forty-three years ago, the crime which we accepted to avoid recommencing
the war. Our resignation has not sufficed; it has not caused the trouble
to disappear; the German Government has none the less been obliged to
confirm it each day. The misfortune has been the forcible annexation of
Alsace-Lorraine. For that the Germans are paying today; for that they
will pay until they have made atonement for their fault. In this regard
France is irreproachable; she has resisted the chauvinists; our general
elections, the conferences of Berne and of Basle, have proved that, far
from seeking revenge, she wished by mutual concessions to arrive
worthily at reconciliation in peace.
The Germans are paying today for their fault of 1870-71, because that
fault has corrupted and poisoned them. I have said it a thousand times.
In order to keep those two unfortunate provinces under their domination
it has been necessary for them to use force, to institute a régime of
force. * * * It has been necessary to prevent revolts by repressive
measures, as at Saverne, which have disgusted, and even disquieted, the
whole world; that ignominious brutality become sovereign mistress, by
the force of circumstances, even against the will of the Kaiser and
against the protestation of all the élite of Germany, of such men as
Zorn, Förster, Nippold, and Bebel, has ended by being a menace and a
danger to Germany itself. All this is connected, and, whatever happens,
Germany cannot emerge victorious from a war which is itself but the
logical result of the abuse of her victories. She cannot conquer
civilization; it is impossible. * * *
Comprehend this well, repeat it, publish it if you wish; France,
Belgium, and England may suffer check after check; they are prepared for
this, they expect it, but they will not be discouraged. The German
armies may exhaust themselves uselessly in killing, burning, and
destroying. They will destroy themselves in the end. Our national policy
is to take them in their own trap and to wear them out.
The day of reckoning is coming, when the inexorable advance of the
Slavic race, always increasing in numbers--it little matters whether it
is well or badly organized--will come from the rear to attack the
Germans at the time when they are confident of victory and to drown them
in the floods of blood which they have caused to flow; terrible
punishment for a war which we and our friends have done everything to
prevent. The victims of this punishment will be at least a half million
of French, Belgians, and Englishmen, together with a whole nation which
desired peace as we did, but which has allowed herself to be misled by a
Government mad enough to wish to reconcile the irreconcilable, namely,
the maintenance of peace and the spirit of conquest. May this punishment
at least begin an era of new peace! Alas! how may we hope for this when
we see the human beast awakening in a delirium of fury and getting
beyond our control to destroy the masterpieces of human genius.
*Fourth Letter.*
PARIS, Sept. 11, 1914.
The Germans appear to have comprehended that the atrocities which have
bitterly aggravated the remorseless violation of Belgian neutrality have
only aroused general indignation, and have at the same time exasperated
the opposing nations and armies. Contrary to the tales which appear in
the sensational journals, which are naturally as eager today to embitter
the war as they were formerly to bring it about, I am assured that the
German armies in France are repudiating the unworthy excesses of the
beginning of the campaign and are respecting life and private property.
This will alleviate the horrors of the war, but France nevertheless will
place no limit on the sacrifices which she will make. She will wear out
the German Army and destroy it, day after day, in continuous battles.
* * *
The Belgians with us at Clermont-Créans, instead of being a burden, as I
had feared, are making themselves useful. They are very welcome. They
are gradually recognized and appreciated as estimable people, and are
employed in the homes and farms and fields. We should like to have more
of them. How we shall regret them when they leave! * * *
The German Emperor must stand either as a pacifist or as a conqueror. He
cannot pass as both. All the results which may follow this war could
well have been obtained in peace by a general effort of good-will. On
the other hand, the legacy of the war will be endless rancor, hatred,
reprisal, and savagery. When it shall be understood that, in spite of
Governments and Parliaments, the war has been, in large part, excited by
the manoeuvres of an international band of the dealers in military
supplies and by their all-powerful newspapers, when it shall be
thoroughly comprehended that these dealers and these newspapers have
played with rumors of war as with a scarecrow, for the purpose of
keeping up a general condition of disquiet favorable to their sinister
operations, then, too late, alas! there will be a revulsion of public
opinion to sustain finally those men, like our friends, who have urged
arbitration rather than war, and conciliation rather than arbitration.
* * * More than ever our motto, "Pro patria per orbis concordiam," will
be that of every good patriot who wishes to develop the internal
prosperity of his country through friendly foreign relations. * * * More
than a century ago you Americans condemned and executed British
imperialism; subsequently Europe condemned and executed Napoleonic
imperialism; Europe is now going to condemn and execute Germanic
imperialism; profit by this threefold lesson to make an end of
imperialism in your country, and by your good example to render to
Europe an incalculable service.
