Above the Battle

* * *

The attitude of the younger reviews is curious: for whereas the older, traditional reviews (those which correspond to our Revue des Deux Mondes or our Revue de Paris) are more or less affected by military fervor—thus, for instance, the Neue{159} Rundschau, which printed Thomas Mann's notorious vagaries on Culture and Civilization (Gedanken im Kriege)—many of the younger ones affect a haughty detachment from actual events.

That impassive publication, Blätter für die Kunst, over which broods the invisible personality 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 review, with an ultra-modern point of view, totally different from the calm impersonality of Blätter für 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 sentiments; for it scoffs mercilessly at the{160} 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 André Gide, Péguy, and Léon Bloy, and reproductions of the works of Daumier, Delacroix, Cézanne, Matisse, and R. de la Fresnaye: (cubism flourishes in this Berlin review). The issue of October 24th is devoted to Péguy, and contains, as frontispiece, Egon Schiele's portrait of the man, who is honored by Franz Pfemfert, the editor, as "the purest and most vigorous moral force in French literature of today." 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 Blätter; important on account of the variety of questions it deals with, and the value and number of its contributors, as well as for the {161}broad-mindedness of its editor—René Schickele. 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 Blätter, which almost corresponds to our Nouvelle Revue Française, reappeared in January last with the following declaration, akin to that of the Revue des Nations, at Berne. "It seems good to us 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 today 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 Brahé 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 Blätter 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{162} Scheler, "Europe and the 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 hängen!" 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 personality has been most exalted by this tempest, the most{163} eloquent, courageous, and decided of all is Wilhelm Herzog. He is the editor of the Forum at Munich, and like our own Péguy, 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,[33] and French civilization against him; he points out that the great men of Germany (Grünwald, Dürer, Bach, and Mozart amongst others) have always been persecuted, humiliated, and calumniated.[34] In an article entitled "Der neue Geist,"[35] after having scoffed at the{164} banality that has reappeared in the German theaters, 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? In the Hochschulen? Have we not read that incredibly clumsy (unwahrscheinlich plumpen) appeal of the 99 professors? Have we not appreciated the statements of that double centenarian (des zweihundertjährige Mummelgreises) mummy Lasson? When I was studying philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of Berlin, the theatre in which he lectured was a place of amusement (Lachkabinett) for us—nothing more. And today people take him seriously! English, French, and Italian papers print his senile babblings against Holland, as typical of the Stimmung of the German intellectuals. The wrong that these privy councillors and professors have done us with their Aufklärungsarbeit can hardly be measured. They have isolated themselves from humanity by their inability to realize the feelings of others."

In opposition to these false representatives of a nation, these cultured gossips and political adventurers, he extols the silent ones, the great mass of the people of all nations who suffer in silence;{165} and he joins with them in "the invisible 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."[36]

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 sanitary column in Galicia, and the sight of so much{166} suffering drove him to despair and death. And there are many hidden tragedies, still unrevealed. 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 recognized 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 or a novel whilst his country is in danger and his brothers dying?{167}

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 minority—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 represents the violation of right by Faustrecht, who are defending with us the spirit of liberty.

Journal de Genève, April 19, 1915.{168}

XV. THE MURDER OF THE ÉLITE

The phrase is not new-coined today;[37] 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 fervor 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. 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{169} moral élite 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 intoxicated 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 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{170} in publications whose boldness the German censorship has not perceived; because I bow with respect to the heroic discipline of silence which France in fighting imposes 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 the last chapter 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 imperialism. 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 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.{171}

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 11th 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 (Unbeliebtheit). Everything has its cause; we must have given cause for this hatred; 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 recognize her faults and correct them." Unfortunately even this article is spoiled{172} 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 chapter) the poet Fritz von Unruh, first Lieutenant 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 transformations. The hero, who like himself, is an officer of Uhlans, passes through various centers 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 reproduced by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung show us a muddy and bloodstained trench, where German soldiers, like beasts in a slaughter-house, die or await death with bitter words—and officers getting drunk on champagne around a 42mm. 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{173} of the machine guns, a Dreissigjæhriger (man of thirty).

And the Uhlan, possessed by horror in the midst of the massacre, falls on his knees and prays:

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 12th of February{174} in Champagne.[38] 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:

The second fragment is the account of a touching encounter with a French prisoner:{176}

The same accent of troubled anguish, together{177} with a despair which at moments nearly reaches to madness, and at others breathes a religious fervor, 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.[39] 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.

