influence of this wide human sympathy, and turns once more to the field
of strife, the rasping cries of hate in the press inspire only horror
and pity. What object have they in view? They wish to punish crimes and
are a crime in themselves; for murderous words are the seeds of future
murder. In the diseased organism of a fevered Europe everything vibrates
and reverberates without end. Every word, every action, arouses
reprisals. Him who fans hatred, hatred flares up to consume. Heroes of
officialdom! bullies of the press! the blows which you deal very often
reach your own people, little though you think it--your soldiers, your
prisoners, delivered into the hands of the enemy. They answer for the
harm which you have done, and you escape the danger.
We cannot stop the war, but we can make it less bitter. There are
medicines for the body. We need medicines for the soul, to dress the
wounds of hatred and vengeance by which the world is being poisoned. We
who write--let that be our task. And as the Red Cross pursues its work
of mercy in the midst of the combat, like the bees of Holy Writ that
made their honey in the jaws of the lion, let us try to support its
efforts. Let our thoughts follow the ambulances that gather up the
wounded on the field of battle. May _Notre-Dame la Misère_ lay on the
brow of raging Europe her stern but succoring hand. May she open the
eyes of these peoples, blinded by pride, and show them that they are
but poor human flocks, equal in the face of suffering; suffering at all
times so great that there is no reason to add to the burden.
_Journal de Genève_, October 30, 1914.
VI. TO THE PEOPLE THAT IS SUFFERING FOR JUSTICE
(For _King Albert's Book_.[20])
Belgium has just written an Epic, whose echoes will resound throughout
the ages. Like the three hundred Spartans, the little Belgian army
confronts for three months the German Colossus; Leman-Leonides; the
Thermopylæ of Liège; Louvain, like Troy, burnt; the deeds of King Albert
surrounded by his valiant men: with what legendary grandeur are these
figures already invested, and history has not yet completed their story!
The heroism of this people, who, without a murmur, sacrificed everything
for honor, has burst like a thunderclap upon us at a time when the
spirit of victorious Germany was enthroning in the world a conception of
political realism, resting stolidly on force and self-interest. It was
a liberation of the oppressed idealism of the West. And that the signal
should have been given by this little nation seemed a miracle.
Men call the sudden appearance of a hidden reality a miracle. It is the
shock of danger which makes us best understand the character of
individuals and of nations. What discoveries this war has caused us to
make in those around us, even among those nearest and dearest to us!
What heroic hearts and savage beasts! The inner soul, not a new soul,
reveals itself.
In this fearful hour Belgium has seen the hidden genius of her race
emerge. The sterling qualities that she has displayed during the last
three months evoke admiration; it should not surprise any one who, in
the pages of history, has felt, coursing through the ages, the vigorous
sap of her people. Small in numbers and in territory, but one of the
greatest in Europe in virtue of her overflowing vitality. The Belgians
of today are the sons of the Flemings of Courtrai. The men of this land
never feared to oppose their powerful neighbors, the kings of France or
Spain--now heroes, now victims, Artevelde and Egmont. Their soil,
watered by the blood of millions of warriors, is the most fertile in
Europe in the harvests of the spirit. From it arose the art of modern
painting, spread throughout the world by the school of the van Eycks at
the time of the Renaissance. From it arose the art of modern music, of
that polyphony which thrilled through France, Germany, and Italy for
nearly two centuries. From it, too, came the superb poetic efflorescence
of our times; and the two writers who most brilliantly represent French
literature in the world, Maeterlinck and Verhaeren, are Belgian. They
are the people who have suffered most and have borne their sufferings
most bravely and cheerfully; the martyr-people of Philip II and of
Kaiser Wilhelm; and they are the people of Rubens, the people of
Kermesses and of Till Ulenspiegel.
He who knows the amazing epic re-told by Charles de Coster: _The heroic,
joyous, and glorious adventures of Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedjak_, those
two Flemish worthies who might take their places side by side with the
immortal Don Quixote and his Sancho Panza--he who has seen that
dauntless spirit at work, rough and facetious, rebellious by nature,
always offending the established powers, running the gauntlet of all
trials and hardships, and emerging from them always gay and
smiling--realizes also the destinies of the nation that gave birth to
Ulenspiegel, and even in the darkest hour fearlessly looks towards the
approaching dawn of rich and happy days. Belgium may be invaded. The
Belgian people will never be conquered nor crushed. The Belgian people
cannot die.
