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THE DIARY OF A FRENCH PRIVATE
SOME REVIEWS OF THE FRENCH EDITION
EMILE FAGUET in _Les Annales Politiques et Littéraires_, March 5, 1916:—
I had the honour … three years ago to write the Preface to
M. Gaston Riou’s first book, _Aux écoutes de la France qui
vient_. It was full of fire, impetus, and passion; it was a
heart-beat. I was not always of the same opinion as the author,
but I never failed to share his sentiments. I felt in him at
once a brother in patriotism and a brother in love of truth
and justice. I greeted him affectionately and contradicted him
tenderly. You all know the success of the work. The public
learned and has remembered a new proper name. M. Gaston Riou
now presents us with a very different book, but one painfully
entrancing, as its title implies, _Journal d’un simple soldat,
guerre—captivité, 1914-1915_.… M. Riou now shows himself to
be an extraordinarily delicate and lively painter of real
life, a charming painter of landscape, a vivacious narrator, a
thoughtful, conscientious, and penetrating psychologist alike
in respect of individuals and of nations. At once artist and
thinker, the artist never does injustice to the thinker, while
the thinker always gives the artist free play.
_Chicago Daily News_, May 1916:—
Out of the mass of books, good, bad, and indifferent, which
have been written about the great war, there is one, _Journal
d’un simple soldat_, by Gaston Riou, which stands out as a
work that will live and pass down to future generations as a
masterpiece.
Rev. FATHER MÉNAGE, O.P., in _La Revue des Jeunes_, Feb. 25, 1916:—
The author of these pages is a man of energy and self-command.
But he is something more. What gives the work a distinctive
character is the profundity of its psychologic sense.
_Daily Chronicle_, March 24, 1916:—
It has grown out of the war, but it is more than a war book
because it has thought, feeling, knowledge, and English readers
of French will appreciate its great charm of style.
A. BILLY in _Paris Midi_, Feb. 9, 1916:—
These pages are the diary of the man who, among all the French
prisoners, was perhaps best fitted to understand Germany from
within.
_La Tribuna_, Feb. 20, 1916:—
Though not a novel, it is as engrossing as a novel.
DANIEL LESUEUR in _La Renaissance_, March 18, 1916:—
Every one should read this record of imprisonment, whose
realism—simple, trivial, and at times almost repulsive—is
irradiated with a beauty which no work of romantic fiction can
ever equal.
MARCEL ROUFF in _Mercure de France_, April 1, 1916:—
The book will gain by being read and re-read after the war,
when the coming of peace will have restored to us that
independence of mind which is necessary for the adequate
appreciation of works of art.
PAUL BOURGET in _Echo de Paris_, April 28, 1916:—
I consider the _Journal d’un simple soldat_, one of the best
examples of the literature of war impressions which has
characterized the conflict now in progress.… The book is as
impassioned as a novel and as living as history.
THE DIARY OF A
FRENCH PRIVATE
WAR—IMPRISONMENT
1914-1915
BY
GASTON RIOU
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY
EDEN AND CEDAR PAUL
[Illustration]
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.
_First published in 1916_
(_All rights reserved_)
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
_Gaston Riou was born on January 7, 1883. He is a native of the Cévennes,
the region from which are derived three of the most distinguished among
modern French psychologists, Melchior de Vogüé, Auguste Sabatier, and
Paul Bourget. The Cévenole family from which he springs played an active
part in the wars of religion. On the mother’s side he is related to
Jacques de Vaucanson, the leading French mechanical engineer of the
eighteenth century, and also to Majal Désubas, the last Huguenot martyr,
executed at Montpellier in 1747. Thus by family tradition he is liberal,
nonconformist, and republican._
_Propagandist by temperament, he devoted himself at an early age to the
study of Christian origins. In 1905, at the Sorbonne, he wrote a thesis
upon the ~De unitate~ of St. Cyprian. His first published writings dealt
with the modernist movement of Loisy, Murri, and Tyrrell, and they
attracted considerable attention in Italy and in Germany. The ardour
which inspired them was very different from the ~rabies theologica~. The
young author, though Calvinist by conviction, adopted an attitude remote
from partisanship, his view being, “Whatever is Christian, is ours.” He
insisted upon the need for a new synthesis, embracing at once the ancient
faith and the actual conditions and the social life and thought of our
day. He contended that the non-Roman churches scattered throughout the
world might well constitute the embryo of a new Catholicism. But above
all, in this writer simultaneously republican and Christian believer,
was manifest the earnest desire to reconcile the France of ’89 with
the Christian ideal and the longing to witness and to assist in the
renovation of his country. Writing of him at this period, M. Emile
Faguet, a noted French critic, declared: “His ardour, his fire, his
impetus, the rush of his blood, are all instinct with the passion of
patriotism.”_
_In the year 1913 this admixture of religious uneasiness and nationalist
hope found expression in a volume entitled ~Aux écoutes de la France qui
vient~, which from the first attracted widespread attention. Above all,
this work embodies faith in France, and the leaders among the younger men
of the country rallied round him who had ventured to proclaim this faith.
