"Are they," he asks, "going to bury Ulenspiegel the soul, Nele the heart of mother Flanders? Sleep, perhaps, but die, no! Come, Nele."And he departed, singing his sixth song. But no one knows where he sang his last.
"Are they," he asks, "going to bury Ulenspiegel the soul, Nele the heart of mother Flanders? Sleep, perhaps, but die, no! Come, Nele."
And he departed, singing his sixth song. But no one knows where he sang his last.
{97}
November 17, 1914.
There has reached me, after much delay, at Geneva, where I am engaged on the International work of Prisoners of War, the echo of attacks against me in certain newspapers, roused by the articles that I have published in theJournal de Genève, or rather by two or three passages arbitrarily chosen from those articles (for they themselves are scarcely known to anybody in France). My best reply will be to collect what I have written and publish it in Paris. I would not add a word of explanation, for there is not a line that I did not think it my right and my duty to set down. Moreover, I think that there is better work to do at this moment than to defend oneself; there are others to defend, the{98}thousands of victims who are fighting in France. Time devoted to polemics is like a theft from these unfortunates, from these prisoners and families, whose hands seeking each other across space we are trying to unite at Geneva.
But not content with attacking me personally, they have attacked ideas and a cause which I believe to be that of the true France; and since my friends expect me to defend these thoughts which are also theirs, I profit by the hospitality which is offered me to reply distinctly and frankly in good French.
I have published four articles: a letter to Gerhart Hauptmann, written the day after the devastation of Louvain, "Above the Battle," "The Lesser of Two Evils," and "Inter Arma Caritas." In these four articles I have stated that of all the imperialisms which are the scourge of the world, Prussian Military Imperialism is the worst. I have declared that it is the enemy of European liberty, the enemy of Western civilization, the enemy of Germany herself, and that it must be destroyed. On this point I imagine we are agreed.
To what do my critics take exception? Without entering into the discussion of certain points of detail, such as the appeal made by the Allies to the{99}forces of Asia and Africa of which I disapprove, and still disapprove because I see in it a near and grave danger for Europe and for the Allies themselves, and because this danger is already materializing in threats of disturbance in the world of Islam—exception is taken essentially on two grounds:
1. My refusal to include the German people and its military and intellectual rulers in the same denunciation.
2. The esteem and friendship which I have for the individuals in the country with which we are at war.
I will reply first of all without ambiguity to this second reproach. Yes, I have German friends as I have French, Italian, and English friends, and friends of every race. They are my wealth: I am proud of it and keep it. When one has had the good fortune to meet in this world loyal souls with whom one shares one's most intimate thoughts, and with whom one has formed bonds of brotherly union, such bonds are sacred, and not to be broken asunder in the hour of trial. He would be a coward who timidly ceased to own them, in order to obey the insolent summons of a public opinion which has no right over the heart. Does the love of country demand this unkindness of thought which is associated{100}with the name Cornélienne? Cornéille himself has given the answer:
Certain letters, which I shall reproduce later, will show the grief, sometimes almost tragic, that such friendships mean in these moments. Thanks to them, we have at least been able to defend ourselves against a hatred which is more murderous than war, since it is an infection produced by its wounds; and it does as much harm to those whom it possesses as to those against whom it is directed.
This poison I see with apprehension spreading at the present moment. Amongst the victim populations, the cruelties and ravages committed by the German armies have brought to birth a desire for reprisals. This, when once in existence, is not for the press to exasperate, for such a desire runs the risk of leading to dangerous injustice—dangerous not only for the conquered but above all for the conquerors. France has, in this war, the chance of playing the nobler part, the rarest chance that the world has even seen. A German wrote to me a few weeks ago: "France has won in this war a prodigious moral triumph. The sympathies of the{101}whole world are drawn towards her; and, most extraordinary of all, Germany herself has a secret leaning towards her enemy." All should wish that this moral triumph may be hers to the end, and that she may remain to the end just, straightforward, and humane. I could never distinguish the cause of France from that of humanity. It is just because I am French that I leave to our Prussian enemies the motto: "Oderint, dum metuant." I wish France to be loved, I wish her to be victorious not only by force, not only by right (that would be difficult enough), but by that large and generous heart which is pre-eminently hers. I wish her to be strong enough to fight without hatred and to regard even those against whom she is forced to fight as misguided brothers who must be pitied when they have been rendered harmless.
Our soldiers know it well, and I say nothing here of letters from the front which tell us of compassion and kindness between the combatants. But the civilians who are outside the combat, who do not fight, but talk, who write and embroil themselves in a factitious and lunatic agitation and are never exhausted; these are delivered over to the winds of feverish violence. And there is the danger. For they form opinion, the only opinion that can{102}be expressed (all others are forbidden). It is for these that I write, not for those who are fighting (they have no need of us!).
And when I hear the publicists trying to rouse the energies of the nation by all the stimulants at their disposal for this one object, the total crushing of the enemy nation, I think it my duty to rise in opposition to what I believe to be at once a moral and a political error. You make war against a State, not against a people. It would be monstrous to hold sixty-five million men responsible for the acts of some thousands—perhaps some hundreds. Here in French Switzerland, so passionately in sympathy with France, so eager both in its sympathies and in the duty of restraining them, I have been able for three months, by reading German letters and pamphlets, to examine closely the conscience of the German nation. And I have been able thus to take account of a good many facts which escape the greater part of the French people. The first, the most striking, the most ignored, is that there is not in Germany as a whole any real hatred of France (all the hatred is turned against England). The especial pathos of the situation lies in the fact that the French spirit only really began to exercise an attraction upon Germany some two or three years{103}ago. Germany was beginning to discover the true France, the France of work and of faith. The new generations, the young classes that they have just led to the abattoir of Ypres and Dixmude, numbered the purest souls, the greatest idealists, those most possessed by the dream of universal brotherhood. If I say that for many among them the war has been a laceration, "a horror, a failure, a renunciation of every ideal, an abdication of the spirit," as one of them wrote on the eve of his death—if I say that the death of Péguy has been mourned by many young Germans, no one would believe me. But belief will be a necessity the day I publish the documents which I have collected.
