‘Victorious France means to take her place again in the order of the
mind, the only order whereby a legitimate domination may be exercised.’
Hence the desire to found (the manifesto itself underlines the words):
‘_The intellectual Federation of Europe and the world under the aegis
of victorious France, the guardian of civilization._’
Victory under arms conferring the right to command in the intellectual
order--that is professed to-day by French thinkers! One remembers the
Roman writers, from whom these thinkers claim descent, who took as the
leader of their minds Greece, which had been conquered by force of
arms; one also remembers the German teachers of 1871 who also claimed
intellectual hegemony for their ‘victorious’ nation, which they too
claimed as ‘the guardian of civilization’.[188]
When this manifesto was published, somewhat similar reflections seem
to have occurred to the mind of one of our great writers. In a letter
concerning this document,[189] Marcel Proust deplores the proclamation
of ‘a kind of “Frankreich ueber alles”, the policeman of the literature
of all nations.’ As a true priest of the mind, he goes on: ‘Why take
this peremptory attitude towards other countries in such matters as
literature, where a man only reigns by persuasion?’ I am happy to take
this opportunity to do homage to this true ‘clerk’, and to say that I
know that there are still other writers in France beside those who only
believe in the virtue of cold steel.