Such an example will be more efficacious than overhasty or superficial
intervention, however well intentioned it might be. Above all, beware of
offering aid to Europe in a spirit of opportunism rather than of high
principle. Especially, do not try to take advantage of some
circumstances in order to urge a lame and ephemeral peace. Public
opinion will be bitterly divided if the war is brought to an end merely
by lassitude and a desire for comfort. Public opinion will accept only a
peace inspired with high ideals, without needless humiliation for the
conquered, and equally without sacrifice of any principles which have
brought together the anti-German coalition.
The war itself, however atrocious it has been and still may be, will
have been only a commencement, the beginning of continual wars into
which the New World will be drawn, if we do not leave the desire of life
and the means of living to Germany, conquered but still alive. It is
possible to conquer and to exterminate armies, but it is not possible to
exterminate a nation of 70,000,000 people. It will then be necessary to
make a place for Germany which will permit the exercise of her fecund
activity in the struggle of universal competition. If we yield to the
temptation to make an end of German competition, we shall neither end
the competition nor shall we end war.
For years I have repeated this to our English friends who were
intoxicated with the theories of Chamberlain. I see without surprise but
with sorrow that serious journals of London and Paris spread before the
eyes of their readers the absurd idea that this war will kill the German
foreign commerce, while the English and French production will be
enriched without a rival, and consequently without effort. Place should
be made for Germany from Berlin to Vienna in the organization of a
general European confederation which will give full satisfaction to
Italy at Trieste, will install the Turkish Government in Asia, will
bring about an agreement between the Christian Balkan States, and give
the free disposal of their destinies to Poland, Denmark, Finland,
Hungary, Rumania, and Alsace-Lorraine.
In this manner the worst problems on which general peace depends would
be solved, and with these problems that of armaments, which it would no
longer be dangerous nor humiliating to reduce if the general reduction,
extending even to Japan and seconded by all the republics of the New
World, were agreed to by all. Certainly such an agreement would be
difficult to develop; it would terrify the diplomats, but outside of
such an agreement I see in perspective nothing but perpetual war,
internal revolution, and general ruin.
*Fifth Letter.*
PARIS, Sept. 18, 1914.
* * * The pride of an empire may not be crushed without a bitter
struggle. The German Government has at its disposition the live force of
a young and growing people. However, the day is coming when that people,
aware that they have been deceived, will be able to repudiate their
Government, just as the French people did after Sedan. Meanwhile the
German armies have stopped their retreat in order to form a new line of
resistance. But to what good? This line will be overthrown, and in the
end the German Army will be obliged to retreat in disorder and again to
cross the land which it has laid waste.
The true difficulties, in my opinion, are going to commence when the
conquered Germans must submit to the conditions made by the conquerors.
The victors will be able to agree, I believe, to stop the war and to
dictate conditions. But will they agree to make these conditions
moderate? That is the question. At that moment even France will be far
from unanimous, as she has been unanimous in defending herself. France
is of one opinion on these principal points:
1. Alsace-Lorraine ought to be liberated at last, free to return to
France; her rights ought to be respected and recognized. Such liberation
should extend as far as possible to every country in Europe whose right
has been violated.
2. We must make an end of ruinous armed peace, invented, so it was said,
to prevent war, but which has made war inevitable. German militarism
must be crushed unless it is again to become a menace and give the
signal for another competition of armaments. This peace will be only a
truce, a sinister comedy, unless it is crowned by a general convention
of disarmament, to which Germany must subscribe with all the others and
before all the others.
3. Arbitration, conciliation, all the means already provided for
amicable adjustment, and if possible for the prevention of international
conflicts, should be organized on a more solid and more definite basis
than in the past, with the sanction, or at least the maximum of
necessary precautions, of a federated Europe. All which we have done at
The Hague, far from being lost, will serve as a foundation for the
building of a pacific federation.
On these three points one may prophesy a unanimity almost complete; but
the division will begin when it comes to distinguishing between Germany
and the empire, between the German people who have a right to live and
the German Empire which opposed the right to live; the division will
begin when some demand the humiliation of Germany, others the ruin of
her colonies, and of her very life. France, who has defended peace,
will, I am sure, also defend justice; but justice will not triumph
without difficulty. And it is here that the United States will render
great service, if the United States has preserved, as one can see so
clearly in the Mexican crisis, her moral authority and
disinterestedness.
In the cuttings from the American papers which you have sent me I have
read with great disquietude an article which says that, after all, the
United States "will be the beneficiary of the European war." This
article claims that the United States may profit very easily by this war
to take away from Germany her commerce in the three Americas, &c. It is
a dangerous form of reasoning, which, however, is not new.
