t> 
 
 ROMAIN ROLLANi:
 
 Ex Libris 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT
 
 ABOVE THE BATTLE
 
 "The fire smouldering in the forest of Europe was be- 
 ginning to burst into flames. In vain did they try to put it 
 out in one place : it only broke out in another. With gusts 
 of smoke and a shower of sparks it swept from one point to 
 another, burning the dry brushwood. Already in the East 
 there were skirmishes as the prelude to the great war of the 
 nations. AH Europe, Europe that only yesterday was 
 sceptical and apathetic, like a dead wood, was swept by 
 the flames. All men were possessed by the desire for battle. 
 War was ever on the point of breaking out. It was stamped 
 out, but it sprang to life again. The world felt that it was 
 at the mercy of an accident that might let loose the dogs of 
 war. The world lay in wait. The feeling of inevitability 
 weighed heavily even upon the most pacifically minded. 
 And ideologues, sheltered beneath the massive shadows of 
 the cyclops, Proudhon, hymned in war man's fairest title of 
 nobility. . . . :; 
 
 " This, then, was to be the end of the physical and moral 
 resurrection of the races of the West ! To such butchery 
 they were to be borne along by the currents of action and 
 passionate faith ! Only a Napoleonic genius could have 
 marked out a chosen, deliberate aim for this blind, onward 
 rush. But nowhere in Europe was there any genius for 
 action. It was as though the world had chosen the most 
 mediocre to be its governors. The force of the human mind 
 was in other things so there n>as nothing to be done but 
 to trust to the declivity down which they were moving. 
 This both governors and governed were doing. Europe 
 looked like a vast armed vigil." 
 
 Jean-Christophe, vol. x (1912). 
 
 [English translation by Gilbert Cannan, vol. iv, p. 504.]
 
 ABOVE THE BATTLE 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 C. K. OGDEN, M.A. 
 
 (Editor of The Cambridge Magazine) 
 
 LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. 
 RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.
 
 First published in 1916. 
 
 (All rights reserved.)
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 1 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ' Over the carnage rose prophetic a -voice, 
 Be not disheartened, affection shall solve the problem of 
 freedom yet. 
 
 ( Were you looking to be held together by lawyers ? 
 Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms? 
 Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so 
 cohere.} " 
 
 THESE lines of Walt Whitman will be recalled 
 by many who read the following pages : for not 
 only does Rolland himself refer to Whitman in 
 his brief Introduction, but, were it not for a 
 certain bizarrerie apart from their context, the 
 words " Over the Carnage " might perhaps have 
 stood on the cover of this volume as a striking 
 variant on Au-dessus de la Melee. 
 
 Yet though the voice comes to us over the 
 carnage, its message is not marred by the pas- 
 sions of the moment. After eighteen months of 
 war we are learning to look about us more 
 calmly, and to distinguish amid the ruins those 
 
 7
 
 Introduction 
 
 of Europe's intellectual leaders who have not 
 been swept off their feet by the fury of the 
 tempest. Almost alone Remain Rolland has 
 stood the test. The two main characteristics 
 which strike us in all that he writes are lucidity 
 and commonsense the qualities most needed by 
 every one in thought upon the war. But there 
 is another feature of Rolland's work which con- 
 tributes to its universal appeal. He describes 
 our feelings and sensations in the presence of a 
 given situation, not what actually passes before 
 our eyes : he describes the effects and causes of 
 things, but not the things themselves. Through 
 his work for the Agence Internationale des 
 prisonniers de guerre, to which one of the 
 articles now collected is largely devoted, he is, 
 moreover, in a position to observe every phase 
 of the great battle between ideals and between 
 nations which fills him with such anguish and 
 indignation. And with his matchless insight and 
 sympathy he gives permanent form to our vague 
 feelings in these noble and inspiring essays. 
 
 It will not, however, surprise the vast public 
 who have read Jean-Christophe to find that while 
 so many have capitulated to the madness of the 
 terrible year through which we have passed, 
 Rolland has remained firm, and has surpassed 
 
 8
 
 Introduction 
 
 himself. He was prepared. As the extract 
 placed at the beginning of this volume shows, 
 he was one of the few who realised only too 
 well the horror he was powerless to prevent. 
 Yet he made every effort to open the eyes of 
 Europe and especially of the young, so many of 
 whom had learned to look up to him as a 
 leader. To these young men, one of the finest 
 essays in the present collection is primarily 
 addressed O jeunesse heroique du monde. . . . 
 
 Eighteen months have passed and they still 
 endure the terrible ordeal, the young men of 
 Germany and France, whom he had striven so 
 hard to bring together ; on whose aspirations 
 and failings Jean-Christophe is a critical com- 
 mentary. The movements and tendencies of 
 society were there given a dramatic embodi- 
 ment, permeated for Rolland by the Life Force 
 that struggle between Good and Bad, Love 
 and Hatred, which makes life worth living. All 
 is set down with the clear analysis of feeling 
 natural to a musical critic. But in spite of his 
 burning words on the destruction of Rheims, 
 Rolland, as is clear from his other critical and 
 biographical writings, is more interested in men 
 than in their achievements. And the men of 
 to-day interest him most passionately. "Young 
 
 9
 
 Introduction 
 
 men," he has said, "do not bother about the old 
 people. Make a stepping-stone of our bodies 
 and go forward." 
 
 And above all it is the permanent things in 
 life with which he is concerned. As Mr. Lowes 
 Dickinson puts it, " M. Holland is one of the 
 many who believe, though their voice for the 
 moment may be silenced, that the spiritual 
 forces that are important and ought to prevail 
 are the international ones ; that co-operation, not 
 war, is the right destiny of nations ; and that 
 all that is valuable in each people may be main- 
 tained in and by friendly intercourse with the 
 others. The war between these two ideals is 
 the greater war that lies behind the present 
 conflict. Hundreds and thousands of generous 
 youths have gone to battle in the belief that 
 they are going to a ' war that will end war,' 
 that they are fighting against militarism in the 
 cause of peace. Whether, indeed, it is for that 
 they will have risked or lost their lives, only the 
 event can show." 
 
 The forces against such ideals are powerful, 
 but Holland is not dismayed. " 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." And 
 
 10
 
 Introduction 
 
 he appeals not only in the name of humanity 
 but in the name of that France which he loves 
 so dearly " la vraie France " of which Jaures 
 wrote (in the untranslatable words which Hol- 
 land has quoted), "qui n'est pas resume'e dans 
 une e*poque et dans un jour, ni dans le jour d'il 
 y a des siecles, ni dans le jour d'hier, mais la 
 France tout entiere, dans la succession de ses 
 jours, de ses nuits, de ses aurores, de ses 
 crepuscules, de ses monte'es, de ses chutes, et 
 qui, a travers toutes ces ombres melees, toutes 
 ces lumieres incompletes et toutes ces vicissi- 
 tudes, s'en va vers une pleine clarte qu'elle n'a 
 pas encore atteinte, mais dont le pressentiment 
 est dans sa pensee ! " 
 
 But though his love of France inspires every 
 word that Holland has written, the significance 
 of the present volume is not less apparent to 
 English readers. Some of the articles and letters 
 now collected have already appeared in English, 
 for the most part in the pages of The Cain- 
 bridge Magazine, from which they have been 
 widely quoted in the press. For help in render- 
 ing the translations as adequate as possible I 
 may also take this opportunity of acknowledging 
 my special indebtedness to Mr. Roger Fry, 1 who 
 
 1 For translating "The Murder of the Elite." 
 II
 
 Introduction 
 
 has just issued through the Omega Workshops 
 a striking translation of some of the most recent 
 French poetry inspired by the war ; to Mr. 
 James Wood, who has himself done part of the 
 translation, particularly " Pro Aris " ; and to Mr. 
 E. K. Bennett, of Caius College, whose version 
 of " Above the Battle " has already been quoted 
 by the Archbishop of Canterbury and others. 
 For the most part, the articles here collected 
 have not appeared in English before ; and they 
 have been almost inaccessible even in French, 
 as their author explains in his Preface. 
 
 C. K. OGDEN. 
 
 MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 
 January 1916.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY THE TRANSLATOR . , . 1 
 
 PREFACE . . . . . . .15 
 
 I. AN OPEN LETTER TO GERHART HAUPTMANN 1 9 
 
 II. PRO ARIS . . . . . -23 
 
 III. ABOVE THE BATTLE . . . -37 
 
 IV. THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS . . 56 
 V. INTER ARMA CARITAS . . . -75 
 
 VI. TO THE PEOPLE THAT IS SUFFERING FOR 
 
 JUSTICE . . . . .92 
 
 VII. LETTER TO MY CRITICS . . . .96 
 
 VIII. THE IDOLS . . . .106 
 
 IX. FOR EUROPE (SPAIN) . . . .121 
 
 X. FOR EUROPE (HOLLAND). . . .126 
 
 XL LETTER TO FREDERIK VAN EEDEN . .135 
 
 XII. OUR NEIGHBOUR THE ENEMY . . .141 
 
 XIII. LETTER TO THE " SVENSKA DAOBLADET " . 150 
 
 XIV. WAR LITERATURE . . . .152 
 XV. THE MURDER OF THE ELITE . . .167 
 
 XVI. JAURES . . . . . .180 
 
 13
 
 IT is my pleasant duty to thank the brave 
 friends who have defended me during the past 
 year, in the Parisian press : at the end of October 
 1914, Amedee Dunois, in rHumanite, and Henri 
 Guilbeaux, in the Bataille syndicaliste ; in the 
 same paper, Fernand Depres ; Georges Pioch, 
 in the Homines du Jour\ J. M. Renaitour, in 
 the Bonnet Rouge ; Rouanet, in PHumanite ; 
 Jacques Mesnil, in the Mercure de France, and 
 Gaston Thiesson, in the Guerre Sociale. To 
 these faithful comrades in the struggle I express 
 my affectionate gratitude. 
 
 R. R. 
 October 1915.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 A GREAT nation assailed by war has not only its 
 frontiers to protect : it must also protect its 
 good sense. It must protect itself from the hallu- 
 cinations, injustices, and follies which the plague 
 lets loose. To each his part : to the armies the 
 protection of the soil of their native land. To the 
 thinkers the defence of its thought. If they 
 subordinate that thought to the passions of their 
 people they may well be useful instruments of 
 passion ; but they are in danger of betraying the 
 spirit, which is not the least part of a people's 
 patrimony. One day History will pass judgment 
 on each of the nations at war ; she will weigh 
 their measure of errors, lies, and heinous follies. 
 Let us try and make ours light before her ! 
 
 Children are taught the Gospel of Jesus and 
 the Christian ideal. Everything in the educa- 
 tion they receive at school is designed to 
 stimulate in them intellectual understanding of 
 the great human family. Classical education 
 makes them see, beyond the differences of race, 
 the roots and the common trunk of our civilisa- 
 
 15
 
 Preface 
 
 tion. Art makes them love the profound sources 
 of the genius of a people. Science makes them 
 believe in the unity of reason. The great social 
 movement which renews the world, reveals the 
 organised effort of the working classes all round 
 them to unite their forces in the hopes and 
 struggles which break the barriers of nations. 
 The brightest geniuses of the earth chant, like 
 Walt Whitman and Tolstoi, universal brother- 
 hood in joy and suffering, or else as our Latin 
 spirits, pierce with their criticism the prejudices 
 of hatred and ignorance which separate indi- 
 viduals and peoples. 
 
 Like all the men of my time I have been 
 brought up on these thoughts ; I have tried in 
 my turn to share the bread of life with my 
 younger or less fortunate brothers. When the 
 war came I did not think it my duty to deny 
 these thoughts because the hour had come to 
 put them to the test. 
 
 I have been insulted. I knew that I should be 
 and I went forward. But I did not know that 
 I should be insulted without even a hearing. 
 
 For several months no one in France could 
 know my writings except through scraps of 
 phrases arbitrarily extracted and mutilated by 
 my enemies. It is a shameful record. For 
 
 1(5
 
 Preface 
 
 nearly a year this has gone on. Certain socialist 
 or syndicalist papers may have succeeded here 
 and there in getting some fragments through, 1 
 but it was only in the month of June 1915 that 
 for the first time my chief article, the one which 
 was the object of the most violent criticism, 
 " Above the Battle," dating from September 
 1914, could be published in full (almost in full), 
 thanks to the malevolent zeal of a maladroit pam- 
 phleteer, to whom I am indebted for bringing my 
 words before the French public for the first time. 
 
 A Frenchman does not judge his adversary 
 unheard. Whoever does so judges and condemns 
 himself: for he shows that he fears the light. 
 I place before the world the texts they have 
 slandered. 2 I shall not defend them. Let them 
 defend themselves! 
 
 1 One article only, "The Idols," may, I think, have been 
 published in its entirety in La Bataille syndicaliste, 
 
 - I leave my articles in their chronological order. I have 
 changed nothing in them. The reader will notice, in the 
 stress of events, certain contradictions and hasty judgments 
 which I would modify to-day. ... In general, the senti- 
 ments expressed have arisen out of indignation and pity. 
 In proportion as the immensity of the ruin extends one feels 
 the poverty of protest, as before an earthquake. "There 
 is more than one war," wrote the aged Rodin to me on the 
 ist of October, 1914. " What is happening is like a punish- 
 ment which falls on the world." 
 
 I B
 
 Preface 
 
 One single word will I add. For a year I have 
 been rich in enemies. Let me say this to them : 
 they can hate me, but they will not teach me 
 to hate. I have no concern with them. My 
 business is to say what I believe to be fair and 
 humane. Whether this pleases or irritates is 
 not my business. I know that words once 
 uttered make their way of themselves. Hope- 
 fully I sow them in the bloody soil. The harvest 
 will come. 
 
 ROMAIN HOLLAND. 
 
 September 1915. 
 
 18
 
 AN OPEN LETTER TO GERHART HAUPTMANN 
 
 Saturday, August 29, 1914.' 
 
 I AM not, Gerhart Hauptmann, one of those 
 Frenchmen who regard Germany as a nation of 
 barbarians. I know the intellectual and moral 
 greatness of your mighty race. I know all that 
 I owe to the thinkers of old Germany ; and even 
 now, at this hour, I recall the example and the 
 words of our Goethe for he belongs to the 
 whole of humanity repudiating all national 
 hatreds and preserving the calmness of his soul 
 on those heights " where we feel the happiness and 
 the misfortunes of other peoples as our own" I 
 myself have laboured all my life to bring together 
 the minds of our two nations ; and the atrocities 
 of this impious war in which, to the ruin of 
 
 1 A telegram from Berlin (Wolffs Agency), reproduced by 
 the Gazette de Lausanne, August 29, 1914, has just announced 
 that " the old town of Louvain, rich in works of art, exists 
 no more to-day." 
 
 19
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 European civilisation, they are involved, will never 
 lead me to soil my spirit with hatred. 
 
 Whatever pain, then, your Germany may give 
 me, whatever reasons I may have to stigmatise 
 as criminal German policy and the means it 
 employs, I do not attach responsibility for it to 
 the people which is burdened with it and is used 
 as its blind instrument. It is not that I regard, 
 as you do, war as a fatality. A Frenchman does 
 not believe in fatality. Fatality is the excuse of 
 souls without a will. War springs from the 
 weakness and stupidity of nations. One cannot 
 feel resentment against them for it ; one can only 
 pity them. I do not reproach you with our 
 miseries ; for yours will be no less. If France 
 is ruined, Germany will be ruined too. I did not 
 even raise my voice when I saw your armies 
 violating the neutrality of noble Belgium. This 
 flagrant breach of honour, which incurs the con- 
 tempt of every upright conscience, is quite in the 
 political tradition of your Prussian kings ; it did 
 not surprise me. 
 