M. Jean Finot, editor of the ~Revue des Revues~, bestowed upon Gaston
Riou the title of ~princeps juventutis~. Since then, with the coming of
the war, all France has regarded the ~Ecoutes~ as a work of prophecy. We
read in it the phrase: “Silently and studiously an élite is in process of
formation. The members of this élite are united, as it were, in heroic
friendship, for they are all animated by a single passion, the desire
to renovate their country, and they are all inspired by the same faith,
simple and strong. When others despaired, they did not despair. They are
confident that a splendid morrow, worthy of the finest epochs of our
history, is now germinating in the furrows of our motherland.”_
_Nor was it in France alone that ~Aux écoutes de la France qui vient~
attracted attention. In Germany, Karl Lamprecht, the great pangermanist
historian, devoted two lectures to it at the royal court of Dresden. In
~Zukunft~ Maximilian Harden exclaimed: “The publication of such a work
suffices to prove that je-m’enfichisme [the Gallio spirit] is dead in
France, and that young France is turning away from the scepticism of the
masters of French literature.”_
_Riou collaborated with Bergson, Henri Poincaré, and Charles Gide in the
publication of a historical study, ~Le matérialisme actuel~, an attempt
to summarize the tendencies of contemporary thought. Of this volume
a critic declared: “For France it celebrates the close of the age of
negativism, and heralds the opening of an epoch of lyrical effort, of
affirmation, and of activity.”_
_When war broke out, Gaston Riou had just returned from a journey in
England, Scotland, and Wales. He went to the front among the first, took
part in the fighting in Lorraine, and was mentioned in dispatches. He was
wounded in the battle of Dieuze, was taken prisoner, and passed eleven
months in a Bavarian fortress. This was not his first visit to Germany.
A year earlier he had been sent there on an official mission, and he is
personally acquainted with many Germans of note._
_The fruit of his imprisonment is ~Journal d’un simple soldat~, which
we are now publishing as ~The Diary of a French Private~. In its native
land the success of the book has been extraordinary, and the sternest of
French critics have with one voice declared it to be a permanent addition
to literature. Paul Bourget, Emile Faguet, Camille Mauclair, and Maurice
Donnay all speak of it as a masterpiece._
TO GUGLIELMO FERRERO
WE. Had we laid their hearts bare, we should have found there,
not so much war, as justice and humanity.
MICHELET.
THEY. I begin by seizing what I want; there are plenty of
pedants in my realm who can prove my right to it.
FREDERICK II.
CONTENTS
PAGE
REMINISCENCES OF A PREVIOUS JOURNEY 11
FEVER AND LOW SPIRITS 59
DINNER 66
FONTAINEBLEAU 71
AN OLD CAMPAIGNER 73
I HAVE A TABLE 79
WE KILL THEIR HOPES 85
SUNDAY 98
THE VICTORY OF THE MARNE 103
A BREAKFAST 117
THE FIRST LETTER 123
STILL SHORT COMMONS 130
I HAVE A PALLIASSE 145
THE REVOLT OF THE HUNGRY 151
A CHANCE CATERER 175
OUR GAOLER 196
THE SLOPES ARE FORBIDDEN 214
A BLACK MOOD 220
A FRANCONIAN QUARTERMASTER 226
DAWN 250
HE GOES AWAY 255
DISAPPOINTMENT 265
OH, DEAR! 267
THE RUSSIANS 271
VASSILI 289
THE COMMON PEOPLE OF GERMANY AND THE WAR 291
CROSSING SWITZERLAND 312
THE DIARY OF A FRENCH PRIVATE
REMINISCENCES OF A PREVIOUS JOURNEY
_September 2, 1914._
Here I am a prisoner.
What a journey! I am bitter at soul; it makes me sick to think of it.
Across Rhenish Prussia, the Palatinate, the grand duchy of Baden,
Würtemberg, and Bavaria, for three days and three nights, at every
station, and even as we pass through the countryside, groups of peasants
and gloomy crowds of citizens hurl execrations at us, stamp, and shake
their fists, making signs that they would like to cut our throats and
tear out our eyes. From the streets of country towns, lost amid the
sweltering plains, troops of children assemble, waving flags. They form
up in line beside the track. When the train comes in, moving slowly like
a funeral convoy, they beg for our képis; they vociferate in their own
language, “Paris _kaput_! Death to the French!” The sight of the red
cross armlet produces paroxysms of fury. “Death,” they scream, “death
to the red cross men! These are they who finish off our wounded!” The
shouting becomes strident, terrible, mad. Sometimes they try to take
the train by storm, and are stopped only by the bayonets of the German
soldiers on guard in each compartment, who growl out threats.
The women are even more horrible than the men. The murderous glance, the
clawed fingers, working and tearing as if in the dream of a tigress, the
nostrils dilated and twitching, the lips cyanosed, grimacing hatred—never
before have I seen such faces of damned souls, such Medusa heads. Who
could believe that women should appear so horrible!… When the train
stops for any time, richly dressed matrons parade beside it, offering
our guards mugs of beer, cigars and cigarettes, bread-and-butter and
jam, steaming sausages. Sick with hunger and fatigue, we look on at this
prodigality. “Above all,” they say, “give nothing to these French! Let
them starve!” We are offered water.
Everywhere, at the stations, from the steeples, the factories, the inns,
huge flags are waving. Chime answers chime across the rivers. The big
cathedral bells make the hills re-echo. All Germany is holiday-making,
drunk with blood, thrilling with the prospect of victory.
Is this the Germany I knew last year?