It is somewhat better understood in France how this German nation, enveloped in the network of lies woven by its Government, and abandoning herself thereto with a blind and obstinate loyalty, is profoundly convinced that she was attacked, hemmed in by the jealousy of the world; and that she must defend herself at all costs or die. It is among the chivalrous traditions of France to render homage to the courage of an adversary. One owes it to that adversary to recognize that in default of other virtues the spirit of sacrifice is, in the present instance, almost boundless. It would be a great mistake to{104}force it to extremes. Instead of driving this blind people to a magnificent and desperate defense, let us try to open their eyes. It is not impossible. An Alsatian patriot, to whom one could not impute indulgence for Germany, Dr. Bucher of Strasbourg, told me not long since, that even though the German is full of haughty prejudices carefully fostered by his teachers, he is at any rate always amenable to discussion and his docile spirit is accessible to arguments. As an example, I would instance the secret evolution that I see in progress in the thought of certain Germans. Numbers of German letters that I have read this month begin to utter agonized questionings as to the legitimacy of the proceedings of Germany in Belgium. I have seen this anxiety growing, little by little, in consciences which at first reposed in the conviction of their right. Truth is slowly dawning. What will happen if its light conquers and spreads? Carry truth in your hands! Let it be our strongest weapon! Let us, like the soldiers of the Revolution, whose hearts live again in our troops, fight not against our enemies, but for them. In saving the world, let us save them too. France does not break old chains in order to rivet new.
Your thoughts are fixed on victory. I think of{105}the peace which will follow. For however insistently the most militarist among you may talk, venturing as did an article to hold out the delightful promise of a perpetual war—"a war which will last after this war, indefinitely...."[22](it will come to an end, nevertheless—for lack of combatants!) ... there must come a day when you will stretch out the hand of friendship, you and your neighbors across the Rhine, if it were only to come to an agreement, for the sake of your own business. You will have to re-establish supportable and humane relations: so set to work in such a manner as not to make them impossible! Do not break down all the bridges, since it will ever be necessary to cross the river. Do not destroy the future. A good open, clean wound will heal; but do not poison it. Let us be on our guard against hatred. If we prepare for war in peace according to the wisdom of nations, we should also prepare for peace in war. It is a task which seems to me not unworthy of those among us who find themselves outside the struggle, and who through the life of the spirit have wider relations with the universe—a little lay church which, today more than the other, preserves its faith in the unity of human thought and believes that all{106}men are sons of the same Father. In any case, if such a faith merits insult, the insults constitute an honor that we will claim as ours before the tribunal of posterity.{107}
For more than forty centuries it has been the effort of great minds who have attained liberty to extend this blessing to others; to liberate humanity and to teach men to see reality without fear or error, to look themselves in the face without false pride or false humility and to recognize their weakness and their strength, that they may know their true position in the universe. They have illumined the path with the brightness of their lives and their example, like the star of the magi, that mankind may have light.
Their efforts have failed. For more than forty centuries humanity has remained in bondage—I do not say to masters (for such are of the order of the flesh, of which I am not speaking here; and their chains break sooner or later), but to the phantoms of their own minds. Such servitude comes from within. We grow faint in the endeavor to cut the{108}bonds which bind mankind, who straightway tie them again to be more firmly enthralled. Of every liberator men make a master. Every ideal which ought to liberate is transformed into a clumsy idol. The history of humanity is the history of Idols and of their successive reigns; and as humanity grows older the power of the Idol seems to wax greater and more destructive.
At first the divinities were of wood, of stone, or of metal. Those at any rate were not proof against the axe or against fire. Others followed that no material force could reach, for they were graven in the invisible mind. Yet all aspired to material dominion, and to secure for them that dominion the peoples of the world have poured out their best blood: Idols of religions and of nationality: the Idol of liberty whose reign was established in Europe by the armies of thesans-culotteat the point of the bayonet. The masters have changed, the slaves are still the same. Our century has made the acquaintance of two new species. The Idol of Race, at first the outcome of noble ideas, became in the laboratories of spectacled savants the Moloch which Germany herself hurled against France in 1870 and which her enemies now wish to use against the Germany of today. The latest on the scene is{109}that authentic product of German science, fraternally allied to the labors of industry, of commerce, and of the firm of Krupp—the Idol of Kultur surrounded by its Levites, the thinkers of Germany.
* * *
The common feature of the cult of all Idols is the adaptation of an ideal to the evil instincts of mankind. Man cultivates the vices which are profitable to him, but feels the necessity of legitimizing them; being unwilling to sacrifice them, he must idealize them. That is why the problem at which he has never ceased to labor throughout the centuries has been to harmonize his ideals with his own mediocrity. He has always succeeded. The crowd has no difficulty here. It sets side by side its virtues and its vices, its heroism and its meanness. The force of its passions and the rapid course of the days which carry it along cause it to forget its lack of logic.
But the intelligent few cannot satisfy themselves with so little effort. Not that they are, as is often said, less readily swayed by passion. This is a grave error; the richer a life becomes the more does it offer for passion to devour, and history sufficiently shows the terrifying paroxysms to which the lives{110}of religious leaders and revolutionaries have attained. But these toilers in the spirit love careful work, and are repelled by popular modes of thought which perpetually break through the meshes of reasoning. They have to make a more closely woven net in which instinct and idea, cost what it may, combine to form a stouter tissue. They thus achieve monstrouschefs-d'œuvre. Give an intellectual any ideal and any evil passion and he will always succeed in harmonizing the twain. The love of God and the love of mankind have been invoked in order to burn, kill, and pillage. The fraternity of 1793 was sister to the Holy Guillotine. We have in our time seen Churchmen seeking and finding in the Gospels the justification of Banking and of War. Since the outbreak of the war a clergyman of Würtemberg established the fact thatneither Christ nor John the Baptist nor the apostles desired to suppress militarism.[23]A clever intellectual is a conjuror in ideas. "Nothing in my hands—nothing up my sleeves." The great trick is to extract from any given idea its precise contrary—war from the Sermon on the Mount, or, like Professor{111}Ostwald, the military dictatorship of the Kaiser from the dream of an intellectual internationalism. For such conjurors these things are but child's play.
Let us expose them, by examining the words of this Dr. Ostwald, who has appeared during the last few months as the Baptist of the Gospel of the spiked helmet.
Here is the Idol to begin with—Kultur (made in Germany), with a capital K "rectiligne et de quatre pointes, comme un chevel de frise,"as Miguel de Unamuno wrote to me. All around are little gods, the children of its loins:Kulturstaat,Kulturbund,Kulturimperium....
"I am now" (it is the voice of Ostwald[24]) "going to explain to you the great secret of Germany. We, or rather the Germanic race, have discovered the factor of Organization. Other peoples still live under the régime of individualism while we are under that of Organization. The stage of Organization is a more advanced stage of civilization."
It is surely clear that, like those missionaries who, in order to carry the Christian faith to heathen peoples, secure the co-operation of a squadron and a landing party which straightway establish in the{112}idolatrous country commercial stores protected by a ring of cannon, German intelligence cannot without selfishness keep her treasures to herself. She is obliged to share them.