 But when I see the fury with which you are 
 treating that magnanimous nation whose only 
 crime has been to defend its independence and 
 the cause of justice to the last, as you Germans 
 yourselves did in 1813 ... that is too much! 
 
 20
 
 Letter to Gerhart Hauptmann 
 
 The world is revolted by it. Keep these 
 savageries for us Frenchmen, your true enemies ! 
 But to wreak them against your victims, against 
 this small, unhappy, innocent Belgian people . . . 
 how shameful is this ! 
 
 And not content to fling yourselves on living 
 Belgium, you wage war on the dead, on the 
 glories of past ages. You bombard Malines, you 
 burn Rubens, and Louvain is now no more than 
 a heap of ashes Louvain with its treasures of 
 art and of science, the sacred town ! What are 
 you, then, Hauptmann, and by what name do 
 you want us to call you now, since you repudi- 
 ate the title of barbarians ? Are you the grand- 
 sons of Goethe or of Attila? Are you making 
 war on enemies or on the human spirit ? Kill 
 men if you like, but respect masterpieces. They 
 are the patrimony of the human race. You, like 
 all the rest of us, are its depositories ; in pillaging 
 it, as you do, you show yourselves unworthy of 
 our great heritage, unworthy to take your place 
 in that little European army which is civilisation's 
 guard of honour. 
 
 It is not to the opinion of the rest of the world 
 that I address myself in challenging you, Haupt- 
 mann. In the name of our Europe, of which 
 you have hitherto been one of the most illustrious 
 
 21
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 champions, in the name of that civilisation for 
 which the greatest of men have striven all down 
 the ages, in the name of the very honour of your 
 Germanic race, Gerhart Hauptmann, I aMu 
 you, I challenge you, you and the intellectuals 
 of Germany, amongst whom I reckon so many 
 friends, to protest with all your energy against 
 this crime which is recoiling upon you. 
 
 If you fail to do this, you will prove one 
 of two things : either that you approve what 
 has been done and in that case may the opinion 
 of mankind crush you or else that you are 
 powerless to raise a protest against the Huns 
 who command you. If this be so, by what title 
 can you still claim, as you have claimed, that you 
 fight for the cause of liberty and human pro- 
 gress ? You are giving the world a proof that, 
 incapable of defending the liberty of the world, 
 you are even incapable of defending your own, 
 and that the best of Germany is helpless 
 beneath a vile despotism which mutilates master- 
 pieces and murders the spirit of man. 
 
 I am expecting an answer from you, Haupt- 
 mann, an answer that may be an act. The 
 opinion of Europe awaits it as I do. Think about 
 it : at such a time silence itself is an act. 
 
 Journal de Geneve, Wednesday, September 2, 1914. 
 22
 
 II 
 
 PRO ARIS 
 
 September 1914.* 
 
 AMONG the many crimes of this infamous war 
 which are all odious to us, why have we chosen 
 for protest the crimes against things and not 
 against men, the destruction of works and not of 
 lives? 
 
 Many are surprised by this, and have even re- 
 proached us for it as if we have not as much 
 pity as they for the bodies and hearts of the 
 thousands of victims who are crucified ! Yet 
 over the armies which fall, there flies the vision of 
 their love, and of la Patrie, to which they 
 sacrifice themselves over these lives which are 
 passing away passes the holy Ark of the art 
 and thought of centuries, borne on their shoulders. 
 The bearers can change. May the Ark be saved ! 
 To the elite of the world falls the task of 
 guarding it. And since the common treasure is 
 threatened, may they rise to protect it ! 
 
 1 Written after the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral. 
 23
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 I am glad to think that in the Latin countries 
 this sacred duty, has always been regarded as 
 paramount. Our France which bleeds with so 
 many other wounds, has suffered nothing more 
 cruel than the attack against her Parthenon, the 
 Cathedral of Rheims, " Our Lady of France." 
 Letters which I have received from sorely tried 
 families, and from soldiers who for two months 
 have borne every hardship, show me (and I am 
 proud of it for them and for my people) that 
 there was no burden heavier for them to bear. 
 It is because we put spirit above flesh. Very 
 different is the case of the German intellectuals, 
 who, to my reproaches for the sacrilegious acts 
 )f their devastating armies, have all replied with 
 me voice, " Perish every chef-(?ceuvre rather than 
 German soldier ! " 
 
 A piece of architecture like Rheims is much 
 more than one life : it is a people whose centuries 
 vibrate like a symphony in this organ of stone. 
 It is their memories of joy, of glory, and of grief ; 
 their meditations, ironies, dreams. It is the tree 
 of the race, whose roots plunge to the profoundest 
 depths of its soil, and whose branches stretch with 
 a sublime elan towards the sky. It is still more : 
 its beauty which soars above the struggles of 
 nations is the harmonious response made by the 
 
 24
 
 Pro Aris 
 
 human race to the riddle of the world this light 
 of the spirit more necessary to souls than that 
 of the sun. 
 
 Whoever destroys this work, murders more than 
 a man ; he murders the purest soul of a race. 
 His crime is inexpiable, and Dante would have it 
 punished with an eternal agony, eternally renewed. 
 We who repudiate the vindictive spirit of so cruel 
 a genius, do not hold a people responsible for the 
 crimes of a few, The drama which unfolds itself 
 before our eyes, and whose almost certain dtnoue- 
 ment will be the crushing of the German hege- 
 nomy, is enough for us. 
 
 What brings it home to us most nearly is that 
 not one of those who constitute the moral and 
 intellectual elite of Germany that hundred noble 
 spirits, and those thousands of brave hearts of 
 which no great nation was ever destitute not one 
 really suspects the crimes of his Government ; the 
 atrocities committed in Flanders, in the north 
 and in the east of France during the two or three 
 first weeks of the war ; or (one can safely wager) 
 the voluntary devastations of the towns of Belgium 
 and the ruin of Rheims. If they came to look 
 at the reality, I know that many of them would 
 weep with grief and shame ; and of all the short- 
 comings of Prussian Imperialism, the worst and 
 
 25
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 the vilest is to have concealed its crimes from 
 its people. For by depriving them of the means 
 of protesting against those crimes, it has involved 
 them for ever in the responsibility ; it has abused 
 their magnificent devotion. The intellectuals, 
 however, are also guilty. For if one admits 
 that the brave men, who in every country tamely 
 feed upon the news which their papers and 
 their leaders give them for nourishment, allow 
 themselves to be duped, one cannot pardon those 
 whose duty it is to seek truth in the midst of 
 error, and to know the value of interested 
 witnesses and passionate hallucinations. Before 
 bursting into the midst of this furious debate 
 upon which was staked the destruction of nations 
 and of the treasures of the spirit, their first duty 
 (a duty of loyalty as much as of common-sense) 
 should have been to consider the problems from 
 both sides. By blind loyalty and culpable trust- 
 fulness they have rushed head-foremost into the 
 net which their Imperialism had spread. They 
 believed that their first duty was, with their eyes 
 closed, to defend the honour of their State against 
 all accusation. They did not see that the noblest 
 means of defending it was to disavow its faults 
 and to cleanse their country of them. . . . 
 I have awaited this virile disavowal from the 
 26
 
 Pro Aris 
 
 proudest spirits of Germany, a disavowal which 
 would have been ennobling instead of humiliating. 
 The letter which I wrote to one of them, the day 
 after the brutal voice of Wolffs Agency pompously 
 proclaimed that there remained of Louvain no 
 more than a heap of ashes, was received by the 
 entire 61ite of Germany in a spirit of enmity. 
 They did not understand that I offered them the 
 chance of releasing Germany from the fetters of 
 those crimes which its Empire was forging in its 
 name. What did I ask of them? What did I 
 ask of you all, finer spirits of Germany? to 
 express at least a courageous regret for the ex- 
 cesses committed, and to dare to remind unbridled 
 power that even the Fatherland cannot save itself 
 through crime, and that above its rights are those 
 of the human spirit. I only asked for one voice 
 a single free voice. . . . None spoke. I heard 
 only the clamour of herds, the pack of intellectuals 
 giving tongue on the track whereon the hunter 
 loosed them, and that insolent Manifesto, in which 
 without the slightest effort to justify its crimes 
 you have unanimously declared that they do not 
 exist. And your theologians, your pastors, your 
 court-preachers, have stated further that you are 
 very just and that you thank God for having made 
 you thus. . . . Race of Pharisees, what chastise- 
 
 27
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 ment from on high shall scourge your sacrilegious 
 pride ! ... Do you not suspect the evil which 
 you have done to your own people ! The mega- 
 lomania, a menace to the world, of an Ostwald 
 or an H. S. Chamberlain, 1 the criminal determina- 
 tion of ninety-three intellectuals not to wish to 
 see the truth, will have cost Germany more 
 than ten defeats. 
 
 1 When I wrote this, I had not yet seen the monstrous 
 article by Thomas Mann (in the Neue Rundschau of 
 November 1914), where, in a fit of fury and injured pride, he 
 savagely claimed for Germany, as a title to glory, all the 
 crimes of which her adversaries accuse her. He dared to 
 write that the present war was a war of German Kultur 
 "against Civilisation," proclaiming that German thought 
 had no other ideal than militarism, and inscribes on his 
 banner the following lines, the apology of force oppressing 
 weakness : 
 
 " Denn der Mensch verkilmmert im Frieden, 
 Miissige Ruh ist das Grab des Mitts. 
 Das Gesetz ist der Freund des Schivachen, 
 A lies will es nur eben machen. 
 Mochte gern die Welt verflachen, 
 Aber der Krieg lasst die Kraft erscheinen. ..." 
 
 (Man deteriorates in peace. Idle rest is the tomb of courage. 
 Law is the friend of the weak, it aims at levelling all; 
 it would reduce the -world to a level. War brings out 
 strength.} 
 
 Even so a bull in the arena, mad with rage, rushes with 
 lowered Jiead on the matador's sword, and impales himself. 
 
 28
 
 Pro Aris 
 
 How clumsy you are ! I believe that of all your 
 faults maladresse is the worst. You have not 
 said one word since the beginning of this war 
 which has not been more fatal for you than 
 all the speeches of your adversaries. It is you 
 who have light-heartedly furnished the proof or 
 the argument of the worst accusations that have 
 been brought against you ; just as your official 
 agencies, under the stupid illusion of terrorising 
 us, have been the first to launch emphatic recitals 
 of your most sinister devastations. It is you, 
 who when the most impartial of your adversaries 
 were obliged, in fairness, to limit the responsibility 
 of these acts to a few of your leaders and armies, 
 have angrily claimed your share. It is you who 
 the day after the destruction of Rheims, which, in 
 your inmost hearts, should have dismayed the best 
 amongst you, have boasted of it in imbecile pride> 
 instead of trying to clear yourselves. 1 It is you, 
 wretched creatures, you, representatives of the 
 spirit, who have not ceased to extol force and to 
 
 1 As one of these 'pedants of barbarism' (so Miguel de 
 Unamuno rightly describes them) writes, " one has the right 
 to destroy, if one has the force to create " (Wer stark ist zu 
 schaffen, der darf auch zerstoren). Friedr Gundolf : Tat 
 und Wort im Krieg, published in the Frankfurter Zeitung, 
 October nth. Cf. the article of the aged Hans Thoma, in 
 the Leipzigcr Ilhtstrierte Zeitung of October ist. 
 
 29
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 despise the weak, as if you did not know that 
 the wheel of fortune turns, that this force one 
 day will weigh afresh upon you, as in past ages, 
 when your great men, at least, retained the con- 
 solation of not having yielded to it the sovereignty 
 of the spirit and the sacred rights of Right ! . . . 
 What reproaches, what remorse are you heaping 
 up for the future, O blind guides you who are 
 leading into the ditch your nation, which follows 
 you like the stumbling blind men of Brueghel ! 
 What poor arguments you have opposed to 
 us for two months ! 
 
 1. War is war, say you, that is to say without 
 common measure with the rest of things, above 
 morals and reason and all the limits of ordinary 
 life, a kind of supernatural state before which 
 one can only bow without discussion ; 
 
 2. Germany is Germany, that is to say with- 
 out common measure with the rest of nations. 
 The laws which apply to others do not apply 
 to her, and the rights which she arrogates to 
 herself to violate Right appertain to her alone. 
 Thus she can, without crime, tear up written 
 promises, betray sworn oaths, violate the 
 neutrality of peoples which she has pledged her- 
 self to defend. But she claims in return the 
 right to find, in the nations which she outrages, 
 
 30
 
 Pro Aris 
 
 "chivalrous adversaries," and that they should 
 not be so, that they should dare to defend them- 
 selves by all the means and the arms that remain 
 to them, she proclaims a crime ! . . . 
 
 One recognises there indeed the interested 
 teaching of your Prussian masters ! Great minds 
 of Germany, I do not doubt your sincerity, 
 but you are no longer capable of seeing the 
 truth. Prussian Imperialism has crushed down 
 over your eyes and conscience its spiked 
 helmet. 
 
 "Necessity knows no law." . . . Here is the 
 eleventh commandment, the message that you 
 bring to the universe to-day, sons of Kant ! . . . 
 We have heard it more than once in history: it 
 is the famous doctrine of Public Safety, mother 
 of heroisms and crimes. Every nation has re- 
 course to it in the hour of danger, but the 
 greatest are those who defend against it their 
 immortal soul. Fifteen years have passed since 
 the famous trial which saw a single innocent 
 man opposed to the force of the State. Fifteen 
 years have passed since we French affronted 
 and shattered the idol of public safety, when it 
 threatened, as our Peguy says, "the eternal 
 safety of France." 
 
 Listen to him, whom you have killed ; listen 
 3*
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 to a hero of the French conscience, writers 
 who have the keeping of the conscience of 
 Germany. 
 
 " Our enemies of that time" wrote Charles 
 P6guy, " spoke the language of the raison d'Etat, 
 of the temporal safety of the people and the race. 
 But we t by a profound Christian movement, by 
 a revolutionary effort, at unity with traditional 
 Christianity ', aimed at no less than attaining tlic 
 heights of sacrifice, in our anxiety for the eternal 
 salvation of this people. We did not wish to 
 place France in the position of having committed 
 the unpardonable sin" 
 
 You do not trouble yourselves about that, 
 thinkers of Germany. You bravely give your 
 blood to save the mortal life, but do not bother 
 about the life eternal. It is a terrible moment, 
 I grant. Your fatherland as ours struggles for 
 its life, and I understand and admire the ecstasy 
 of sacrifice which impels your youth, as ours, 
 to make of its body a rampart against death. 
 " To be or not to be," do you say ? No, that 
 is not enough. To be the great Germany, to 
 be the great France, worthy of their past, and 
 respecting one another even while fighting, that 
 is what I wish. I should blush for victory if 
 my France bought it at the price for which you 
 
 32
 
 Pro Aris 
 
 will pay for your temporary success. Even while 
 the battles are being fought upon the plains 
 of Belgium and amongst the chalky slopes of 
 Champagne, another war is taking place upon the 
 field of the spirit, and often victory below means 
 defeat above. The conquest of Belgium, Malines, 
 Louvain and Rheims^ the carillons of Flanders, 
 will sound a sadder knell in your history thanj 
 the bells of Jena ; and the conquered Belgians 
 have robbed you of your glory. You know it. 
 You are enraged because you know it. What is 
 the good of vainly trying to deceive yourselves? 
 Truth will be clear to you in the end. You 
 have done your best to silence her one day she 
 will speak ; she will speak by the mouth of one 
 of your own in whom will be awakened the 
 conscience of your race. . . . Oh, that he may 
 soon appear and that we may hear his voice 
 the pure and noble voice of the redeemer who 
 shall set you free ! He who has lived in the 
 intimacy of your old Germany, who has clasped 
 her hand in the twisted streets of her heroic 
 and sordid past, who has caught the breath of 
 her centuries of trials and shames, remembers 
 and waits : for he knows that even if she has 
 never proved strong enough to bear victory 
 without wavering, it is in her hours of trouble 
 
 33 C
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 that she reforms herself, and her greatest geniuses 
 are sons of sorrow. 
 
