarely broke silence. His voice rang out as he said:
"Liebknecht!"
The same evening, Marthereau, a humble territorial, whose face,
bristling with hair, recalled that of a water-spaniel, is listening to a
comrade who says: "William is a foul beast, but Napoleon is a great
man." This same soldier, after groaning about the war, goes on to speak
with delight of the martial ardour displayed by the only son left to
him, a boy of five. Marthereau shakes his weary head, his fine eyes
shining like those of a puzzled and thoughtful hound. He sighs, saying:
"Oh, we're none of us so bad, but we're unlucky, poor devils all of us.
But we're too stupid, we're too stupid!"
As a rule, however, the human cry from these lowly fellows is anonymous.
We hardly know who has been speaking, for, often enough, all share in a
common thought. Born out of common trials, this thought brings them much
closer to the other unfortunates in the enemy trenches than to the rest
of the world away there in the rear. For visitors from the rear, "trench
tourists," for people in the rear, journalists "who exploit the public
misery," bellicose intellectuals, the soldiers unite in showing a
contempt which is free from violence but knows no bounds. To them has
come "the revelation of the great reality": a difference between human
beings, a difference far profounder and with far more impassable
barriers than those of race: the sharp, glaring, and inalterable
distinction, in the population of every country, between those who
profit and those who suffer, those who have been compelled to sacrifice
everything, those who give to the uttermost of their numbers, of their
strength, and of their martyrdom, those over whom the others march
forward smiling and successful.
One to whom this revelation has come, says bitterly: "That sort of thing
does not encourage one to die!"
But none the less this man meets his death bravely, meekly, like the
others.
* * * * *
The climax of the work is the last chapter, "The Dawn." It is like an
epilogue, the thought in which returns to join the thought in the
prologue, "The Vision," but enlarges upon that opening thought, just as
in a symphony the promise of the outset is fulfilled at the close.
"The Vision" describes the coming of the declaration of war, shows how
the tidings reached a sanatorium in Savoy, facing Mont Blanc. There,
these sick men, drawn thither from all the ends of the earth, "detached
from the affairs of the world and almost from life itself, ... as remote
from their fellow-men as if they already belonged to a future age, look
away into the distance, towards the incomprehensible land of the living
and the mad." They contemplate the flood below; they watch the
shipwrecked nations, grasping at straws. "These thirty millions of
slaves, hurled against one another by guilt and by mistake, hurled into
war and mud, uplift their human faces whose expression reveals at last a
nascent will. The future is in the hands of these slaves, and it is
plain that the old world will be transformed by the alliance one day to
be made between those whose numbers and whose miseries are infinite."