THE DIARY
There was, however, one companion with whom Rolland could hold converse
daily--his inner consciousness. Day by day, from the outbreak of the
war, Rolland recorded his sentiments, his secret thoughts, and the
messages he received from afar. His very silence was an impassioned
conversation with the time spirit. During these years, volume was added
to volume, until by the end of the war, they totaled no less than
twenty-seven. When he was able to return to France, he naturally
hesitated to take this confidential document to a land where the censors
would have a legal right to study every detail of his private thoughts.
He has shown a page here and there to intimate friends, but the whole
remains as a legacy to posterity, for those who will be able to
contemplate the tragedy of our days with purer and more dispassionate
views.
It is impossible for us to do more than surmise the real nature of this
document, but our feelings suggest to us that it must be a spiritual
history of the epoch, and one of incomparable value. Rolland's best and
freest thoughts come to him when he is writing. His most inspired
moments are those when he is most personal. Consequently, just as the
letters taken in their entirety may be regarded as artistically superior
to the published essays, so beyond question his diary must be a human
document supplying a most admirable and pure-minded commentary upon the
war. Only to the children of a later day will it become plain that what
Rolland so ably showed in the case of Beethoven and the other heroes,
applies with equal force to himself. They will learn at what a cost of
personal disillusionment his message of hope and confidence was
delivered to the world; they will learn that an idealism which brought
help to thousands, and which wiseacres have often derided as trivial and
commonplace, sprang from the darkest abysses of suffering and
loneliness, and was rendered possible solely by the heroism of a soul in
travail. All that has been disclosed to us is the fact of his faith.
These manuscript volumes contain a record of the ransom with which that
faith was purchased, of the payments demanded from day to day by the
inexorable creditor we name Life.