 September 1914. 
 
 * 
 * # 
 
 Since these lines were written I have watched 
 the birth of the anxiety which little by little is 
 making its way into the consciences of the good 
 people of Germany. First a secret doubt, kept 
 under by a stubborn effort to believe the bad 
 arguments collected by their Government to 
 oppose it documents fabricated to prove that 
 Belgium had renounced her neutrality herself, 
 false allegations (in vain repudiated four times 
 by the French Government, by the Commander- 
 in-Chief, by the Cardinal and the Archbishop, 
 and by the Mayor of Rheims) accusing the 
 French of using the Cathedral of Rheims for 
 military purposes. Lacking arguments, their 
 system of defence is at times disconcerting in 
 its naivete. 
 
 "Is it possible," they say, "that we should 
 be accused of wishing to destroy artistic monu- 
 ments, we, the people above all others who 
 venerate art, in whom is instilled this respect 
 from infancy, who have the greatest number of 
 text books and historical collections of art and 
 the longest list of lectures on aesthetics? Is it 
 
 34
 
 Pro Aris 
 
 possible to accuse of the most barbarous actions 
 the most humane, the most affectionate, and the 
 most homely of peoples?" 
 
 The idea never strikes them that Germany is 
 not constituted by a single race of men, and that 
 besides the obedient masses who are born to 
 obey, to respect the law all the laws there is 
 the race which commands, which believes itself 
 above all laws, and which makes and unmakes 
 them in the name of force and necessity (Not . . .) 
 It is this evil marriage of idealism and German \ 
 force which leads to these disasters. The ideal- 
 ism proves to be a woman ; a woman captive, 
 who like so many worthy German wives, worships 
 her lord and master, and refuses even to think 
 that he could ever be wrong. 
 
 It is, however, necessary for the salvation of 
 Germany that she should one day countenance 
 the thought of divorce, or that the wife should 
 have the courage to make her voice heard in the 
 household. I know already several who are 
 beginning to champion the rights of the spirit 
 against force. Many a German voice has reached 
 us lately in letters protesting against war and 
 deploring with us the injustices which we deplore 
 I will not give their names in order not to com- 
 promise them. Not very long ago I told the 
 
 35
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 " Fair " * which obstructed Paris that it was not 
 France. I say to-day to the German Fair, " You 
 are not the true Germany." There exists another 
 Germany juster and more humane, whose ambition 
 is not to dominate the world by force and guile, 
 but to absorb in peace everything great in the 
 thought of other races, and in return to reflect the 
 harmony. With that Germany there is no dispute ; 
 we are not her enemies, we are the enemies of those 
 who have almost succeeded in making the world 
 forget that she* still lives. 
 October 1914. 
 
 Edition des Cahiers Vaudois ro e cahier, 1914 (Lausanne, 
 C. Tarin). 
 
 1 Jean-Christophe, part v, " La Foire sur la Place." In 
 vol. iii of the English version. TRANS.
 
 Ill 
 
 ABOVE THE BATTLE 
 
 O YOUNG men that shed your blood with so 
 generous a joy for the starving earth ! O heroism 
 of the world ! What a harvest for destruction 
 to reap under this splendid summer sun ! Young 
 men of all nations, brought into conflict by a 
 common ideal, making enemies of those who 
 should be brothers ; all of you, marching to your 
 death, are dear to me. 1 Slavs, hastening to the 
 aid of your race ; Englishmen fighting for honour 
 and right ; intrepid Belgians who dared to oppose 
 the Teutonic colossus, and defend against him 
 the Thermopylae of the West ; Germans fighting 
 to defend the philosophy and the birthplace of 
 Kant against the Cossack avalanche ; and you, 
 above all, my young compatriots, in whom the 
 generation of heroes of the Revolution lives 
 again ; you, who for years have confided your 
 
 1 At the very hour I wrote these lines, Charles Peguy 
 died. 
 
 37
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 dreams to me, and now, on the verge of battle, 
 bid me a sublime farewell. 
 
 Those years of scepticism and gay frivolity in 
 which we in France grew up are avenged in you ; 
 your faith, which is ours, you protect from their 
 poisonous influence ; and with you that faith 
 triumphs on the battlefield. " A war of revenge " 
 is the cry. Yea ! revenge indeed ; but in no 
 spirit of Chauvinism. The revenge of faith 
 against all the egotisms of the senses and of the 
 spirit the surrender of self to eternal ideas. 
 
 One of the most powerful of the young French 
 novelists Corporal X. writes to me : 
 
 " 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 com- 
 plete 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 Marseillaise, 
 
 \ thrills them ; heroic, earnest, and even religious. I have 
 
 I 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 
 
 the ephebi of old calmly going to sacrifice. After them 
 
 38
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 1 1 
 Germany and of armed peace. It will fade like a phan- t 
 torn before us ; the world seems to breathe again. Re- 
 assure your Viennese friend, 1 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 ful- 
 filled ; and we who prophesied it twenty years ago to 
 unbelieving ears may rejoice to-day." 
 
 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 un- 
 shaken certainty that, in defending your invaded 
 
 1 Alludes to a Viennese writer who had told me, a few 
 weeks before the declaration of war, that a disaster for 
 France would be a disaster for the liberal thinkers of 
 Germany too. 
 
 39
 
 country, you are defending 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 van- 
 quished, 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 Europe ascending its funeral 
 
 40
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 pyre, and, like Hercules, destroying itself with 
 its own hands ! 
 
 And thus the three greatest nations of the West 
 the guardians of civilisation, rush headlong to 
 their ruin, calling in to their aid Cossacks, Turks, 
 Japanese, Cingalese, Soudanese, Senegalese, 
 Moroccans, Egyptians, Sikhs and Sepoys bar- 
 barians from the poles and those from the equator, 
 souls and bodies of all colours. 1 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 civilisation 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 the other? 
 Was it not your duty to attempt you]aaM&Jlver_ 
 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 labour and the riches of the 
 world ? Must the stronger for ever darken the 
 others with the shadow of his pride, and the 
 others for ever unite to dissipate it ? Is there no 
 1 See note, p, 193 
 41
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 man- 
 kind 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 
 
 f*o regulate. There is no fatality ! The only 
 .tality is what we desire; and more often, too, 
 hat we do not desire enough. Let each now 
 :peat his mea culpa. The leaders of thought, 
 the Church, the Labour 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. 
 
 The most striking feature in this monstrous 
 42
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 epic, the fact without precedent, is the unani- 
 mity 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 hurl- 
 ing 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 ; Hol- 
 land against Hanptmann ; Wells against Bernard 
 Shaw. Kipling and D'Annunzio,. Dehmel and de 
 
 43
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 Rdgnier sing war hymns, Barres and Maeterlinck 
 chant paeans of hatred. Between a fugue of Bach 
 and the organ which thunders Deutschland ilber 
 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 civilisation 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 fossilised man in the Chapelle-aux- 
 Saints most nearly, is none other than that of 
 Prince Bismarck ! " 
 
 44
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 But the two moral forces whose weakness this 
 contagious war shows up most clearly are Chris- 
 tianity and Socialism. These rival apostles of 
 religious and secular internationalism have sud- 
 denly developed into the most ardent of 
 nationalists. Herve is eager to die for the 
 standard of Austerlitz. The German socialists, 
 pure trustees of the pure doctrine, support the 
 bills 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 honour 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 ; J 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 faith of others ; they have no 
 courage to die for their own. 
 
 1 Liebknecht has since gloriously cleared his honour 01 
 the compromises of his party. I here express my admira- 
 tion of his attitude. (R. R., January 1915.) 
 
 45
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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, and Love 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 colours ; Jesuits offer their services to 
 the German armies ; cardinals issue warlike man- 
 dates ; 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. . . . 
 
 Come, friends ! Let us make a stand ! Can 
 46
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 x 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 defence 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 honour them 
 and seek to unite with them for our common good. 
 You Christians will say and in this you seek 
 consolation for having betrayed your Master's 
 
 1 Recently published in the Corriere della Sera and trans- 
 lated by the Journal de Geneve, September 1914. 
 
 47
 
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 im- 
 purity ; 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 neighbours 
 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 funda- 
 mental 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 to-day 
 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 noble chimera of 
 modernism what did he do against those princes 
 
 48
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 Tsar, is it a question of defending one despot- 
 ism 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 main- 
 taining 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 honour, its independence, its 
 life. Who has brought these plagues upon them ? 
 brought them to the desperate alternative of over- 
 whelming their adversary or dying ? None other 
 
 49 D
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 Tsarism, 
 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 domina- 
 tion, 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 the free 
 men of all the countries of Europe when this 
 war is over take up again the motto of Voltaire : 
 " Ecrasons VinfAme ! " 
 
 50
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 violenc 
 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 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
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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, 1 professor of medicine at Paris, and 
 taken up enthusiastically by M. Paul Seippel 
 in the Journal de Geneve. 2 
 
 " 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 organisa- 
 tion 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 before public 
 opinion and seeks to court it. Nothing shows 
 this more clearly than the efforts of both parties 
 
 1 Le Temps, September 4, 1914. 
 
 2 Issues of September 16 and 17, 1914 : La Guerre et le 
 Droit. 
 
 52
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 tri- 
 bunal 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 honour of humanity ? What is the value I/ 
 of life when you have saved it at the price of II 
 all that is worth living for ? ... 
 
 Rt 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, 1 "can only lead to zoological wars, wars 
 of extermination, similar to those tn which various 
 species of rodents and carnivorous beasts fight 
 for their existence. This would be the end of 
 
 1 Letter dated September 15, 1871, published in Reforme 
 intellectuelle et morale. 
 
 53
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 that fertile admixture called humanity, composed 
 as it is o/ 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 Switzer- 
 land 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 
 
 54
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 to-day. 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 Geneve, September 15, 1914. 
 
 55
 
 IV 
 
 THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS: 
 PANGERMANISM, PANSLAVISM 
 
 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 passion- 
 ately 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 
 
 56
 
 The Lesser of Two Evils 
 
 reading the papers and letters which, during 
 the last two months, have arrived in Geneva 
 from every country, that the ardour 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, English- 
 men, 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 Liege to Senlis, passing by way of 
 Louvain, Malines, and Rheims. For Germany, 
 the monster (" Ungeheuer" as the aged Wundt 
 calls it) which threatens civilisation is Russia, 
 and the bitterest reproach which the Germans 
 hurl against France is our alliance with the 
 Empire of the Tsar. 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 
 
 57
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 danger in the balance, and thus show 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 noth- 
 ing. 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 im- 
 portant 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 to-day, 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 
 
 58
 
 The Lesser of Two Evils 
 
 of since the death of Nietzsche, whose magnifi- 
 cent 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 to 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 of Boris 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 Insti- 
 
 59
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 tutes, Russian students and scholars work side 
 by side with our own, and Russian revolution- 
 aries who have taken refuge in Paris mingle 
 their aspirations with those of our socialists. 
 
 The crimes of Tsarism are continually on 
 your lips. We, too, denounce these crimes ; for 
 Tsarism is our enemy, and what I wrote but 
 recently, I repeat now. But it is likewise the 
 enemy of the intellectual elite 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 Civilised 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 mobilisation 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 organisation, no reason to 
 respect it more. "Civilised 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 
 60
 
 The Lesser of Two Evils 
 
 Germany 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 with- 
 out 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 Tsarism never found 
 a defender amongst the great artists, scholars, and 
 thinkers of Russia. Are not Kropotkin, Tolstoi, 
 Dostoievski, and Gorki, the greatest names in 
 its literature, the very ones who denounced its 
 crimes !
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 con- 
 fidences 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 civilisation, 
 seems to me no less ferocious than Tsarism 
 towards everything that ventures to oppose its 
 avaricious desire for universal dominion. But 
 whereas immense and mysterious Russia, over- 
 flowing with young and revolutionary forces, gives 
 us hope of a coming renewal, your Germany bases 
 its systematic harshness on a culture too anti- 
 quated and scholastic to allow of any hope of 
 amendment. If I had any such hope and I once 
 
 62
 
 The Lesser of Two Evils 
 
 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 yourselves on 
 your complete unity with Prussian Imperialism. 
 Know once for all that there is nothing more over- 
 whelming for us Latins, nothing more difficult to 
 endure, than your militarisation 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 in- 
 teresting 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 them ; let young Russia, herself so eager 
 
 63
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 for liberty, help generously to shed its benefits 
 abroad. 
 
 October 10, 1914. 
 
 * 
 * # 
 
 LETTER TO ROMAIN ROLLAND 
 
 y>th September, 1914. 
 
 SIR, I desire to thank you for your article, 
 "Above the Battle." . . . Although by my edu- 
 cation I am more akin to the civilisations of 
 Germany and Russia than to the civilisation 
 of France, yet I respect the French spirit more, 
 for I am convinced, more than ever to-day, 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 the liberty of 
 the world. You can hardly imagine how such 
 words re-echo in the hearts of oppressed nations, 
 what streams of sympathy are to-day converging 
 from all corners of Europe upon France, what 
 hopes depend upon your victory. 
 
 And yet many doubts have been expressed 
 with regard to these French and English asser- 
 tions because both nations have allied them- 
 
 64
 
 The Lesser of Two Evils 
 
 selves 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 Tsar? Every revolutionary party 
 would refuse indignantly to accept assistance 
 from Prussian militarism. Do they wish to set 
 free the neighbouring 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 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 
 
 65 E
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 centre is 
 Riga. There are colonies of them in all the 
 principal towns of Russia. Last year the Annales 
 des Nationalitis of Paris devoted two numbers to 
 these two sister nations. Owing to the geographi- 
 cal 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 libera- 
 tors. By sheer force the Germans kept us for 
 centuries in a state equivalent to slavery. Only 
 fifty years ago the Russian Government 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 
 
 66
 
 The Lesser of Two Evils 
 
 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 accusa- 
 tions with a bitter smile, and in writing the word 
 Kulturtrager (bearer of civilisation) add an ex- 
 clamation mark afterwards, for the behaviour of 
 the Germans has brought the expression into 
 contempt. We have acquired our culture in spite 
 of their opposition, and against their will. Even 
 to-day 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 ad- 
 ministered in a manner that differs, and differs 
 for the worse, from that adopted in the 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 
 
 67
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 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 to-day. Certainly the 
 gulf between these two tendencies is less deep 
 
 68
 
 The Lesser of Two Evils 
 
 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 intel- 
 lectual world of Russia than to that of the Germany 
 of to-day, is that it would never be capable of justi- 
 fying 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 defence of a guilty 
 Government. 
 
 Let not my testimony in favour of the Russians 
 lead any one to believe that I am idealising 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 
 
 69
 
 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 atro- 
 cities 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 might count 
 themselves fortunate which were visited by dragoons 
 commanded by officers of Russian nationality ; for 
 where Riissian 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 
 
 70
 
 The Lesser of Two Evils 
 
 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 colonise 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 employ- 
 ment, 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 civilisation and know well what 
 Panslavism and Pangermanism mean, are of 
 opinion that, of the two, Panslavism is less 
 fatal to the civilisations 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 arro- 
 gant contempt for everything that is not themselves, 
 the calm and calculated method in which they carry
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 hangman. The officers of German nationality, on 
 the other hand, carried out their orders with 
 enjoyment. 
 