"Germany wishes to organize Europe, for Europe has hitherto not been organized. With us everything tends to elicit from each individual the maximal output in the direction most favorable for society. That for us is liberty in its highest form."
We may well pause to marvel at this way of talking about human "culture" as though it were a question of asparagus and artichokes. Of this happiness, and these advantages, this maximal output, this market-garden culture, this liberty of artichokes subjected to a judicious forcing process, Professor Ostwald does not wish to deprive the other peoples of Europe. As they are so unenlightened as not to acquiesce with enthusiasm:
"War will make them participate in the form of this organization in our higher civilization."
Thereupon the chemist-philosopher, who is also in his leisure hours a politician and a strategist, sketches in bold outline the picture of the victories of Germany and a remodeled Europe—a United States of Europe under the paternal sceptre of his mailed Kaiser: England crushed, France disarmed,{113}and Russia dismembered. His colleague Haeckel completes this joyousexposéby dividing Belgium, the British Empire, and the North of France—like Perrette of the fable before her pitcher broke. Unfortunately neither Haeckel nor Ostwald tells us if their plan for the establishment of this higher civilization included the destruction of the Halle of Ypres, of the Library at Louvain, of the Cathedral at Rheims. After all these conquests, divisions, and devastations, let us not overlook this wonderful sentence of which Ostwald certainly did not realize the sinister buffoonery, worthy of a Molière: "You know that I am a pacifist."
However far the high priests of a cult may allow their emotion to carry them, their profession of faith still retains a certain diplomatic reserve which does not hamper their followers. Thus theKulturmenschen. But the zeal of their Levites must frequently disturb the serenity of Moses and Aaron—Haeckel and Ostwald—by its intemperate frankness. I do not know what they think of the article of Thomas Mann which appeared in the November number of theNeue Rundschau: "Gedanken im Kriege." But I do know what certain French intellectuals will think of it. Germany could not offer them a more terrible weapon against herself.{114}
In an access of delirious pride and exasperated fanaticism Mann employs his envenomed pen to justify the worst accusations that have been made against Germany. While an Ostwald endeavors to identify the cause ofKulturwith that of civilization, Mann proclaims: "They have nothing in common. The present war is that ofKultur(i. e., of Germany) against civilization." And pushing this outrageous boast of pride to the point of madness, he defines civilization as Reason (Vernunft, Aufklärung), Gentleness (Sittigung, Sänftigung), Spirit (Geist, Auflösung), and Kultur as "a spiritualorganizationof the world" which does not exclude "bloody savagery." Kultur is "the sublimation of the demoniacal" (die Sublimierung des Dämonischen). It is "above morality, above reason, and above science." While Ostwald and Haeckel see in militarism merely an arm or instrument of which Kultur makes use to secure victory, Thomas Mann affirms that Kultur and Militarism are brothers—their ideal is the same, their aim the same, their principle the same. Their enemy is peace, is spirit ("Ja, der Geist ist zivil, ist bürgerlich"). He finally dares to inscribe on his own and his country's banner the words, "Law is the friend of the weak; it would reduce the world to a level. War brings out strength."{115}
In this criminal glorification of violence, Thomas Mann himself has been surpassed. Ostwald preached the victory of Kultur, if necessary by Force; Mann proved that Kultur is Force. Some one was needed to cast aside the last veil of reserve and say "Force alone. All else be silent." We have read extracts from the cynical article in which Maximilian Harden, treating the desperate efforts of his Government to excuse the violation of Belgian neutrality as feeble lies, dared to write:
"Why on earth all this fuss? Might creates our Right. Did a powerful man ever submit himself to the crazy pretensions or to the judgment of a band of weaklings?"
What a testimony to the madness into which German intelligence has been precipitated by pride and struggle, and to the moral anarchy of this Empire, whoseorganizationis imposing only to the eyes of those who do not see farther than the façade! Who cannot see the weakness of a Government which gags its socialist press and yet tolerates such an insulting contradiction as this?{116}Who does not see that such words defame Germany before the whole world for centuries to come? These miserable intellectuals imagine that with their display of infuriated Nietzcheism and Bismarckism they are acting heroically and impressing the world. They merely disgust it. They wish to be believed. People are only too ready to believe them. The whole of Germany will be made responsible for the delirium of a few writers. Germany will one day realize she has had no more deadly enemy than her own intellectuals.
* * *
I write here without prejudice, for I am certainly not proud of our French intellectuals. The Idol of Race, or of Civilization, or of Latinity, which they so greatly abuse, does not satisfy me. I do not like any idol—not even that of Humanity. But at any rate those to which my country bows down are less dangerous. They are not aggressive, and, moreover, there remains even in the most fanatical of our intellectuals a basis of native common sense, of which the Germans of whom I have just spoken seem to have lost all trace. But it must be admitted that on neither side have they brought honor to the cause of reason, which they have not{117}been able to protect against the winds of violence and folly. There is a saying of Emerson's which is applicable to their failure:
"Nothing is more rare in any man than an act of his own."
Their acts and their writings have come to them from others, from outside, from public opinion, blind and menacing. I do not wish to condemn those who have been obliged to remain silent either because they are in the armies, or because the censorship which rules in countries involved in war has imposed silence upon them. But the unheard-of weakness with which the leaders of thought have everywhere abdicated to the collective madness has certainly proved their lack ofcharacter.
Certain somewhat paradoxical passages in my own writings have caused me at times to be styled an anti-intellectual; an absurd charge to bring against one who has given his life to the worship of thought. But it is true that Intellectualism has often appeared to me as a mere caricature of Thought—Thought mutilated, deformed, and petrified, powerless, not only to dominate the drama of life, but even to understand it. And the events of to-day have proved me more in the right than I wished to be. The intellectual lives too much in the{118}realm of shadows, of ideas. Ideas have no existence in themselves, but only through the hopes or experiences which can fill them. They are either summaries, or hypotheses; frames for what has been or will be; convenient or necessary formulæ. One cannot live and act without them, but the evil is that people make them into oppressive realities. No one contributes more to this than the intellectual, whose trade it is to handle them, who, biased by his profession, is always tempted to subordinate reality to them. Let there supervene a collective passion which completes his blindness, and it will be cast in the form of the idea which can best serve its purpose: it transfers its life-blood to that idea, and the idea magnifies and glorifies it in turn. Nothing is more long-lived in a man than a phantom which his own mind has created, a phantom in which are combined the madness of his heart and the madness of his head. Hence the intellectuals in the present crisis have not been overcome by the warlike contagion less than others, but they have themselves contributed to spreading it. I would add (for it is their punishment) that they are victims of the contagion for a longer period: for whilst simple folk constantly submit to the test of every-day action and of experience, and modify their ideas{119}without conscious regret, the intellectual finds himself bound in the net of his own creation and every word that he writes draws the bonds tighter. Hence while we see that in the soldiers of all armies the fire of hate is rapidly dying down and that they already fraternize from trench to trench, the writers redouble their furious arguments. We can easily prophesy that when the remembrance of this senseless war has passed away among the people its bitterness will still be smouldering in the hearts of the intellectuals....
