"What are our lives, our books, compared with the magnitude of the aim? The war of the Revolution against feudalism is beginning anew. The armies of the Republic will secure the triumph of democracy in Europe and complete the work of the Convention. We are fighting for more than our hearths and homes, for the awakening of liberty." Another of these young people, of noble spirit and pure heart, who will be, if he lives, the first art critic of our time—Lieutenant X.:—"My friend, could you see our Army as I do, you would be thrilled with admiration for our people, for this noble race. An enthusiasm, like an outburst of the Marseillaise, thrills them; heroic, earnest, and even religious. I have seen the three divisions of my army corps set out; the men of active service first, young men of twenty marching with firm and rapid steps, without a cry, without a gesture, like{39}the ephebi of old calmly going to sacrifice. After them come the reserve, men of twenty-five to thirty years, more stalwart and more determined, who will reinforce the younger men and make them irresistible. We, the old men of forty, the fathers of families, are the base of the choir; and we too, I assure you, set out confidently, resolute and unwavering. I have no wish to die, but I can die now without regret; for I have lived through a fortnight, which would be cheap at the price of death, a fortnight which I had not dared to ask of fate. History will tell of us, for we are opening a new era in the world. We are dispelling the nightmare of the materialism of a mailed Germany and of armed peace. It will fade like a phantom before us; the world seems to breathe again. Reassure your Viennese friend,[10]France is not about to die; it is her resurrection which we see. For throughout history—Bouvines, the Crusades, Cathedrals, the Revolution—we remain the same, the knights-errant of the world, the paladins of God. I have lived long enough to see it fulfilled; and we who prophesied it twenty years ago to unbelieving ears may rejoice today."
"What are our lives, our books, compared with the magnitude of the aim? The war of the Revolution against feudalism is beginning anew. The armies of the Republic will secure the triumph of democracy in Europe and complete the work of the Convention. We are fighting for more than our hearths and homes, for the awakening of liberty." Another of these young people, of noble spirit and pure heart, who will be, if he lives, the first art critic of our time—Lieutenant X.:—
"My friend, could you see our Army as I do, you would be thrilled with admiration for our people, for this noble race. An enthusiasm, like an outburst of the Marseillaise, thrills them; heroic, earnest, and even religious. I have seen the three divisions of my army corps set out; the men of active service first, young men of twenty marching with firm and rapid steps, without a cry, without a gesture, like{39}the ephebi of old calmly going to sacrifice. After them come the reserve, men of twenty-five to thirty years, more stalwart and more determined, who will reinforce the younger men and make them irresistible. We, the old men of forty, the fathers of families, are the base of the choir; and we too, I assure you, set out confidently, resolute and unwavering. I have no wish to die, but I can die now without regret; for I have lived through a fortnight, which would be cheap at the price of death, a fortnight which I had not dared to ask of fate. History will tell of us, for we are opening a new era in the world. We are dispelling the nightmare of the materialism of a mailed Germany and of armed peace. It will fade like a phantom before us; the world seems to breathe again. Reassure your Viennese friend,[10]France is not about to die; it is her resurrection which we see. For throughout history—Bouvines, the Crusades, Cathedrals, the Revolution—we remain the same, the knights-errant of the world, the paladins of God. I have lived long enough to see it fulfilled; and we who prophesied it twenty years ago to unbelieving ears may rejoice today."
O my friends, may nothing mar your joy! Whatever fate has in store, you have risen to the pinnacle of earthly life, and borne your country with you. And you will be victorious. Your self-sacrifice, your courage, your whole-hearted faith in your sacred cause, and the unshaken certainty that, in defending your invaded country, you are defending{40}the liberty of the world—all this assures me of your victory, young armies of the Marne and Meuse, whose names are graven henceforth in history by the side of your elders of the Great Republic. Yet even had misfortune decreed that you should be vanquished, and with you France itself, no people could have aspired to a more noble death. It would have crowned the life of that great people of the Crusades—it would have been their supreme victory. Conquerors or conquered, living or dead, rejoice! As one of you said to me, embracing me on the terrible threshold: "A splendid thing it is to fight with clean hands and a pure heart, and to dispense divine justice with one's life."
You are doing your duty, but have others done theirs? Let us be bold and proclaim the truth to the elders of these young men, to their moral guides, to their religious and secular leaders, to the Churches, the great thinkers, the leaders of socialism; these living riches, these treasures of heroism you held in your hands; for what are you squandering them? What ideal have you held up to the devotion of these youths so eager to sacrifice themselves? Their mutual slaughter! A European war! A sacrilegious conflict which shows a maddened{41}Europe ascending its funeral pyre, and, like Hercules, destroying itself with its own hands!
And thus the three greatest nations of the West, the guardians of civilization, rush headlong to their ruin, calling in to their aid Cossacks, Turks, Japanese, Cingalese, Soudanese, Senegalese, Moroccans, Egyptians, Sikhs and Sepoys—barbarians from the poles and those from the equator, souls and bodies of all colors.[11]It is as if the four quarters of the Roman Empire at the time of the Tetrarchy had called upon the barbarians of the whole universe to devour each other.
Is our civilization so solid that you do not fear to shake the pillars on which it rests? Can you not see that all falls in upon you if one column be shattered? Could you not have learned if not to love one another, at least to tolerate the great virtues and the great vices of each other? Was it not your duty to attempt—you have never attempted it in sincerity—to settle amicably the questions which divided you, the problem of peoples annexed against their will, the equitable division of productive labor and the riches of the world? Must the stronger forever darken the others with the shadow of his{42}pride, and the others forever unite to dissipate it? Is there no end to this bloody and puerile sport, in which the partners change about from century to century—no end, until the whole of humanity is exhausted thereby?
The rulers who are the criminal authors of these wars dare not accept the responsibility for them. Each one by underhand means seeks to lay the blame at the door of his adversary. The peoples who obey them submissively resign themselves with the thought that a power higher than mankind has ordered it thus. Again the venerable refrain is heard: "The fatality of war is stronger than our wills." The old refrain of the herd that makes a god of its feebleness and bows down before him. Man has invented fate, that he may make it responsible for the disorders of the universe, those disorders which it was his duty to regulate. There is no fatality! The only fatality is what we desire; and more often, too, what we do not desire enough. Let each now repeat hismea culpa. The leaders of thought, the Church, the Labor Parties did not desire war ... That may be.... What then did they do to prevent it? What are they doing to put an end to it? They are stirring up the bonfire, each one bringing his faggot.{43}
The most striking feature in this monstrous epic, the fact without precedent, is the unanimity for war in each of the nations engaged. An epidemic of homicidal fury, which started in Tokio ten years ago, has spread like a wave and overflowed the whole world. None has resisted it; no high thought has succeeded in keeping out of the reach of this scourge. A sort of demoniacal irony broods over this conflict of the nations, from which, whatever its result, only a mutilated Europe can emerge. For it is not racial passion alone which is hurling millions of men blindly one against another, so that not even neutral countries remain free of the dangerous thrill, but all the forces of the spirit, of reason, of faith, of poetry, and of science, all have placed themselves at the disposal of the armies in every state. There is not one amongst the leaders of thought in each country who does not proclaim with conviction that the cause of his people is the cause of God, the cause of liberty and of human progress. And I, too, proclaim it.
