The possession of others is a passion, that is to say, it is an ordeal,
a painful effort. This supreme joy, like all the joys to which we
attach value, is born out of suffering.
We must experience men in order to know them, and our neighbor for
whom, or through whom, we have never had to endure any anguish, has
surprises in store for us, or else escapes us altogether: that is
almost a truism.
Like all others, this treasure cannot be acquired without effort,
without bitterness; but it knows no decay, it never ceases to grow
through the mere play of the forces of our life and seems as if
sheltered from the blows of fate. It does not, like money, depreciate
in value or serve ignoble ends. It only returns to oblivion.
It is not strictly personal. It can be shared and bequeathed. Since
it escapes destruction and death, it can become the most precious of
heritages; it has this superiority over money, that its transmission is
really valid only after it has been in some sort of way reconquered.
It must fall into worthy hands that will know how to work to preserve,
cultivate and build it up again. In certain points it resembles what we
call experience.
To suffer, first of all! That is surely one of the grandeurs of our
race, and we truly love our blessings for what they have cost us in
tears, in sweat, in blood.
It is repugnant to the spirit to admit that anything can be a blessing
which the war has given. The desperate folly of the Western world has
engendered and still holds in reserve such great misfortunes that we
cannot ransack all these ruins, these heaps of bones, with any hope of
extracting from them, as rag pickers do with their hooks, some fragment
that is good, some useful bit of waste. No! There is no excuse for
this ferocious, immeasurable stupidity. And yet, men have suffered so
terribly from one another that they have learned to know one another,
that is to say, to possess one another mutually. In spite of my own
denials, let me save this bit of wreckage from the general disaster.
That is indeed one blessing so dearly bought that we shall not
willingly give it up. And I do not speak here only of those who have
fought against each other; I speak also of those who have fought side
by side, who have shed their blood for the same cause and under the
same standards.
Companions have been given us, imposed upon us, association with whom,
even when casual and transitory, would once have seemed impossible to
us. Living as free men, we sought to control the inevitable as far
as possible, to choose our own road and avoid those whose opinions
or points of view about the universe were likely to offend our own.
We thus made use of that liberty for the most part in order to humor
our irritable feelings, to lull our souls to sleep in a precarious
security, and restrict the area of our inward activity.
Then came the war and we had not only to suffer from the enemy, to
endure unforeseen attacks in regions of ourselves that we considered
invulnerable, but to suffer still more from our own messmates, from
those who commanded us and especially those whom we commanded.
Could it have been otherwise? No! No! If that suffering had been spared
us, we should not have been men, we should not have gone to war, we
should not have been those divine animals whom it is so beautiful and
so shameful to be and whom we cannot help being.
We have been told that all suffering is sterile, hopeless and without
redemptive power. That it only serves to nourish hatred. But how
marvelous it is when it engenders understanding, that is to say,
possession, that is to say, love!
I have observed that for many men, except in actual bodily encounter,
combat face to face, the enemy has lost all individual or specific
character and has become almost confounded with the great hostile
forces of nature: lightning, fire, tidal waves. The bullet coming
from so far away, the shell hurled from beyond the horizon, all these
mortal powers are simply like a form of blind destiny. In spite of
daily lessons in hatred, in spite of vociferations, these men die
courageously, with a resigned despair, without hatred.
But with other, less noble souls, the tendency to aversion and
quarreling, thus turned back from the enemy, seeks its objects in their
immediate surroundings and finds them, creates them, alas!
My comrades, my comrades, if the uncertainty of your spirit, your
agony, the rebelliousness of your afflicted flesh urges you to seek
those who are responsible, do not look too angrily upon those who are
about you, do not, in your aberration, accuse Houtelette because he is
a chatterbox, Exmelin because he is an egoist, or Blèche because he is
a rude, morose commander. Do not place your misery to the account of
Méry, who is so slow in obeying, and be willing to admit that Maurin is
not to blame for everything because his opinions are not the same as
yours. At least, if you must draw your circle of animosity, make it so
close about you that it contains only yourselves, and seek first of all
in yourselves the causes of your unhappiness.
Better still, apply yourselves to looking your suffering in the face,
putting it, with insight and precision, to the proof.
You know that a loathsome drink almost ceases to be loathsome when you
drink it without haste but with a desire to appreciate the precise
quality of its bitterness. Exactly in this same manner you should
endeavor to measure, to study your suffering. Instead of abhorring it,
try in a way to understand it; it will become interesting, curious, I
dare not say lovable.
If Méry carries out your orders badly, consider systematically how he
can be made to become, in spite of himself, a really good servant. If
Blèche exercises his authority in a way that incessantly wounds you,
interest yourself in his brutality, try to analyze his movements, his
expressions, his familiar habits, and you will then be in a better
position, not to escape from him indeed, but to avoid at times the
sting, the cut of his peremptoriness. You will make him restless by
doing this, and you will set him thinking. It is not necessary for him
to fear you, it is enough for him to recognize in you a free force with
which he has to reckon, a force it is wise to propitiate. Meanwhile,
to use a colloquialism, “you’ve got him.” Every time you have obliged
him to be less arrogant, more just with you, you can say that you have
“had” him, as the soldiers so admirably put it.
This possession costs a certain amount of work. But you are willing to
toil eight hours in order to earn ten francs that do not remain for a
single day between your fingers; you can certainly afford a few minutes
of your effort and your soul to acquire a treasure of which nothing
will ever be able to deprive you.