Who shall break the idols? Who shall open the eyes of their fanatical followers? Who shall make them understand that no god of their minds, religious or secular, has the right to force himself on other human beings—even he who seems the most worthy—or to despise them? Admitting that yourKulturon German soil produces the sturdiest and most abundant human crop, who has entrusted to you the mission of cultivating other lands? Cultivate your own garden. We will cultivate ours. There is a sacred flower for which I would give all the products of your artificial culture. It is the wild violet of Liberty. You do not care about it. You tread it under foot. But it will not die. It will live longer than your masterpieces of barrack{120}and hot-house. It is not afraid of the wind. It has braved other tempests than that of today. It grows under brambles and under dead leaves. Intellectuals of Germany, intellectuals of France, labor and sow on the fields of your own minds: respect those of others. Beforeorganizingthe world you have enough to do toorganizeyour own private world. Try for a moment to forget your ideas and behold yourselves. And above all, look at us. Champions ofKulturand of Civilization, of the Germanic races and of Latinity, enemies, friends, let us look one another in the eyes. My brother, do you not see there a heart similar to your own, with the same hopes, the same egoism, and the same heroism and power of dream which forever refashions its gossamer web?Vois-tu pas que tu es moi? said the old Hugo to one of his enemies....
The true man of culture is not he who makes of himself and his ideal the center of the universe, but who looking around him sees, as in the sky the stream of the Milky Way, thousands of little flames which flow with his own; and who seeks neither to absorb them nor to impose upon them his own course, but to give himself the religious persuasion of their value and of the common source of the fire by which all alike are fed. Intelligence of the mind{121}is nothing without that of the heart. It is nothing also without good sense and humor—good sense which shows to every people and to every being their place in the universe—and humor which is the critic of misguided reason, the soldier who, following the chariot to the Capitol, reminds Cæsar in his hour of triumph that he is bald.
Journal de Genève, December 4, 1914.{122}
National passions are triumphant. For five months they have rent our Europe. They think they will soon have compassed its destruction and effaced its image in the hearts of the last of these who remain faithful to it. But they are mistaken. They have renewed the faith that we had in it. They have made us recognize its value and our love. And from one country to another we have discovered our unknown brothers, sons of the same mother, who in the hour when she is denied, consecrate themselves to her defence.
Today, it is from Spain that the voice reaches us, from the thinkers of Catalonia. Let us pass on their appeal which comes to us from the shores of the Mediterranean, like the sound of a Christmas bell. Another day the bells of Northern Europe will be heard in their turn. And soon all will ring{123}together in unison. The test is good. Let us be thankful. Those who desired to separate us have joined our hands.
R. R.
December 31, 1914.
MANIFESTO OF THEFRIENDS OF THE MORAL UNITY OF EUROPE
A number of literary and scientific men at Barcelona, as far removed from amorphous internationalism on the one hand as from mere parochialism on the other, have banded themselves togetherto affirm their unchangeable belief in the moral unity of Europe, and to further this belief as far as the suffocating conditions resulting from the present tragic circumstances permit.
We set out from the principle that the terrible war which today is rending the heart of this Europe of ours is, by implication, aCivil War.
A civil war does not exactly mean an unjust war; still, it can only be justified by a conflict between great ideals, and if we desire the triumph of one or the other of these ideals, it must be for the sake of the entire European Commonwealth and its general well-being. None of the belligerents, therefore, can be allowed to aim at the complete destruction{124}of its opponents; and it is even less legitimate to start out from the criminal hypothesis that one or another of the parties isde factoalready excluded from this superior commonwealth.
Yet we have seen with pain assertions such as these approved and deliriously spread abroad; and not always amongst common people, or by the voices of those who speak not with authority. For three months it seemed as if our ideal Europe were ship-wrecked, but a reaction is making its appearance already. A thousand indications assure us that, in the world of intellect at any rate, the winds are quieting down, and that in the best minds the eternal values will soon spring up once more.
It is our purpose to assist in this reaction, to contribute to making it known, and, as far as we are able, to ensure its triumph. We are not alone. We have with us in every quarter of the world the ardent aspirations of far-sighted minds, and the unvoiced wishes of thousands of men of good will, who, beyond their sympathies and personal preferences, are determined to remain faithful to the cause of this moral unity.
And above all we have, in the far distant future, the appreciation of the men who tomorrow will applaud this modest work to which we are devoting ourselves today.{125}
We will begin by giving the greatest possible publicity to those actions, declarations, and manifestations—whether they emanate from belligerent or neutral nations—in which the effort of reviving the feeling of a higher unity and a generous altruism may become apparent. Later we shall be able to extend our activities and place them at the service of new enterprises. We demand nothing more of our friends, of our press, and of our fellow citizens than a little attention for these quickenings of reality, a little respect for the interests of a higher humanity, and a little love for the great traditions and the rich possibilities of aunified Europe.
Barcelona,November 27, 1914.
Eugenio D'Ors, Member of the Institute;Manuel De Montoliu, Author;Aurelio Ras, Director of the ReviewEstudio;Augustin Murua, University Professor;Telesforo de Aranzadi, University Professor;Miguel S. Oliver;Juan Palau, publicist;Pablo Vila, Director ofMont d'OrCollege;Enrique Jardi, Barrister;E. Messeguer, publicist;Carmen Karr, Director of theResidencia de Estudiantes El Hogar;Esteban Terrades, Member of the Institute;Jose Zulueta, Member of Parliament;R. Jori, Author;Eudaldo Duran{126}Reynals, Librarian of theBiblioteca de Cataluna;Rafael Campalans, Engineer;J. M. Lopez-Pico, Author;R. Rucabado, Author;E. Cuello Calou, University Professor;Manuel Revenlos, Professor of theEscuela de Funcionarios;J. Farran Mayoral, Author;Jaime Masso Torrents, Member of the Institute;Jorge Rubio Balaguer, Director of theBiblioteca de Cataluna.