* * *

"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 ardor 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{180} 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 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 Genève, June 14, 1915.{181}

XVI. JAURÈS

Jaurès 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 to find{182} one who, like him, could stir the crowd and give pleasure to the few; pour out his overflowing genius not only in his speeches and social treatises, but also in his philosophical and historical works;[40] and leave on all things the impress of his personality, the furrow of his robust labor, the seeds of his progressive mind. I have listened to him often in the Chamber, at socialist congresses, at meetings held on behalf of oppressed nations; he even did me the honor 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, words like the call of a trumpet, which reached the farthest seats in the vast amphitheatre, and went straight to the heart,{183} 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 Jaurès 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,[41] his heart was full of a passion for liberty,[42] and this twofold instinct protected him alike from party despotism and anarchy. His 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{184} all things, and this universal sympathy was equally averse to narrow negation and fanatical affirmation. All intolerance inspired him with horror.[43]

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 revolution from the sickening and brutal odor 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, 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{185} 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 continual 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.[44] 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 whatever party they might have belonged. "We reverence the past," he said. "Not in vain have blazed the hearths of all the generations of mankind—but it is we who are advancing, who{186} 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 l'Histoire socialiste de la Révolution, 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 valor and nobility. The moral level of society tomorrow will be determined by the standard of morality of conscience today. 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 manifold and moving unity of all things. This admirable equilibrium of countless elements presupposes in the man who achieves it magnificent health of body and of mind, a mastery of his whole being. And Jaurès 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{187} today 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.[45] 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 agonized presentiment, ever since the year 1905, of the monstrous war which was imminent;[46] his consciousness "of the antagonism, now muffled, now acute, but always profound and terrible, between Germany and England" (November 18, 1909);[47] his denunciation of the secret dealings of European finance and diplomacy, dealings which are encouraged by the "torpor of public spirit"; his cry of alarm 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 considerations or delirious pride"; his contemptuous words for those whom he calls "the jockeys of his country";{188} his clear perception of all responsibilities;[48] 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 Amsterdam Congress in 1904) their haughty weakness, their lack of revolutionary tradition, their want of parliamentary strength, their "formidable powerlessness";[49] 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;[50] and, looking even beyond the war, his premonition of the consequences, near and remote, national and international, of this conflict of nations.

How would he have acted had he lived? The 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.[51] There can be no doubt that when he had fought against the war{189} until all hope of preventing it was gone, he would have yielded loyally to the common duty of national defense 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 absorption of conquered nations by one dominating nation would be a unity realized in slavery." On his return to Paris, in giving an account of the Congress to French Socialists (September 7, 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 defense of national independence. For this great European was also a great Frenchman.[52] Yet it is certain, too, that the{190} 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 shattered 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 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 splendor of the setting sun.

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 labors on the maternal earth:

"There are hours," he says, "when in feeling the earth beneath our feet, we experience a joy deep{191} and tranquil as the earth herself. How often on my journey along footpaths and across fields I have realized suddenly that it was indeed 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 realized 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 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{192} 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 humanizing her. Beneath the torrents of blood shed upon his tomb the new life and the peace of tomorrow are already springing. It was a favorite and often repeated thought of Jaurès, 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 today is the beginning of the reconciliation of tomorrow."

R. R.

Journal de Genève, August 2, 1915.

{193}

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 'civilized 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 realization 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{194} 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 blame. I denounce today once more with as much vigor as fourteen months ago, the short-sighted policy which has introduced Africa and Asia[53] into the quarrels of Europe. The future will justify my indictment.

R. R.

            PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.           