 Nevertheless, Russian domination, though pre- 
 ferable 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 weak- 
 
 72
 
 The Lesser of Two Evils 
 
 ened, it conceded certain liberal measures and 
 then revoked them almost entirely as its strength 
 returned. What have we to expect from a 
 victory for Tsarism, especially we who are not 
 Russians, but a savage revival of the crushing 
 ideals of Panslavism ? 
 
 This is the agonised question which the nations 
 subject to Russia are asking now. I read in 
 your article that the turn of Tsarism 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 
 Tsarism, 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 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 
 
 73
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 Pan- 
 germanism 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, with- 
 out the perpetual menace of being absorbed by 
 Russia or Germany. We believe that, in virtue 
 of the civilisation 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 civilised 
 peoples. 
 Journal de Geneve, October 10, 1914.
 
 INTER ARMA CARITAS 
 
 ONCE more I address myself to our friends the 
 enemy. But this time I shall attempt no dis- 
 cussion, 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. 1 
 
 1 Open letter of Dr. Ernst Dryander, the First Court 
 Preacher and Vice-President of the Higher Ecclesiastical 
 Council, to C. E. Babut, Pastor of Nimes, September 15, 
 1914 (published in FEssor for the loth October and the 
 Journal de Geneve, i8th October). 
 
 75
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 recognise 
 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 
 the ex-parte affirmations of their Emperor, and of 
 their Chancellor, like well-behaved scholars, whose 
 only argument is Magister 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 colour, whose 
 testimony demands the attention of an impartial 
 
 76
 
 Inter Arma Caritas 
 
 judge? But do they so much as know of their 
 existence, and does the master allow his class to 
 handle the manuals of his enemies ? Our dis- 
 agreement is not only as regards the facts of the 
 case ; it is due to difference in mind itself. 
 Between the spirit of Germany to-day and that 
 of the rest of Europe there is no longer a point 
 of contact. We speak to them of Humanity ; 
 they reply with Uebermensck, 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 labour is our lot 
 
 77
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 throughout the years. It knows no pause, even 
 in those hours when the 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 role 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 
 Anna Caritas. 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 Amidst all the misery which every man of feel- 
 ing can do his share to relieve, let us recall the 
 fate of the prisoner of war. But knowing that 
 Germany to-day blushes at her former senti- 
 mentality, 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 
 
 78
 
 Inter Arma Caritas 
 
 in its train thousands of prisoners, officers and 
 men. 
 
 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 
 rumours circulate only too easily, rumours given 
 currency by an unscrupulous press, rumours 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 Ger- 
 many ? But it is all a lie on both sides ; and K-o 
 those of us whose task it~Ts 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 know- 
 ledge of previous wars in the West would not have 
 allowed us to expect, is by contrast less cruel to 
 
 79
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 all those prisoners and wounded who are put 
 out of the battle line. 
 
 The letters that we receive and documents 
 already published especially an interesting account 
 which appeared in the Neue Ztircher Zeitung of 
 October i8th, 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 indi- 
 viduals disclose a similar situation, 1 and there is 
 
 1 The newspapers of both countries give publicity only to 
 prejudiced stories unfavourable to the enemy. One would 
 imagine that they devote themselves to collecting only the 
 worst cases, in order to preserve the atmosphere of hatred ; 
 and those to which they give predominance are often doubt- 
 ful and always exceptional. No mention is made of any- 
 thing that would tell in a contrary direction of prisoners 
 who are grateful for their treatment, as in the letters which 
 
 80
 
 Inter Arma Caritas 
 
 plenty of reliable 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 con- 
 tending 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 im- 
 agined, and his lot, sad as it is, is less to be 
 pitied than that of another class of prisoners of 
 
 we have to transmit to their families in which, for example, 
 a German civil prisoner speaks of a pleasant walk, or of sea 
 bathing, he has been allowed to enjoy. I have even come 
 across the case of an entomologist who is peacefully 
 absorbed in his researches, and profiting by his enforced 
 sojourn in the South of France to complete his collection 
 of insects. 
 
 8l F
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 over him, 
 and it is possible to discover where he is and 
 to come to his assistance. 
 
 In this work the admirable Agence Inter- 
 nationale des prisonniers de guerre, most provi- 
 dentially 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 aegis 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 trans- 
 mits about 7,000 letters between prisoners and 
 their families, and is responsible for the safe 
 
 82
 
 Inter Arma Caritas 
 
 dispatch of some 4,000 francs on an average. 
 The precise information which it is able to 
 communicate was very meagre 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. 
 
 This renewal of intercourse between a prisoner 
 and his family is not the only beneficial result 
 of our organisation. Its peaceful work, its im- 
 partial 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 ex- 
 change 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 
 
 83
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 neutral countries, who are so ungrudging in 
 their anxiety to aid the sufferings of the com- 
 batants, 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. 1 
 
 Instead of showering gifts (which, no doubt, 
 are 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 con- 
 centrated, 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 
 
 1 On this point, I would echo the appeal in the article 
 cited above, from the Neue Ztircher Zeitung. 
 
 84
 
 Inter Arma Caritas 
 
 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. 
 
 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 im- 
 possible. 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 mobilisation by de- 
 claring 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 
 
 85
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 
 i, 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 loth, the Saxons 
 seized a helpless village priest of seventy-three, 
 scarcely able 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 Quievrechain (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 Nomeny (Meurthe-et-Moselle) ; since when 
 
 86
 
 Inter Arma Caritas 
 
 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 dis- 
 appeared 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 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 and two years 
 of age. Are we to understand that they too 
 could have been mobilised ? 
 
 We see the anguish of the survivors. Imagine 
 87
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 serve ! Yet these are 
 the most innocent victims of this war. They 
 have not taken part in it, and nothing had pre- 
 pared them for such calamities. 
 
 Fortunately a man of generous sympathies 
 (he will not forgive me for publishing his name), 
 Dr. Ferriere, 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 
 
 88
 
 Inter Arma Caritas 
 
 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 honour 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 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 can- 
 not 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, 
 
 89
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 more can be expected from the charitable 
 efforts of private individuals than from Govern- 
 ments. The friends with whom we communi- 
 cated 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 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 
 
 90
 
 Inter Arma Caritas 
 
 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. May Notre- Dame la Misere 
 lay on the brow of raging Europe her stern 
 but succouring hand. May she open the eyes 
 of these peoples, 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 Geneve, October 30, 1914.
 
 VI 
 
 TO THE PEOPLE THAT IS SUFFERING 
 FOR JUSTICE 
 
 (For King Alberfs Book.*} 
 
 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 Thermopylae of Liege ; 
 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 com- 
 pleted their story ! The heroism of this people, 
 who, without a murmur, sacrificed everything for 
 honour, 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. It was a liberation of the op- 
 
 1 Published by the Daily Telegraph, London, 1914. 
 92
 
 People Suffering for Justice 
 
 pressed 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 to-day are the sons of the Flemings of 
 Courtrai. The men of this land never feared 
 to oppose their powerful neighbours, 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 
 
 93
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 fertile in 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, Ger- 
 many, 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 Lainine 
 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 emerg- 
 
 94
 
 People Suffering for Justice 
 
 ing from them always gay and smiling realises 
 also the destinies of the nation that gave birth 
 to Ulenspiegel, and even in the darkest 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 of Till Ulenspiegel, 
 when they think he is dead, and are going to 
 bury him, he wakes up : 
 
 "Are they'' he asks, "going to bury Ulen- 
 spiegel the sou^ 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. 
 
 95
 
 VII 
 
 LETTER TO MY CRITICS ' 
 
 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 the Journal de 
 Geneve^ 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 thousands of victims who are 
 
 1 The editor of a great Paris paper having offered to 
 publish my reply to those who attacked me, I sent him 
 this article, which never appeared. 
 
 9 6
 
 Letter to My Critics 
 
 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 
 civilisation, 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 ? With- 
 out entering into the discussion of certain points 
 of detail, such as the appeal made by the Allies 
 to the forces of Asia and Africa of which I 
 
 97 G
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 materialising in threats of disturbance in 
 the world of Islam exception is taken essen- 
 tially 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 w*>rld 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 N 
 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 with 
 
 98
 
 Letter to My Critics 
 
 the name Corne'lienne ? Corneille himself has 
 given the answer : 
 
 Albe vous a nommc, je ne vous connais plus. 
 Je vous connais encore, et c'est ce qui me tue. 
 
 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 spread- 
 ing 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 
 ever seen. A German wrote to me a few weeks 
 ago : " France has won in this war a prodigious 
 
 99
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 moral triumph. The sympathies of the whole 
 world are drawn towards her ; and, most extra- 
 ordinary 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 com- 
 batants. 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 
 100 fc
 
 Letter to My Critics 
 
 violence. And there is the danger. For they form 
 opinion, the only opinion that can 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 
 101
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 situation lies in the fact that the French spirit 
 only really began to exercise an attraction upon 
 Germany some two or three years ago. Germany 
 was beginning to discover the true France, the 
 France of work and of faith. The new gene- 
 rations, 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 brother- 
 hood. 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 Peguy 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. 
 1 02
 
 Letter to My Critics 
 
 One owes it to that adversary to recognise that 
 in default of other virtues the spirit of sacrifice 
 is, in the present instance, almost boundless. It 
 would be a great mistake to force it to extremes. 
 Instead of driving this blind people to a mag- 
 nificent and desperate defence, let us try to open 
 their eyes. It is not impossible. An Alsatian 
 patriot, to whom one could not impute indul- 
 gence 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 agonised 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 heart lives again 
 in our troops, fight not against our enemies, but 
 103
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 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. . . . " * 
 (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 neighbours 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 un- 
 worthy of those among us who find themselves 
 'iPaul Bourget 
 104
 
 Letter to My Critics 
 
 outside the struggle, and who through the life of 
 the spirit have wider relations with the universe 
 a little lay church which, to-day more than the 
 other, preserves its faith in the unity of human 
 thought and believes that all men are sons of 
 the same Father. In any case, if such a faith 
 merits insult, the insults constitute an honour 
 that we will claim as ours before the tribunal of 
 posterity. 
 
 105
 
 VIII 
 THE IDOLS 
 
 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 with- 
 out fear or error, to look themselves in the face 
 without false pride or false humility and to 
 recognise their weakness and their strength, that 
 they may know their true position in the universe. 
 They have illumined the path with the bright- 
 ness 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 
 
 1 06
 
 The Idols 
 
 the endeavour to cut the 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 the 
 
 sans-culotte at 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 hurled herself against France in 
 
 1870 and which her enemies now wish to use 
 
 107
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 against the Germany of to-day. The latest on 
 the scene is that authentic product of German 
 science, fraternally allied to the labours of in- 
 dustry, 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 
 legitimising them ; being unwilling to sacrifice 
 them, he must idealise them. That is why the 
 problem at which he has never ceased to labour 
 throughout the centuries has been to harmonise 
 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 them- 
 selves 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 
 
 108
 
 The Idols 
 
 the more does it offer for passion to devour, 
 and history sufficiently shows the terrifying 
 paroxysms to which the lives 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 reason- 
 ing. 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 monstrous chefs-d'oeuvre. Give an in- 
 tellectual any ideal and any evil passion and 
 he will always succeed in harmonising the 
 twain. The love of God and the love of man- 
 kind 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 Wiir- 
 temberg established the fact that neither Christ 
 nor John the Baptist nor the apostles desired to 
 suppress militarism* A clever intellectual is a 
 
 1 The Evangelical pastor Schrenck in an article on " War 
 and the New Testament," quoted with approval by the 
 Rev. Ch. Correvon in the Journal religieux of Neuchatel, 
 November I4th. 
 A 109
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 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. . . . 
 
 " / am now " (it is the voice of Ostwald^} "going 
 to explain to you the great secret of Germany. We, 
 or rather the Germanic race, have discovered the 
 factor of Organisation. Other peoples still live under 
 the regime of individualism while we are under 
 that of Organisation. The stage of Organisation is 
 a more advanced stage of civilisation? 
 
 1 In a declaration to the editor of the Swedish paper 
 Dagen. 
 
 IIO
 
 The Idols 
 
 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 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 organise Europe, for Europe 
 has hitherto not been organised. With us everything 
 tends to elicit from each individual the maximal 
 output in the direction most favourable 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 organisation in our higher civilisation" 
 
 Thereupon the chemist-philosopher, who is also 
 in
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 in his leisure hours a politician and a strategist, 
 sketches in bold outline the picture of the vic- 
 tories of Germany and a remodelled Europe 
 a United States of Europe under the pater- 
 nal sceptre of his mailed Kaiser : England 
 crushed, France disarmed, and Russia dismem- 
 bered. His colleague Haeckel completes this 
 joyous expose by dividing Belgium, the British 
 Empire, and the North of France like Perrette 
 of the fable before her pitcher broke. Unfortu- 
 nately neither Haeckel nor Ostwald tell us if 
 their plan for the establishment of this higher 
 civilisation 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 realise the sinister buffoonery, worthy 
 of a Moliere : " You know that I am a pacifist." 
 However far the high priests of a cult may 
 allow their emotion to carry them, their pro- 
 fession of faith still retains a certain diplomatic 
 reserve which does not hamper their followers. 
 Thus the Kulturmenschen. 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 
 112
 
 The Idols 
 
 what they think of the article of Thomas Mann 
 which appeared in the November number of the 
 Neue 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. 
 
 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 endeavours 
 to identify the cause of Kultur with that of 
 civilisation, Mann proclaims : "They have nothing 
 in common. The present war is that of Kultur 
 (i.e. of Germany) against civilisation." And 
 pushing this outrageous boast of pride to the 
 point of madness, he defines civilisation as Reason 
 (Vernunftt Aufkldrung\ Gentleness (Sittigung, 
 Sanftigung), Spirit (Geist, Auflosung), and 
 Kultur as " a spiritual organisation of the world " 
 which does not exclude " bloody savagery." 
 Kultur is " the sublimation of the demoniacal " 
 (die Sublimierung des Ddmonischeri). 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 
 
 113 H
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 ideal is the same, their aim the same, their prin- 
 ciple the same. Their enemy is peace, is spirit 
 ("/, der Geist ist zivil> ist bilrgerlich "). 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." 
 
 Das Gesetz ist der Freund des Schivachen, 
 
 Mochte gem die Welt verflachen 
 
 Aber der Krieg lasst die Kraft crscheinen . . . 
 
 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 
 114
 
 The Idols 
 
 German intelligence has been precipitated by 
 pride and struggle, and to the moral anarchy 
 of this Empire, whose organisation is imposing 
 only to the eyes of those who do not see farther 
 than the fagade ! Who cannot see the weak- 
 ness of a Government which gags its socialist 
 press and yet tolerates such an insulting con- 
 tradiction as this ? 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 be- 
 lieved. 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 realise she has had no 
 more deadly enemy than her own intellectuals. 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 I write here without prejudice, for I am cer- 
 tainly not proud of our French intellectuals. 
 The Idol of Race, or of Civilisation, 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 
 115
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 which my country bows down are less dangerous. 
 They are not aggressive, and, moreover, there 
 remains even in the most fanatical of our in- 
 tellectuals 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 
 honour to the cause of reason, which they have 
 not been able to protect against the winds of 
 violence and folly. There is a saying of Emer- 
 son'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 of character. 
 