I had travelled through the country in the company of Marcel Chabrières,
as if on a pilgrimage. We passed through Heidelberg, my peaceful
Heidelberg, so lovable in the shade of its august ruin and of its
oak-crowned and vine-clad hill; Marburg, the quiet little town with
its professors and its workmen, resting more quietly at the foot of
the margrave’s castle than even the bones of St. Elisabeth of Hungary
beneath the pavement of the church; Dresden, that fine seat of artistic
and courtly life; Munich, the Teuton Florence, blooming like a flower;
Weimar, more sacred than all the others, where the neighbouring houses of
Schiller and Goethe mourn discreetly the memories of the golden century,
the lyrical and generous youth of Germany!… We were charmed with these
laughing cities of the spirit. I can still picture them in the limpid air
of last spring, I recall their dainty aspect, and the cheerful welcome
they accorded us; I see their waters reflecting the blue skies and the
bright clouds. When I but think of them, in this damp crypt of exile,
gusts of liberty, youth, and ecstasy agitate my heart.
We had strolled through the docks of Cologne and of Hamburg; we had
visited Elberfeld, Barmen, Hagen, and Essen, the smoky iron-towns of
Westphalia. Near the great forges of M. Krupp von Bohlen we had admired
the fairylike village of Margaritendorf, where brutal modern industry
would seem to have pledged itself to put its slaves to sleep every
evening in an idyllic retreat. From the window of the train, on the
journey from Hamburg to Berlin, passing through a country of pines and
lean fields, we had a glimpse of Friedrichsruhe, the lordly domain
where sleeps the “honest broker” who made the empire, “awaiting the
resurrection of the just.”
After the gentle sweetness of the ancient university towns, we were
intoxicated with the energies of this new world, this world of pride and
of money, of sweat and of lucre. Even in ugly Berlin, the parvenu town,
we paid our respects to the titanic effort of a nation in the full vigour
of life, ambitious, stubborn, determined to dazzle the world, to take the
place of Athens, of Rome, of Paris, convinced of its destiny to rule the
universe.
* * * * *
But every one talked to me of peace.
Since I was upon an official mission, I was able to converse with the
men in whom young Germany recognizes its masters. They all spoke with
one voice. They declared that their race had an ecumenical mission.
Patriotic, active, prolific, it was inevitably destined to control
Europe. “But for this,” they added, “we need peace.”
“Why, then, are you armed?”
“We have no natural frontiers; our plains lie open to the invader both
from the east and from the west. English merchants are jealous of our
successes; France obstinately refuses to grasp the proffered hand of
friendship; Russia is becoming panslavist. Caught in such a vice, how
can we ensure peace in any other way than by arming for defence? But we
have no need of war. In twenty years we shall be eighty millions, and we
shall be rich. Do you imagine that it will then be necessary for us to
unsheathe the sword in order to play our proper part in the world?”
This was the language employed to me by liberals. It was the language of
M. Simon and M. Wolf, editors or owners of the two leading journals in
Germany; of Max Weber of Heidelberg, the keenest intelligence I have
ever known; of Troeltsch, the distinguished sociologist; of Windelband,
the successor of Kant and of Fichte; of Vossler of Munich, the Romance
philologist, rival of such men as Ferdinand Bruneau and Joseph Bédier;
of Liebermann, the celebrated Berlin painter, who has supplemented
the labours of Paul Cassirer in order to introduce the work of our
impressionists into Prussia; of Lichtwark, the director of the Kunsthalle
in Hamburg; of Naumann, the editor of _Hilfe_, who supplies ideas to men
of the left wing in politics; above all, of a man more influential than
any I have yet named, Carl Lamprecht, the Saxon, whose gigantic history
of modern Germany has taken the form of an epic in honour of William II.
* * * * *
Young men, who across the Rhine are “liberals,”[1] talked in just the
same way.
I shall long remember the night we passed at Frankfort in the company
of M. Moritz von Bethmann, cousin of the Chancellor. How ardent was his
confidence! He was far from being a malcontent. He had no desire for
any kind of “restoration”; and still less did he wish, in the name of a
Frederick Barbarossa or of a Frederick the Great, to anathematize the
present. He accepted it joyously, delighted to be living in it, eager to
carry his full share of duties and hopes. But his lightness of heart was
neither studied nor ostentatious.
I recall very precisely his reply to the charge of materialism which, on
the spur of the moment, I levelled against new Germany. His rejoinder was
spirited and instantaneous.
“Do you really believe,” he said, “that we are going to rest satisfied
for a long time in the boastful materialism that ensued upon the victory?
You dare to say this, at the very moment when Kant and Fichte are once
more being restored to honour; when, just like you, we are discovering
the ‘buried temple,’ internal values, faith! Allow me to assure you
that the young men of Germany are at this moment more exacting in
matters of spiritual nourishment than your young men of the Agathon
type and the group that runs the _Action française_. Our minds cannot
give themselves up to a stupid or politic adoration of that which our
intelligence, fully conscious of its work, has destroyed. Though it may
cost us more suffering than you, we demand that our hearts and our minds
shall preserve full freedom of judgment, and we know how to await their
decision. We are not prepared, under pretext of spiritual nostalgia, to
accept outworn formulas which would compel us to shun and to disavow the
social order we owe to science, history, commerce, and democracy. We
shall not give ourselves up to the cult of any religions which, however
venerable they may be, are surcharged with fossilized rubbish and proud
of their state of petrifaction, which would have no understanding of our
scruples, and would be absolutely unfitted to fecundate our real life!
