France has suffered, suffers and will suffer more deeply than all
the other countries of the world. She is at once the altar and the
holocaust. She has sacrificed her men, her cities, and her soil. It is
in the heart of her beautiful fields that the devastating storm whirls
and roars.
In the depths of my soul I hope that, because of this great grief, it
will be France that will give the signal for redemption. I hope that
the reign of the heart will begin just here where the old civilization
will leave imperishable traces of its murderous folly.
The resources of the French people in perseverance, in self-reliance,
in goodness, in subtle delicacy are so great that one feels a word
would suffice to rally all hearts and give them their bearings. One
feels that at the mere phrase “moral civilization” thousands and
thousands of noble heads will nod approval, thousands of hands will
reach out to find each other.
People who have obstinate views on the political meaning of wars,
on the eminently economic nature of the peril that has been run
by humanity, and on the efficacy of the industrial and scientific
civilization, will not fail to proclaim that France ought first of
all to return to its furious task and apply itself to surpassing the
peoples that have outstripped it along this path.
But France has always been the country of initiation and revelation. It
is the chosen land of spiritual revolutions. May the bloody baptism it
has received give it precedence in the discussion of the future!
Do you wish it to lose the glorious rank it holds in the moral order,
at the head of the nations, that it may fall in line behind the peoples
who are enslaved by automatism and swear allegiance to a worn-out,
condemned, bankrupt social and economic religion?
If the destiny of our country is to make a humanity that is plunged in
affliction give ear to the words of peace, consolation and love, let it
accomplish this beautiful mission, let it teach the other peoples the
generous laws of the true possession of the world.
X
My work is finished, and now the time has come for me to part with it.
It is going off into this misty autumn night. My heart is both glad and
sorrowful.
It is going away from me, henceforth to follow a destiny of its own
that will no longer depend only upon my love.
I shall turn to other duties, I shall assume other cares. A voice tells
me that they will always be the same duties, the same cares, and that
there is no longer but one great task for men, one single task with a
hundred radiant aspects.
It is late. The night is drawing to a close; it is calm and yet
penetrated with a vast, subdued murmur of joy. They say it is one of
the last nights of the war.
I hear about me the panting breath of the wounded. There are several
hundred of them; they are sleeping or longing for sleep and rest. Their
burning breath is like a lamentation. Many of them will never see the
peace they have so dearly bought. They are perhaps the wounded of the
last battle, the last victims, the last martyrs.
Over the whole face of the world souls are suffering with them, for
them, souls which the angel of death laboring here this night will not
deliver.
My work is finished. It begins to withdraw from me. If it can bring any
consolation to a single one of these suffering souls, let me believe
that it has fulfilled its destiny.