Translated from the Spanish by R. R.
Journal de Genève, January 9, 1915.
{127}
In the preceding chapter, in which I put before my readers the fine manifesto of the Catalonian intellectuals "For the Moral Unity of Europe," I stated that after this appeal from the Mediterranean South I would make known those of the North. Amongst the latter here is the voice of Holland:—
TheNederlandsche Anti-Oorlog Road(Dutch Anti-War Council) is perhaps the most important attempt that these last months has seen to unify pacifist thought. Whilst recognizing the value of what has been done for some years past in favor of peace, the N. A. O. R. is convinced that "all this work could have been much more effective, and could even have prevented the present catastrophe, if it had been better taken in hand." There has been{128}lack of co-operation, wastage of energy, lack of penetration to the mass of the people. The problem is to discover if this internal defect cannot be remedied. "Will the world-wide tragedy of rivalry continue even inside the pacifist movement, or will this war teach those who are fighting against it the necessity of an energetic organization and preparation?"
To this task theN.A.O.R.is devoting itself. Founded on October 8, 1914, it had succeeded by January 15th in securing the adhesion of 350 Dutch societies (official, political, of all parties, religious, intellectual, labor), and its manifestoes brought together the signatures of more than a hundred of the most illustrious names of the Netherlands—statesmen, prelates, officers, writers, professors, artists, business men, etc. It therefore represents a considerable moral force.
Let it be said at once that theN.A.O.R.does not look for an immediate end of the war by a peace at any price. On the one hand it declares itself "it has formed no presumptuous idea of its strength; it has no naïve confidence in vague peace formulæ, nor even in well-defined mutual obligations. The universal war of today has, alas! taught it much in this respect also." And, moreover, it is{129}quite aware that a peace at any price, under present conditions, would only be a consecration of injustice. The great public meetings which it has organized on December 15th in the chief towns of the Netherlands have unanimously declared that such a peace seemed neither possible nor even desirable. I will add that certain of the articles of theN.A.O.R.suggest, with all the reserve necessitated by its attitude of neutrality and its profound desire for impartiality, the direction of its suppressed sympathies. Especially the following:—
"To repair the harm done by this war to the prestige of law in international relations. To bow before the law, whether customary or codified in treaties is a duty, even where sanction is wanting. Reform will be in vain: if there is not respect for law, and nations refuse to keep their word, a durable peace is out of the question."
The object of theN.A.O.R.is especially to study the conditions in which we can realize a just, humane, and durable peace, which will secure for Europe a long future of fruitful tranquility and of common work, and to interest the public opinion of all nations in securing such a peace. I cannot analyze here, owing to lack of space, the various public manifestoes, theAppeal to the People of{130}Holland(October, 1914), or theAppeal for Co-operation and the Preparation of Peace, a kind of attempt to mobilize the pacifist armies (November). The latter of these contains ideas which agree in many cases with those of theUnion of Democratic Control(the abolition of secret diplomacy, and a larger control of foreign affairs by Parliaments; the prohibition of special armament industries; the establishment of the elementary principle of international law, that no country shall be annexed without the consent, freely expressed, of the population). I will content myself here with publishing the manifesto addressed to the thinkers, writers, artists, and scientists of all nations. In this manifesto we shall find support for the tasks which we ourselves have undertaken in working to keep the thought of Europe sheltered from the ravages of the war, and in continually recalling it to the recognition of its highest duty, which is, even in the worst storms of passion, to safeguard the spiritual unity bf civilized humanity.
R. R.
February 7, 1915.
NEDERLANDSCHE ANTI-OORLOG RAAD
Immediately after the European war had broken out, several groups of intellectuals belonging to the{131}warring nations have advocated the justice of their country's cause in manifestoes and pamphlets, which they have scattered in great numbers throughout the neutral states.[25]And this still goes on; side by side with the war of the sword a no less vehement war is carried on with the pen.
Those writings have also reached us, the undersigned, all subjects of a neutral state. We have read them with the greatest interest, as they enable us to form a clear opinion not only of the frame of mind brought about by the outbreak of the war among the intellectuals of the warring nations, but also of the opinions they hold about the causes and the nature of the present war.
It has not surprised us neutrals to see that the spokesmen of the opposing nations are equally convinced of the justice of their cause. Neither has it surprised us that those spokesmen evince such a strong inclination to advocate their rights before the neutral states. Indeed, in such a terrible struggle it is a psychologic necessity for all the nations concerned that they should believe implicitly in the justice of their cause; they must ardently desire to testify to their faith before others. Only an unshakable{132}confidence in the absolute justice of their cause can keep them from wavering or despairing during the gigantic struggle.
But we have perceived with great sorrow that the greater part of those writings are absolutely lacking in the slightest effort to be just towards opponents; that the meanest and most malicious motives are ascribed to them.
We respect the conviction of every one of the warring nations that they are fighting for a just cause. Even if we should have formed an opinion about the origin of the war, we should yet not think the present a fit moment to oppose different opinions or arguments to each other. This should be the work of the future, when scientific research will be able to consider all the facts quietly, when national passions will have subsided and the nations will listen with more composure to the verdict of history.
Yet we think it our duty and we consider it a privilege given to us as neutrals to utter a serious warning against the systematic rousing of a lasting bitterness between the now warring parties.
Though fully aware that the late events have irritated the feeling of nationality to the utmost, yet we believe that patriotism should not prevent any one from doing justice to the character of one's{133}enemy; that faith in the virtues of one's own nation need not be coupled with the idea that all vices are inherent in the opposing nation; that confidence in the justice of one's own cause should not make one forget that the other side cherishes that conviction with the same energy.
Besides, no one should forget that the question: "What nations will be enemies?" depends on political relations, which vary according to unexpected circumstances. Today's enemy may be tomorrow's friend.
The tone, in which of late not only the papers to which we have referred above, but also the newspaper press of the warring nations has written about the enemy, threatens to arouse and to perpetuate the bitterest hatred.
To the evils directly resulting from the war, will be added the regrettable consequence that co-operation between the belligerent nations in art, science, and all other labors of peace will be delayed for some time, nay, even made quite impossible. Yet the time will come after this war, when the nations will have to resume some form of intercourse, social as well as spiritual.
The fewer fierce accusations have been breathed on either side, the less one nation has attacked the{134}character of the other: in short, the less lasting bitterness has been roused, so much the easier will it be afterwards to take up again the broken threads of international intercourse.
This rousing of hatred and bitterness is also an impediment in the way that leads our thoughts towards peace.