At the end of the story of _Till Ulenspiegel_, when they think he is
dead, and are going to bury him, he wakes up:
_"Are they," he asks, "going to bury Ulenspiegel the soul, Nele the
heart of mother Flanders? Sleep, perhaps, but die, no! Come,
Nele."_
_And he departed, singing his sixth song. But no one knows where he
sang his last._
VII. LETTER TO MY CRITICS[21]
_November 17, 1914._
There has reached me, after much delay, at Geneva, where I am engaged on
the International work of Prisoners of War, the echo of attacks against
me in certain newspapers, roused by the articles that I have published
in the _Journal de Genève_, or rather by two or three passages
arbitrarily chosen from those articles (for they themselves are scarcely
known to anybody in France). My best reply will be to collect what I
have written and publish it in Paris. I would not add a word of
explanation, for there is not a line that I did not think it my right
and my duty to set down. Moreover, I think that there is better work to
do at this moment than to defend oneself; there are others to defend,
the thousands of victims who are fighting in France. Time devoted to
polemics is like a theft from these unfortunates, from these prisoners
and families, whose hands seeking each other across space we are trying
to unite at Geneva.
But not content with attacking me personally, they have attacked ideas
and a cause which I believe to be that of the true France; and since my
friends expect me to defend these thoughts which are also theirs, I
profit by the hospitality which is offered me to reply distinctly and
frankly in good French.
I have published four articles: a letter to Gerhart Hauptmann, written
the day after the devastation of Louvain, "Above the Battle," "The
Lesser of Two Evils," and "Inter Arma Caritas." In these four articles I
have stated that of all the imperialisms which are the scourge of the
world, Prussian Military Imperialism is the worst. I have declared that
it is the enemy of European liberty, the enemy of Western civilization,
the enemy of Germany herself, and that it must be destroyed. On this
point I imagine we are agreed.
To what do my critics take exception? Without entering into the
discussion of certain points of detail, such as the appeal made by the
Allies to the forces of Asia and Africa of which I disapprove, and
still disapprove because I see in it a near and grave danger for Europe
and for the Allies themselves, and because this danger is already
materializing in threats of disturbance in the world of Islam--exception
is taken essentially on two grounds:
1. My refusal to include the German people and its military and
intellectual rulers in the same denunciation.
2. The esteem and friendship which I have for the individuals in the
country with which we are at war.
I will reply first of all without ambiguity to this second reproach.
Yes, I have German friends as I have French, Italian, and English
friends, and friends of every race. They are my wealth: I am proud of it
and keep it. When one has had the good fortune to meet in this world
loyal souls with whom one shares one's most intimate thoughts, and with
whom one has formed bonds of brotherly union, such bonds are sacred, and
not to be broken asunder in the hour of trial. He would be a coward who
timidly ceased to own them, in order to obey the insolent summons of a
public opinion which has no right over the heart. Does the love of
country demand this unkindness of thought which is associated with the
name Cornélienne? Cornéille himself has given the answer:
--_Albe vous a nommé, je ne vous connais plus._
--_Je vous connais encore, et c'est ce qui me tue._
Certain letters, which I shall reproduce later, will show the grief,
sometimes almost tragic, that such friendships mean in these moments.
Thanks to them, we have at least been able to defend ourselves against a
hatred which is more murderous than war, since it is an infection
produced by its wounds; and it does as much harm to those whom it
possesses as to those against whom it is directed.
This poison I see with apprehension spreading at the present moment.