“I do not know if the renascence in France takes the form of swearing
by the middle ages, or by the seventeenth century, or by Bonald and de
Maistre, and of invoking maledictions on the work of ’89.[2]… The German
renascence, if this be so, is at the antipodes of yours. But do not
imagine that we are iconoclasts. As much as any others, we like to come
to terms with tradition. But we insist that tradition shall not hinder
our freedom of movement, that it shall either make us live or let us
live. Is that vaingloriousness? When we claim the privilege of living, of
thinking, and of creating, no less freely than did the men who founded
the tradition of the middle ages, or than those who founded the tradition
of the seventeenth century, are we not within our strict rights, and is
not the exercise of these rights a positive duty? We may be wrong, but
we believe that a new world is in course of construction. The work that
has to be done is of greater value in our eyes than the work that is
finished, however venerable and august the latter.
“I am a close student of your new political literature. Will you permit
me to say that I discover therein a carping and regretful tone? It seems
to me that its chief effort is devoted to blackening and decrying the
regime you have chosen, to undermining confidence in it. Our efforts
take the opposite direction. We are all for construction, adaptation,
glorification, lyric enthusiasm. We accept our national mission. We
accept our present life. We desire that our energies should continue
to increase, to coalesce, to become intertwined. You will see; when
the right moment comes they will secure for us a hegemony, and beyond
question it will be the most humane and the most pacific of hegemonies.”
Our conversation was a lengthy one. All the conventional barriers had
been cast down. Every one gave utterance to his own truth, as if speaking
to himself alone, in that species of lucid exaltation which sometimes
results from a prolonged vigil. And the strange thing was that in
proportion as behind the verbal agreements we sensed ever more strongly
the depths of unexpressed antagonisms, we felt each for the other an
increasing esteem. The hours passed. All the lamps in the Frankfurter Hof
had been extinguished, except our own, which continued to burn in the
great reading-room, its yellow light piercing the smoke-wreaths from our
cigars, and exhibiting the virile and yet refined features of the young
banker. We passed out into the open. The porter was asleep. The streets
were deserted. After this great duel between our respective national
dreams, the cold of the night was agreeable. Through the ancient street
where the young Goethe, locked up by his father in the corner room, had
watched Gretchen going by, we gained the banks of the Main. The first
streaks of dawn were already illuminating the broad surface of the river,
peopled with motionless vessels.
This was a year ago. Now the war has come between our dreams.
* * * * *
I remember this as if it were yesterday.
At Leipzig, again, I see a small and cheap room, an eyrie in the
Inselstrasse, among the great printing houses. It was attractive none the
less, almost touching in its simplicity, the ugly little place, with an
empty cup of coffee on the edge of a deal table laden with papers, and,
fixed to the wall, two shelves for books. It was a cell, showing that its
tenant was a man devoid of all vanities, a stranger to the amenities of
our century. Here, one fine morning, after I had rung the bell five or
six times, I was welcomed by M. Wilhelm Baum, editor of _Die Akademische
Rundschau_ and president of the “Free Students.”
Mlle. Marianne Lamprecht had drawn my attention to this young man as
a sort of _princeps juventutis_. Her father thought highly of him and
assisted him in his undertakings. The society of which he was the leader
had ramifications throughout lettered and scientific Germany. All its
members were serious workers; its mere existence had overwhelmed with
ridicule the reputation of the old aristocratic “corps,” those little
courts of idlers, where the gilded youth of the fatherland, under the
pretence of study, spends all its days in drinking, duelling, and
drabbing.
The appearance of M. Wilhelm Baum surprised me. Over his night-shirt he
had hastily donned a short and seedy jacket; his hair was untidy; he was
a small man of awkward aspect. The cinders from the stove, scattered
here and there, scrunched under our feet. My eye was caught by the
teaspoon, still wet, among the manuscripts. The man was in keeping with
his surroundings. Yet, when I had seated myself on an ancient sofa with
broken springs, my second glance at this “prince” aroused sympathetic
feelings. A secret flame illumined the blue eyes, the ascetic brow, and
the sickly countenance, revealing, in this shy youth of twenty-five, a
strong and lofty soul.
He, likewise, confided to me his hopes.
They differed little from those of M. Moritz von Bethmann. But on the
lips of M. Baum they received an apostolic breadth. The young banker
had not shown that he felt any insurmountable horror of war, which he
regarded merely as a useless expense. M. Baum, on the other hand, whose
entire mentality was under the influence of evangelical radicalism,
detested war as barbarism and as a manifestation of antichrist.
At one o’clock, since I could not make up my mind to leave him, I
persuaded him to dine with me at my hotel. Marcel Chabrières had spent
the morning at the museum among the tinted marbles of Max Klinger. He
was astonished to find that I was already on a friendly footing, almost
intimate indeed, with this young German.
