VICTORY AND PEACE
_Toi qui nous apportas l'épée_--
_Le glaive de Justice_--
_Et nous ordonnas de l'acheter_
_Fût ce an prix de nos tuniques,_
_Toi qui renversas les tables des marchants_
_Installés sous Tes portiques,_
_Donne à nos bras la foi et la rage à nos coeurs_
_Afin que la Victoire couronne de fleurs_
_Le front de nos enfants._--
EMILE CAMMAERTS, "Prière Pâques," 1915.
A few still perhaps remain of those who, as under-graduates at the time
of the Franco-German War, remember Dean Stanley's first sermons after
many years of exclusion from the Oxford University pulpit. Using in one
of them his favourite plan of giving life to ancient literature by
modern illustrations and conversely making modern tendencies clearer by
references to ancient thought, he took the words of the Hebrew prophet,
applying them to the troubles and strife of the time. "Who is this that
cometh from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah?" What will emerge from
the bloodshed of war and the chaos of communal revolution? The answer
was given--"It may be, it must be a united Germany; it may be, it must
be a regenerate France."
Truly it has been a regenerate France that, with firm resolve and calm
courage, has suffered and withstood invasion, far different from the
France which in 1870 went to war with light heart, excited and
unprepared, anticipating easy victory. War shattered the Empire and the
true soul of France was found.
Well might the "Song before Sunrise" again greet the purified France:--
Who is this that rises red with wounds and splendid.
All her breast and brow made beautiful with scars?
May we soon be able to add the conclusion!--
In her eyes the light and fire of long pain ended,
In her lips a song as of the morning stars.
The prophecy in both parts was fulfilled. Germany did indeed become
united, united not only by closer political ties between all its
divisions, but united in its aims and in its methods, conscious of union
and of strength, marvellous in its power of organisation, fitting each
member into his special position in the consolidated state, and moulding
him for the place he was to occupy; drilled from earliest youth how to
act and how to think, his commonest acts done, and very gestures made,
according to rule. Yet they, too, had their ideals. I remember in 1871,
the year after the Franco-German War, meeting a party of Germans who
were unveiling a tablet by the Pasterze Glacier in memory of a comrade
fallen in the war--Karl Hoffman, a pioneer of mountaineering in the
Glockner district--and hearing their impassioned speeches. The mountains
of Austrian Tyrol were to them "die Alpen seines Vaterlandes," and the
song with the refrain, "Lieb Vaterland muss grösser sein" echoed from
the rocks, "My beloved Fatherland must be greater"; may not this be the
expression of a noble patriotism? But it so easily turns to "my country
must have more, must take more," and becomes the very watchword of
greed. "Deutschland über Alles" might perhaps mean first to the German
"My country before everything to me." _Corruptio optimi pessima_, it
easily becomes "Germany over all,"--the country which dominates an
inferior world and is thus the condensed motto of supreme insolence.
"Insolence breeds the tyrant," and the doom the ancient poet prophesies
is the divine ordinance to be fulfilled by the action of man.
"Insolence, swollen with vain thought, mounts to the highest place, and
is hurled down to the doom decreed."
Insolence seems the nearest equivalent for the Greek word [Greek:
hybris], which implies much more. Some translate it "pride." It is a
sense of superiority, greater strength, higher culture, leading to a
claim to dominate the minds and the lives, the destinies, of others, and
then in its arrogant self-assertion to override all laws and all
restraints imposed by justice. It is the exact opposite of the Christian
precept: "Let each esteem other better than himself." This, like some
other Christian precepts, may never have been meant to express the whole
truth, but only that side which men are naturally apt to neglect. It was
hardly necessary to insist that men should defend themselves against
attack, maintain their rights, and keep their self-respect. There are
some crimes, too, which it required no special revelation to condemn;
man revolts from them as _contra naturam_. One of these crimes is
refusal to aid their fellow-countrymen who are fighting against
aggression.
With the spirit that claims to dominate in its "will to power," to
override the eternal laws of justice, there can be no compromise. Until
that spirit is vanquished, the answer to the question, "Is it peace?"
must be, "What hast thou to do with peace, so long as thy brutal acts
and thy tyrannies are so many?" The order is given to smite. With profit
now we may recall the old narrative,--"And he smote thrice, and stayed.
And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have
smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten" the enemy till thou
hadst destroyed his evil will. The work must be completed thoroughly;
but that task once accomplished, to continue war, whether open or
veiled, either to satisfy national hatred and the mere wish for
vengeance, or, still more, in the desire of gain, would be to become--to
use George Herbert's words--"parcel devils in damnation" with those who
have driven or beguiled Germany to crime against humanity and to her own
undoing. It is but too easy for heroic effort and firm determination to
defend the right, to be corrupted either by a spirit of insolence or
greed. Even as we sow the seeds for a fruitful harvest of good, the
arch-enemy may be sowing the tares. On the other hand, to cease from
work and from struggle, either through fear or slackness or weariness,
or even from that pacific temperament which shrinks from contest of any
kind, may have results almost equally fatal. That other prayer of the
Greek poet is for us also. "But I ask that the god will never relax that
struggle which is for the State's true welfare"--"the contest in which
citizen vies with citizen who shall best serve the State."
_B.--POLITICAL PEACE_