Amongst the victim populations, the cruelties and ravages committed by
the German armies have brought to birth a desire for reprisals. This,
when once in existence, is not for the press to exasperate, for such a
desire runs the risk of leading to dangerous injustice--dangerous not
only for the conquered but above all for the conquerors. France has, in
this war, the chance of playing the nobler part, the rarest chance that
the world has even seen. A German wrote to me a few weeks ago: "France
has won in this war a prodigious moral triumph. The sympathies of the
whole world are drawn towards her; and, most extraordinary of all,
Germany herself has a secret leaning towards her enemy." All should wish
that this moral triumph may be hers to the end, and that she may remain
to the end just, straightforward, and humane. I could never distinguish
the cause of France from that of humanity. It is just because I am
French that I leave to our Prussian enemies the motto: "_Oderint, dum
metuant._" I wish France to be loved, I wish her to be victorious not
only by force, not only by right (that would be difficult enough), but
by that large and generous heart which is pre-eminently hers. I wish her
to be strong enough to fight without hatred and to regard even those
against whom she is forced to fight as misguided brothers who must be
pitied when they have been rendered harmless.
Our soldiers know it well, and I say nothing here of letters from the
front which tell us of compassion and kindness between the combatants.
But the civilians who are outside the combat, who do not fight, but
talk, who write and embroil themselves in a factitious and lunatic
agitation and are never exhausted; these are delivered over to the winds
of feverish violence. And there is the danger. For they form opinion,
the only opinion that can be expressed (all others are forbidden). It
is for these that I write, not for those who are fighting (they have no
need of us!).
And when I hear the publicists trying to rouse the energies of the
nation by all the stimulants at their disposal for this one object, the
total crushing of the enemy nation, I think it my duty to rise in
opposition to what I believe to be at once a moral and a political
error. You make war against a State, not against a people. It would be
monstrous to hold sixty-five million men responsible for the acts of
some thousands--perhaps some hundreds. Here in French Switzerland, so
passionately in sympathy with France, so eager both in its sympathies
and in the duty of restraining them, I have been able for three months,
by reading German letters and pamphlets, to examine closely the
conscience of the German nation. And I have been able thus to take
account of a good many facts which escape the greater part of the French
people. The first, the most striking, the most ignored, is that there is
not in Germany as a whole any real hatred of France (all the hatred is
turned against England). The especial pathos of the situation lies in
the fact that the French spirit only really began to exercise an
attraction upon Germany some two or three years ago. Germany was
beginning to discover the true France, the France of work and of faith.
The new generations, the young classes that they have just led to the
abattoir of Ypres and Dixmude, numbered the purest souls, the greatest
idealists, those most possessed by the dream of universal brotherhood.
If I say that for many among them the war has been a laceration, "a
horror, a failure, a renunciation of every ideal, an abdication of the
spirit," as one of them wrote on the eve of his death--if I say that the
death of Péguy has been mourned by many young Germans, no one would
believe me. But belief will be a necessity the day I publish the
documents which I have collected.
It is somewhat better understood in France how this German nation,
enveloped in the network of lies woven by its Government, and abandoning
herself thereto with a blind and obstinate loyalty, is profoundly
convinced that she was attacked, hemmed in by the jealousy of the world;
and that she must defend herself at all costs or die. It is among the
chivalrous traditions of France to render homage to the courage of an
adversary. One owes it to that adversary to recognize that in default of
other virtues the spirit of sacrifice is, in the present instance,
almost boundless. It would be a great mistake to force it to extremes.
Instead of driving this blind people to a magnificent and desperate
defense, let us try to open their eyes. It is not impossible. An
Alsatian patriot, to whom one could not impute indulgence for Germany,
Dr. Bucher of Strasbourg, told me not long since, that even though the
German is full of haughty prejudices carefully fostered by his teachers,
he is at any rate always amenable to discussion and his docile spirit is
accessible to arguments. As an example, I would instance the secret
evolution that I see in progress in the thought of certain Germans.
Numbers of German letters that I have read this month begin to utter
agonized questionings as to the legitimacy of the proceedings of Germany
in Belgium. I have seen this anxiety growing, little by little, in
consciences which at first reposed in the conviction of their right.
Truth is slowly dawning. What will happen if its light conquers and
spreads? Carry truth in your hands! Let it be our strongest weapon! Let
us, like the soldiers of the Revolution, whose hearts live again in our
troops, fight not against our enemies, but for them. In saving the
world, let us save them too. France does not break old chains in order
to rivet new.