Enthusiasm is the bread of youth. Youth loves the impossible, and will
accept life only through a passion which colours it with iridescent
hues, invests it with a halo, and endows it with heroic lineaments. This
meal was one of those moments of transfiguration when the world seems
malleable and impregnated with divine fire. Our minds were filled with
a vision, the vision of a new classic age, as harmonious as the age
of Pericles in Greece or as the third Christian century, but vaster,
richer, more humane, sparkling with youth—an age which was to integrate
and beautify the conquests and discoveries, still uncoordinated, of the
last three hundred years. German and French, in this dream, came to an
understanding. It is true that he considered that his nation, turning
back to the tradition of Weimar, was to be the master-craftsman, whereas
I contended that France had never ceased to occupy that role, which
was her vocation and fulfilled her nature. But this difficulty seemed
trifling. We were not so much antagonists as friendly rivals.
Is this man, I asked myself when he had gone, is this man typical of
young and literate Germany? In the classic land of militarism, is it only
the old who are swashbucklers?
A few weeks later, in early spring, on one of those afternoons in which
showers alternate with sunshine, and in which the buds, swelling with
sap, open, I was walking in the beech forest to the south of Munich.
My companion, about thirty years of age, was in fine fettle. Tall and
thick-set, florid of face, hair blond and bristly, he walked like a
conqueror, and seemed in his element among these sturdy trees. The man
of the woods personified! I considered that this professor, already
renowned, ought rightly in appearance to be rough-hewn, massive,
dynamic, like a woodman at work. He was a hearty eater and a vigorous
drinker, ruddy with health, absolutely innocent of the scepticism of
drawing-rooms. I had several times before had the chance of admiring this
man who reminded me of one of our Normandy horses. Above all, I had seen
him at the Hofbrauerie in Munich, where we had washed down our political
discussions with copious draughts of that dark beer, whose consumption in
Bavaria is encouraged by old King Louis, chief brewer, and owner of the
wealthiest tavern in the empire.
A country walk frequently encourages avowals which would never have
been made during a thousand meetings in town, among sophisticated men.
My companion had just confessed to me that he belonged to the “Social
Democracy.” As yet in secret only, for it is not permissible in Germany
to wear openly and simultaneously the livery of the professor and that
of the socialist. But the socialist party, suffering from a dearth of
intellectuals, desired him to become a deputy. At the first opportunity,
he would exchange his professorial chair for a seat in the Reichstag.
The ambition to revive Bebel in his own person, to become a new Wilhelm
Liebknecht, made his nostrils dilate.
Somewhat mockingly, when with the impetuosity of primitive man he was
speaking of the social mission of Germany, I said to him point-blank:
“Admit that you think we are worn out, that in your eyes France is
nothing more than an elderly beauty, with bald head, pallid lips,
wrinkled skin, decayed teeth, enfeebled intelligence!”
“If I were a bourgeois,” he answered laughingly, “I should answer in
the negative. You still have your stockings and your bankers, matters
of considerable importance in the eyes of the bourgeoisie of every
land. But I am a socialist and a democrat. The minimum programme of our
party is to effect the overthrow of Prussian absolutism, and to apply
throughout Germany that parliamentary regime which is the _conditio sine
qua non_ of all social advance. But you French, for your part, hold this
parliamentary regime in scorn. What would you have me think of a nation
which repents of its virtues, which makes fun of its chief glory?
“Here in Germany we read your Maurras and similar writers.[3] We are
told that in France these men have the ear of the younger generation.
It astounds us. It seems to us insane, this cheerful renunciation of
the tradition which has made you famous, and for which you are still
idolized by all that is noblest in the world. Do you find this strange?
When material force is failing you, you, the noble nation, become rabid
apologists of the regime of force, of ‘the man with the big stick.’ You
take Machiavel for master. You ask for a French Bismarck. You declare
yourselves to be royalists, imperialists, absolutists. I can see no
difference between your romano-positive young men and our own _echten
Deutschen_, those energumens who deafen us in our public squares with
their _hochs_ to the Kaiser, who shout their _Deutschland über alles_
at every _prosit_, and who pile monument upon monument in honour of the
militarist Moloch, until the appearance of our towns becomes intolerable.
Young Frenchmen converted to the Germany of the junkers, blood-brothers
of our idiot of a crown prince! What a farce! But for us, the German
socialists, this is merely an additional reason for the redoubling of our
energies. Our watchword to-day is extremely simple: to raise in Europe
and to carry onward to victory the standard of democracy which has fallen
from the hand of France!”
“Such is really your idea of France, your own, and that of all the German
left?”
“To speak frankly, it is with us a dogma that generous and humane France
is dead, and that all that was best in her spirit has entered into us.”
We walked on for some time without saying a word. The idea never occurred
to him that these wholesale judgments could possibly shock or pain me,
for he was one of those happy men, common in Germany, endowed with
a veritable talent for frankness. He continued his terrible strides,
and after a while he exclaimed gaily: “Anyhow, you don’t bring enough
children into the world to be socialists. Our ideas can germinate only
in dense crowds, where there is hardly standing room, where people lack
air and space, breed without restriction, and have nothing to lose! Your
_Einzweikindersystem_[4] condemns you to be nothing but bourgeois, and
poor bourgeois at that!”
I made no answer. What answer was possible? He knew my ideas. He had been
one of those who introduced my _Ecoutes_ into Germany. Besides, it gave
him so much pleasure to believe in our decadence, to be convinced that
Germany, as far as democracy was concerned, was henceforward without peer
in the world.