 Certain somewhat paradoxical passages in my 
 own writings have caused me at times to be 
 styled an anti-intellectual ; an absurd charge to 
 116
 
 The Idols 
 
 bring against one who has given his life to the 
 worship of thought. But it is true that Intel- 
 lectualism has often appeared to me as a mere 
 caricature of Thought Thought mutilated, de- 
 formed, and petrified, powerless, not only to 
 dominate the drama of life, but even to under- 
 stand 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 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 
 formulae. 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, biassed by his pro- 
 fession, 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 
 
 117
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 them- 
 selves 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 
 everyday action and of experience, and modify 
 their ideas without conscious regret, the intel- 
 lectual 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 
 fraternise 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 
 118
 
 The Idols 
 
 seems the most worthy or to despise them ? 
 Admitting that your Kultur on 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 and hot-house. It is not afraid of the 
 wind. It has braved other tempests than that 
 of to-day. It grows under brambles and under 
 dead leaves. Intellectuals of Germany, intel- 
 lectuals of France, labour and sow on the fields 
 of your own minds : respect those of others. 
 Before organising the world you have enough 
 to do to orgatiise your own private world. Try 
 for a moment to forget your ideas and behold 
 yourselves. And above all, look at us. Champions 
 of Kultur and of Civilisation, 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 for ever 
 119
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 refashions its gossamer web ? Vois-tu pas que tu 
 es mot? 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 centre 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 is nothing without that 
 of the heart. It is nothing also without good 
 sense and humour good sense which shows to 
 every people and to every being their place in the 
 universe and humour which is the critic of 
 misguided reason, the soldier who, following the 
 chariot to the Capitol, reminds Caesar in his hour 
 of triumph that he is bald. 
 Journal de Geneve, December 4, 1914. 
 
 1 2O
 
 IX 
 
 FOR EUROPE 
 
 MANIFESTO OF THE WRITERS AND THINKERS OF 
 CATALONIA 
 
 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 recognise 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. 
 To-day, 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 
 
 121
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 all will ring together in unison. The test is good. 
 Let us be thankful. Those who desired to sepa- 
 rate us have joined our hands. 
 
 R. R. 
 December 31, 1914. 
 
 MANIFESTO OF THE FRIENDS OF 
 THE MORAL UNITY OF EUROPE 
 
 A number of literary and scientific men at 
 Barcelona, as far removed from amorphous inter- 
 nationalism on the one hand as from mere 
 parochialism on the other, have banded them- 
 selves together to 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 to-day is rending the heart of this 
 Europe of ours is, by implication, a Civil 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 Common- 
 wealth and its general well-being. None of the 
 belligerents, therefore, can be allowed to aim at 
 the complete destruction of its opponents ; and 
 
 122
 
 For Europe (Spain) 
 
 it is even less legitimate to start out from the 
 criminal hypothesis that one or another of the 
 parties is de facto already 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 shipwrecked, 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 quietening 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 to-morrow will 
 123
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 applaud this modest work to which we are devot- 
 ing ourselves to-day. 
 
 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 littte 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 a unified Europe, 
 
 BARCELONA, November 27, 1914. 
 
 EUGENIO D'ORS, Member of the Institute; 
 MANUEL DE MONTOLIU, Author; AURELIO RAS, 
 Director of the Review Estudio; AUGUSTIN 
 MURUA, University Professor ; TELESFORO DE 
 ARANZADI, University Professor; MIGUEL S. 
 OLIVER ; JUAN PALAU, publicist ; PABLO VILA, 
 Director of Mont <?Or College ; ENRIQUE JARDI 
 Barrister; E. MESSEGUER, publicist; CARMEN 
 KARR, Director of the Residencia de Estudiantes 
 124
 
 For Europe (Spain) 
 
 El Hogar; ESTEBAN TERRADES, Member of the 
 Institute ; JOSE ZULUETA, Member of Parliament ; 
 R. JORI, Author; EUDALDO DURAN REYNALS, 
 Librarian of the Biblioteca de Cataluna ; RAFAEL 
 CAMPALANS, Engineer ; J. M. L6pEZ-Pic6, 
 Author; R. RUOABADO, Author; E. CUELLO 
 CALOU, University Professor; MANUEL REVEN- 
 I,6s, Professor of the Escuela de Fundonarios ; 
 J. FARRAN MAYORAL, Author; JAIME MASS6 
 TORRENTS, Member of the Institute ; JORGE 
 RUBIO BALAGUER, Director of the Biblioteca de 
 
 Cataluna. 
 
 Translated from the Spanish by R, R. 
 
 Journal de Geneve, January 9, 1915. 
 
 125
 
 X 
 
 FOR EUROPE 
 
 AN APPEAL FROM HOLLAND TO THE INTELLECTUALS OF 
 ALL NATIONS 
 
 IN a recent article, in which I put before the 
 readers of the Journal de Geneve the fine mani- 
 festo 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 : 
 
 The Nederlandsche Anti-Oorlog Raad (Dutch 
 Anti-War Council) is perhaps the most important 
 attempt that these last months has seen to unify 
 pacifist thought. Whilst recognising the value of 
 what has been done for some years past in favour 
 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 catas- 
 trophe, if it had been better taken in hand." 
 There has been lack of co-operation, wastage of 
 126
 
 For Europe (Holland) 
 
 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 the N.A.O.R. is devoting itself. 
 Founded on October 8, 1914, it had suc- 
 ceeded by January i$th in securing the adhesion 
 of 350 Dutch societies (official, political, of all 
 parties, religious, intellectual, labour), and its mani- 
 festoes 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 the N.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 naive confidence in vague 
 peace formulae, nor even in well-defined mutual 
 obligations. The universal war of to-day has, alas ! 
 taught it much in this respect also." And, more- 
 over, it is quite aware that a peace at any price, 
 under present conditions, would only be a conse- 
 127
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 cration of injustice. The great public meetings 
 which it has organised on December 1 5th 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 the N.A.O.R. suggest, 
 with all the reserve necessitated by its attitude 
 of neutrality and its profound desire for impar- 
 tiality, 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 want- 
 ing. 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 the N.A.O.R. is especially to 
 study the conditions in which we can realise a 
 just, humane, and durable peace, which will secure 
 for Europe a long future of fruitful tranquillity 
 and of common work, and to interest the public 
 opinion of all nations in securing such a peace. 
 I cannot analyse here, owing to lack of space, the 
 various public manifestoes, the Appeal to the People 
 of Holland (October 1914), or the Appeal for 
 Co-operation and the Preparation of Peace, a kind 
 128
 
 For Europe (Holland) 
 
 of attempt to mobilise the pacifist armies (Novem- 
 ber). The latter of these contains ideas which 
 agree in many cases with those of the Union of 
 Democratic Control (the abolition of secret diplo- 
 macy, 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 ad- 
 dressed to the thinkers, writers, artists, and 
 scientists of all nations. In this manifesto we 
 shall find support for the tasks which we our- 
 selves 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 of civilized humanity. 
 
 R. R. 
 
 February 7, 1915. 
 
 NEDERLANDSCHE ANTI-OORLOG 
 RAAD 
 
 Immediately after the European war had 
 broken out, several groups of intellectuals be- 
 129 I
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 longing to the warring nations have advocated 
 the justice of their country's cause in manifes- 
 toes and pamphlets, which they have scattered 
 in great numbers throughout the neutral states. 1 
 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 spokes- 
 men 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 
 
 1 The famous "Appeal to the Civilised Nations" had 
 been sent out shortly before this by the ninety-three German 
 intellectuals. 
 
 130
 
 For Europe (Holland) 
 
 they should believe implicitly in the justice of 
 their cause ; they must ardently desire to testify 
 to their faith before others. Only an unshak- 
 able 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.
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 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 un- 
 expected circumstances. To-day's enemy may 
 be to-morrow's friend. 
 
 The tone, in which of late not only the papers 
 to which we referred higher up, 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 labours 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 
 132
 
 For Europe (Holland) 
 
 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 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 respon- 
 sible 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 realised that in all civilised 
 countries there are men and women with the 
 same notions of justice and morality as they 
 have themselves. 
 
 133
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 May the representatives of all countries 
 according to the saying of a Dutch statesman 
 remember what unites them and not only 
 what separates them ! 
 
 Signed: H.-C. DRESSELHUYS, Secretary- 
 General of the Ministry of Justice, President of 
 the N.A.O.R. J.-H. SCHAPER, member of the 
 Second Chamber, Vice- President, Madame M. 
 ASSER-THORBEKE, secretary of the Dutch 
 League for Women's Suffrage. Professor Dr. 
 D. VAN EMBDEN, Professor of the law at 
 Amsterdam. Dr. KoOLEN, member of the 
 Second Chamber. V.-H. RUTGERS, member of 
 the Second Chamber. Baron de JONG VAN 
 BEEK EN DONK, Secretary of the N.A.O.R. 
 (and also subscribed to by 130 politicians, 
 intellectuals, and artists, including FREDERIK VAN 
 EEDEN, WILLEM MENGELBERG, etc.). Bureau : 
 Theresiastraat, 51, The Hague. 
 
 Journal de Geneve, February 15, 191;. 
 
 134
 
 XI 
 
 LETTER TO FREDERIK VAN EEDEN 
 
 January 12, 1915. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 You offer me the hospitality of your 
 paper De 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 be men, who, rising above the selfish aims of 
 short-lived nations, do not loose sight of the 
 interests of civilisation as a whole that civilisa- 
 tion which each race mistakenly identifies with 
 its own, to destroy that of the others. I wish 
 your noble country, 1 which has always preserved 
 1 Holland. 
 135
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 its political and moral independence among the 
 great surrounding states, could become the heart 
 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 of Amis de V Unite" 
 Morale de PEurope at Barcelona I send you 
 their fine appeal : and the Union of Democratic 
 Control founded 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 
 organisations, though each has its racial charac- 
 teristics and peculiarities, for all aim at re-estab- 
 136
 
 Letter to Frederik Van Eeden 
 
 lishing the peace of Europe as best they may. 
 With them let 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 
 endeavour 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 it may be) 
 
 137
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 and the intrigues of diplomacy, do not make it 
 the seed of a new war of revenge ; and that the 
 moral crimes 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 Kultundeal und 
 der Krieg}* 
 
 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 
 
 1 "To let a people," he said, "or still more a fraction of a 
 people, decide international questions, for instance, which 
 state shall control them, is as good as making the children 
 of a house vote for their father. It is the most ridiculous 
 fallacy that human wit has ever invented." 
 
 138
 
 Letter to Frederik Van Eeden 
 
 establish this primordial right which soars over 
 all the armies. 
 
 From this principle we can deduce an im- 
 mediate application. Since the whole of Europe 
 is disorganised 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 to-day 
 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 
 139
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 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 Weckblad voor Nederland, January 
 24, 1915. 
 
 140
 
 XII 
 
 OUR NEIGHBOUR THE ENEMY 
 
 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. Who- 
 ever insists, in the midst of war, on defending 
 141
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 peace among 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 
 honour 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 
 to-day) 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 
 
 142
 
 Our Neighbour the Enemy 
 
 in these chilly March days when we see the first 
 flowers appear 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 hare 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 pub- 
 licists of Germany, whose orders are to profess 
 143
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 for France rather sympathy and compassion 
 than animosity, and who are even constrained to 
 distinguish between the people and the Govern- 
 ment of Russia, have vowed eternal hatred 
 against England. Hasse England has become 
 their Delenda Carthago. The most moderate 
 declare that the struggle cannot be ended ex- 
 cept by the destruction of the Seeherrschaft 
 (naval supremacy) of Britain. And Great Britain 
 is not less determined to continue the conflict 
 until German militarism has been totally eradi- 
 cated. Yet it is precisely between these two 
 nations that the noblest bonds of mutual assist- 
 ance 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, the Emergency Committee for the Assist- 
 ance 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 jour- 
 ney, of securing hospitality in families for poor 
 144
 
 Our Neighbour the Enemy 
 
 Germans and finding work for them. By the 
 end of December almost ; 10,000 had 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, the Society 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 (A uskunfts-und Hilfsstelle fiir Deutsche 
 im Ausland und Ausl&nder in Deutschland}. 
 Amongst its members may be noted aristo- 
 cratic names, and persons well known in the 
 religious and academic world : Frau Marie von 
 Biilow-Mcerlins, Helene Graefin Harrach, Nora 
 Freiin von Schleinitz, Professors W. Foerster, 
 D. Baumgarten, Paul Natorp, Martin Rade, 
 145 K
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 Siegmund-Schultze, etc. At its head is a lady 
 of deep religious feeling, Dr. Elisabeth Rotten. 
 As will be readily imagined, an undertaking 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 
 recognised 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 resist- 
 ing 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 neighbour 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 
 recognise one another. . . . 
 146
 
 Our Neighbour the Enemy 
 
 " 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 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 neighbours 
 (Naechstendienste) innocent enemies, in whom 
 we see human brothers and sisters. Above 
 and beyond this practical aid, we find conso- 
 lation 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 neighbour." 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 
 
 H7
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 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 our courage 
 and gives us hope that new bridges will be 
 rebuilt, on which the men, who now find them- 
 selves 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 of gutes Frankreich, 
 " good France," or, as our tender-hearted old 
 writers used to say, " Douce France." 
 
 R. R. 
 
 I take this opportunity of recommending to 
 my French readers the publication of Mme. 
 
 148
 
 Our Neighbour the Enemy 
 
 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 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 soli- 
 darity 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 Geneve, March 15, 1915. 
 
 149
 
 XIII 
 
 A LETTER TO SVENSKA DAGBLADET OF 
 STOCKHOLM ' 
 
 THE European thought of to-morrow 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 them- 
 selves 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 ! " 
 
 1 The Svenska Dagbladet sent to the principal intel- 
 lectuals of Europe an inquiry on the subject of the results 
 which the war would have, "for international collaboration, 
 in the domain of the spirit." It asked " with anxiety, to 
 what extent it would be possible, once peace was concluded, 
 to establish relations between the scientists, writers, and 
 artists of the different nations." 
 ISO
 
 A Letter to Sweden 
 
 The destinies of humanity will rise superior to 
 those of all the nations. Nothing will be able to 
 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 f * 
 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 agonised by the sufferings 
 of millions of innocent victims, sacrificed to-day 
 on the field of battle, but I have no anxiety for 
 the future unity of European society. It will be 
 realised anew. The war of to-day is its baptism 
 of blood. 
 
 R. R. 
 
 April 10, 1915.
 
 XIV 
 
 WAR LITERATURE 
 
 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, ol 
 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 situa- 
 tion is rather different, since for various reasons, 
 
 152
 
 War Literature 
 
 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. 1 
 
 * * 
 
 It has been pointed out that in all countries 
 the extremest views have been expressed by 
 writers who have already passed el 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 honour, 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 that he did not 
 
 1 The literary appreciation of the work cited is here 
 treated as of secondary importance, in order that evidence 
 may be discovered with regard to the thought of Germany 
 
 153
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 know to which of the ten nationalities he owed 
 his intellect, is now writing Battle Songs (Scklack- 
 tenlieder), and Songs of the Flag (Faknenlteder} , 
 apostrophising 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. 1 
 
 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 our dead." 
 
 1 See the article of Josef Luitpol Stern, "Dichter," in 
 Die Weissen Bl'dttcr, March 1915. 
 
 154
 
 War Literature 
 
 Rudolf L^onhard 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 night- 
 mare : 
 
 Menschen in Not . . . 
 
 Briider dir tot ... 
 
 Krieg ist im Land . . . 
 
 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 1 5th) : not the superman, but 
 at least man. And Franz Werfel realises this 
 ideal in poems thrilling with a mournful humanity, 
 which takes part in the sacrament of misery and 
 death : 
 
 155
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 " We are bound together not only by our com- 
 mon 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 be- 
 fore the tyrant, or gaze trembling into the beloved's 
 countenance, or mark down your enemy with piti- 
 less 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. . . . Ten- 
 derness is wisdom, kindness is reason. * . . . We 
 are strangers all upon this earth, and die but to 
 be reunited" 2 
 
 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 con- 
 tinues 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 the Neue Ziircher Zeitung of 
 November 3rd, " O Freunde, nicht diese Tone !" 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 
 
 1 Hohe Gemeinschaft. 
 3 Fremde sind \vir auf der Erde alle. 
 I 5 6
 
 War Literature 
 
 destroying the future of Europe. 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. 
 