Every one who in word or writing rails at the enemy or excites national passions is responsible for the longer duration of this horrible war.
Therefore, we the undersigned, appeal to all those of the same mind, especially among those belonging to the warring nations, to co-operate for this purpose: that in word and writing everything be avoided that may rouse lasting animosity.
We especially address this appeal to those who influence public opinion in their own country, to men of science and to artists, to those who long ago have realized that in all civilized countries there are men and women with the same notions of justice and morality as they have themselves.
May the representatives of all countries—according to the saying of a Dutch statesmen—remember what unites them and not only what separates them!
Signed:—H.-c. Dresselhuys, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Justice,Presidentof the{135}N.A.O.R.J.-H. Schaper, member of the Second Chamber,Vice-President. MadameM. Asser-Thorbeke, secretary of the Dutch League for Women's Suffrage. Professor Dr.D. van Embden, Professor of law at Amsterdam. Dr.Koolen, member of the Second Chamber.V.-H. Rutgers, member of the Second Chamber. Baron deJong van Beek en Donk,Secretaryof the N.A.O.R. (and also subscribed to by 130 politicians, intellectuals, and artists, includingFrederik van Eeden,Willem Mengelberg, etc.). Office: Theresiastraat, 51, The Hague.
Journal de Genève, February 15, 1915.{136}
January 12, 1915.
My Dear Friend:
You offer me the hospitality of your paperDe Amsterdammer. I thank you and accept. It is good to take one's stand with those free souls who resist the unrestrained fury of national passions. In this hideous struggle, with which the conflicting peoples are rending Europe, let us at least preserve our flag, and rally round that. We must re-create European opinion. That is our first duty. Among these millions who are only conscious of being Germans, Austrians, Frenchmen, Russians, English, etc., let us strive to bemen, who, rising above the selfish aims of short-lived nations, do not lose sight of the interests of civilization as a whole—that civilization which each race mistakenly identifies with its own, to destroy that of the others. I wish your noble country,[26]which has always preserved its{137}political and moral independence among the great surrounding states, could become the hearth of this ideal Europe we believe in—the hearth round which shall gather all those who seek to rebuild her.
Everywhere there are men who think thus though they are unknown one to another. Let us get to know them. Let us bring together each and all. Here I would introduce to you two important groups, one from the North and one from the South—the Catalonian thinkers who have formed the society ofAmis de l'Unité Morale de l'Europeat Barcelona—I send you their fine appeal: and theUnion of Democratic Controlfounded in London and inspired by indignation against this European war, and by the firm determination to render it impossible for the diplomatists and militarists to inaugurate another. I am having the programmes and the first publications sent to you. This Union, whose general Council contains members of Parliament, and authors like Norman Angell, Israel Zangwill, and Vernon Lee, has already formed twenty branches in towns in Great Britain.
Let us try and unite permanently all such organizations, though each has its racial characteristics and peculiarities, for all aim at re-establishing the peace of Europe as best they may. With them let{138}us take stock of our united resources. Then we can act.
* * *
What shall we do? Try to put an end to the struggle? It is no use thinking of that now. The brute is loose; and the Governments have succeeded so well in spreading hatred and violence abroad that even if they wished they could not bring it back again into control. The damage is irreparable. It is possible that the neutral countries of Europe and the United States of America may decide one day to interfere, and endeavor to put an end to a war which, if it continued indefinitely, would threaten to ruin them as well as the belligerents. But I do not know what one must expect from this too tardy intervention.
In any case I see another outlet for our activity. Let the war be what it may—we can no longer intervene; but at least we must try to make the scourge productive of as little evil and as much good as possible. And in order to do this we must get public opinion all the world over to see to it that the peace of the future shall be just, that the greed of the conqueror (whoever that may be) and the intrigues of diplomacy, do not make it the seed of a new war of revenge; and that the moral crimes{139}committed in the past are not repeated or allowed to stain yet darker the record of humanity. That is why I hold the first article of the Union of Democratic Control as a sacred principle: "No Province shall be transferred from one Government to another without the consent by plebiscite of the population of such province." We must oppose those odious maxims which have weighed too long on the populations they enslave and which quite recently Professor Lasson dared to repeat as a threat for the future, in his cynical Catechism of Force (Das Kulturideal und der Krieg).[27]
And this principle must be proposed and adopted at once without any delay. If we waited to announce it until—the war being over—the congress of the Powers were assembled, we should be suspected of wishing to make justice serve the interest of the conquered. It is now, when the forces of the two sides are equal, that we must establish this primordial right which soars over all the armies.
From this principle we can deduce an immediate application. Since the whole of Europe is disorganized{140}let us profit by it to set in order this untidy house! For a long time injustices have been accumulating. The moment of settling the general account will be an opportunity of rectifying them. The duty of all of us who feel for the brotherhood of mankind is to stand for the rights of the small nations. There are some in both camps: Schleswig, Alsace, Lorraine, Poland, the Baltic nations, Armenia, the Jewish people. At the beginning of the war Russia made some generous promises. We have registered them in our minds; let her not forget them! We are as determined about Poland, torn by the claws of three imperial eagles, as we are about Belgium crucified. We remember all. It is because our fathers, obsessed by their narrow realism and by selfish fears, let the rights of the people of Eastern Europe be violated, that today the West is shattered, and the sword hangs over the small nations, over you, my friends, as over the country which is befriending me, Switzerland. Whoever harms one of us harms all the others. Let us unite! Above all race questions, which are for the most part a mask behind which pride crouches and the interests of the financial or aristocratic classes dissemble, there is a law of humanity, eternal and universal, of which we are all the servants and{141}guardians; it is that of the right of a people to rule themselves. And he who violates shall be the enemy of all.
R. R.
De Amsterdammer Weekblad voor Nederland, January 24, 1915.
{142}
March 15, 1915.
While the war tempest rages, uprooting the strongest souls and dragging them along in its furious cyclone, I continue my humble pilgrimage, trying to discover beneath the ruins the rare hearts who have remained faithful to the old ideal of human fraternity. What a sad joy I have in collecting and helping them!
I know that each of their efforts—like mine—that each of their words of love, rouses and turns against them the hostility of the two hostile camps. The combatants, pitted against each other, agree in hating those who refuse to hate. Europe is like a besieged town. Fever is raging. Whoever will not rave like the rest is suspected. And in these hurried times when justice cannot wait to study evidence, every suspect is a traitor. Whoever insists, in the midst of war, on defending peace among{143}men knows that he risks his own peace, his reputation, his friends, for his belief. But of what value is a belief for which no risks are run?