Strange combats are being waged between metaphysicians, poets, historians—Eucken against Bergson; Hauptmann against Maeterlinck; Rolland against Hauptmann; Wells against Bernard Shaw.{44}Kipling and D'Annunzio, Dehmel and de Régnier sing war hymns, Barrès and Maeterlinck chant paeans of hatred. Between a fugue of Bach and the organ which thundersDeutschland über Alles, Wundt, the aged philosopher of eighty-two, calls with his quavering voice, the students of Leipzig to the holy war. And each nation hurls at the other the name "Barbarians."
The academy of moral science, in the person of its president, Bergson, declares the struggle undertaken against Germany to be "the struggle of civilization itself against barbarism." German history replies with the voice of Karl Lamprecht that "this is a war between Germanism and barbarism and the present conflict is the logical successor of those against the Huns and Turks in which Germany has been engaged throughout the ages." Science, following history into the lists, proclaims through E. Perrier, director of the Museum, member of the Academy of Sciences, that the Prussians do not belong to the Aryan race, but are descended in direct line from the men of the Stone Age called Allophyles, and adds, "the modern skull, resembling by its base, the best index of the strength of the appetites, the skull of the fossilized man in the{45}Chapelle-aux-Saints most nearly, is none other than that of Prince Bismarck!"
But the two moral forces whose weakness this contagious war shows up most clearly are Christianity and Socialism. These rival apostles of religious and secular internationalism have suddenly developed into the most ardent of nationalists. Hervé is eager to die for the standard of Austerlitz. The German socialists, pure trustees of the pure doctrine, support this bill of credit for the war in the Reichstag. They place themselves at the disposal of the Prussian minister, who uses their journals to spread abroad his lies, even into the barracks, and sends them as secret agents to attempt to pervert Italy. It was believed for the honor of their cause for a moment that two or three of them had been shot rather than take arms against their brothers. Indignant, they protest; they are all marching under arms! Liebknecht, forsooth, did not die for the cause of socialism;[12]but Frank, the principal champion of the Franco-German union, fell under French fire, fighting in the cause of militarism. These men have courage to die for the{46}faith of others; they have no courage to die for their own.
As for the representatives of the Prince of Peace—priests, pastors, bishops—they go into battle in their thousands, to carry out, musket in hand, the Divine commands:Thou shalt not kill, andLove one another. Each bulletin of victory, whether it be German, Austrian, or Russian, gives thanks to the great captain God—unser alter Gott, notre Dieu—as William II or M. Arthur Meyer says. For each has his own God, and each God, whether old or young, has his Levites to defend him and destroy the God of the others.
Twenty thousand French priests are marching with the colors; Jesuits offer their services to the German armies; cardinals issue warlike mandates; and the Serb bishops of Hungary incite their faithful flocks to fight against their brothers in Greater Serbia. The newspapers report, with no expressions of astonishment, the paradoxical scene at the railway station at Pisa, where the Italian socialists cheered the young ordinands who were rejoining their regiments, all singing the Marseillaise together. So strong the cyclone that sweeps them all before it; so feeble the men it encounters on its career—and I am amongst them....{47}
Come, friends! Let us make a stand! Can we not resist this contagion, whatever its nature and virulence be—whether moral epidemic or cosmic force? Do we not fight against the plague, and strive even to repair the disaster caused by an earthquake? Or must we bow ourselves before it, agreeing with Luzzatti in his famous article[13]that "In the universal disaster, the nations triumph"? Shall we say with him that it is good and reasonable that "the demon of international war, which mows down thousands of beings, should be let loose," so that the great and simple truth, "love of our country," be understood? It would seem, then, that love of our country can flourish only through the hatred of other countries and the massacre of those who sacrifice themselves in the defense of them. There is in this theory a ferocious absurdity, a Neronian dilettantism which repels me to the very depths of my being. No! Love of my country does not demand that I shall hate and slay those noble and faithful souls who also love theirs, but rather that I should honor them and seek to unite with them for our common good.
You Christians will say—and in this you seek{48}consolation for having betrayed your Master's orders—that war exalts the virtue of sacrifice. And it is true that war has the privilege of bringing out the genius of the race in the most commonplace of hearts. It purges away, in its bath of blood, all dross and impurity; it tempers the metal of the soul of a niggardly peasant, of a timorous citizen; it can make a hero of Valmy. But is there no better employment for the devotion of one people than the devastation of another? Can we not sacrifice ourselves without sacrificing our neighbors also? I know well, poor souls, that many of you are more willing to offer your blood than to spill that of others.... But what a fundamental weakness! Confess, then, that you who are undismayed by bullets and shrapnel yet tremble before the dictates of racial frenzy—that Moloch that stands higher than the Church of Christ—the jealous pride of race. You Christians of today would not have refused to sacrifice to the gods of Imperial Rome; you are not capable of such courage! Your Pope Pius X died of grief to see the outbreak of this war—so it is said. And not without reason. The Jupiter of the Vatican who hurled thunderbolts upon those inoffensive priests who believed in the{49}noble chimera of modernism—what did he do against those princes and those criminal rulers whose measureless ambition has given the world over to misery and death? May God inspire the new Pontiff who has just ascended the throne of St. Peter, with words and deeds which will cleanse the Church from the stain of this silence.
As for you socialists who on both sides claim to be defending liberty against tyranny—French liberty against the Kaiser, German liberty against the Czar, is it a question of defending one despotism against another? Unite and attack both.
There was no reason for war between the Western nations; French, English, and German, we are all brothers and do not hate one another. The war-preaching press is envenomed by a minority, a minority vitally interested in maintaining these hatreds; but our peoples, I know, ask for peace and liberty and that alone. The real tragedy, to one situated in the midst of the conflict and able to look down from the high plateaus of Switzerland into all the hostile camps, is the patent fact that actually each of the nations is being menaced in its dearest possessions—in its honor, its independence, its life. Who has brought these plagues upon them? Brought{50}them to the desperate alternative of overwhelming their adversary or dying? None other than their governments, and above all, in my opinion, the three great culprits, the three rapacious eagles, the three empires, the tortuous policy of the house of Austria, the ravenous greed of Czarism, the brutality of Prussia. The worst enemy of each nation is not without, but within its frontiers, and none has the courage to fight against it. It is the monster of a hundred heads, the monster named Imperialism, the will to pride and domination, which seeks to absorb all, or subdue all, or break all, and will suffer no greatness except itself. For the Western nations Prussian imperialism is the most dangerous. Its hand uplifted in menace against Europe has forced us to join in arms against this outcome of a military and feudal caste, which is the curse not only of the rest of the world but also of Germany itself, whose thought it has subtly poisoned. We must destroy this first: but not this alone; the Russian autocracy too will have its turn. Every nation to a greater or less extent has an imperialism of its own, and whether it be military, financial, feudal, republican, social, or intellectual, it is always the octopus sucking the best blood of Europe. Let{51}the free men of all the countries of Europe when this war is over take up again the motto of Voltaire: "Ecrasons l'infâme!"