Indeed it is true, all these “young men of the left” were ardent
believers in Germany’s mission. But to justify this mission they did
not, like the cynical pangermanists, appeal to the _Faustrecht_, the
right of the stronger; they did not speak of bloody conquests. Perhaps
they thought of them, but such brutalities (which the German mind, even
when finely tempered, accepts with little reluctance) remained hidden
in the background, within the domain of possibilities, among the lesser
evils and contingencies—profane delights which a platonic lover hardly
dares to envisage even in his secret dreams. Idealists of the Michelet
type, quaffing the austere wines of Kant and Fichte (recently unsealed
and served round at the universities by the new masters), they made an
exclusive claim to the moral heritage of ’89, of which we, they said,
had ceased to be the heirs. Were not they the youthful neophytes of the
democratic faith which the degenerate French had lost? Had they not
passionately espoused the modern world, whose uncertain dawn had first
ventured to shine on Paris, that slight and foolish city, but whose full
noon was now to illumine the strong and loyal (_treu und fest_) town of
Berlin, the guardian of the Rhine? Yes, _finis Galliæ_! It was theirs
to lead the great caravan of the universe towards the new justice. It
was their part, the part of these good Teutons, with their virgin spirit
and their new blood, to direct in future the affairs of the human race.
_Gesta Dei per Germanos!_
* * * * *
One of these young men was M. Wichert, director of the Mannheim museum.
He was the favourite disciple of M. Lichtwark of Hamburg, and had also
been a pupil of the late celebrated von Tschudi, grand master of the
artistic life of Germany. Von Tschudi, it may be mentioned in passing,
of course had a quarrel with William II, just like Bismarck, just like
Haeseler, and Bülow, just like all the clever men in the empire who were
unfortunate enough to possess a vigorous individuality. M. Wichert was a
friend of our consul, M. Deschars,[5] who arranged a meeting between us.
Son of a poor officer, and orphaned while quite young, M. Wichert went
through his course of studies as best he could. His life is a romance.
Loneliness; poverty; chance encounter with a Mæcenas; sudden abandonment
of science for art; renewed poverty; unexpected patronage by the great
pontiffs of art, Tschudi and Lichtwark; appointment as sub-director of
the picture gallery of Munich; appearance upon the scene of the Magian
kings, a delegation of aldermen from the town of Mannheim, modernist
before all, offering him carte blanche for the creation of a museum; for
a start the young Messiah purchases in Paris Manet’s best work, “The
Execution of Maximilian,” Daumier’s portrait of Michelet, and the “Man
with the Pipe,” the most famous of Cézanne’s pictures; all Mannheim is
terrified at its commissioner’s prodigality; he defends himself before
the entire town council, silencing some by his boldness, winning over
others by his disinterested violence, by the aspect of his threadbare
coat, and the thinness of his slight but ardent figure; thus he arouses
that municipal patriotism which is so keen in the fatherland, convincing
the councillors that he will do nothing less than make of Mannheim
the leading art centre of Germany, and at the point of the bayonet he
wrests from them a vote of confidence; shortly afterwards, a wealthy
Jew entrusts him with five million marks for the establishment of a
museum; he founds an art school to enlighten the Mannheim bourgeoisie,
which is upstart, elementary, but open-minded and full of goodwill; his
lectures become fashionable in the town; he provides similar instruction
for the common people; acting upon suggestions made by M. Osthaus, a
rich bourgeois of Hagen, he establishes travelling exhibitions. In a
word, Tschudi being dead and Lichtwark dying, M. Wichert allowed his
own way at Mannheim, at twenty-five years of age figures in the role of
co-ordinator, protector, inspirer of the artistic life of Germany. He has
made up his mind to transform Mannheim—the Hanseatic city of traders and
manufacturers, the mushroom town flaming red with its abundance of new
bricks, an American city suddenly appearing in Europe—into a Jerusalem
of the new art. He desires that the streets shall become beautiful,
that their names shall have a poetic ring, that the squares shall be as
harmonious as a house by Van de Velde or Niemeyer. He secures an order
for the demolition of the theatre built ten years earlier in the “Jugend”
style, and already an object of ridicule; a competition is opened for the
design of the building which is to replace it. The whole town becomes
crazy about art. A bourgeois is regarded as dishonoured if he has not
given 40,000 marks to the museum to buy a Renoir or some Gauguins. If
this apostolate continues, the people will checkmate the very Athenians.
M. Wichert talks to me in the following strain: “In the history of art
nothing can rival the creative energy displayed by France. Romanesque,
gothic, all the gothics, renaissance, baroque, rococo (the terms have no
invidious meaning in Germany), directoire, empire—all these are French.
Throughout ten centuries you continued to bring forth styles which were
so elegant and so convenient, whose taste was so confident, that they
instantly captured the world.
“But have you suddenly become sterile? Is France, pre-eminently the
nation of innovators, no longer competent to do anything but to copy its
own past? Like your new sociologists, your furniture makers supply Louis
XVI, Louis XIV, empire; your builders furnish Louis XVI, renaissance,
and again Louis XVI. Have you really ceased to produce architects since
Gabriel and Louis, cabinet-makers since Boule, enchasers since Gouthière?
Or is it that you no longer care for anything but the old, like those
respectable and fatigued ladies who cannot endure a new face, and ask
only to be allowed to die in peace, surrounded by the things of their
youth? However this may be, we often tell one another that France no
longer possesses enough energy to survive the titanic act of giving birth
to the modern world, and that she is now nothing more than a beautiful
corpse, embalmed and laid to rest in a splendid museum.