{195}

INDEX

• Abattoir of Ypres and Dixmude, the, 103.
• Absurdity, a ferocious, 47.
• Academicians and Professoren, the voice of, 153.
• Academy of moral science, the, 44.
• Address to the Civilized Nations, 60.
• Ador, M. Gustave, 83.
• Adversary, A Frenchman does not judge his, unheard, 17, 31.
• Agence internationale des prisonniers de guerre, 83.
• Ajax, the madness of, 78.
• Albert, King, 93.
• Allies, the, 73, 98.
• Allophyles, 44.
• Angell, Norman, 137.
• Apostles, rival, 45.
• Architecture like Rheims, a piece of, 24.
• Archbishop of Canterbury, 12, 145.
• Arguments, furious, 119.
• Armies of the Marne and Meuse, 40.
• Art, 16.
• Aryan race, 44.
• Asia and Africa, forces of, 99;
• ethnological signification of the terms of, 194.
• Atrocities committed in Flanders, 25;
• in Russia, 70.
• Attila, 21.
• Auskunfts- und Hilfsstelle für Deutsche im Ausland und Ausländer in Deutschland, 146.
• Austerlitz, 45.
• Austria, 50.
• Authors of these wars, criminal, 42.
• Babut, C. E., 76.
• Bach, 44, 163.
• Baker, M. P., J. Allen-, 145.
• Banking and war, the justification of, 110.
• Baptism of blood, 152.
• Barbarians from the poles and those from the equator, 41, 44.
• Barrès, 44.
• Baumgarten, D., 146.
• Bebel, 189.
• Bees of Holy Writ, the, 91.
• Beethoven, 58.
• Behring, 61.
• Belgium, the neutrality of noble, 20, 87, 93, 94.
• Bennett, E. K., 12.
• Bergson, 43.
• Bishops, 46.
• Bismarck, Prince, 45.
• Blind loyalty, 26.
• Bloody soil, 18.
• Bonfire, stirring up the, 42.
• Books of every kind and of every color, 77.
• Boris Godunov, 59.
• Brotherhood, 16, 101.
• Brueghel, the stumbling blind men of, 30.
• Bucher, Dr., of Strasbourg, 104.
• Bull in the arena, a, 28.
• Cæsar, 121.
• Cambridge Magazine, The, 11.
• Cardinals, 46.
• Caste, a military and feudal, 50.
• Catalonia, the thinkers of, 122.
• Catechism of Force, 139.
• Censor, the German, 163.
• Central Bureau, the, 146.
• Chamberlain, H. S., 28.
• Chauvinism, 38, 147, 160.
• Christianity and socialism, 45.
• Christians of today, 48.
• Cingalese, 41.
• City of God, 54.
• Civilization, the common trunk of our, 16, 41.
• Civil war, a, 123.
• Combatants, compassion and kindness between the, 101.
• Combats, strange, 43.
• Comparisons between the two nations, 167.
• Congress in Stuttgart in 1907, the, 189.
• Contagion, can we not resist this, 47.
• Coomaraswamy, Ananda, 194.
• Cornélienne, 100.
• Correvon, Rev. Ch., 110.
• Cosmic force, 11.
• Cossack avalanche, the, 37, 41.
• Coster, Charles de, 95.
• Courtney, Lord and Lady, of Penwith, 145.
• Cubism, 160.
• Cyclone, the, 46.
• Czarism, the ravenous greed of, 50, 60.
• Danger for Europe, grave, 99.
• D'Annunzio, 44.
• Dante, 25.
• Dehmel, 44, 61, 154.
• "Der neue Geist," 163.
• Destiny of nations, 10.
• De Unamuno, Miguel, 29.
• Deutschland Über Alles, 44.
• Dickinson, Lowes, 10.
• Dickinson, Right-Hon. W. H., 145.
• Dilettantism, neronian, 47.
• Dogs of war, the, 2.
• Dollfus, M. Max., 83.
• Don Quixote, 95.
• Dostoievsky, 59, 61.
• Dryander, Dr. Ernst, 76.
• Dunois, Amédée, 14.
• Dürer, 163.
• Dutch Anti-War Council, 127.
• Duty, to seek truth in the midst of error, 26, 169.
• Eagles, the three rapacious, 50.
• Eckehart, Meister, 165.
• Egyptians, 41.
• Elite of the World, the, 23.
• Emergency committee for the assistance of Germans, Austrians, 144.
• Emerson's, a saying of, 117.
• Enemies, "for a year I (Rolland) have been rich in," 18.
• England, all the hatred is turned against, 102, 145.
• Enthusiasm, heroic, earnest, and even religious, 38.
• Ephebi of old calmly going to sacrifice, the, 39.
• Epic, this monstrous, 43.
• Epidemic of homicidal fury, an, 43.