Your thoughts are fixed on victory. I think of the peace which will
follow. For however insistently the most militarist among you may talk,
venturing as did an article to hold out the delightful promise of a
perpetual war--"a war which will last after this war, indefinitely...."[22]
(it will come to an end, nevertheless--for lack of combatants!) ...
there must come a day when you will stretch out the hand of friendship,
you and your neighbors across the Rhine, if it were only to come to an
agreement, for the sake of your own business. You will have to
re-establish supportable and humane relations: so set to work in such a
manner as not to make them impossible! Do not break down all the
bridges, since it will ever be necessary to cross the river. Do not
destroy the future. A good open, clean wound will heal; but do not
poison it. Let us be on our guard against hatred. If we prepare for war
in peace according to the wisdom of nations, we should also prepare for
peace in war. It is a task which seems to me not unworthy of those among
us who find themselves outside the struggle, and who through the life of
the spirit have wider relations with the universe--a little lay church
which, today more than the other, preserves its faith in the unity of
human thought and believes that all men are sons of the same Father. In
any case, if such a faith merits insult, the insults constitute an honor
that we will claim as ours before the tribunal of posterity.
VIII. THE IDOLS
For more than forty centuries it has been the effort of great minds who
have attained liberty to extend this blessing to others; to liberate
humanity and to teach men to see reality without fear or error, to look
themselves in the face without false pride or false humility and to
recognize their weakness and their strength, that they may know their
true position in the universe. They have illumined the path with the
brightness of their lives and their example, like the star of the magi,
that mankind may have light.
Their efforts have failed. For more than forty centuries humanity has
remained in bondage--I do not say to masters (for such are of the order
of the flesh, of which I am not speaking here; and their chains break
sooner or later), but to the phantoms of their own minds. Such servitude
comes from within. We grow faint in the endeavor to cut the bonds which
bind mankind, who straightway tie them again to be more firmly
enthralled. Of every liberator men make a master. Every ideal which
ought to liberate is transformed into a clumsy idol. The history of
humanity is the history of Idols and of their successive reigns; and as
humanity grows older the power of the Idol seems to wax greater and more
destructive.
At first the divinities were of wood, of stone, or of metal. Those at
any rate were not proof against the axe or against fire. Others followed
that no material force could reach, for they were graven in the
invisible mind. Yet all aspired to material dominion, and to secure for
them that dominion the peoples of the world have poured out their best
blood: Idols of religions and of nationality: the Idol of liberty whose
reign was established in Europe by the armies of the _sans-culotte_ at
the point of the bayonet. The masters have changed, the slaves are still
the same. Our century has made the acquaintance of two new species. The
Idol of Race, at first the outcome of noble ideas, became in the
laboratories of spectacled savants the Moloch which Germany herself
hurled against France in 1870 and which her enemies now wish to use
against the Germany of today. The latest on the scene is that authentic
product of German science, fraternally allied to the labors of industry,
of commerce, and of the firm of Krupp--the Idol of Kultur surrounded by
its Levites, the thinkers of Germany.
* * * * *
The common feature of the cult of all Idols is the adaptation of an
ideal to the evil instincts of mankind. Man cultivates the vices which
are profitable to him, but feels the necessity of legitimizing them;
being unwilling to sacrifice them, he must idealize them. That is why
the problem at which he has never ceased to labor throughout the
centuries has been to harmonize his ideals with his own mediocrity. He
has always succeeded. The crowd has no difficulty here. It sets side by
side its virtues and its vices, its heroism and its meanness. The force
of its passions and the rapid course of the days which carry it along
cause it to forget its lack of logic.
But the intelligent few cannot satisfy themselves with so little effort.
Not that they are, as is often said, less readily swayed by passion.