“Here in Germany, believe me, we worship your artistic tradition. For
centuries we could find nothing better to do than attempt to assimilate
it. You have visited Cassel, Pilnitz, Carlsruhe, Potsdam; I cannot doubt
that you felt at home in these royal palaces, which are nothing but
replicas of Versailles.
“But I sometimes incline to think that the creative force which formerly
existed in France has emigrated to Germany. It is true that during
the nineteenth century there occurred in France a splendid blossoming
of sculptors and painters: Delacroix, Rude, Carpeaux, the landscape
painters of Barbizon, the admirable school of Manet, and, coming down to
to-day, Rodin, Degas, Maillol, Jouve, Vallette, the expressionists. Yes,
unquestionably, even if your architecture (the master art which controls
and co-ordinates all the rest) is decadent, your sculpture and your
painting remain unrivalled.
“But are you not struck by the fact that during the last twenty years
it has been in Germany, above all, that your innovators have gained
appreciation; that many of them have had to secure their first celebrity
in the foreign world, before they were enabled to harvest in France the
fruits of a restricted glory, admired in their own homes solely by a
group of cosmopolitan epicures? Are you not astonished that such a man as
Van de Velde, who vegetated in Paris, should build palaces for our great
manufacturers; and that Maillol, the sculptor, a most typical Frenchman,
should find a place of honour in our museums while in France he is
still almost unknown? Is this neglect deliberate? Is it because you are
convinced that genius cannot flower to perfection until it has suffered,
that you provide this chill atmosphere for your best artists? Or is it
timidity, unwillingness to take risks, stupidity, provincialism? Whatever
the reason, the air of France is to-day less favourable to creation than
the air of Germany.
“In Germany there is an extensive public which lives upon the hope of a
new ‘culture.’ This public has nothing in common with the pangermanists.
It includes few generals and few leaders of the bureaucracy. But it
contains our best men of letters and some of our principal bourgeois,
in a word, the general staff of wealthy, liberal, and parliamentary
young Germany. There are some, like Stephan Georg, Wolfskehl, and Madame
Osthaus, in whom this hope assumes an ardent and mystical character,
becoming a true religion. While it is the fashion in Paris, at least so
we are assured, to be frankly reactionary,[6] here all the men and all
the women who wield the empire of mind are animated by a quasi-messianic
spirit. Is it possible that Nietzsche, with his idea of the revaluation
of values, has contributed to the spread of this spirit? I do not know.
We wait; we aspire; we hope. To us to-morrow is sacred. Every one is
striving towards forms of life and art which shall be more ample, more
truthful, more expressive, more beautiful. Every one is making ready to
welcome the wonderful butterfly which is to spring from this larval age.
It is with us a matter of faith that the men will come, that they are now
on the way, who can provide the artillery and the watchwords of the new
civilization.
“I frequently visit Paris to attend the great sales; I am well acquainted
with the superior smiles with which many of your critics greet our
attempts. They make fun of the curved outlines of our ‘Jugend’
buildings. For my part, I detest that style of architecture as much as
they. Are we not now demolishing a theatre built after this design,
although the mortar is hardly dry? But it is possible for us to destroy
our architectural abortions. In Germany you can get money, all the money
you require, for an artistic purpose. Can you do the same in France?
Can you make sacrifices to an ideal incorporated in stone? No, you have
too little faith. You believe in your bankers, not in your artists. You
venture nothing in art; we hazard all, boldly running the risk of making
a mistake. And, by building, we learn to build.
“Ten years ago we were making bad attempts; to-day we have discovered
a system of architecture appropriate to modern requirements and at the
same time beautiful. Go and look at the Weltheim in Berlin, M. Osthaus’s
home at Hagen, the new station at Hamburg. When you are in Hamburg get M.
Schumacher, chief architect of the republic, to show you the plans of the
magnificent public garden he has just designed, which is to cost fifteen
million marks.
“Here money is the ally of art, the living art of to-day, the ally
of artistic creation, whereas in your country money, more prudent,
devotes itself only to the purchase of antique and catalogued beauty. I
believe, in fact, that France lacks Medicis, whilst Germany possesses
them in abundance. The reason is obvious. The wealthier members of our
bourgeoisie are uneasy and discontented; they desire a true parliament
which will enable them to get the better of the junkers; it is their
nature to be progressive. Your bourgeoisie, on the other hand, has
triumphed, and, since it has nothing more to desire, it is natural that
it should dread novelty in philosophy and art no less than in politics.
I know that what I am saying runs counter to all your hopes. But you can
do nothing to change your destiny in this matter. France has entered the
conservative phase; we are now the creators; we, henceforward, shall be
the true successors of your masters.”
* * * * *
Thus everywhere was to be heard the same refrain: the future lies in the
hands of Germany! Germany is the Messiah of the new art; the Messiah of
the socialist city; the Messiah of modern thought; the Messiah of the
new classic age. She is the successor of aged France. It is she who will
realize what the last of the great Frenchmen have dreamed.