• Esthonian nations, 66.
• Eucken, 43.
• Europe, a mutilated, 43, 123.
• Eycks, Van, 95.
• Faith in the virtues of one's own nation, 133.
• Fatality, 20; of war, 42.
• Father, all men are sons of the same, 106.
• Fatherland, our earthly, 54.
• Finns, the, 67.
• Ferrière, M. Adolphe, 89, 168.
• Flogged, the privilege of being, 70.
• Foerster, Professor W., 146.
• Fram, Andrea, 156.
• France is ruined, if, 20;
• the true, 98;
• sublime history, 166.
• Frank, 45.
• Fratricidal struggle, 90.
• Fried, Dr. Alfred H., 171.
• Friendly relations exist between the prisoners and their guards, 81.
• Fry, Mr. Roger, 11.
• Funeral pyre, Europe ascending its, 41.
• Galilean barque, the, 143.
• George, Stefan, 159, 170.
• German prisoners concentrated in France, 81;
• my, friends, 99.
• Germany, 19;
• intellectual élite of, 25;
• Kultur, 28;
• great minds of, 30, 31;
• and England, 187.
• God, the great captain, 46.
• Goethe, our, 19, 58.
• Gondolf, Friedr., 29.
• Good and evil, the eternal struggle between, 78.
• Gorki, 61.
• Greatness, intellectual and moral, 19.
• Grodtken, 58.
• Grünwald, 163.
• Guesde, Jules, 188.
• Guilbeaux, Henri, 14.
• Haeckel, Professor Ernst, 61, 113, 160.
• Hague Court, the, 52.
• Hallucinations, passionate, 26.
• Hangmen, the people will learn how to deliver themselves from their, 180.
• Harden, Maximilian, 115.
• Harmony of races, a, 55.
• Harrach, Helene Græfin, 146.
• Hatred, the wounds of, 91, 100.
• Hauptmann, 19, 43, 61, 98, 155.
• Herakles, 190.
• Hercules, 41.
• Heretics, 56.
• Hervé, 45.
• Herzog, Wilhelm, 57, 163, 170.
• Hesse, Hermann, 157.
• High Court, a moral, 51.
• Hildebrand, 61.
• History will pass judgment on each of the nations at war, 15.
• Holy Guillotine, 110.
• Holy War against Russia, a, 65.
• Holz, Arno, 155.
• Honor of their state, to defend the, 26.
• Hugo, Victor, 120.
• Human Mind, the force of, 2.
• Humanity is a symphony of great collective souls, 54.
• Humperdinck, 61.
• Hungarians in distress, 145.
• Huns, the, 22.
• Huysmans, Camille, 188.
• Idealism and German force, 35.
• Ideas have no existence in themselves, 118.
• Idols, the history of humanity is the history of, 108.
• Imperialism, military, financial, feudal, republican, social or intellectual, 50, 98.
• Imperial Rome, 48.
• Insulted without even a hearing, 16.
• Intellectual élite of Russia, the, 60.
• Intellectual leaders, Europe's, 8.
• Intellectuals, guilty, 26;
• of Germany, 22;
• the criminal determination of ninety-three, 28;
• provide terrible examples of hatred, 82;
• French, 116;
• the furious, 151.
• Intelligence of the mind, 120.
• Intelligent few, the, 109.
• Internationalism, intellectual, 111.
• International union of women suffrage societies, 146.
• Invisible tribunal of humanity, 53.
• Ideologues, 2.
• Invocation to Peace, 158.
• Islam, threats of disturbance in the world of, 99.
• Japanese, 41.
• Jaurès, 11;
• a favorite thought of, 192;
• democracy, 186;
• the murder of, 181.
• Jean-Christophe, 8.
• Jena, the bells of, 33.
• Jesuits, 46.
• Jesus, 15.
• Journalists, 162.
• Jupiter of the Vatican, 48.
• Justice to small nations, 74.
• Kalish, 58.
• Kant, sons of, 31, 37.
• Kill! Kill! I hate the war, 79.
• Kipling, 44.
• Klein, Dr. Albert, 173.
• Klemm, Wilhelm, 159.
• Klinger, 61.
• Knights-errant of the world, the, 39.
• Kock, Hans, 159.
• Kolb, Annette, 162, 163.
• Kropotkin, 61.
• Krupp, 109.
• Kultur, 28.
• Kulturträger, 67.
• Labor parties did not desire war, 42.
• Lamm, der, 155.
• Lamprecht, Karl, 44.
• La Patrie, 23.
• Lasson, 164.
• Law is the friend of the weak, 28.
• Laws of Nations, the, 52.
• Lawyers, 7.
• Lee, Vernon, 137.