 Jeder hat's gehabt 
 
 Keiner hat's geschaetzt. 
 
 Jeden hat der siisse Quell gelabt. 
 
 O wie klingt der Name Friede jetzt ! 
 
 Klingt so fern und zag, 
 
 Klingt so tranenschwer, 
 
 Keiner weiss nnd kennt den Tag, 
 
 Jeder sehnt ihn vol Verlangen her. . . . 
 
 (" 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.") 
 
 * 
 * # 
 
 The attitude of the younger reviews is curious : 
 for whereas the older, traditional reviews (those 
 which correspond to our Revue des Dettx Mondes 
 or our Revue de Paris} are more or less affected 
 by military fervour thus, for instance, the Neue 
 Rundschau i which printed Thomas Mann's 
 157
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 notorious vagaries on Culture and Civilisation 
 (Gedanken im Kriege] many of the younger 
 ones affect a haughty detachment from actual 
 events. 
 
 That impassive publication, Blatter fur die 
 Kunst, over which broods the invisible per- 
 sonality of Stefan George, published at the end 
 of 1914 a volume of poems of 156 pages, which 
 did not contain a single line referring to the 
 war. A note at the end affirms that the points 
 of view of the various authors have not changed 
 on account of recent events, and anticipates the 
 objection that " this is not the time for poetry," 
 by the saying of Jean Paul : " No period has so 
 much need of poetry, as the one which thinks 
 it can do without it." 
 
 Die Aktion, a vibrating, audacious Berlin re- 
 view, with an ultra-modern point of view, totally 
 different from the calm impersonality of Blatter 
 fiir die Kunst, stated in its issue of August 15, 
 1914, that it would not concern itself with politics, 
 but would contain only literature and art. And 
 if it finds room in its literary columns for the 
 war poems sent from the field of battle by the 
 military doctors, Wilhelm Klemm and Hans 
 Kock, it is in consideration of their value as art, 
 and not for the vivacity of their patriotic senti- 
 158
 
 War Literature 
 
 ments ; for it scoffs mercilessly at the ridiculous 
 bards of German Chauvinism, at Heinrich Vierordt, 
 the author of Deutschland, hasse, at the criminal 
 poets who stir up hatred with their false stories, 
 and at Professor Haeckel. The dilettantism of 
 this review is extreme. Its weekly issues contain 
 translations from the French of Andre" Gide, 
 P^g u y> and Le"on Bloy, and reproductions of the 
 works of Daumier, Delacroix, Cezanne, Matisse, 
 and R. de la Fresnaye : (cubism flourishes in this 
 Berlin review). The issue of October 24th is 
 devoted to Peguy, and contains, as frontispiece, 
 Egon Schiele's portrait of the man, who is 
 honoured by Franz Pfemfert, the editor, as " the 
 purest and most vigorous moral force in French 
 literature of to-day." Let us hasten to add, 
 however, that, as is often the case on the other 
 side of the Rhine, they are carried away by their 
 zeal in deploring his death as of one of their 
 countrymen, and in proclaiming themselves his 
 heirs. But the pride which admires is at least 
 superior to the pride which disparages. 
 
 The most important of these young reviews is 
 Die Weissen Blatter ; important on account of the 
 variety of questions it deals with, and the value 
 and number of its contributors, as well as for the 
 broad-mindedness of its editor Rene Schickele. 
 159
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 An Alsatian by birth, he belongs to those who 
 feel most acutely the bitterness of the present 
 struggle. After an interval of three months Die 
 Weissen Blatter ; which almost corresponds to our 
 Nouvelle Revue Franfaise, reappeared in January 
 last with the following declaration, akin to that 
 of the Revue des Nations, at Berne : " // seems 
 good to ^ls to begin the work of reconstruction, in 
 the midst of the war, and to aid in preparing for 
 the victory of the spirit. The community of Europe 
 is at present apparently destroyed. Is it not the 
 duty of all of us who are not bearing arms, to live 
 from to-day onwards according to the dictates of our 
 conscience, as it will be the duty of every German 
 when once the war is over ? " 
 
 By the side of these disinterested manifestoes 
 about actual politics, appear lengthy historical 
 novels ( Tycho Brahe by Max Brod) and satirical 
 comedies by Carl Sternheim, who continues to 
 scourge the upper classes of German society, and 
 the capitalists, for Die Weissen Blatter is open to 
 all questions of the day. But in spite of the 
 actual differences which must necessarily exist 
 between a German and a French review, we 
 cannot but point out the frankly hostile attitude 
 of these writers to all the excesses of Chauvinism. 
 The articles of Max Scheler, " Europe and the 
 160
 
 War Literature 
 
 War," show an impartial attitude which is entirely 
 praiseworthy. The review opens its columns to 
 the loyal Annette Kolb, who, as the daughter of 
 a German father and of a French mother, suffers 
 keenly in this conflict between the parts of her 
 nature, and has lately raised a tempest in Dresden, 
 where in a public lecture she had the courage to 
 admit her fidelity to both sides, and to express 
 her regret that Germany should fail to understand 
 France. In the February number, under the 
 title " Ganz niedrich haengen!" there appeared a 
 violent repudiation of the Krieg mit dem Maul 
 (the war of tongues) ; "If journalists hope to 
 inspire courage by insulting the enemy, they are 
 mistaken we refuse such stimulants. We dare 
 to maintain our opinion, that the humblest volunteer 
 of the enemy, who from an unreasoned but exalted 
 sentiment of patriotism, fires upon us from an 
 ambush, knowing well what he risks, is much 
 superior to those journalists who profit by the public 
 feeling of the day, and under cover of high-sounding 
 words of patriotism do not fight the enemy but spit 
 upon him" 
 
 Of all these young writers who are striving to 
 preserve the integrity of their minds against the 
 force of national passions, the one whose per- 
 sonality has been most exalted by this tempest, 
 
 i6r L
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 the most eloquent, courageous, and decided of all 
 is Wilhelm Herzog. He is the editor of the 
 Forum at Munich, and like our own P6guy, when 
 he began to publish his Cahiers de la Quinzaine> 
 he fills almost the whole of his review with his 
 own burning articles. The enthusiastic biographer 
 of H. von Kleist, he sees and judges the events 
 of his own time with the eyes of that indomitable 
 spirit. The German censor attempts in vain to 
 silence him and to forbid the publication of the 
 lectures of Spitteler and of Annette Kolb ; his 
 indignation and cries of vengeful irony spread 
 even to us. He attacks bitterly the ninety-three 
 intellectuals who "fancy they are all Ajaxes 
 because they bray the loudest" those politicians 
 of the school of Haeckel, who make a new 
 division of the world, those patriotic bards 
 who insult other nations ; he attacks Thomas 
 Mann mercilessly, scoffs at his sophistry, and 
 defends France, the French Army, 1 and French 
 civilisation against him ; he points out that the 
 great men of Germany (Griinwald, Diirer, Bach, 
 and Mozart amongst others) have always been 
 persecuted, humiliated, and calumniated. 2 In an 
 article entitled "Der neue Geist," 3 after having 
 
 1 Die Uberschaetzung der Kunst (December 1914). 
 * Von der Vaterlandsliebe (January 1915). 
 3 December 1914. 
 
 162
 
 War Literature 
 
 scoffed at the banality that has reappeared in 
 the German theatres, and the literary mediocrity 
 of patriotic productions, he asked where this 
 "new spirit" may be found, and this gives him 
 an opportunity to demolish Ostwald and Lasson. 
 
 " Where is it to be found f In the Hochschulen f 
 Have we not read that incredibly clumsy (unwa- 
 hrscheinlich plumpen) appeal of the 99 professors f 
 Have we not appreciated the statements of that 
 double centenarian (des zweihundertjaehrige Mum- 
 melgreises) mummy Lasson f When I was 
 studying philosophy as an undergraduate at the 
 University oj Berlin, the theatre in which he 
 lectured was a place of amusement (Lachkabinett) 
 for us nothing more. And to-day people take 
 him seriously ! English, French, and Italian papers 
 print his senile babblings against Holland, as 
 typical of the Stimmung of the German intellec- 
 tuals. The wrong that these privy councillors and 
 professors have done us with their Aufklarung- 
 sarbeit can hardly be measured. They have isolated 
 themselves from humanity by their inability to 
 realise the feelings of others" 
 
 In opposition to these false representatives of a 
 nation, these cultured gossips and political ad- 
 venturers, he extols the silent ones, the great 
 mass of the people of all nations who suffer 
 163
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 in silence ; and he joins with them in " the in- 
 visible community of sorrow." 
 
 " One who is suffering and knows that his 
 sorrow is shared by millions of other beings, will 
 bear it calmly ; he will accept it willingly even, 
 because he knows that he is enriched thereby, 
 made stronger, more tender, more humane" x 
 
 And he quotes the words of old Meister 
 Eckehart : " Suffering is the fastest steed that 
 will bear you to perfection" 
 
 * # 
 
 At the close of this summary review of the 
 young writers of the war, a place must be found 
 for those whom the war has crushed they 
 counted amongst the best. Ernst Stadler was 
 an enthusiastic admirer of French art and of the 
 French spirit He translated Francis Jammes, 
 and on the eve of his death, in November, he 
 was writing to Stefan Zweig from the trenches 
 about the poems of Verlaine, which he was 
 translating. The unfortunate George Trakl, the 
 poet of melancholy, was made lieutenant of a 
 
 1 Hymnt auj den Schmerx (January 1915). It is to be 
 
 noted that the Forum is read in the trenches, and that it 
 
 has received many letters of approval from the front. 
 
 (Der Phrasenrausch und seine Bekaempfer, February 1915.) 
 
 164
 
 War Literature 
 
 sanitary column in Galicia, and the sight of so 
 much suffering drove him to despair and death. 
 And there are many hidden tragedies, still un- 
 revealed. When they are made known, humanity 
 will tremble in contemplating its handiwork. 
 
 I reflected, as doubtless many of my French 
 readers have also done, in reading through these 
 German writings inspired by the war writings 
 through which from time to time there passes 
 a mighty breath of revolt and sorrow that our 
 young writers are not writing "literature." Instead 
 of books they give us deeds, and their letters. And 
 in re-reading some of their letters I thought that 
 ours had chosen the better part. It is not for 
 me now to point out the position that this 
 heroic correspondence will occupy, not only in our 
 history but also in our literature. Into it the 
 flower of our youth has put all its life, its faith 
 and its genius : and for some of those letters I 
 would give many of the finest lines of the 
 noblest poems. Whatever be the result of this 
 war, and the opinion as to its value later, it will 
 be recognised that France has written on paper, 
 mud-stained and often blotted with blood, some 
 of its sublimest pages. Assuredly this war touches 
 us more nearly than it does our adversaries, for 
 who of us would have the heart to write a play 
 165
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 or a novel whilst his country is in danger and 
 his brothers dying? 
 
 But I will make no comparisons between the 
 two nations. For the present the essential thing 
 is to show that even in Germany there are certain 
 finer minds who are fighting against the spirit 
 which we hate the spirit of grasping imperialism 
 and inhuman pride, of military caste and the 
 megalomania of pedants. They are but a mino- 
 rity we have no illusions about that and we 
 ought to redouble our efforts on that account to 
 vanquish the common enemy. Why then should 
 we trouble to make these generous but feeble 
 voices heard ? Because their merit is the greater 
 for being so little heeded ; because it is the duty 
 of those who are fighting for justice to render 
 justice in their turn to all those men, even when 
 they dwell in a country in which the state repre- 
 sents the violation of right by Faustrecht, who 
 are defending with us the spirit of liberty. 
 
 Journal de Geneve, April 19, 1915. 
 
 166
 
 XV 
 THE MURDER OF THE ELITE 
 
 THE phrase is not new-coined to-day ; J but the 
 fact is. Never, in any period, have we seen 
 humanity throwing into the bloody arena all 
 its intellectual and moral reserves, its priests, 
 its thinkers, its scholars, its artists, the whole 
 future of the spirit wasting its geniuses as 
 food for cannon. 
 
 A great thing, doubtless, when the struggle 
 is great, when a people fights for an eternal 
 cause, the fervour of which fires the whole 
 nation, from the smallest to the greatest ; when 
 it fuses all the egoisms, purifies desire, and 
 out of many souls makes one unanimous soul. 
 
 1 I take the phrase from M. Lucien Maury in an article 
 written before the war: (Journal de Geneve) March 30 
 1914. This is quoted ecently by M. Adolphe Ferriire 
 who, in his remark.ible Doctor's thesis, La lot du Progrh 
 attempts to solve the tragic problem of the part played by 
 the elite. 
 
 167
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 But if the cause be suspect or if it is tainted 
 (as we judge that of our adversaries to be), 
 what will be the situation of a moral e"lite 
 which has preserved the sad and lofty privilege 
 of perceiving at least a part of the truth, and 
 which must nevertheless fight and die and kill 
 for a faith which it doubts? 
 
 Those passionate natures that are intoxi- 
 cated by fighting or are voluntarily blinded by 
 the necessities of action are not troubled by 
 these questions. For them the enemy is a 
 single mass ; nothing else exists for them but 
 this, for they have to break it ; it is their 
 function and their duty. And to each his 
 special duty. But if minorities do not exist 
 for such men, they do exist for us who, since 
 we are not fighting, have the liberty and the 
 duty to see every aspect of the case we who 
 form part of the eternal minority, the minority 
 which has been, is, and always will be eternally 
 oppressed. It is for us to hear and to proclaim 
 these moral sufferings ! Plenty of others repeat 
 or invent the jubilant echoes of the struggle. 
 May other voices be raised to give the tragic 
 accents of the fight and its sacred horror ! 
 
 I shall take my examples from the enemy 
 camp, for several reasons : because the German 
 168
 
 The Murder of the lite 
 
 cause being from the first tainted with injustice, 
 the sufferings of the few who are just, and the 
 still fewer who have spiritual perceptions are 
 greater there than elsewhere ; because these 
 evidences appear openly in publications whose 
 boldness the German censorship has not per- 
 ceived ; because I bow with respect to the heroic 
 discipline of silence which France in fighting im- 
 poses on her sufferings. (Would to God that 
 this silence were not broken by those who, 
 trying to deny these sufferings, profane the 
 grandeur of the sacrifice by the revolting levity 
 of their silly jests in newspapers which are 
 without either gravity or dignity.) 
 
 * * 
 
 I have shown in a recent article that a part 
 of the intellectual youth of Germany was far 
 from sharing the war-madness of its elders. I 
 cited certain energetic reproofs delivered by 
 these young writers to the theorists of imperi- 
 alism. And these writers are not, as one 
 might think from an article in the Temps 
 (though I gladly pay a tribute to its honesty), 
 merely a small group as narrow as that of 
 our symbolists. They count among them writers 
 who appeal to a large public and who do not 
 169
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 set out in any way (except for the group of 
 Stefan George) to write for a select few they 
 wish to write for all. I stated, too, that the 
 boldest review of all, Wilhelm Herzog's Forum, 
 was read in the German trenches and received 
 approbation thence. 
 
