THE LAST APPEAL
For five years Romain Rolland was at war with the madness of the times.
At length the fiery chains were loosened from the racked body of Europe.
The war was over, the armistice had been signed. Men were no longer
murdering one another; but their evil passions, their hate, continued.
Romain Rolland's prophetic insight celebrated a mournful triumph. His
distrust of victory, his reiterated warnings that conquerors are
merciless, were more than justified by the revengeful reality. "Victory
in arms is disastrous to the ideal of an unselfish humanity. Men find it
extraordinarily difficult to remain gentle in the hour of triumph."
These forecasts were terribly fulfilled. Forgotten were all the fine
words anent the victory of freedom and right. The Versailles conference
devoted itself to the installation of a new regime of force and to the
humiliation of a defeated enemy. What the idealism of simpletons had
expected to be the end of all wars, proved, as the true idealists who
look beyond men towards ideas had foreseen, the seed of fresh hatred and
renewed acts of violence.
Once again, at the eleventh hour, Rolland raised his voice in an
address to the man whom sanguine persons then regarded as the last
representative of idealism, as the advocate of perfect justice. Woodrow
Wilson, when he landed in Europe, was received by the exultant cries of
millions. But the historian is aware "that universal history is but a
succession of proofs that the conqueror invariably grows arrogant and
thus plants the seed of new wars." Rolland felt that there was never
greater need for a policy that should be moral, not militarist, that
should be constructive, not destructive. The citizen of the world, the
man who had endeavored to free the war from the stigma of hate, now
tried to perform the same service on behalf of the peace. The European
addressed the American in moving terms: "You alone, Monsieur le
Président, among all those whose dread duty it now is to guide the
policy of the nations, you alone enjoy world-wide moral authority. You
inspire universal confidence. Answer the appeal of these passionate
hopes! Take the hands which are stretched forth, help them to clasp one
another.... Should this mediator fail to appear, the human masses,
disarrayed and unbalanced, will almost inevitably break forth into
excesses. The common people will welter in bloody chaos, while the
parties of traditional order will fly to bloody reaction.... Heir of
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, take up the cause, not of a
party, not of a single people, but of all! Summon the representatives of
the peoples to the Congress of Mankind! Preside over it with the full
authority which you hold in virtue of your lofty moral consciousness
and in virtue of the great future of America! Speak, speak to all! The
world hungers for a voice which will overleap the frontiers of nations
and of classes. Be the arbiter of the free peoples! Thus may the future
hail you by the name of Reconciler!"
The prophet's voice was drowned by the clamors for revenge. Bismarckism
triumphed. Literally fulfilled was the prophecy that the peace would be
as inhuman as the war had been. Humanity could find no abiding place
among men. When the regeneration of Europe might have been begun, the
sinister spirit of conquest continued to prevail. "There are no victors,
but only vanquished."