When the war is over! The evil is done now, the torrent let loose and we cannot force it back into its channel unaided. Moreover crimes have been committed against right, attacks on the liberties of peoples and on the sacred treasuries of thought, which must and will be expiated. Europe cannot pass over unheeded the violence done to the noble Belgian people, the devastation of Malines and Louvain, sacked by modern Tillys.... But in the name of heaven let not these crimes be expiated by similar crimes! Let not the hideous words "vengeance" and "retaliation" be heard; for a great nation does not revenge itself, it re-establishes justice. But let those in whose hands lies the execution of justice show themselves worthy of her to the end.
It is our duty to keep this before them; nor will we be passive and wait for the fury of this conflict to spend itself. Such conduct would be unworthy of us who have such a task before us.
Our first duty, then, all over the world, is to insist on the formation of a moral High Court, a{52}tribunal of consciences, to watch and pass impartial judgment on any violations of the laws of nations. And since committees of inquiry formed by belligerents themselves would be always suspect, the neutral countries of the old and new world must take the initiative, and form a tribunal such as was suggested by Mr. Prenant,[14]professor of medicine at Paris, and taken up enthusiastically by M. Paul Seippel in theJournal de Genève.[15]
"They should produce men of some worldly authority, and of proved civic morality to act as a commission of inquiry, and to follow the armies at a little distance. Such an organization would complete and solidify the Hague Court, and prepare indisputable documents for the necessary work of justice...."
The neutral countries are too much effaced. Confronted by unbridled force they are inclined to believe that opinion is defeated in advance, and the majority of thinkers in all countries share their pessimism. There is a lack of courage here as well as of clear thinking. For just at this time the power of opinion is immense. The most despotic of governments, even though marching to victory, trembles{53}before public opinion and seeks to court it. Nothing shows this more clearly than the efforts of both parties engaged in war, of their ministers, chancellors, sovereigns, of the Kaiser himself turned journalist, to justify their own crimes, and denounce the crimes of their adversary at the invisible tribunal of humanity. Let this invisible tribunal be seen at last, let us venture to constitute it. Ye know not your moral power, O ye of little faith! If there be a risk, will you not take it for the honor of humanity? What is the value of life when you have saved it at the price of all that is worth living for?...
Et propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas....
But for us, the artists and poets, priests and thinkers of all countries, remains another task. Even in time of war it remains a crime for finer spirits to compromise the integrity of their thought; it is shameful to see it serving the passion of a puerile, monstrous policy of race, a policy scientifically absurd—since no country possesses a race wholly pure. Such a policy, as Renan points out in his beautiful letter to Strauss,[16]"can only lead to{54}zoological wars, wars of extermination, similar to those in which various species of rodents and carnivorous beasts fight for their existence. This would be the end of that fertile admixture called humanity, composed as it is of such various necessary elements." Humanity is a symphony of great collective souls; and he who understands and loves it only by destroying a part of those elements, proves himself a barbarian and shows his idea of harmony to be no better than the idea of order another held in Warsaw.
For the finer spirits of Europe there are two dwelling-places: our earthly fatherland, and that other City of God. Of the one we are the guests, of the other the builders. To the one let us give our lives and our faithful hearts; but neither family, friend, nor fatherland, nor aught that we love has power over the spirit. The spirit is the light. It is our duty to lift it above tempests, and thrust aside the clouds which threaten to obscure it; to build higher and stronger, dominating the injustice and hatred of nations, the walls of that city wherein the souls of the whole world may assemble.
I feel here how the generous heart of Switzerland{55}is thrilled, divided between sympathies for the various nations, and lamenting that it cannot choose freely between them, nor even express them. I understand its torment; but I know that this is salutary. I hope it will rise thence to that superior joy of a harmony of races, which may be a noble example for the rest of Europe. It is the duty of Switzerland now to stand in the midst of the tempest, like an island of justice and of peace, where, as in the great monasteries of the early Middle Ages, the spirit may find a refuge from unbridled force; where the fainting swimmers of all nations, those who are weary of hatred, may persist, in spite of all the wrongs they have seen and suffered, in loving all men as their brothers.
I know that such thoughts have little chance of being heard today. Young Europe, burning with the fever of battle, will smile with disdain and show its fangs like a young wolf. But when the access of fever has spent itself, wounded and less proud of its voracious heroism, it will come to itself again.
Moreover I do not speak to convince it. I speak but to solace my conscience ... and I know that at the same time I shall solace the hearts of thousands of others who, in all countries, cannot or dare not speak themselves.
Journal de Genève, September 15, 1914.{56}
I do not hold the doctrine expounded by a certain saintly king, that it is useless to enter into discussion with heretics—and we regard all those who do not agree with our opinions as heretics nowadays—but that it is sufficient to brain them. I feel the need of understanding my enemy's reasons. I am unwilling to believe in unfairness. Doubtless my enemy is as passionately sincere as I am. Why, then, should we not attempt to understand each other? For such an understanding, though it will not suppress the conflict, may perhaps suppress our hatred; and it is hatred more than anything else that I regard as my enemy.
However much I may feel that the motives actuating the various combatants are not equally worthy, I have yet come to the conviction, after reading the papers and letters which, during the{57}last two months, have arrived in Geneva from every country, that the ardor of patriotic faith is everywhere the same, and that each of the nations engaged in this mighty struggle believes itself to be the champion of liberty against barbarism. But liberty and barbarism do not mean the same thing to both sides.
Barbarous despotism, the worst enemy to liberty, is exemplified for us Frenchmen, Englishmen, men of the West, in Prussian Imperialism; and I venture to think that the register of its methods is plainly set forth in the devastated route from Liège to Senlis, passing by way of Louvain, Malines, and Rheims. For Germany, the monster ("Ungeheuer," as the aged Wundt calls it), which threatens civilization is Russia, and the bitterest reproach which the Germans hurl against France is our alliance with the Empire of the Czar. I have received many letters reproaching us with this. In the Munich review,Das Forum, I read only yesterday an article by Wilhelm Herzog challenging me to explain my position with regard to Russia. Let us consider the question, then. I ask nothing better. By this means we shall be able to weigh the German danger and the Russian danger in the balance, and thus show{58}which of the two seems the more threatening to us. Of the actual events of the present war between Germany and Russia I will say nothing. All the information we have comes from Russian or German sources, equally unreliable. To judge by them it would appear that the same ferocity exists in both camps. The Germans in Kalish were worthy companions of the Cossacks in Grodtken and Zorothowo.—It is of the German spirit and of the Russian spirit that I wish to speak here, for this is the important thing and of this we have more definite knowledge.