 But what is more astonishing, this spirit of 
 criticism has possessed some of the combatants 
 and even made its appearance among German 
 officers. In the November-December number of 
 the Friedens- Warte, published in Berlin, Vienna, 
 and Leipzig, by Dr. Alfred H. Fried, there occurs 
 " An appeal to the Germanic peoples," addressed, 
 at the end of October, by Baron Marschall von 
 Biberstein, Landrat of Prussia and captain in 
 the 1st Foot Guards reserve. This article was 
 written in a trench north of Arras, where on the 
 nth of November, Biberstein was killed. He 
 expresses unreservedly his horror of the war and 
 his ardent desire that it may be the last : " That 
 is the conviction of those at the front who are 
 witnesses of the unspeakable horrors of modern 
 warfare." Even more praiseworthy is Biberstein's 
 frankness when he decides to begin a confession 
 and a mea culpa for the sins of Germany. " The 
 war has opened my eyes" he says, " to our terrible 
 unlovableness (Unbeliebtheif). Everything has its 
 170
 
 The Murder of the lilite 
 
 cause ; we must have given cause for this hatrtd ; 
 and even in part have justified it. . . . Let us 
 hope that it will not be the least of the advantages 
 of this war that Germany will turn round on 
 herself, will search out and recognise her faults 
 and correct them" Unfortunately even this 
 article is spoiled by Germanic pride which, 
 desiring a world peace, sets out to impose it on 
 the world. Herein it recalls in some respects 
 the bellicose pacifism of the too celebrated 
 Ostwald. 
 
 But another officer (of whom I spoke in my 
 last article) the poet Fritz von Unruh, first Lieu- 
 tenant of Uhlans on the western front, has 
 written dramatic scenes in verse and prose. 
 These have appeared recently under the title 
 Before the Decision ( Vor der Entscheidung). It 
 is a dramatic poem in which the author has 
 noted his own impressions and his moral trans- 
 formations. The hero, who is like himself, an 
 officer of Uhlans, passes through various centres 
 of the war and remains everywhere a stranger ; 
 his soul is detached from murderous passions, 
 he sees the abominable reality until his sufferings 
 from it amount to agony. The two scenes repro- 
 duced by the Neue Ziircher Zeitung show us a 
 muddy and bloodstained trench, where German 
 171
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 soldiers, like beasts in a slaughter-house, die or 
 await death with bitter words and officers get- 
 ting drunk on champagne around a 42 mm. 
 mortar, laughing and getting excited till they 
 fall beneath the weight of sleep and fatigue. 
 
 From the first scene I take these terrible words 
 of one of those who wait in the trenches under 
 fire of the machine guns, a Dreissigjcehriger (man 
 of thirty). 
 
 In my village they are laughing they drink to each 
 victory. They slaughter us like butcher's cattle and they 
 say " It's war ! " When it is over, they are no fools, they 
 will feast us for three years. But the first cripple won't be 
 grey headed before they will laugh at his white hairs. 
 
 And the Uhlan, possessed by horror in the 
 midst of the massacre, falls on his knees and 
 prays : 
 
 Thou who gavest life and takest it how shall I 
 recognise Thee? In these trenches strewn with muti- 
 lated bodies I find Thee not. Does the piercing cry of 
 these thousands suffocated in the terrible embrace of 
 Death reach not up to Thee? Or is it lost in frozen 
 space ? For whom does Thy Springtime blossom ? 
 For whom is the splendour of Thy suns ? For whom, 
 O God ? I ask it of Thee in the name of all those 
 whose mouths are closed by courage and by fear in face 
 of the horror of Thy darkness : What heat is left within 
 me? What light of truth? Can this massacre be Thy 
 will? Is it indeed Thy will? 
 
 (He loses consciousness and falls.) 
 172
 
 The Murder of the felite 
 
 A pain less lyrical, less ecstatic, more simple, 
 more reflective, and nearer to ourselves marks the 
 sequence of Feldpostbriefe of Dr. Albert Klein, 
 teacher in the Oberrealschule at Giessen and 
 Lieutenant of the Landwehr, killed on the I2th 
 of February in Champagne. 1 Passing over what 
 are, perhaps, the most striking pages from the 
 point of view of artistic quality and power of 
 thought, I will only give two extracts from these 
 letters which are likely to be of special interest 
 to French readers. 
 
 The first describes for us with an unusual 
 frankness the moral condition of the German 
 army : 
 
 Brave, without care for his own life ! Who is there 
 among us that is that ? We all know too well our own 
 worth and our own possibilities ; we are in the flower 
 of our age : force is in our arms and in our souls ; and 
 as no one willingly dies, no one is brave (tapfer) in the 
 usual sense of the word : or at least such are very rare. 
 It is just because bravery is so rare in life, it is just 
 for that that we expend so much religion, poetry, and 
 thought (and this begins already at school), in celebrating 
 as the highest fate death for .one's fatherland, until it 
 attains its climax in the false heroism which makes such 
 a sensation about us in newspapers and speeches and 
 
 1 The review Die Tat, published by Eug. Diederichs at 
 Jena, prints long extracts from them in its issue for May 
 1915. 
 
 173
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 which is so cheap and also in the true heroism of a 
 small number who do risk themselves and lead on the 
 others. . . . We do our duty, we do what we ought ; but 
 it is a passive virtue. . . . When I read in the papers the 
 scribblings of those who have a bad conscience because 
 they are safely in the rear when I read this talk which 
 makes every soldier into a hero, I feel hurt. Heroism is 
 a rare growth, and you cannot build on it a citizen army. 
 To keep such an army together the men must respect 
 their superiors, and even fear them more than the enemy. 
 And the superiors must be conscientious, do their duty well, 
 know their business thoroughly, decide rapidly, and have 
 control of their nerves. When we read the praises which 
 those behind the line write of us, we blush. Thank God, 
 old-fashioned, robust shame is not dead in us. ... Ah ! 
 my dear friends, those who are here don't speak so com- 
 placently of death, of disease, of sacrifice, and of victory 
 as do those who behind the line ring the bells, make 
 speeches, and write newspapers. The men here accus- 
 tom themselves as best they may to the bitter necessity 
 of suffering and of death if fate wills ; but they know and 
 see that many noble sacrifices, innumerable, innumerable 
 sacrifices have already been made, and that already for a 
 long while we shall have had more than enough of de- 
 struction on our side as well as the other. It is precisely 
 when one has to look suffering in the face as I have that a 
 tie begins to be formed that unites one to those over there, 
 on the other side (and one that unites you too with them, 
 my friends ! Yes, surely you feel it too, don't you?) If I 
 come back from here (which I scarcely hope for any more) 
 my dearest duty will be to soak myself in the study and the 
 thoughts of those who have been our enemies. I wish to 
 reconstruct my nature on a wider basis. . . . And I believe 
 that it will be easier after this war than after any other to 
 be a human being. 
 
 174
 
 The Murder of the 
 
 The second fragment is the account of a 
 touching encounter with a French prisoner : 
 
 Yesterday evening I was strangely touched. I happened 
 to see a convoy of prisoners and I talked to one of them, 
 a colleague of mine, Professor of classical philology in 
 
 the college of F . Such an open-minded, intelligent 
 
 man, and with such a fine military bearing, like all his fellows, 
 although they had just been through a terrible experience 
 of machine-gun fire. ... It was a proof to me of the 
 senselessness of the war. I thought how much one would 
 have liked to be the friend of these men, who are so near 
 us in their education, their mode of life, the circle of their 
 thought and their interest. We started talking about a 
 book on Rousseau and we began to dispute like old philo- 
 logists. . . . How much we are alike in force and worth ! 
 And how little truth there is in what our papers tell us 
 of the shaken and exhausted conditions of the French 
 troops ! As true, or rather as untrue, as what the French 
 newspapers write about us. ... My French colleague 
 showed in his remarks such a balanced mind and such 
 understanding and admiration of German thought ! To 
 think that we were made so clearly to be friends and that 
 we had to be separated ! I was altogether overcome, and 
 sat down crushed by it. I thought and thought and could 
 not escape my mood by any sophistry. No end, no end 
 to war, which for nearly six months now has swallowed 
 in its gulf men, fortunes, and happiness ! And this 
 feeling is the same with us as with the other side. It is 
 always the same picture : we do the same thing, we suffer 
 the same thing, we are the same thing. And it is precisely 
 for this reason that we are so bitterly at enmity. . . . 
 
 The same accent of troubled anguish, together 
 with a despair which at moments nearly reaches 
 175
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 to madness, and at others breathes a religious \ 
 fervour, are seen in the letters of a German soldier 
 to a teacher in German Switzerland. (We have 
 known of these at the Prisoners' Agency for 
 three or four months and they were published 
 in Foi et Vie of April 15th. 1 They have been 
 passed over in silence, so we shall persist in 
 calling attention to them, for they thoroughly 
 deserve it). In these letters, which cover from 
 the second fortnight of August to the end of 
 December, we see from the 25th of August 
 onwards the evidence of a desire for peace 
 among the German soldiers. 
 
 We all, even those who were hottest for the fight at 
 the beginning, want nothing now but peace, our officers 
 just as much as ourselves. . . . Convinced as we are of 
 the necessity to conquer, warlike enthusiasm does not exist 
 among us ; we fulfil our duty, but the sacrifice is hard. 
 We suffer in our souls. ... I cannot tell you the sufferings 
 I endure. . . . 
 
 September 2Oth. A friend writes to me : " On the 2oth 
 to 25th of August I took part in big battles : since then 
 I suffer morally even to complete exhaustion, both physical 
 and spiritual. My soul finds no repose. . . . This war 
 will show us how much of the beast still survives in man, 
 and this revelation will cause us to make a great step 
 out of animalism : if not, it is all up with us ! " 
 
 November 28th. (A splendid passage where one almost 
 hears the voice of Tolstoi?) What are all the torments 
 
 1 With an introduction by C. E. Babut. 
 176
 
 The Murder of the lite 
 
 of war compared to the thoughts that obsess us night and 
 day? When I am on some hill from which my view 
 commands the plain, this is the idea which ceaselessly 
 tortures me : down there in the valley the war rages ; 
 those brown lines which furrow the landscape are full 01 
 men who are facing one another as enemies. And up there 
 on the hill opposite you there is, perhaps, a man who, like 
 you, is contemplating the woods and the blue sky and 
 perhaps ruminating the same thoughts as you, his enemy ! 
 This continual proximity might make one mad ! And one 
 is tempted to envy one's comrades who can kill time in 
 sleeping and playing cards. 
 
 December I7th. The desire for peace is intense in 
 every one ; at least, in all those who are at the front and 
 who are obliged to assassinate and be assassinated. The 
 newspapers say that it's hardly possible to restrain the 
 warlike ardour of the fighters. . . . They lie -consciously 
 or unconsciously. Our chaplains in their sermons dispute 
 the legend that our military ardour is slackening. . . . You 
 can hardly believe how such tittle-tattle annoys us. Let 
 them be silent, and let them not talk about things of which 
 they can know nothing ! Or better still, let them come not 
 as almoners who keep to the rear, but into the firing-line, 
 rifle in hand ! Perhaps then they will get to know of the 
 inner changes which take place in so many of us. Accord- 
 ing to these chaplains, any one who is without warlike 
 enthusiasm is not a man such as our age demands. To 
 me it seems that we are greater heroes than the others, 
 we, who without being upheld by warlike enthusiasm, 
 accomplish faithfully our duty, while hating war with our 
 whole souls. . . . They talk of a holy war ... I kno-.v 
 of no holy war. I only know of one war which is the 
 sum of all that is inhuman, impious, and bestial in man ; 
 it is God's chastisement and a call to repentance for the 
 people that throws itself into war or lets itself be drawn 
 177 M
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 into it. God sends men through this hell so that they 
 may learn to love heaven. For the German people this 
 war seems to me to be a punishment and a call to repent- 
 ance, and most of all for our German Church. I have 
 friends who suffer at the idea of being unable to do any- 
 thing for the fatherland. Let them stay at home with a 
 calm conscience ! All depends on their peaceful work. 
 But let the war enthusiasts come ! Perhaps they will 
 learn to keep silent. 
 
 *** 
 
 " Why publish these pages ? " I shall be asked 
 by some people in France. " What good is it, 
 when once war is let loose, to arouse pity for 
 our adversaries, at the risk of blunting the ardour 
 of the combatants ? " I answer, because it is the 
 truth, and because the truth substantiates our 
 judgment, the judgment of the whole world 
 against the German leaders and their policy. 
 What their armies have done we know ; but that 
 they were able to do it containing as they did 
 such elements as those whose confessions we have 
 just heard, incriminates still more deeply their 
 masters. From the depths of the battlefield, 
 these voices of a sacrificed minority rise up as a 
 vengeful condemnation of the oppressors. To the 
 accusations drawn up against predatory Empires 
 and their inhuman pride, in the name of violated 
 right, of outraged humanity by the victim peoples 
 and by the combatants, is added the cry of pain 
 178
 
 The Murder of the lilite 
 
 of the nobler souls of their own people whom the 
 bad shepherds who let loose this war have led 
 and constrained into murder and madness. To 
 sacrifice one's body is not the worst suffering, 
 but also to sacrifice, to deny, to kill one's own 
 soul ! You who die at least for a just cause, and 
 who, full of sap and loaded with faith, fall like 
 ripe fruit, how sweet is your lot beside this 
 torture ! But we shall so act that these sufferings 
 shall not be vain. 
 
 Let the conscience of humanity hear and accept 
 their complaint ! It will resound in the future 
 above the glory of battles ; and whether she wills 
 or no, History will place it on her register. History 
 will do justice between the hangmen and their 
 peoples. And the peoples will learn how to 
 deliver themselves from their hangmen. 
 Journal de Geneve, June 14, 1915. 
 
 179
 
 XVI 
 JAURES 
 
 BATTLES are being fought under our eyes in 
 which thousands of men are dying, yet the 
 sacrifice of their lives does not always influence 
 the issue of the combat. In other cases the death 
 of a single man may be a great battle lost for the 
 whole of humanity. The murder of Jaures was 
 such a disaster. 
 
 Whole centuries were needed to produce such 
 a life ; rich civilisations of North and South, of 
 past and present, spread out on the good soil of 
 France, matured beneath our Western skies. The 
 mysterious chance which combines elements and 
 forces will not easily produce a noble spirit like 
 his a second time. 
 
 Jaures is a type, almost unique in modern times, 
 of the great political orator who is also a great 
 thinker, and who combines vast culture with 
 penetrating observation, and moral grandeur with 
 energetic activity. We must go back to antiquity 
 1 80
 
 Jaurs 
 
 to find one who, like him, could stir the crowd 
 and give pleasure to the few ; pour out his over- 
 flowing genius not only in his speeches and social 
 treatises, but also in his philosophical and 
 historical works ; * and leave on all things the 
 impress of his personality, the furrow of his robust 
 labour, the seeds of his progressive mind. I have 
 listened to him often in the Chamber, at socialist 
 congresses, at meetings held on behalf of op- 
 pressed nations ; he even did me the honour of 
 presenting my Danton to the people of Paris. 
 Again I see his full face, calm and happy like 
 that of a kindly, bearded ogre ; his small eyes, 
 bright and smiling ; eyes as quick to follow the 
 flight of ideas as to observe human nature. I see 
 him pacing up and down the platform, walking 
 with heavy steps like a bear, his arms crossed 
 behind his back, and turning sharply to hurl at 
 the crowd, in his monotonous, metallic voice, 
 
 1 His principal philosophical work is his Doctor's thesis : 
 La realite du monde sensible (1891). Another thesis (in 
 Latin) dates from the same year : Des origines du socialisms 
 allemand, in which he goes back to the Christian socialism 
 of Luther. 
 
 His great historical work is his Histoire sociale de la 
 Revolution. Very interesting is his discussion with Paul 
 Lafargue on T Idcalisme et le matcrialisme dans la con- 
 ception de Phistoire. 
 