This is a grave error; the richer a life becomes the more does it offer
for passion to devour, and history sufficiently shows the terrifying
paroxysms to which the lives of religious leaders and revolutionaries
have attained. But these toilers in the spirit love careful work, and
are repelled by popular modes of thought which perpetually break through
the meshes of reasoning. They have to make a more closely woven net in
which instinct and idea, cost what it may, combine to form a stouter
tissue. They thus achieve monstrous _chefs-d'oeuvre_. Give an
intellectual any ideal and any evil passion and he will always succeed
in harmonizing the twain. The love of God and the love of mankind have
been invoked in order to burn, kill, and pillage. The fraternity of 1793
was sister to the Holy Guillotine. We have in our time seen Churchmen
seeking and finding in the Gospels the justification of Banking and of
War. Since the outbreak of the war a clergyman of Würtemberg established
the fact that _neither Christ nor John the Baptist nor the apostles
desired to suppress militarism_.[23] A clever intellectual is a conjuror
in ideas. "_Nothing in my hands--nothing up my sleeves._" The great
trick is to extract from any given idea its precise contrary--war from
the Sermon on the Mount, or, like Professor Ostwald, the military
dictatorship of the Kaiser from the dream of an intellectual
internationalism. For such conjurors these things are but child's play.
Let us expose them, by examining the words of this Dr. Ostwald, who has
appeared during the last few months as the Baptist of the Gospel of the
spiked helmet.
Here is the Idol to begin with--_Kultur (made in Germany), with a
capital K "rectiligne et de quatre pointes, comme un chevel de frise,"_
as Miguel de Unamuno wrote to me. All around are little gods, the
children of its loins: _Kulturstaat_, _Kulturbund_, _Kulturimperium_....
_"I am now" (it is the voice of Ostwald[24]) "going to explain to you
the great secret of Germany. We, or rather the Germanic race, have
discovered the factor of Organization. Other peoples still live under
the régime of individualism while we are under that of Organization. The
stage of Organization is a more advanced stage of civilization."_
It is surely clear that, like those missionaries who, in order to carry
the Christian faith to heathen peoples, secure the co-operation of a
squadron and a landing party which straightway establish in the
idolatrous country commercial stores protected by a ring of cannon,
German intelligence cannot without selfishness keep her treasures to
herself. She is obliged to share them.
"_Germany wishes to organize Europe, for Europe has hitherto not been
organized. With us everything tends to elicit from each individual the
maximal output in the direction most favorable for society. That for us
is liberty in its highest form._"
We may well pause to marvel at this way of talking about human "culture"
as though it were a question of asparagus and artichokes. Of this
happiness, and these advantages, this maximal output, this market-garden
culture, this liberty of artichokes subjected to a judicious forcing
process, Professor Ostwald does not wish to deprive the other peoples of
Europe. As they are so unenlightened as not to acquiesce with
enthusiasm:
"_War will make them participate in the form of this organization in our
higher civilization._"
Thereupon the chemist-philosopher, who is also in his leisure hours a
politician and a strategist, sketches in bold outline the picture of the
victories of Germany and a remodeled Europe--a United States of Europe
under the paternal sceptre of his mailed Kaiser: England crushed, France
disarmed, and Russia dismembered. His colleague Haeckel completes this
joyous _exposé_ by dividing Belgium, the British Empire, and the North
of France--like Perrette of the fable before her pitcher broke.
Unfortunately neither Haeckel nor Ostwald tells us if their plan for the
establishment of this higher civilization included the destruction of
the Halle of Ypres, of the Library at Louvain, of the Cathedral at
Rheims. After all these conquests, divisions, and devastations, let us
not overlook this wonderful sentence of which Ostwald certainly did not
realize the sinister buffoonery, worthy of a Molière: "You know that I
am a pacifist."
However far the high priests of a cult may allow their emotion to carry
them, their profession of faith still retains a certain diplomatic
reserve which does not hamper their followers. Thus the
_Kulturmenschen_. But the zeal of their Levites must frequently disturb
the serenity of Moses and Aaron--Haeckel and Ostwald--by its intemperate
frankness. I do not know what they think of the article of Thomas Mann
which appeared in the November number of the _Neue Rundschau_: "Gedanken
im Kriege." But I do know what certain French intellectuals will think
of it. Germany could not offer them a more terrible weapon against
herself.