You, my German friends—for those of you who were my friends in the past remain my friends in spite of fanatical demands from both sides that we should break off all relations—know how much I love the Germany of the past, and all that I owe to it. Not less than you, yourselves, I am the son of Beethoven, of Leibnitz, and of Goethe. But what do I owe to the Germany of today, or what does Europe owe to it? What art have you produced since the monumental work of Wagner, which marks the end of an epoch and belongs to the past? What new and original thought can you boast of since the death of Nietzsche, whose magnificent{59}madness has left its traces upon you though we are unscathed by it? Where have we sought our spiritual food for the last forty years, when our own fertile soil no longer yielded sufficient for our needs? Who but the Russian writers have been our guides? What German writer can you set up against Tolstoi and Dostoievsky, those giants of poetic genius and moral grandeur? These are the men who have moulded my soul, and in defending the nation from which they sprang, I am but paying a debt which I owe to that nation as well as to themselves. Even if the contempt for Prussian Imperialism were not innate in me as a Latin, I should have learned it from them. Twenty years ago Tolstoi expressed his contempt for your Kaiser. In music, Germany, so proud of its ancient glory, has only the successors of Wagner, neurotic jugglers with orchestral effects, like Richard Strauss, but not a single sober and virile work of the quality ofBoris Godunov. No German musician has opened up new roads. A single page of Moussorgsky or Strawinsky shows more originality, more potential greatness than the complete scores of Mahler and Reger. In our Universities, in our hospitals and Pasteur Institutes, Russian students and scholars work side by side{60}with our own, and Russian revolutionaries who have taken refuge in Paris mingle their aspirations with those of our socialists.
The crimes of Czarism are continually on your lips. We, too, denounce these crimes; for Czarism is our enemy, and what I wrote but recently, I repeat now. But it is likewise the enemy of the intellectual élite of Russia itself. This cannot be said of your intellectuals, who are so slavishly obedient to the commands of your rulers. A few days ago I received that amazing "Address to the Civilized Nations" with which the Imperial army-corps of German intellectuals bombarded Europe; meanwhile the army-corps of German Commerce (Bureau des Deutschen Handelstages) shelled the markets of the world with circulars ornamented by the figure of Mercury, the god of lies. This mobilization of the forces of the pen and of the caduceus, with which in good truth no other country could compete, has given us additional reason to fear the Empire's powers of organization, no reason to respect it more. "Civilized Nations" read, not without amazement, that Address, the truth of which was vouched for by the names of the most distinguished scientists, thinkers, and artists in Germany{61}—by Behring, Ostwald, Roentgen, Eucken, Haeckel, Wundt, Dehmel, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Hildebrand, Klinger, Liebermann, Humperdinck, Weingartner, etc.—by painters and philosophers, musicians, theologians, chemists, economists, poets, and the professors of twenty universities. They learned, not without surprise, that "it is not true that Germany provoked the war,—it is not true that Germany criminally violated the neutrality of Belgium,—it is not true that Germany used violence against the life or the belongings of a single Belgian citizen without being forced to do so,—it is not true that Germany destroyed Louvain" (destroyed it? no indeed, she saved it!),—"it is not true that Germany——" It is not true that day is day and night is night! I confess that I could not read to the end without that feeling of embarrassment which I felt as a child, when I heard an elderly man whom I respected make false statements. I turned aside my eyes and blushed for him. Thank God! the crimes of Czarism never found a defender amongst the great artists, scholars, and thinkers of Russia. Are not Kropotkin, Tolstoi, Dostoievsky, and Gorki, the greatest names in its literature, the very ones who denounced its crimes!{62}
Russian domination has often been cruelly heavy for the smaller nationalities which it has swallowed up. But how comes it then, Germans, that the Poles prefer it to yours? Do you imagine that Europe is ignorant of the monstrous way in which you are exterminating the Polish race? Do you think that we do not receive the confidences of those Baltic nations who, having to choose between two conquerors, prefer the Russian because he is the more humane? Read the following letter which I received but lately from a Lett, who, though he has suffered severely at the hands of the Russians, yet sides ardently with them against you. My German friends, you are either strangely ignorant of the state of mind of the nations which surround you, or you think us extremely simple and ill-informed. Your imperialism, beneath its veneer of civilization, seems to me no less ferocious than Czarism towards everything that ventures to oppose its avaricious desire for universal dominion. But whereas immense and mysterious Russia, overflowing with young and revolutionary forces, gives us hope of a coming renewal, your Germany bases its systematic harshness on a culture too antiquated and scholastic to allow of any hope of amendment. If I had any{63}such hope—and I once had it, my friends—you have taken great pains to rob me of it, you, artists and scholars, who drew up that address in which you pride yourself on your complete unity with Prussian Imperialism. Know once for all that there is nothing more overwhelming for us Latins, nothing more difficult to endure, than your militarization of the intellect. If, by some awful fate, this spirit were triumphant, I should leave Europe for ever. To live here would be intolerable to me.
Here, then, are some extracts from the interesting letter which I have received from a representative of those little nationalities which are being disputed between Russia and Germany. They desire to maintain their independence, but find themselves obliged to choose between these two nations, and choose Russia. It is good to hear them speak. We are too much inclined to listen only to the Great Powers who are now at war. Let us think of those little barques which the great vessels draw in their wake. Let us share for a moment the agony with which these little nationalities, forgotten by the egotism of Europe, await the final issue of a struggle which will decide their fate. Let England and France heed those beseeching eyes which are turned towards{64}them; let young Russia, herself so eager for liberty, help generously to shed its benefits abroad.
October 10, 1914.
* * *
LETTER TO ROMAIN ROLLAND
30th September, 1914.
Sir:—I desire to thank you for your article, "Above the Battle."... Although by my education I am more akin to the civilizations of Germany and Russia than to the civilization of France, yet I respect the French spirit more, for I am convinced, more than ever today, that it will furnish the greatly needed solution of the problems of national rights and liberty.
In your article you quote the words of one of your friends, a soldier and a writer, who says that the French are fighting not only to defend their own country but to save theliberty of the world. You can hardly imagine how such words re-echo in the hearts of oppressed nations, what streams of sympathy are today converging from all corners of Europe upon France, what hopes depend upon your victory.