• Legand, René, 187.
• Leibnitz, 58.
• Leonhard, Rudolf, 156.
• Le Paquet du prisonnier de guerre, 149.
• Letter to Romain Rolland, 64.
• Letts, the, 66.
• Levites, 46.
• Liberator, men make a master of every, 108.
• Liberty against barbarism, 57.
• Liberty, fighting for the awakening of, 38;
• of the world, 64;
• the wild violet of, 119.
• Liebermann, 61.
• Liebknecht, 45.
• Life Force, the, 9.
• Life, the value of, 53.
• Lissauer, 155.
• Lithuanians, 66.
• Louvain, 21.
• Love of our country, 47.
• Luzzatti, 47.
• Maeterlinck, 95, 193.
• Mahler, 59.
• Maladresse, 29.
• Malines, 21.
• Manifesto of Intellectuals, 27.
• Mann, Thomas, 28, 113, 163.
• Marck, Ludwig, 156.
• Marx, Karl, 186.
• Maury, M. Lucien, 168.
• Medicines for the soul, 91.
• Mesnil, Jacques, 14.
• Meyer, M. Arthur, 46.
• Michelet, 186.
• Middle Ages, the great monasteries of the early, 55.
• Militarization of the intellect, 63.
• Minds, the effort of great, 107.
• Minority vitally interested in maintaining these hatreds, 49.
• Miracle, men call the sudden appearance of a hidden reality a, 94.
• Mobilization of the forces of the pen, this, 60.
• Modernism, the noble chimera of, 49.
• Mœrlins, Frau Marie von Bülow-, 146.
• Molière, 113.
• Moloch, 48, 108.
• Moral epidemic, 11.
• Moral triumph, France has won in this war a prodigious, 100.
• Moroccans, 41.
• Mozart, 163.
• Nations subject to Russia are asking agonized questions, 73.
• Natorp, Paul, 146.
• "Necessity knows no law," 31.
• Nederlandsche Anti-Oorlog Raad, 127.
• Neutral countries are too much effaced, 52.
• Neutrality, Belgium's, 34.
• Newman, Cardinal, 184.
• Newspaper-press of the warring nations, 133.
• Newspapers, of both countries give publicity only to prejudiced stories unfavorable to the enemy, 81;
• jests in, 170;
• those who behind the line ring the bells, make speeches, and write, 175;
• they lie—consciously or unconsciously, 178.
• Nietzsche, 58.
• Nivernais, my own little town in the, 89.
• Nordhausen, Richard, 155.
• Notre-Dame la Misère, 91.
• Ode to a Howitzer, an, 155.
• Official agencies, 29.
• Officialdom, heroes of, 91.
• Omega workshops, the, 12.
• Organization, 111.
• Ostwald, 28, 111, 164.
• Paladins of God, the, 39.
• Pamphleteer, a maladroit, 17.
• Pangermanism, 68.
• Panslavism, 68, 71.
• Passion, the language of, 143.
• Patrimony of the human race, the, 21.
• Patriotism, the true formula of, 185.
• Peace, man deteriorates in, 28;
• armed, 39;
• of Europe, the, 137.
• Pedants of Barbarism, 29.
• Pedants, the megalomania of, 167.
• Péguy, Charles, 31, 32, 37.
• Pen dipped in blood, a, 79;
• armies of the, 144.
• Perrier, E., 44.
• Perrette of the fable, 113.
• Petzold, 155.
• Pioch, Georges, 14.
• Plutarch, 186.
• Polemics is like a theft from these unfortunates, time devoted to, 98.
• Policy, German, 20.
• Pontiff, the new, 49.
• Pope Pius X died of grief to see the outbreak of this war, 48.
• Prelude to the great war of the nations, 2.
• Prenant, Mr., 52.
• Press, the war-preaching French, English and German, 49;
• an unscrupulous, 80;
• bullies of the, 91.
• Prisoner, the moral situation of the military, 82.
• Prisoners, civil, 85;
• of war, 97;
• Agency, 177.
• Priests are marching with the colors, 46.
• Problem of freedom, the, 7.
• Protest, the poverty of, 17.
• Proudhon, 2.
• Prussian Imperialism, 26, 50, 57.
• Psychologic necessity, 131.
• Public opinion, 53.
• Public safety, the famous doctrine of, 31.
• Publicists trying to rouse the energies of the nation, 102.
• Questions which divided you, the, 41.
• Race, the idol of, 108.
• Racial frenzy, 48.
• Rade, Martin, 146.
• Rappoport, Charles, 187.
• Reason, the unity of, 16.