If war has attracted ardent partisans it is because it appeals to the
temperament of many people, it flatters their self-pride, but also it
serves their interests. I have never understood it as I do at present. I
see, for example, the town of Mons enriching itself through the war;
cafés, restaurants, the hotels, are unable to accommodate all who come
to them; the farmers are seen disputing about their products. There are
also the military requisitions by which one can profit in getting rid of
an old horse, of a wagon, an automobile, &c.; there are the butchers,
the bakers, the dealers in cutlery, &c., who have never had so many
purchasers; the furnishers of materials for the hospitals, pharmacists,
orthopedists, &c.
Add to these an immense number of furnishers of military supplies, not
only those who sell cannon, arms, and ammunition, but the accessories,
the uniforms, material for the transports, and for the administrative
work, &c. They are legion. Add to these all the combatants who have been
promised positions as officers, Colonels, Generals. * * * Napoleon I.
gave titles and honors. * * * You will understand that after the war, if
there is an infinite number of unfortunates who mourn and who are ruined
by the war, there are others, on the contrary, who have profited very
well, who have enriched themselves and been raised to a privileged,
fortunate class, who will find it quite natural to demand war or whose
children will demand it later; while the mass of unfortunates, without
strength, without resources, without protection, will need years to
reconquer in peace the rights which they legally enjoyed before the war,
and which the war suddenly took from them.
If to this class, more powerful than numerous, of natural partisans of
the war in Europe you are going to add the American partisans of the
European war, you will commit a grave fault, for the Americans have more
than ever everything to gain by peace and all to lose in war, which they
will not be able to limit if it breaks out again in the world.
The truth is that the Americans evidently gain in the war, but they lose
more. Europe is something else to them than a market over which to
dispute, she is a reservoir of experiences, good and bad, but of
experiences which you cannot do without. To wish for the continuation of
the war in Europe or even to take sides with it as a sort of half evil
is for the Americans a crime, a sort of suicide; that would be to
applaud the destruction of models which civilization seems to have
collected for your edification and for your development. Later, the
United States can do without many of these lessons which she learns from
Europe, but she will always have need of the inspiration of the
masterpieces of our civilization. It is only a barbarous reasoning which
allows one to see in the European war profit for the United States; it
is a loss, a mourning, a shame for the whole world, and particularly for
the free countries which are the guides of other peoples and which can
only fulfill their mission in times of peace.
I have often heard the profits of war discussed. The undertakers of
impressive funeral services can also congratulate themselves over
catastrophes. A railroad accident which puts an entire country in
mourning can enrich them. The most murderous battles bring profit in the
final reckoning to somebody, if it is only to the jackals and the crows;
but it is the whole of a country, and for the United States it is the
whole world, which must be considered, and the more the whole world
prospers the more will the United States find friends, collaborators,
and clients. The more the world is troubled, on the contrary, the more
commerce and general activities will suffer from it, without mention of
the development of instruction and of the progress of human thought,
which will be paralyzed.
I have been surprised to see a serious American paper bring up these old
questions for discussion, and I conclude that we are going to feel in
Europe the result of our errors. It is going to be necessary to find
money to fill up the financial gulf which we dig each day under our feet
without realizing it; a gulf twice made, by the billions which it has
been necessary to spend for the war, by the billions of ordinary income
which must now go by default. We cannot reasonably expect that Germany
will be able to pay all the deficits in France, England, Russia,
Belgium, and Japan; she will have no longer her foreign commerce; her
misery is going to be frightful; it will be necessary then that each of
the adversaries which she has so rashly provoked limit his demands; we
must ourselves limit her ruin unless our own credit shall be ruined
also.
In a word, there are two victories equally difficult for the Allies to
win: the first over Germany, the second over themselves. Let us prepare
ourselves to the uttermost and with all the authority which we can
husband to facilitate the first here, and from your side as well as from
ours, the second. To make war there is the first difficulty; but to
finish well, that is what makes me anxious for the future.
*Sixth Letter.*
PARIS, Sept. 24, 1914.
In spite of all, unity of purpose is maintained among the Allies as well
as among Frenchmen. I say in spite of all, because at Berlin this was
hardly believed possible at the beginning of the war.
* * * All the men have left Créans; my farm is empty, and as I told you,
the work is accomplished just the same. Means are found to feed the
wounded English, becoming more and more numerous, the wounded Belgians
and the prisoners. At the mill the miller's wife has four sons and a
son-in-law in the army. I went to see her; not a tear, she looked
straight before her absorbed in her work and said only "It is
necessary." She continues her work as yesterday, as always, only with
more energy and seriousness than formerly, with the purpose to
accomplish double.
Meanwhile in spite of lack of news, we are beginning to learn that many
sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers whom we saw go away will never
return. Each day a few of the wounded are buried, and so it is in all
the communities in the country which are not occupied by the Germans. In
every town, village, home, and heart the national tribulations have
their local echo.