And yet many doubts have been expressed with{65}regard to these French and English assertions because both nations have allied themselves with Russia, whose policy is contrary to the ideas of right and liberty; and Germany herself maintains that it is precisely those ideas for which she is fighting against Russia.
It would be interesting to discover what German writers and professors really mean when they speak of a Holy War against Russia. Do they wish to assist Russian revolutionaries to dethrone the Czar?—Every revolutionary party would refuse indignantly to accept assistance from Prussian militarism. Do they wish to set free the neighboring countries, such as Poland, which are oppressed by Russia, by incorporating them with the German Empire?—It is well known that the Poles who are German subjects have suffered much more ignoble treatment than the Russian Poles, though even they have every reason to complain.
The Baltic provinces of Russia alone remain, and here the Germans have for centuries had their pioneers among the large landowners and the merchants in the bigger towns. These, no doubt, Russian subjects but of German nationality, would welcome the German armies with enthusiasm. But they{66}form only a caste of nobles and of the wealthy middle-classes, numbering at most a few thousands, whereas the bulk of the population, the Lettish and Esthonian nations, would regard the absorption of these provinces into Germany as the worst of calamities. We know well what German domination means. I am a Lett and can speak with authority, for I know the deepest feelings and hopes of my own countrymen.
The Letts are akin to the Lithuanians. They inhabit Courland, Livonia, and a part of the province of Vitebsk. Their intellectual center is Riga. There are colonies of them in all the principal towns of Russia. Last year theAnnales des Nationalitésof Paris devoted two numbers to these two sister nations. Owing to the geographical situation of their country, which is only too desirable, they had the misfortune to be under the yoke of the Germans, before they were under the yoke of the Russians. To understand how much they suffered under the former it will be sufficient to say that, in comparison with the Germans, we think of the Russians as our liberators. By sheer force the Germans kept us for centuries in a state equivalent to slavery. Only fifty years ago the Russian Government{67}set us free from this bondage; but, at the same time, it committed the grave injustice of leaving all our land in the hands of German proprietors. Nevertheless, within the last twenty or thirty years, we have succeeded in reclaiming from the Germans a part at least of our land, and in reaching a considerable level of culture, thanks to which, we are considered, together with the Esthonians and the Finns, as the most advanced people in the Russian Empire.
German papers often accuse us of ingratitude, and reproach us with our lack of appreciation of the advantages of the culture which they boast of having brought us. We listen to such accusations with a bitter smile, and in writing the wordKulturträger(bearer of civilization) add an exclamation mark afterwards, for the behavior of the Germans has brought the expression into contempt. We have acquired our culture in spite of their opposition, and against their will.Even today it is the German representatives in the Russian Duma who veto the occasional suggestions on the part of the Government to make reforms in the Baltic provinces.These provinces are administered in a manner that differs, and differs for the worse, from that adopted in the{68}other provinces of Russia. We still submit to laws and regulations which no longer exist in other parts of Europe—laws which were made in the feudal ages and have been rigorously maintained amongst us, thanks to the exertions of the big German landowners, who are always sure of a hearing at the Imperial Court of St. Petersburg.
Formerly, when we were striving in vain to reconcile our sympathy and admiration for German thought and art with the narrow, haughty, and cruel spirit of its representatives amongst us, we explained it all by saying that the Germans in our provinces were of a peculiar type, and had little in common with other Germans. But the crimes of which they have been guilty in Belgium and in France show us our mistake. Germans are the same everywhere in the work of conquest and domination—wholly without humanitarian scruples. In Germany, as in Russia, there are two distinct tendencies—the one, provoked by the ideas of Pangermanism and Panslavism, is to seek national glory on the field of battle and in the oppression of the personalities of other nations; the other is to achieve the same end in the peaceful realms of thought and artistic creation. Just as the culture of which Goethe was{69}typical has nothing in common with Prussian militarism, so Tolstoi may be considered as the representative of that other Russia which is so different from the one represented by the Russian Government of today. Certainly the gulf between these two tendencies is less deep in Germany than in Russia, and this is due to the immense size of Russia, which contains vast numbers of poor and ignorant human beings whom the Russian Government oppresses with the utmost brutality.But it is entirely unjust always to allude to the Russians as barbarians; and the Germans who invariably make use of this word when they speak of Russia have less right than any one to do so.No one who knows the intellectual world of Germany and Russia will venture to say that the former is much superior to the latter—they are simply different.And I would add that the one fact which makes us feel more drawn to the intellectual world of Russia than to that of the Germany of today, is that it would never be capable of justifying and approving the brutal conduct of its Government, as the German intellectuals are doing now. It has often been constrained to keep silence, but it has never raised its voice in defense of a guilty Government.{70}
Let not my testimony in favor of the Russians lead any one to believe that I am idealizing them, or that my people, the Letts, have enjoyed any special privileges under their government. On the contrary! I have suffered more at their hands than at the hands of the Germans, and my nation knows only too well how heavy is the hand of the Russian Government, and how suffocating the atmosphere of Panslavism. In 1906 it was the Lett peasant and intellectual classes who enjoyed most frequently the privilege of being flogged; it was amongst these classes that the greatest number of unfortunates were shot, hanged, or imprisoned for life. And since that dreadful year there are to be found in all the principal towns of Western Europe colonies of Letts, formed of refugees who succeeded in escaping from the atrocities of the punitive expedition sent by the Russian Government against my country. But this fact is significant:at the head of the majority of the military bands commissioned to punish the country were German officers who had asked for this employment, and showed so great a zeal in shooting down men and setting fire to houses, that they went even beyond the intentions of the Russian Government. In those days the places{71}might count themselves fortunate which were visited by dragoons commanded by officers of Russian nationality; for where Russian officers would have ordered the knout, German officers habitually inflicted a sentence of death.
If my nation had ever to choose between a German and a Russian government it would choose the latter as the lesser of two evils. I see in the Lett newspapers that the reservists of my country left for the war with enthusiasm. I do not imagine that this enthusiasm is due to the thought that they are fighting for the glory of a nation which, by every means in its power, seeks to hinder our national development, by forbidding instruction in our native tongue in primary schools, by attempting to colonize our land with Russian peasants, by compelling our own people to emigrate to Siberia and America, by excluding all Letts from any share in Government employment, etc. This enthusiasm nevertheless exists, and it is because the war is being waged against Germany, and because the Letts know that the Germans have long been aiming at the possession of the Baltic provinces. To prevent this we are prepared to make any sacrifice. We, who love our national civilization and know well what Panslavism{72}and Pangermanism mean, are of opinion that, of the two, Panslavism is less fatal to the civilizations of small nations. This is really due to the character of the two races.
German oppression is always systematic, hence always efficacious. In addition to this, their arrogant contempt for everything that is not themselves, the calm and calculated method in which they carry out their system of persecution wherever they dominate, all this makes them intolerable.