In all these young men, the élite of the German nation, there was
effervescing a strange force, there was surging an ardent and emotional
nationalism, a veritable religion of German primacy. They considered
that primacy inevitable. It originated spontaneously; its increase was
dependent upon organic growth; and no accident, whether in war or peace,
could either hasten or hinder it. They were all radiating hope; they all
had faith in the present, a warm vintage yielding a thick and heady must,
of intoxicating aroma, and whence will be derived a robust wine for the
peoples to drink.
They were sincere when they spoke of peace. Doubtless their idealist
ambition was transformed into a materialist and brutal ambition among
men of business, officers, and bureaucrats. For these latter, German
production was to ruin that of England, the German will was to control
the foreign chancelleries. But such ends cannot be secured without war.
Or they could be secured without war, only if Europe made up her mind to
submit! Only if the English merchants were good enough to go bankrupt!
Only if the greater Slavs should offer no objection to the enslavement
of their little brothers on the Drina! Thus while the young liberals
were dreaming of a pacific hegemony, Krupp was making his 420 millimetre
guns, sergeants were teaching recruits to fear their officers as they
feared God, and Berlin was fashioning new military laws which even the
socialists, after some formal resistance, voted integrally.
But during this journey, the fact which struck me most of all was the
existence of a liberal youth. I had not expected to find anything of the
kind. I had been so positive that from the Rhine to the Vistula I should
hear nothing but the noise of military accoutrements.
* * * * *
I had seen the German army in Strasburg, at the _Parole Aufgabe_ in the
Place de Broglie, when the general transmits to the officers’ corps the
orders and the passwords. The whole of this assembly, in its light-grey
uniform in which a simple sub-lieutenant was indistinguishable from a
colonel, made salutes. The salute seemed to me the distinctive sign of
this army, a fervent salute, involving the head and the entire spine,
passing off in a smile at once triumphant and humble, martial and
innocent, seeming to say, “How enviable I am in that I obey! How enviable
I am in that I command!”
I looked down on this from the third story of the editorial offices
of _Le Journal d’Alsace-Lorraine_. Suddenly I came to understand the
feudal spirit, the cascade of absolute authority and of submission which
formerly descended from the sovereign to the serf by way of the hierarchy
of barons.
When I had crossed the Rhine, in the streets of the German towns the
strength of this impression grew, until it became positively haunting.
Everywhere I saw blind adoration of the uniform, overwhelming joy in
wearing it; everywhere the intoxication of command, equalled only by the
delight of obedience; everywhere complete ignorance of the essential
equality of men, demonstrated first of all in the life of Christ,
and which, once it is thoroughly understood, purifies politeness of
servility, transforms obedience into affectionate collaboration, and
transfigures power into service; everywhere, both in military and in
civil life, I saw lords and servants, I saw the same man at once lord and
servant, lord of those under him, servant of those over him—but nowhere
did I see citizens. I saw servants, submissive, prepared for anything,
obedient to every sign, mechanized and rejoicing thereat, convinced that
it was to their interest to be so, proud of the shape and strength of
the iron hand of which individually each man was one of the innumerable
phalanges. I was tempted to see in this the dominant characteristic of
the German nation. A powerful nation, but one estranged from the modern
spirit: a medieval islet in the midst of liberal Europe; a redoubtable
nation wherein absolutism, exorcised elsewhere in ’89, was patiently
preparing its revenge, and whence some day, perhaps soon, would come the
initiative of a combat to the death between feudalism and democracy.
Some weeks after the scene in the Place de Broglie, M. von Arnim,
attached to the Prussian general staff, accompanied me through the
barracks of Potsdam and the camp of Döberitz. The regiments of the guard
were at drill. The order, the silence, were absolute, even in the case of
those standing at ease. The drill ground was nothing but a vast solitude,
like those great electric power works, which appear deserted, and where
the only sign of life is the gentle hum of the dynamos. There seemed
nothing human in this drill ground. From time to time there was a raucous
cry, and the gloomy maniples advanced, retired, wheeled to the right or
to the left.
“What a fine army of automata!” I said under my breath.
“That’s it,” exclaimed M. von Arnim, grasping at the comment, which had
been made for my own edification alone, as a eulogium. “In France you
cultivate individual initiative, but we avoid it like the pest. The
whole aim of our training is to break it down. All we need is to produce
somnambulists, performing such and such an action upon such and such an
order; not reflecting, not reacting, but acting merely, passively, by
instinct, responding to the order as a well-trained thoroughbred responds
to the pressure of your knee. The soldier must not think. Above all
he must not think. If we attribute so much importance to the rigorous
carrying out of movements, if we push to the point of mania our fondness
for these drill-ground evolutions which you regard as useless and
ridiculous, it is because they break down thought, rout it, weary it, put
it to sleep, and annihilate it; because they reduce the human being to
the level of a pure automaton. Show me a man who, by persistent drilling,
has been emptied of thought, and I will show you a good soldier!
“On the battlefield, automatic obedience and fear of the superior officer
take the place of courage. This doctrine has but one inconvenience: we
shall sacrifice more men than you when we have to attack. This is of no
consequence. We have less reason than France to make a thrifty use of our
soldiers. Germany is prolific.”
* * * * *
This German army, what a powerful mould it would constitute for a healthy
race, one filled with the pride of youth but still requiring to be
formed, one which had not yet emerged from the simple gregarious stage,
one without any of those dispersed indurations due to the appearance of
irreducible individualities—a race still boneless and plastic.