If all France were victim of a catastrophe of nature, an earthquake, a
conflagration, or a flood, the country would be crushed; but, no, the
contrary is now true, for the present catastrophe has been brought about
by an evil will and each one comprehends that this will, if left free to
act, will continue to do evil until it has been crushed. We have neither
the time nor the wish to complain; we fight. * * *
The people, all those who are now devoted to my policy, to our policy,
remain more faithful than ever. They keep silent awaiting the end of the
war and knowing well that in fact it is not so much a question of
Germany as of German reaction, German imperialism, and German
militarism. They know also that if the German reaction might have been
crushed sooner, the war would not have broken out. Thus, far from being
blind, public opinion is alive to the truth. The grandeur, and to speak
the whole truth, alas, the beauty of the atrocious war is that it is a
war of liberation. * * *
It is impossible that the New World should remain a simple spectator
before the gigantic struggle which is progressing in Europe. I do not
ask that the New World intervene by armed force, but that it shall not
conceal its opinion, its aversion for that horror which is called
reaction and which truly is only death; that it shall not conceal its
indignation for the abominable calculation of that reaction which is
incapable of comprehending anything of the life, the work, the science
and the art of human genius. I ask that the New World shall not remain
skeptical before the senile attacks of those armies which respect
nothing, neither women, children, old men, unfortified cities, museums,
nor cathedrals. * * *
It is impossible that the free United States, born out of the sacred
struggle against European domination, enlarged, enriched, and ennobled
by that struggle, and now in the front rank among nations as the fruit
of that struggle, should hesitate between revolution and reaction,
between right and conquest, between peace and war.
Americans are too generous to hesitate, too wise, also, for Prussian
reaction is cracking and is going to crumble; even Americans of German
origin would be acting against their own fatherland if they, by their
sympathies, should sustain the régime of caporalism which is now
destroying it.
*The Vital Energies of France*
*By Henri Bergson.*
*From The Bulletin des Armees, Nov. 5, 1914.*
The issue of the war is not doubtful: Germany will succumb. Material
force and moral force, all that sustains her will end by failing her
because she lives on provisions garnered once for all, because she
wastes them and will not know how to renew them.
Everything has been said about her material resources. She has money,
but her credit is sinking, and it is not apparent where she can borrow.
She needs nitrates for her explosives, oil for her motors, bread for her
sixty-five millions of inhabitants. For all this she has made provision,
but the day will come when her granaries will be empty and her
reservoirs dry. How will she fill them? War as she practices it consumes
a frightful number of her men, and here, too, all revitalization is
impossible; no aid will come from without, since an enterprise launched
to impose German domination, German "culture," German products, does not
and never will interest those who are not Germans. Such is the situation
of Germany confronting a France who keeps her credit intact and her
ports open, who procures provisions and ammunition according to her
need, who reinforces her army with all that her Allies bring to her, and
who can count--since her cause is that of humanity itself--upon the
increasingly active sympathy of the civilized world.
But it is not merely a question of material force, of visible force.
What of the moral force that cannot be seen and that is more important
than the other--which to a certain degree can be supplied--that is
essential, since without it nothing avails?
The moral energy of nations, like that of individuals, can only be
sustained by some ideal superior to themselves, stronger than they are,
to which they can cling with a strong grip when they feel their courage
vacillate. Where lies the ideal of contemporary Germany? The time has
past when her philosophers proclaimed the inviolability of justice, the
eminent dignity of the person, (the individual?), the obligation laid
upon nations to respect one another. Germany militarized by Prussia has
thrust far from her those noble ideas which came to her formerly for the
most part from the France of the eighteenth century and the Revolution.
She has made for herself a new soul, or rather, she has docilely
accepted that which Bismarck has given her. To that statesman has been
attributed the famous phrase: "Might makes right." As a matter of fact
Bismarck never said it, because he was unable to distinguish between
might and right; in his eyes right was simply that which is desired by
the strongest, that which is declared in the law imposed by the victor
upon the vanquished. His whole moral philosophy is summed up in that.
The Germany of the present knows no other. She also worships brute
force. And as she believes herself strongest she is entirely absorbed in
adoration of herself. Her energy has its origin in this pride. Her moral
force is only the confidence by which her material force inspires her.
That is to say, that here also she lives on her reserves, that she has
no means of revitalization. Long before England was blockading her
coasts she had blockaded herself, morally, by isolating herself from all
ideals capable of revivifying her.
Therefore she will see her strength and her courage worn out. But the
energy of our soldiers is linked to something which cannot be worn out,
to an ideal of justice and liberty. Time has no hold on us. To a force
nourished only by its own brutality we oppose one that seeks outside of
itself, above itself, a principle of life and of renewal. While the
former is little by little exhausted, the latter is constantly revived.
The former already is tottering, the latter remains unshaken. Be without
fear: the one will be destroyed by the other.
*France Through English Eyes*
With Rene Bazin's Appreciation.