Russians are less logical by nature; their minds are not so regulated and they are more inclined to obey the dictates of their hearts; for this reason they are less to be feared as oppressors. The blows which they strike are often extremely cruel and painful, but they can repent from time to time. Their manners are rougher and more brutal(I speak here more especially of civil and military officials),but on the whole they are more humane than the Germans, who often conceal feelings of fierce savagery under the mask of perfect courtesy. In the year 1906, when there were executions in Russia on a large scale, there were many cases of suicide amongst Russian officers who could not reconcile their profession of soldiers with that of a{73}hangman. The officers of German nationality, on the other hand, carried out their orders with enjoyment.
Nevertheless Russian domination, though preferable to German, is still very oppressive. I hear the news of Russian victories with mingled feelings, rejoicing in so far as they are victories for the Allies, yet dreading the triumph of Russia. After the defeats of the Russo-Japanese War, when the Russian Government was weakened, it conceded certain liberal measures and then revoked them almost entirely as its strength returned. What have we to expect from a victory for Czarism, especially we who are not Russians, but a savage revival of the crushing ideals of Panslavism?
This is the agonized question which the nations subject to Russia are asking now. I read in your article that the turn of Czarism will come after that of Prussianism. In what sense is this to be understood? Is it your opinion that another war will presently break out against Czarism, or will it be struck down by the blows of an internal revolution? Is it even possible that France and England obtained the promise of a reform in the internal politics of Russia before allying themselves with her? And is{74}the proclamation to the Poles evidence of this? Will it have any real effect after the war? And those other nations oppressed by Russia—the Finns, the Letts, the Lithuanians, the Esthonians, the Armenians, the Jews...—will they too have justice done them?
These questions are probably devoid of any political significance. Yet without perceiving in what manner France and England can set us free, we do direct our hopes towards them. We believe that in some way or other they will take care in future that their Russian ally shall show herself worthy of them and of the ideas for which they are fighting, lest the blood of those who have died in the cause of freedom go to feed the strength of the oppressors.
Thus, sir, I have ventured uninvited to set forth rather fully to you the hopes and fears of a nation which has developed itself on a narrow strip of land between the two abysses of Pangermanism and Panslavism. Whilst ardently desiring the destruction of the former, we have everything to fear from the latter. Yet we do not aspire to political independence. We seek only the possibility of developing freely our intellectual, artistic, and economic powers, without the perpetual menace of{75}being absorbed by Russia or Germany. We believe that, in virtue of the civilization we have acquired in the face of obstacles, we are worthy of the liberties and rights of man; we are convinced that as a nation we have qualities which will fit us to play a valuable part in the great symphony of civilized peoples.
Journal de Genève, October 10, 1914.{76}
Once more I address myself to our friends the enemy. But this time I shall attempt no discussion, for discussion is impossible with those who avow that they do not seek for but possess the truth. For the moment there is no spiritual force that can pierce the thick wall of certitude by which Germany is barricaded against the light of day—the terrible certitude, the pharisaical satisfaction which pervades the monstrous letter of a Court preacher who glorifies God for having made him impeccable, irreproachable, and pure, himself, his emperor, his ministers, his army, and his race; and who rejoices beforehand in his "holy wrath" at the destruction of all who do not think as he thinks.[17]{77}
True, I am very far from thinking that this monument of anti-Christian pride represents the spirit of the better part of Germany. I know how many noble hearts, moderate, affectionate, incapable of doing evil and almost of conceiving it, go to make up her moral strength; amongst them are friends that I shall never cease to esteem. I know how many intrepid minds work ceaselessly in German science for the conquest of the truth. But I see on the one hand these good people so over-confident, so tractable, with their eyes shut, ignorant of the facts and unwilling to recognize anything but what it is the pleasure of their Government that they shall know; and on the other, the clearest minds of Germany, historians and savants, trained for the criticism of texts, basing their conviction on documents which all emanate from one alone of the parties concerned, and by way of peremptory proof referring us to theex-parteaffirmations of their Emperor, and of their Chancellor, like well-behaved scholars, whose only argument isMagister dixit. What hope remains of convincing such people that there exists a truth beyond that master, and that in addition to his White Book we have in our hands books of every kind and of every color, whose testimony demands the attention of an impartial judge? But{78}do they so much as know of their existence, and does the master allow his class to handle the manuals of his enemies? Our disagreement is not only as regards the facts of the case; it is due to difference in mind itself. Between the spirit of Germany today and that of the rest of Europe there is no longer a point of contact. We speak to them ofHumanity; they reply withUebermensch,Uebervolk, and it goes without saying that they themselves are the Uebervolk. Germany seems to be overcome by a morbid exaltation, a collective madness, for which there is no remedy but time. According to the view of medical experts in analogous cases such forms of madness develop rapidly, and are suddenly followed by profound depression. We can then but wait, and in the meantime defend ourselves to the best of our ability from the madness of Ajax.
Certainly Ajax has given us plenty of work to do. Look at the ruins around us! We may bring aid to the victims—yet how little can we achieve? In the eternal struggle between good and evil the scales are not evenly balanced. We need a century to re-create what one day can destroy. The fury of madness, on the other hand, endures only for a day; patient labor is our lot throughout the years. It knows no pause, even in those hours when the{79}world seems at an end. The vine-growers of Champagne gather in their vintage though the bombs of the rival armies explode around them—and we, too, can do our share! There is work for all who find themselves outside the battle. Especially for those who still can write, it seems to me that there should be something better to do than to brandish a pen dipped in blood and seated at their tables to cry "Kill! Kill!" I hate the war, but even more do I hate those who glorify it without taking part. What would we say of officers who marched behind their men? The noblest rôle of those who follow in the rear is to pick up their friends who fall, and to bear in mind even during the battle those fair words so often forgotten—Inter arma caritas.
* * *
Amidst all the misery which every man of feeling can do his share to relieve, let us recall the fate of the prisoner of war. But knowing that Germany today blushes at her former sentimentality, I carefully refrain from appealing to her pity by whinings, as they call them, about the destruction of Louvain and Rheims. "War is war." Granted!—then it is natural that it drags in its train thousands of prisoners, officers and men.{80}
For the moment I shall say only a word about these, in order to comfort as far as possible the families who are searching for them, and are so anxious about their fate. On both sides hateful rumors circulate only too easily, rumors given currency by an unscrupulous press, rumors which would have us believe that the most elementary laws of humanity are trampled under foot by the enemy. Only the other day an Austrian friend wrote to me, maddened by the lies of some paper or other, to beg me to help the German wounded in France, who are left without any aid. And have I not heard or read the same unworthy fears expressed by Frenchmen as regards their wounded, who are said to be maltreated in Germany? But it is all a lie—on both sides; and those of us whose task it is to receive the true information from either camp must affirm the contrary. Speaking generally (for in so many thousands of cases one cannot, of course, be sure that there will not here and there be individual exceptions) this war, whose actual conduct has provoked a degree of harshness which our knowledge of previous wars in the West would not have allowed us to expect, is by contrast less cruel to all those—prisoners and wounded—who are put out of the battle line.{81}
The letters that we receive and documents already published—especially an interesting account which appeared in theNeue Zürcher Zeitungof October 18th, written by Dr. Schneeli, who had just been visiting the hospitals and prisoners' camps in Germany—show that in that country efforts are being made to reconcile the ideals of humanity with the exigencies of war. They make it clear that there is no difference between the care bestowed by the Germans on their own wounded and those of the enemy, and that friendly relations exist between the prisoners and their guards, who all share the same food.