Certainly it is put to the test in these days, when every day brings the echo of violence, injustice, and new cruelties. But was it not still more tried when it was entrusted to the fishermen of Judea by him whom humanity pretends to honor still—with its lips more than with its heart? The rivers of blood, the burnt towns, all the atrocities of thought and action, will never efface in our tortured souls the luminous track of the Galilean barque, nor the deep vibrations of the great voices which from across the centuries proclaim reason as man's true home. You choose to forget them, and to say (like many writers of today) that this war will begin a new era in the history of mankind, a reversal of former values, and that from it alone will future progress be dated. That is always the language of passion. Passion passes away. Reason remains—reason and love. Let us continue to search for their young shoots amidst the bloody ruins.
I feel the same joy when I find the fragile and valiant flowers of human pity piercing the icy crust of hatred that covers Europe, as we feel in these chilly March days when we see the first flowers appear{144}above the soil. They show that the warmth of life persists below the surface of the earth, that fraternal love persists below the surface of the nations, and that soon nothing will prevent it rising again.
I have on several occasions shown how the neutral countries have become the refuge of this European spirit, which seems driven from the belligerent countries by the armies of the pen, more savage than the others because they risk nothing. The efforts made in Holland or in Spain to save the moral unity of Europe, the burning charity and untiring help that Switzerland lavishes on prisoners, on wounded, on victims of both sides, are a great comfort to oppressed souls, who in every country are suffocating in the atmosphere of hatred forced on them, and who look for purer air. But I find still more beautiful and touching the signs of fraternal aid between friends and enemies in belligerent countries, however rare and feeble they may be.
If there are two countries between which the present war seems specially to have created an abyss of hatred and misunderstanding, they are England and Germany. The writers and publicists of Germany, whose orders are to profess for France rather sympathy and compassion than animosity,{145}and who are even constrained to distinguish between the people and the Government of Russia, have vowed eternal hatred against England.Hasse Englandhas become theirDelenda Carthago. The most moderate declare that the struggle cannot be ended except by the destruction of theSeeherrschaft(naval supremacy) of Britain. And Great Britain is not less determined to continue the conflict until German militarism has been totally eradicated. Yet it is precisely between these two nations that the noblest bonds of mutual assistance for the misfortunes of the enemy have been formed and maintained.
Two days after the declaration of war there was founded in London by the Archbishop of Canterbury and by well known persons, such as J. Allen-Baker, M.P., the Right-Hon. W. H. Dickinson, M.P., Lord and Lady Courtney of Penwith, theEmergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians in Distress. This work, which affects a large part of England, consists in paying the repatriation expenses of destitute civilians, of accompanying German women and girls on their return journey, of securing hospitality in families for poor Germans and finding work for them. By the end of December almost £10,000 had{146}been spent in this way. Several sub-committees visit Prisoners' Camps, facilitate correspondence between the belligerent nations, or undertake, for Christmas, to convey to interned alien enemies more than 20,000 parcels and 200 Christmas trees. Another English society, already in existence before the war, theSociety of Friends of Foreigners in Distress, regularly looks after 1,800 German and Austrian families. Finally, the Central Bureau (London) of the International Union of Women Suffrage Societies has rendered great service to foreigners, paying for the return journey of between seven and eight thousand women.
In Germany there has been founded at Berlin a similar Bureau for giving information and assistance to Germans abroad, and to foreigners in Germany (Auskunfts-und Hilfsstelle für Deutsche im Ausland und Ausländer in Deutschland). Amongst its members may be noted aristocratic names, and persons well known in the religious and academic world: Frau Marie von Bülow-Mœrlins, Helene Græfin Harrach, Nora Freiin von Schleinitz, Professors W. Foerster, D. Baumgarten, Paul Natorp, Martin Rade, Siegmund-Schultze, etc. At its head is a lady of deep religious feeling, Dr. Elisabeth Rotten. As will be readily imagined, an undertaking{147}of this kind has not failed to evoke suspicion and opposition in nationalist quarters. But it has emerged successful, and persists; and here are the terms in which it justifies its high mission against the ravings of German Chauvinism:
"Since the beginning of the war we have recognized the obligation to interest ourselves in the welfare of foreigners stranded in Germany. Efforts such as ours are as unpopular in our country as in other countries. At a time when the whole German people is engaged in resisting the enemy, it seems superfluous to render to those who belong to foreign countries more than minimum services to which they are legally entitled. But it is not only the thought of our kinsmen abroad which urges us to this work, it is our own desire to render friendly service (Freundendienste) to those who, through no fault of their own, are in difficulties because of the war. Even in war time, our neighbor is he who is in need of our help; and love for one's enemy (Feindesliebe) remains a sign whereby those who retain their faith in the Lord may recognize one another....
"We have been able to reassure German families as to the lot of their members in enemy countries, and in return to vouch to foreigners for the fact{148}that their friends in our country will be able to rely on us for assistance if they need it. We have been able to help as neighbors (Naechstendienste) innocent enemies, in whom we see human brothers and sisters. Above and beyond this practical aid, we find consolation and comfort in being able freely to hearken, even in such times as these, to the voice of humanity, and to the command 'love thy neighbor.' The tragedy which bursts over the earth on every side, which fills all our being with a religious respect for human suffering, but also stirs our love and self-sacrifice, enlarges our hearts and leaves no room except for feelings of affirmation and benevolent action.
"Our desire to help and to alleviate suffering knows no frontiers. This need is all the more urgent when we find in the sufferings of others the traits of what we ourselves also suffer. What unites men goes deeper into our being than what separates them. That we can tend the wounds that we are constrained to deal, and that the same is the case in the enemy's country, gives promise of the brighter days which will come. In the midst of the tempest which destroys all around us so many things which we consider worthy of eternal existence, the possibility of such action strengthens{149}our courage and gives us hope that new bridges will be rebuilt, on which the men who now find themselves separated, will once more be closely united in a common effort."
I dedicate these noble words to my friends amongst the people of France, who have so often, by letter or by message, declared to me their sympathy for such thoughts and their unchanging faith in humanity. I dedicate them to all in France who, even in these days, by their justice and goodness contribute to make their country loved, as much as she makes herself admired by her arms—to those who assure her of the name which I read with emotion on a postcard written yesterday, on his way to Geneva, by a badly wounded German who had been repatriated: the name ofgutes Frankreich, "good France," or, as our tender-hearted old writers used to say, "DouceFrance."