• Red Cross, the, 82, 88.
• Redeemer, the, 33.
• Reger, 59.
• Régnier, de, 44.
• Renaitour, J. M., 14.
• Renan, 53.
• Repatriation, 90.
• Reprisals, a desire for, 100.
• Responsible for the longer duration of this horrible war? who are, 134.
• Retaliation, 51.
• Revolution, an internal, 73.
• Rheims, 9;
• Cathedral, 23, 24.
• Rhine, your neighbors across the, 105.
• Riga, 66.
• Rivalry, the world-wide tragedy of, 128.
• Rodin, 17.
• Roentgen, 61.
• Rolland, Romain, 8;
• letters to, 64;
• attacks against, 97.
• Roman Empire at the time of the Tetrarchy, the, 41.
• Rotten, Dr. Elizabeth, 146.
• Rouanet, 14.
• Rubens, 21.
• Rulers, 42.
• Rumors circulate only too easily, 80.
• Russia, our alliance with, 57;
• nations subject to, 73;
• generous promises of, 140.
• Russian, autocracy, the, 50;
• writers have been our guides for the last forty years, 59;
• the hand of the, Government, 70;
• evils of, Government, 71;
• domination very oppressive, 73.
• Sacrifice, the ecstasy of, 32.
• Sacrilegious conflict, a, 40.
• Sancho Panza, 95.
• Savageries, 21.
• Scheler, Max, 162.
• Schickele, René, 160.
• Schleinitz, Nora Freiin von, 146.
• Schneeli, Dr., 81.
• Schrenck, 110.
• Schultze, Siegmund-, 146.
• Seeherrschaft of Britain, 145.
• Seippel, M. Paul, 52.
• Senegalese, 41.
• Sepoys, 41.
• Sermon on the Mount, the, 110.
• Shaw, Bernard, 43.
• Shameful record, a, 17.
• Sikhs, 41.
• Silence itself is an act, at such a time, 22;
• the heroic discipline of France in, 170.
• Sin, the unpardonable, 32.
• Socialism, the leaders of, 40;
• drifting, 190.
• Socialists, German, 45;
• Italian, 46;
• unite and attack both Kaiser and Czar, 49.
• Society of friends of foreigners in distress, 146.
• Sons of sorrow, geniuses are, 34.
• Soudanese, 41.
• Spirit above flesh, put, 24;
• is the light, the, 54.
• Spiritual forces, 10;
• guides of the human race, 151.
• Sport, this bloody and puerile, 42.
• Stepping-stone, a human, 10.
• Stern, Josef Luitpol, 155.
• Sterheim, Carl, 161.
• Strauss, 53;
• Richard, neurotic jugglers with orchestral effects, 59.
• Strawinsky, 59.
• Sudermann, 61.
• Switzerland, 49;
• the generous heart of, 54.
• Tenderness is wisdom, 157.
• Teutonic colossus, the, 47.
• Thermopylæ of Liège, the, 93.
• Thiesson, Gaston, 14.
• Thoma, Hans, 29.
• Till Ulenspiegel, 95.
• Tillys, modern, 51.
• Tokio, 43.
• Tolstoi, 16, 59.
• Trakl, George, 165.
• Trustfulness, culpable, 26.
• Turks, 41.
• Uebervolk, 78.
• Unamuno, Miguel de, 111.
• Underhand means, 42.
• Unified Europe, a, 125.
• Union of Democratic Control, 137.
• United States of Europe, a, 112.
• Unity of European Future, 152.
• Valmy, a hero of, 48.
• Vandervelde, 189.
• Verdict of history, the, 132.
• Verhaeren, 95.
• Vices which are profitable, 109.
• Victory below means defeat above, 33.
• Vierordt, Heinrich, 160.
• Voltaire, the motto of, 51.
• Von Biberstein, Baron Marschall, 171.
• Von Unruh, Fritz, 155, 172.
• Wagner, 58.
• War, that lies behind the present conflict, the greater, 10;
• as a fatality, 20;
• is war, 30;
• international, 47;
• between the Western nations, no reason for, 49;
• the delightful promise of a perpetual, 105;
• of the pen, 131.
• Warsaw, 54.
• Wedekind, Franz, 155.
• Weingartner, 61.
• Wells, 43.
• Werfel, Franz, 156.
• Whitman, Walt, 7;
• and Tolstoi, 16.
• William II, 46.
• Wolff's Agency, 27.
• Wood, James, 12.
• Workers' International, the, 188.
• Wound will heal, a good open clean, 105;
• wounded of both countries are living in terms of friendship, in Germany and France alike, 82.
• Writers, German, 154.
• Wundt, 44, 61.
• Zangwill, Israel, 137.
• Zorothowo, 58.
• Zweig, Stefan, 165.