I could wish that a similar inquiry might be made and published on the camps where German prisoners are concentrated in France. In the meantime accounts which reach me from individuals disclose a similar situation,[18]and there is plenty of reliable{82}evidence that in Germany and France alike the wounded of both countries are living in terms of friendship. There are even soldiers who refuse to have their wounds dressed or receive their rations before their comrades the enemy have received similar attention. And who knows if it is not perhaps in the ranks of the contending armies that the feelings of national hatred are least violent? For there one learns to appreciate the courage of one's adversaries, since the same sufferings are common to all, and since where all energy is directed towards action there is none left for personal animosity. It is amongst those who are not actively engaged that there is developed the harsh and implacable brand of hatred, of which certain intellectuals provide terrible examples.
The moral situation of the military prisoner is therefore not so overwhelming as might be imagined, and his lot, sad as it is, is less to be pitied than that of another class of prisoners of whom I shall speak later. The feeling of duty accomplished, the memory of the struggle, glorifies his misfortune in his own eyes, and even in those of the enemy. He is not totally abandoned to the foe; international conventions protect him; the Red Cross watches{83}over him, and it is possible to discover where he is and to come to his assistance.
In this work the admirableAgence internationale des prisonniers de guerre, most providentially established some two months after the commencement of the war, has caused the name of Geneva to be known and blessed in the most remote corners of France and Germany. It only needs, like Providence itself, to gain the co-operation of those over whose interests it watches, that is to say, of the States concerned which have been somewhat slow in supplying the lists we need. Under the ægis of the International Committee of the Red Cross, with M. Gustave Ador as president and M. Max Dollfus as director, some 300 voluntary workers, drawn from all classes of society, are assisting in its charitable work. More than 15,000 letters a day pass through its hands. It daily transmits about 7,000 letters between prisoners and their families, and is responsible for the safe dispatch of some 4,000 francs on an average. The precise information which it is able to communicate was very meager at the start, but soon increased, until a thousand cases could be dealt with in the course of a single day; and this number rapidly increased with the arrival of more complete lists from the Governments concerned.{84}
This renewal of intercourse between a prisoner and his family is not the only beneficial result of our organization. Its peaceful work, its impartial knowledge of the actual facts in the belligerent countries, contribute to modify the hatred which wild stories have exasperated, and to reveal what remains of humanity in the most envenomed enemy. It can also draw the attention of the different Governments, or at least of the general public, to cases where a speedy understanding would be in the interest of both parties—as, for instance, in the exchange of men who are so seriously wounded that they will be quite unable to take further part in the war, and whom it is useless and inhuman to keep languishing far from their friends. Finally, it can effectively direct public generosity, which often hesitates for want of guidance. It can, for instance, point out to neutral countries, who are so ungrudging in their anxiety to aid the sufferings of the combatants, where help is most urgently needed—for the wounded prisoners, convalescents leaving the hospital without linen or boots, and with no claims on the enemy for further support.[19]
Instead of showering gifts (which, no doubt, are{85}never superfluous) on the armies who can and should be supported by the peoples for whom they are fighting, neutrals might well reserve the greater part of their generosity for those who are most destitute, those whose need is the greatest, for they are feeble, broken, and alone.
* * *
But there is another class of prisoners on whom I would like interest to be specially concentrated, for their situation is far more precarious, unprotected as they are by any international convention. These are the civil prisoners. They are one of the innovations of this unbridled war, which seems to have set itself to violate all the rights of humanity. In former wars it was only a question of a few hostages arrested here and there as a guarantee of good faith for the pledge of some conquered town. Never until now had one heard of populations taken bodily into captivity on the model of ancient conquests—a custom actively revived since the beginning of this war. Such a contingency not having been foreseen, no conventions existed to regulate the situation in the laws of war, if the words have any meaning. And as it would have been awkward to formulate fresh laws in the midst of the struggle, it seemed more simple to overlook them. It has been as though these unfortunates did not exist.{86}
But they do exist, and in thousands. Their number seems about equal on both sides. Which of the belligerents took the initiative in these captures? At present certainty is impossible. It seems clear that in the second half of July Germany ordered the arrest of a number of Alsatian civilians. To this France replied the day after her mobilization by declaring prisoners Germans and Austrians then to be found on her territory. The casting of this vast net was followed by similar action in Germany and Austria, though, perhaps, with less result. The conquest of Belgium and the invasion of the North of France brought about a redoubling of these measures aggravated by violence. The Germans, on retiring after their defeat on the Marne, methodically made a clean sweep in the towns and villages of Picardy and Flanders of all persons capable of bearing arms—500 men at Douai, at Amiens 1,800 summoned before the citadel on some apparently harmless pretext, and carried off without even the possibility of returning for a change of clothes.
In many cases the captures had not even the excuse of military utility. In the village of Sompuis (Marne) on September 10th, the Saxons seized a helpless village priest of seventy-three, scarcely able{87}to walk, and five old men of ages from sixty to seventy, one of whom was lame, and took them away on foot. Elsewhere women and children are taken, happy if they can remain together. Here a husband, mad with grief, searches for his wife and son aged three, who have disappeared since the Germans passed through Quièvrechain (Nord). There it is a mother and her children taken by the French near Guebwiller; the children were sent back, but not the mother. A French captain, wounded by the bursting of a shell, saw his wife also wounded by German bullets at Nomêny (Meurthe-et-Moselle); since when she has disappeared, taken he does not know where. An old peasant woman of sixty-three is taken away from her husband near Villers-aux-Vents (Meuse) by a company of Germans. A child of sixteen is seized at its mother's house at Mulhouse.
Such action shows an utter lack of human feeling, and is almost more absurd than cruel. It really appears as though people had been deliberately separated from all who were dearest to them; and of those who have so disappeared no trace remains by which they can at present be found. I am not speaking of Belgium; there the silence is as of the grave. Of what is taking place there nothing has{88}been heard in the outer world for three months. Are the villages and towns still in existence? I have before me letters from parents (in some cases belonging to neutral nations) begging for news of their children of twelve or eight years of age, detained in Belgium since hostilities broke out. I have even found in the lists of these vanished children—doubtless prisoners of war—youthful citizens of four or two years of age. Are we to understand that they too could have been mobilized?