R. R.
I take this opportunity of recommending to my French readers the publication of Mme. Arthur Spitzer (Geneva):Le Paquet du prisonnier de guerre. It has contributors in Paris, and was founded in November "to bring comfort in their misery to such French, Belgians, and English{150}prisoners as cannot be assisted by their families." It begs all who wish to send a parcel to a relation or friend who has been taken prisoner, to send with it, when possible, a similar consignment for some other prisoner—one of their fellow countrymen without relations, friends, or resources. May this noble thought of solidarity be extended later, in more humane times, so that whoever helps a prisoner belonging to his own country may be willing at the same time to help an enemy prisoner!
R. R.
Journal de Genève, March 15, 1915.
{151}
The European thought of tomorrow is with the armies. The furious intellectuals in one camp and the other who insult one another do not represent it at all. The voice of the peoples who will return from the war, after having experienced the terrible reality, will send back into the silence of obscurity these men who have revealed themselves as unworthy to be spiritual guides of the human race. Amongst those who thus retire more than one St. Peter will then hear the cock crow, and will weep saying, "Lord, I have denied thee!"
The destinies of humanity will rise superior to those of all the nations. Nothing will be able to{152}prevent the reforming of the bonds between the thought of the hostile nations. Whatever nation should stand aside would commit suicide. For by means of these bonds the tide of life is kept in motion.
But they have never been completely broken, even at the height of the war. The war has even had the sad advantage of grouping together throughout the universe the minds who reject national hatred. It has tempered their strength, it has welded their wills into a solid block. Those are mistaken who think that the ideals of a free human fraternity are at present stifled! They are but silent under the gag of military (and civil) dictation which reigns throughout Europe. But the gag will fall, and they will burst forth with explosive force. I am agonized by the sufferings of millions of innocent victims, sacrificed today on the field of battle, but I have no anxiety for the future unity of European society. It will be realized anew. The war of today is its baptism of blood.
R. R.
April 10, 1915.
{153}
The intellectuals on both sides have been much in evidence since the beginning of the war; they have, indeed, brought so much violence and passion to bear upon it, that it might almost be called their war!
It seems to me, however, that attention has not been sufficiently drawn to the fact that, with a few exceptions, it is only the voice of the older generation that has been heard—the voice of Academicians, and Professoren, of distinguished members of the press and the universities, of poets of established reputations, and the doyens of literature, art, and science.
As far as France is concerned, the explanation of this is simple: nearly all those up to the age of forty-eight who are able to bear arms are now acting instead of talking. In Germany the situation is rather different, since for various reasons,{154}which I shall not attempt to elucidate, much of the literary youth of the nation has remained at home, and continues to publish books. Even those who are at the front contrive to send articles and poems to the Reviews (for the passion for writing dies hard in Germany).
It seems to me to be of importance to ascertain what spiritual currents are influencing the young intellectuals of Germany.[29]
* * *
It has been pointed out that in all countries the extremest views have been expressed by writers who have already passedel mezzo del cammino. We shall attempt to find the reason for this at some later date. At present we are content again to verify this fact in the case of German writers. Almost all the celebrated and acknowledged poets, all those who were rich in years and in honor, were swept off their feet at the beginning of the war. And this fact is all the more curious because some of them had been up to that time the apostles of peace, of pity, and of humanitarianism. Dehmel, the enemy of war, the friend of all men, who said{155}that he did not know to which of the ten nationalities he owed his intellect, is now writing Battle Songs (Schlachtenlieder), and Songs of the Flag (Fahnenlieder), apostrophizing the enemy, praising and dealing death. (At the age of fifty-one he is learning to bear arms, and has enlisted against the Russians.) Gerhart Hauptmann, whom Fritz von Unruh calls "the poet of brotherly love," has shaken off his neurasthenia, and bids men "mow down the grass which drips with blood." Franz Wedekind is pouring out invectives against Czarism, Lissauer against England. Arno Holz is raving deliriously. Petzold desires to be in every bullet that enters an enemy's heart; whilst Richard Nordhausen has written an Ode to a Howitzer.[30]
At first the younger writers as well were possessed with the same madness for war; but, in contact with the sufferings they endured and inflicted, it quickly disappeared. Fritz von Unruh enlisted as a Uhlan, and left for the front, crying "Paris, Paris is our goal!" Since the Battle of the Aisne, in September, he has written "Der Lamm": "Lamb of God, I have seen thy look of suffering. Give us peace and rest; lead us back to the heaven of love, and give us back{156}our dead." Rudolf Leonhard sang of war at the beginning, and is still fighting; on re-reading his poems shortly afterwards, he wrote on the front page: "These were written during the madness of the first weeks. That madness has spent itself, and only our strength is left. We shall again win control over ourselves and love one another." Poets, hitherto unknown, are revealed by the cry of compassion wrung from their anguished hearts. To Andrea Fram, who has remained at home, it is a grief that he does not suffer, whilst thousands of others suffer and die. "All thy love, and all thy agony, in spite of thy ardent desire, avail not to soothe the last hour of a single man who is dying yonder." Upon Ludwig Marck each minute weighs like a nightmare:—
The poet who writes under the pseudonym of Dr. Owlglass proposed a new ideal for Germany, on the seventieth anniversary of the birth of Nietzsche (October 15th): not the superman, but at least—man. And Franz Werfel realizes this ideal in poems thrilling with a mournful humanity, which takes part in the sacrament of misery and death:{157}
"We are bound together not only by our common words and deeds, but still more by the dying glance, the last hours, the mortal anguish of the breaking heart. And whether you bow down before the tyrant, or gaze trembling into the beloved's countenance, or mark down your enemy with pitiless glance, think of the eye that will grow dim, of the failing breath, the parched lips and clenched hands, the final solitude, and the brow that grows moist in the last agony.... Be kind.... Tenderness is wisdom, kindness is reason[31].... We are strangers all upon this earth, and die but to be reunited."[32]
But the one German poet who has written the serenest and loftiest words, and preserved in the midst of this demoniacal war an attitude worthy of Goethe, is Hermann Hesse. He continues to live at Berne, and, sheltered there from the moral contagion, he has deliberately kept aloof from the combat. All will remember his noble article in theNeue Zürcher Zeitungof November 3rd, "O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!" in which he implored the artists and thinkers of Europe "to save what little peace" might yet be saved, and not to join with their pens in destroying the future of Europe.{158}Since then he has written some beautiful poems, one of which, an Invocation to Peace, is inspired with deep feeling and classical simplicity, and will find its way to many an oppressed heart.
("Each one possessed it, but no one prized it. Like a cool spring it refreshed us all. What a sound the word Peace has for us now!
"Distant it sounds, and fearful, and heavy with tears. No one knows or can name the day for which all sigh with such longing.")