 181
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 words like the call of a trumpet, which reached 
 the farthest seats in the vast amphitheatre, and 
 went straight to the heart, making the soul of 
 the whole multitude leap in one united emotion. 
 What beauty there was in the sight of these 
 proletarian masses stirred by the visions which 
 Jaures evoked from distant horizons, imbibing 
 the thought of Greece through the voice of their 
 tribune ! 
 
 Of all this man's gifts the most fundamental 
 was to be essentially a man not the man of a 
 single profession, or class, or party, or idea but 
 a complete, harmonious, and free man. His all- 
 comprehensive nature could be the slave of 
 nothing. The highest manifestations of life 
 flowed together and met in him. His intelligence 
 demanded unity, 1 his heart was full of a passion 
 for liberty, 2 and this twofold instinct protected 
 him alike from party despotism and anarchy. His 
 
 1 " The need of unity is the profoundest and noblest of 
 the human mind " (La realite du monde sensible). 
 
 * " This young democracy must be given a taste for liberty 
 It has a passion for equality ; it has not in the same 
 degree an idea of liberty, which is acquired much more 
 slowly and with greater difficulty. We must give the 
 children of the people, by means of a sufficiently lofty 
 exercise of their powers of thinking, a sense of the value of 
 man and consequently of the value of liberty, without which 
 man does not exist." (To the teachers, January 15, 1888.) 
 
 182
 
 Jaurs 
 
 spirit sought to encompass all things, not in 
 order to do violence to them, but to bring them 
 into harmony. Above all, he had the power of 
 seeing the human element in all things, and this 
 universal sympathy was equally averse to narrow 
 negation and fanatical affirmation. All intoler- 
 ance inspired him with horror. 1 
 
 He had put himself at the head of a great 
 revolutionary party, but it was with the desire 
 "of saving the great work of democratic revolu- 
 tion from the sickening and brutal odour of blood, 
 murder, and hatred which still clings to the 
 memory of the middle-class Revolution." In his 
 own name, and in the name of his party, he 
 demanded " with regard to all doctrines, respect 
 for the human personality and for the spirit which 
 is manifested in each." The mere feeling of the 
 moral antagonism which exists between man and 
 man, even when there is no open conflict, the 
 sense of the invisible barriers which render human 
 brotherhood impossible, was painful to him. He 
 could not read those words of Cardinal Newman 
 in which he speaks of the gulf of damnation, 
 
 1 " As for myself, I have never made use of violence to 
 attack beliefs, whatever they may be ; nay, more, I have 
 always abstained even from that form of violence which 
 consists in insult. Insult expresses a weak and feverish 
 revolt, rather than the liberty of reason." (1901.) 
 
 133
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 which, even in this life, is fixed between men, 
 without having " a sort of nightmare. . . . He saw 
 the abyss ready to gape beneath the feet of 
 fragile and unhappy human beings who think 
 themselves bound together by a community 
 of sympathy and suffering " the sadness of this 
 thought obsessed him. 
 
 To fill in this abyss of misunderstanding was 
 his life-work. Herein lay the originality of his 
 standpoint, that although he was the spokesman 
 of the most advanced parties, he became the con- 
 tinual mediator between conflicting ideas. He 
 sought to unite them all in the service of progress 
 and of the common good. In philosophy he 
 united idealism and realism in history, the past 
 and the present in politics, the love of his own 
 country and a respect for other countries. 1 He 
 refrained from denouncing that which has been, 
 in the name of that which is to be, as many 
 so-called free-thinkers have done ; and far from 
 condemning, he upheld the theories of all those 
 who had been fighters in past centuries, to what- 
 
 1 " The true formula of patriotism is the equal right of all 
 countries to liberty and justice ; it is the duty of every 
 citizen to increase in his own country the forces of liberty 
 and justice. Those are but sorry patriots who in order to 
 love and serve one country, find it necessary to decry the 
 others, the other great moral forces of humanity." (1905.) 
 
 184
 
 Jaur&s 
 
 ever party they might have belonged. "We 
 reverence the past," he said. " Not in vain have 
 blazed the hearths of all the generations of man- 
 kind but it is we who are advancing, who are 
 fighting for a new ideal, it is we who are the true 
 inheritors of the hearth of our ancestors. We have 
 taken the flame thereof, you have preserved only 
 the ashes." (January 1909.) In his Introduction 
 to PHistoire socialiste de la Revolution, in which 
 he attempts to reconcile Plutarch, Michelet, and 
 Karl Marx, he writes : " We hail with equal 
 respect all men of heroic will. History, even 
 when conceived as a study of economic forms, 
 will never dispense with individual valour and 
 nobility. The moral level of society to-morrow 
 will be determined by the standard of morality of 
 conscience to-day. So that, to offer the examples 
 of all the heroic fighters who for the past century 
 have been inspired by an ideal and held death 
 in sublime contempt, is to do revolutionary work." 
 In everything he touches he achieves a generous 
 synthesis of life ; he imposes his grand panoramic 
 conception of the universe, the sense of the mani- 
 fold and moving unity of all things. This admir- 
 able equilibrium of countless elements presupposes 
 in the man who achieves it magnificent health of 
 body and of mind, a mastery of his whole being. 
 185
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 And Jaures possessed this mastery, and because 
 of it he was the pilot of European democracy. 
 How clear and far reaching was his foresight ! 
 In years to come, when the record of the war of 
 to-day is set down, he will appear therein as a 
 terrible witness. Was there anything he did not 
 foresee ? One needs only to read through his 
 speeches during the last ten years. 1 It is yet too 
 early, in the midst of the conflict, to quote freely 
 his predictions concerning the coming retribution. 
 Let us recall only his agonised presentiment, ever 
 since the year 1905, of the monstrous war which 
 was imminent; 2 his consciousness "of the an- 
 tagonism, now muffled, now acute, but always 
 profound and terrible, between Germany and 
 England" (November 18, 1909)53 his denuncia- 
 tion of the secret dealings of European finance 
 and diplomacy, dealings which are encouraged 
 by the " torpor ot public spirit " ; his cry of alarm 
 
 1 Or the extracts given by Charles Rappoport in his 
 excellent book Jean /auns, Fkomme, le penseur, le sodaliste 
 (1915, Paris, P Emancipatrice\ with an introduction by 
 Anatole France. See also the pamphlet by Rene Legand, 
 Jean Jaures. From this book are quoted the passages 
 referred to in the notes which follow. Jean Jaures, a 
 brochure by Rene Legand, should also be read. 
 
 2 Rappoport, op. ctt., pp. 70-77. 
 
 3 Rappoport, p. 234. 
 
 1 86
 
 Jaures 
 
 at " the sensational lies of the press, actuated by 
 the rotten system of capitalism, sowing panic and 
 hatred, and playing cynically with the lives of 
 millions of men, through mere financial considera- 
 tions or delirious pride " ; his contemptuous words 
 for those whom he calls "the jockeys of his 
 country " ; his clear perception of all responsi- 
 bilities j 1 his foreknowledge of the domesticated 
 attitude which would be adopted in case of war 
 by the Social-democratic party of Germany, to 
 whom he showed, as in a mirror (at the Amster- 
 dam Congress in 1904) their haughty weakness 
 their lack of revolutionary tradition, their want of 
 parliamentary strength, their " formidable power- 
 lessness"; 2 of the attitude which certain leaders 
 of French Socialism, too, and amongst others 
 Jules Guesde, would maintain in the conflict 
 between the great States of Europe; 3 and, look- 
 ing even beyond the war, his premonition of the 
 consequences, near and remote, national and inter- 
 national, of this conflict of nations. 
 
 How would he have acted had he lived ? The 
 
 1 In his speech at Vaise, near Lyon, July 25, 1914, six days 
 before his death, he said : " Every people appears through- 
 out the streets of Europe carrying its little torch ; and now 
 comes the conflagration." 
 
 * Rappoport, p. 61. 
 
 3 Rappoport, p. 369-70. 
 
 187
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 proletariat of Europe looked to him for guidance, 
 and had faith in him Camille Huysmans has 
 said so in the speech delivered at his grave in 
 the name of the Workers' International. 1 There 
 can be no doubt that when he had fought against 
 the war until all hope of preventing it was gone, 
 he would have yielded loyally to the common 
 duty of national defence and taken part in it with 
 all his might. He had announced this point of 
 view at the Congress in Stuttgart, in 1907, in full 
 agreement therein with Vandervelde and Bebel : 
 " If, whatever the circumstances, a nation were to 
 refuse from the outset to defend itself, it would be 
 entirely at the mercy of the Governments of 
 violence, barbarism, and reaction ... A unity 
 of mankind which was the result of the absorp- 
 tion of conquered nations by one dominating 
 nation would be a unity realised in slavery." 
 On his return to Paris, in giving an account of 
 the Congress to French Socialists (September 7, 
 
 1 "Throughout the world there are six millions of us, 
 organised workmen, for whom the name of Jaures was the 
 incarnation of the noblest and most complete aspiration. 
 ... I remember what he was for the workmen of other 
 countries. I see still the foreign delegates who awaited his 
 words before forming their final opinions ; even when they 
 were not in agreement with him they were glad to approach 
 his point of view. He was more than the Word : he was the 
 Conscience." 
 
 1 88
 
 Jaures 
 
 1907, at the Tivoli Vaux-Hall), he impressed upon 
 them their double duty war against war, so long 
 as it is only a menace upon the horizon, and in the 
 hour of danger war in defence of national inde- 
 pendence. For this great European was also a 
 great Frenchman. 1 Yet it is certain, too, that the 
 firm accomplishment of his patriotic duty would 
 not have prevented him from maintaining his 
 human ideals, and watching with untiring eyes 
 for every opportunity of reconstructing the shat- 
 tered unity. Certainly he would not have allowed 
 the vessel of socialism to drift, as his feeble 
 successors have done. 
 
 # 
 # * 
 
 He has passed from us. But the reflection 
 of his luminous genius, his kindness in the 
 
 1 Who has spoken more nobly than he of the eternal France, 
 "the true France, that is not summed up by an epoch or 
 by a day, neither by the day of long ago, nor the day that 
 has just passed, but the whole of France complete in the 
 succession of her days, of her nights, of her dawns, of her 
 shadows, of her heights and f her depths ; of France who, 
 across all these mingled shades, all these half-lights and all 
 these vicissitudes, goes forward towards a brilliance which 
 she has not yet attained, but which is foreshadowed in her 
 thought!" (1910.) 
 
 See his masterly picture of French history, and his mag 
 nificent eulogy of France, at the Conference of 1905, which 
 he was prevented from delivering in Berlin, and which 
 Robert Fischer read in his place. 
 189
 
 Above the Battle 
 
 bitter struggle, his indestructible optimism even 
 in the midst of disaster, shine above the carnage 
 of Europe, over which the dusk is gathering, 
 like the splendour of the setting sun.i 
 
 There is one page which he wrote, which 
 cannot be read without emotion an immortal 
 page in which he represents the noble Herakles, 
 resting after his labours on the maternal earth : 
 
 " There are hours," he says, " when in feeling 
 the earth beneath our feet, we experience a 
 joy deep and tranquil as the earth herself. How 
 often on my journey along footpaths and across 
 fields I have realised suddenly that it was in- 
 deed the earth on which I trod, that I belonged 
 to her, as she belonged to me ! Then without 
 thinking I went more slowly, because it was 
 not worth while to hasten across her surface, 
 because I was conscious of her and possessed 
 her at each step I took, and my soul was 
 moving within her depths. How many times 
 at the fall of day, as I lay by the side of 
 a ditch, my eyes turned towards the faint blue 
 of the eastern sky, I have suddenly realised 
 that the earth was speeding on her journey 
 hastening from the fatigues of the day and the 
 limited horizons which the sun illumines, and 
 rushing with prodigious force towards the 
 
 190
 
 Jaures 
 
 serenity of night and unlimited horizons, and 
 bearing me with her. I felt in my body as in 
 my soul, and in the earth herself as in my 
 body, the thrill of this journey, and a strange 
 sweetness in those blue spaces which opened 
 out before us, without a shock, without a fold, 
 without a murmur. Oh ! how much deeper and 
 more intense is this kinship of our flesh with 
 the earth, than the vague and wandering kinship 
 of our eyes with the starry heavens. How much 
 less beautiful the night with its stars would be 
 to us, did we not feel ourselves at the same 
 time bound to the earth." 
 
 He has returned to the earth that earth 
 which belonged to him, that earth to which he 
 belonged. They have again taken possession of 
 each other, and his spirit is even now warming 
 and humanising her. Beneath the torrents of 
 blood shed upon his tomb the new life and the 
 peace of to-morrow are already springing. It 
 was a favourite and often repeated thought of 
 Jaures, as of Heraclitus of old, that nothing can 
 interrupt the flow of things, that " peace is only 
 a form or aspect of war, war only a form or 
 aspect of peace, and what is conflict to-day is 
 the beginning of the reconciliation of to-morrow." 
 
 R. R. 
 
 Journal de Geneve, August 2, 1915. 
 
 191
 
 NOTES 
 To PAGE 19 ("LETTER TO GERHART HAUPTMANN") 
 
 The letter to Gerhart Hauptmann, written after the 
 destruction of Louvain, and in the stress of the emotion 
 aroused by the first news, was provoked by a high-sounding 
 article of Hauptmann which appeared a few days previously. 
 In that letter he rebutted the accusation of barbarism hurled 
 against Germany, and returned it ... against Belgium. 
 The article ended as follows : 
 
 "... I assure M. Maeterlinck that no one in Germany 
 thinks of imitating the act of his 'civilised nation.' We 
 prefer to be and to remain the German barbarians for whom 
 the women and the children of our enemies are sacred. 
 I can assure him that we never thoughtlessly massacre 
 and make martyrs of Belgian women and children. Our 
 witnesses are on our frontiers ; the socialist beside the 
 bourgeois, the peasant beside the savant, and the prince 
 beside the workman : and all fight with a full realisation 
 of the object, for a noble and rich national treasure, for 
 internal and external goods which aid the progress and 
 the ascent of humanity." 
 
 To PAGE 41 ("ABOVE THE BATTLE") 
 
 My enemies have not failed to make use of this passage 
 to attribute to me sentiments of contempt with regard to the 
 peoples of Asia and Africa. This charge is all the less 
 
 193 N
 
 Notes 
 
 justified in that I have precious friendships amongst the 
 intellectuals of Asia, with whom I have remained in 
 correspondence during this war. These friends have been 
 so little misled as to my real thought that one of them, 
 a leading Hindu writer, Ananda Coomaraswamy, has 
 dedicated to me an admirable essay which appeared in 
 the New Age (December 1914), entitled "A World Policy 
 for India," but 
 
 1. Asiatic troops, recruited amongst races of professional 
 warriors, in no way represent the thought of Asia, as 
 Coomaraswamy agrees. 
 
 2. The heroism of the troops of Africa and Asia is not 
 under discussion. There was no need for the hecatombs, 
 which have been made during the past year, to evoke 
 admiration for their splendid devotion. 
 
 3. As regards barbarism, I am glad to confess that now 
 the " white-skins " can no longer reproach " skins black, 
 red, or yellow" in this respect. 
 
 4. It is not the latter but the former whom I blajne. 
 I denounce to-day once more with as much vigour as 
 fourteen months ago, the short-sighted policy which has 
 introduced Africa and Asia * into the quarrels of Europe. 
 The future will justify my indictment. 
 
 R. R. 
 
 1 The terms Asia and Africa have not, of course, a geographical 
 but an ethnological signification. Turkey is not, and never has been, 
 European ; and it is difficult to decide up to what point certaia of the 
 Balkan Powers are European. 
 
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