War! In France, to men of my generation, men who have passed their
fiftieth year, this terrible word awakens three special memories, the
memory of the Crimean expedition, of the campaign in Italy, and of our
disasters in 1870. What victories, what defeats, and what a lesson!
Assuredly, war is accursed. It is a horrible thing that nations should
cut each other’s throats. According to our progressive humanitarian
ideas, war must disappear on the day when nations come to exchange
a kiss of peace. There are exalted minds which, beyond their native
country, behold humanity, and prophesy universal concord. But how these
theories fall to pieces on the day when the country is threatened! The
philosophers themselves snatch a gun and shoot. All declarations of
fraternity are over; and only a cry for extermination rises from the
breast of the whole nation. For war is a dark necessity, like death. It
may be that we must have something of a dungheap to keep civilisation
in flower. It is necessary that death should affirm life; and war is
like those cataclysms of the antediluvian world which prepared the
world of man.
We have grown tender; we make moan over every existence that passes
away. And yet, do we know how many existences, more or less, are
needed to balance the life of the earth? We yield to the idea that
an existence is sacred. Perhaps the fatalism of the ancients, which
could behold the massacres of old without leaping to a Utopia of
universal brotherhood, had a truer greatness. To keep ourselves manly,
to accept the dark work wrought by death in that night wherein none
of us can read, to tell ourselves that, after all, people die, and
that there are merely hours in which they die more--this, when all is
said, is the wise man’s attitude. Those who are angry with war should
be angry with all human infirmities. The soft-hearted philosophers
who have been loudest in their curses of war, have been obliged to
perceive that war will be the weapon of progress until the day when,
ideal civilisation being attained, all nations join in the festival of
universal peace. But that ideal civilisation lies so remote in the blue
future, that there will assuredly be fighting for centuries yet. It is
the fashionable thing, just now, to consider war as an old remnant of
barbarism, from which the Republic will one day set us free. To declaim
against war is one way of setting up as a progressive person. But let a
single cry of alarm arise upon the frontier, let a trumpet sound in the
street, and we shall all be shouting for arms. War is in the blood of
man.
Victor Hugo wrote that only kings desired war, that nations desired
only to exchange marks of affection. Alas! that was but a poetic
aspiration. The poet has been the high-priest of that dream-peace of
which I spoke; he celebrated the _United States_ of Europe, he put
forward the brotherhood of nations, and prophesied the new golden age.
Nothing could be sweeter or larger. But to be brothers is a trifle; the
first thing is to love one another, and the nations do not love one
another at all. A falsehood is bad, merely in that it is a falsehood.
Undoubtedly, a sovereign, when he sees himself in danger, may try the
fortune of war against a neighbour, in the hope of consolidating his
throne by victory. But after the first victory, or the first defeat,
the nation makes the war its own, and fights for itself. If it were
not fighting for itself, it would not go on fighting. And what shall
we say of really national wars? Let us suppose that France and Germany
some day again find themselves face to face. Republic, empire, or
kingdom, the Government will count for nothing; it will be the whole
nation which will rise. A great thrill will run from end to end of the
land. The bugles will sound of themselves to call the people together.
There has been war germinating in our midst, in spite of ourselves,
these twenty years, and if ever the hour strikes, it will rise, an
overflowing harvest, in every furrow.
Three times in my life, I repeat, have I felt the passage of war over
France; and never shall I forget the particular sound made by her
wings. First of all comes a far-off murmur, heralding the approach of
a great wind. The murmur grows, the tumult bursts, every heart beats:
a dizzy enthusiasm, a need of killing and conquering takes hold of the
nation. Then, when the men are gone and the noise has sunk, an anxious
silence reigns, and every ear is on the stretch for the first cry from
the army. Will it be a cry of triumph or of defeat? It is a terrible
moment. Contradictory news comes; every tiniest indication is seized,
every word is pondered and discussed until the hour when the truth is
known. And what an hour that is, of delirious joy or horrible despair!