We see the anguish of the survivors. Imagine the distress of those who have disappeared, deprived of money or the means of obtaining any from their families. What misery is revealed in the first letters received from such families interned in France or Germany! A mother whose little boy is ill, although rich, cannot procure any money. Another, with two children, requests us to warn her family that if after the war, nothing more is heard of her, it will mean that she has died of hunger. These cries of misery seemed in the noise of battle to fall on deaf ears for the first two months. The Red Cross itself, absorbed in its immense task, reserved all its help for the military prisoners, and the Governments seemed to show a superb disdain for their unfortunate citizens. Of what use are such as cannot{89}serve! Yet these are the most innocent victims of this war. They have not taken part in it, and nothing had prepared them for such calamities.
Fortunately a man of generous sympathies (he will not forgive me for publishing his name), Dr. Ferrière, was touched by the misfortunes of these outcasts of the war. With a tenacity as patient as it was passionate, he set himself to construct in the swarming hive of Red Cross workers a special department to deal with their distress. Refusing to be discouraged by the innumerable difficulties and the remote chances of success, he persevered, limiting himself at first to drawing up lists of the missing, and trying to inspire confidence in their anxious friends. He then attempted by every means in his power to discover the place of internment, and to re-establish communications between relations and friends. What joy when one can announce to a family that the son or the father has been found! Every one of us at our table—for I, too, had the honor of sharing in the work—rejoices as though he were a member of that family. And as luck would have it the first letter of this kind which I had to write was to comfort some good people in my own little town in the Nivernais.
Great progress has already been made. The most{90}pressing needs have obtained a hearing. The Governments have agreed to liberate women, children under seventeen, and men over sixty. Repatriation began on October 23rd through the Bureau of Berne, created by the Federal Council. It remains, if not to deliver the others (we cannot count on this before the end of the war), at any rate to put them in communication with their families. In such cases, as in many others, more can be expected from the charitable efforts of private individuals than from Governments. The friends with whom we communicated in Germany or Austria as in France have replied with enthusiasm, all showing a generous desire to take part in our work. It is such questions transcending national pride which reveal the underlying fellowship of the nations which are tearing each other to pieces, and the sacrilegious folly of war. How friends and enemies are drawn together in the face of common suffering which the efforts of all humanity would hardly suffice to alleviate!
When after three months of fratricidal struggle one has felt the calming influence of this wide human sympathy, and turns once more to the field of strife, the rasping cries of hate in the press inspire only horror and pity. What object have they{91}in view? They wish to punish crimes and are a crime in themselves; for murderous words are the seeds of future murder. In the diseased organism of a fevered Europe everything vibrates and reverberates without end. Every word, every action, arouses reprisals. Him who fans hatred, hatred flares up to consume. Heroes of officialdom! bullies of the press! the blows which you deal very often reach your own people, little though you think it—your soldiers, your prisoners, delivered into the hands of the enemy. They answer for the harm which you have done, and you escape the danger.
We cannot stop the war, but we can make it less bitter. There are medicines for the body. We need medicines for the soul, to dress the wounds of hatred and vengeance by which the world is being poisoned. We who write—let that be our task. And as the Red Cross pursues its work of mercy in the midst of the combat, like the bees of Holy Writ that made their honey in the jaws of the lion, let us try to support its efforts. Let our thoughts follow the ambulances that gather up the wounded on the field of battle. MayNotre-Dame la Misèrelay on the brow of raging Europe her stern but succoring hand. May she open the eyes of these peoples,{92}blinded by pride, and show them that they are but poor human flocks, equal in the face of suffering; suffering at all times so great that there is no reason to add to the burden.
Journal de Genève, October 30, 1914.{93}
(ForKing Albert's Book.[20])
Belgium has just written an Epic, whose echoes will resound throughout the ages. Like the three hundred Spartans, the little Belgian army confronts for three months the German Colossus; Leman-Leonides; the Thermopylæ of Liège; Louvain, like Troy, burnt; the deeds of King Albert surrounded by his valiant men: with what legendary grandeur are these figures already invested, and history has not yet completed their story! The heroism of this people, who, without a murmur, sacrificed everything for honor, has burst like a thunderclap upon us at a time when the spirit of victorious Germany was enthroning in the world a conception of political realism, resting stolidly on force and self-interest.{94}It was a liberation of the oppressed idealism of the West. And that the signal should have been given by this little nation seemed a miracle.
Men call the sudden appearance of a hidden reality a miracle. It is the shock of danger which makes us best understand the character of individuals and of nations. What discoveries this war has caused us to make in those around us, even among those nearest and dearest to us! What heroic hearts and savage beasts! The inner soul, not a new soul, reveals itself.
In this fearful hour Belgium has seen the hidden genius of her race emerge. The sterling qualities that she has displayed during the last three months evoke admiration; it should not surprise any one who, in the pages of history, has felt, coursing through the ages, the vigorous sap of her people. Small in numbers and in territory, but one of the greatest in Europe in virtue of her overflowing vitality. The Belgians of today are the sons of the Flemings of Courtrai. The men of this land never feared to oppose their powerful neighbors, the kings of France or Spain—now heroes, now victims, Artevelde and Egmont. Their soil, watered by the blood of millions of warriors, is the most fertile in{95}Europe in the harvests of the spirit. From it arose the art of modern painting, spread throughout the world by the school of the van Eycks at the time of the Renaissance. From it arose the art of modern music, of that polyphony which thrilled through France, Germany, and Italy for nearly two centuries. From it, too, came the superb poetic efflorescence of our times; and the two writers who most brilliantly represent French literature in the world, Maeterlinck and Verhaeren, are Belgian. They are the people who have suffered most and have borne their sufferings most bravely and cheerfully; the martyr-people of Philip II and of Kaiser Wilhelm; and they are the people of Rubens, the people of Kermesses and of Till Ulenspiegel.
He who knows the amazing epic re-told by Charles de Coster:The heroic, joyous, and glorious adventures of Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedjak, those two Flemish worthies who might take their places side by side with the immortal Don Quixote and his Sancho Panza—he who has seen that dauntless spirit at work, rough and facetious, rebellious by nature, always offending the established powers, running the gauntlet of all trials and hardships, and emerging from them always gay and smiling—realizes also the destinies of the nation that gave birth to Ulenspiegel, and even in the darkest{96}hour fearlessly looks towards the approaching dawn of rich and happy days. Belgium may be invaded. The Belgian people will never be conquered nor crushed. The Belgian people cannot die.
At the end of the story ofTill Ulenspiegel, when they think he is dead, and are going to bury him, he wakes up: