One who is aware of values which he regards as a hundredfold more precious than the wellbeing of the "fatherland," of society, of the kinships of blood and race, values which stand above fatherlands and races, international values, such a man would prove himself hypocrite should he try to play the patriot. It is a degradation of mankind to encourage national hatred, to admire it, or to extol it.
Nietzsche, Vorreden Material im Nachlass.
La vocation ne peut être connue et prouvée que par le sacrifice que fait le savant et l'artiste de son repos et son bien-être pour suivre sa vocation.
Letter de Tolstoi a Romain Rolland.
4, Octobre, 1887.
CHAPTER I
THE WARDEN OF THE INHERITANCE
THE events of August 2, 1914, broke Europe into fragments. Therewith collapsed the faith which the brothers in the spirit, Jean Christophe and Olivier, had been building with their lives. A great heritage was cast aside. The idea of human brotherhood, once sacred, was buried contemptuously by the grave-diggers of all the lands at war, buried among the million corpses of the slain.
Romain Rolland was faced by an unparalleled responsibility. He had presented the problems in imaginative form. Now they had come up for solution as terrible realities. Faith in Europe, the faith which he had committed to the care of Jean Christophe, had no protector, no advocate, at a time when it was more than ever necessary to raise its standard against the storm. Well did the poet know that a truth remains naught but a half-truth while it exists merely in verbal formulation. It is in action that a thought becomes genuinely alive. A faith proves itself real in the form of a public confession.
In Jean Christophe, Romain Rolland had delivered his message to this fated hour. To make the confession a live thing, he had to give something more, himself. The time had come for him to do what Jean Christophe had done for Olivier's son. He must guard the sacred flame; he must fulfil what his hero had prophetically foreshadowed. The way in which Rolland fulfilled this obligation has become for us all an imperishable example of spiritual heroism, which moves us even more strongly than we were moved by his written words. We saw his life and personality taking the form of an actually living conviction. We saw how, with the whole power of his name, and with all the energy of his artistic temperament, he took his stand against multitudinous adversaries in his own land and in other countries, his gaze fixed upon the heaven of his faith.
Rolland had never failed to recognize that in a time of widespread illusion it would be difficult to hold fast to his convictions, however self-evident they might seem. But, as he wrote to a French friend in September, 1914, "We do not choose our own duties. Duty forces itself upon us. Mine is, with the aid of those who share my ideas, to save from the deluge the last vestiges of the European spirit.... Mankind demands of us that those who love their fellows should take a firm stand, and should even fight, if needs must, against those they love."
For five years we have watched the heroism of this fight, pursuing its own course amid the warring of the nations. We have watched the miracle of one man's keeping his senses amid the frenzied millions, of one man's remaining free amid the universal slavery of public opinion. We have watched love at war with hate, the European at war with the patriots, conscience at war with the world. Throughout this long and bloody night, when we were often ready to perish from despair at the meaninglessness of nature, the one thing which has consoled us and sustained us has been the recognition that the mighty forces which were able to crush towns and annihilate empires, were powerless against an isolated individual possessed of the will and the courage to be free. Those who deemed themselves the victors over millions, were to find that there was one thing which they could not master, a free conscience.
Vain, therefore, was their triumph, when they buried the crucified thought of Europe. True faith works miracles. Jean Christophe had burst the bonds of death, had risen again in the living form of his own creator.
CHAPTER II
FOREARMED
WE do not detract from the moral services of Romain Rolland, but we may perhaps excuse to some extent his opponents, when we insist that Rolland had excelled all contemporary imaginative writers in the profundity of his preparatory studies of war and its problems. If to-day, in retrospect, we contemplate his writings, we marvel to note how, from the very first and throughout a long period of years, they combined to build up, as it were, a colossal pyramid, culminating in the point upon which the lightnings of war were to be discharged. For twenty years, the author's thought, his whole creative activity, had been unintermittently concentrated upon the contradictions between spirit and force, between freedom and the fatherland, between victory and defeat. Through a hundred variations he had pursued the same fundamental theme, treating it dramatically, epically, and in manifold other ways. There is hardly a problem relevant to this question which is not touched upon by Christophe and Olivier, by Aërt and by the Girondists, in their discussions. Intellectually regarded, Rolland's writings are a maneuvering ground for all the incentives to war. He thus had his conclusions already drawn when others were beginning an attempt to come to terms with events. As historian, he had described the perpetual recurrence of war's typical accompaniments, had discussed the psychology of mass suggestion, and had shown the effects of wartime mentality upon the individual. As moralist and as citizen of the world, he had long ere this formulated his creed. We may say, in fact, that Rolland's mind had been in a sense immunized against the illusions of the crowd and against infection by prevalent falsehoods.
Not by chance does an artist decide which problems he will consider. The dramatist does not make a "lucky selection" of his theme. The musician does not "discover" a beautiful melody, but already has it within him. It is not the artist who creates the problems, but the problems which create the artist; just as it is not the prophet who makes his prophecy, but the foresight which creates the prophet. The artist's choice is always pre-ordained. The man who has foreseen the essential problem of a whole civilization, of a disastrous epoch, must of necessity, in the decisive hour, play a leading part. He only who had contemplated the coming European war as an abyss towards which the mad hunt of recent decades, making light of every warning, had been speeding, only such a one could command his soul, could refrain from joining the bacchanalian rout, could listen unmoved to the throbbing of the war drums. Who but such a man could stand upright in the greatest storm of illusion the world has ever known?
Thus it came to pass that not merely during the first hour of the war was Rolland in opposition to other writers and artists of the day. This opposition dated from the very inception of his career, and hence for twenty years he had been a solitary. The reason why the contrast between his outlook and that of his generation had not hitherto been conspicuous, the reason why the cleavage was not disclosed until the actual outbreak of war, lies in this, that Rolland's divergence was a matter not so much of mood as of character. Before the apocalyptic year, almost all persons of artistic temperament had recognized quite as definitely as Rolland had recognized that a fratricidal struggle between Europeans would be a crime, would disgrace civilization. With few exceptions, they were pacifists. It would be more correct to say that with few exceptions they believed themselves to be pacifists. For pacifism does not simply mean, to be a friend to peace, but to be a worker in the cause of peace, an εἱρηνοποιὁς, as the New Testament has it. Pacifism signifies the activity of an effective will to peace, not merely the love of an easy life and a preference for repose. It signifies struggle; and like every struggle it demands, in the hour of danger, self-sacrifice and heroism. Now these "pacifists" we have just been considering had merely a sentimental fondness for peace; they were friendly towards peace, just as they were friendly towards ideas of social equality, towards philanthropy, towards the abolition of capital punishment. Such faith as they possessed was a faith devoid of passion. They wore their opinions as they wore their clothing, and when the time of trial came they were ready to exchange their pacifist ethic for the ethic of the war-makers, were ready to don a national uniform in matters of opinion. At bottom, they knew the right just as well as Rolland, but they had not the courage of their opinions. Goethe's saying to Eckermann applies to them with deadly force. "All the evils of modern literature are due to lack of character in individual investigators and writers."
Thus Rolland did not stand alone in his knowledge, which was shared by many intellectuals and statesmen. But in his case, all his knowledge was tinged with religious fervor; his beliefs were a living faith; his thoughts were actions. He was unique among imaginative writers for the splendid vigor with which he remained true to his ideals when all others were deserting the standard; for the way in which he defended the European spirit against the raging armies of the sometime European intellectuals now turned patriots. Fighting as he had fought from youth upwards on behalf of the invisible against the world of reality, he displayed, as a foil to the heroism of the trenches, a higher heroism still. While the soldiers were manifesting the heroism of blood, Rolland manifested the heroism of the spirit, and showed the glorious spectacle of one who was able, amid the intoxication of the war-maddened masses, to maintain the sobriety and freedom of an unclouded mind.
CHAPTER III
THE PLACE OF REFUGE
AT the outbreak of the war, Romain Rolland was in Vevey, a small and ancient city on the lake of Geneva. With few exceptions he spent his summers in Switzerland, the country in which some of his best literary work had been accomplished. In Switzerland, where the nations join fraternal hands to form a state, where Jean Christophe had heralded European unity, Rolland received the news of the world disaster.
Of a sudden it seemed as if his whole life had become meaningless. Vain had been his exhortations, vain the twenty years of ardent endeavor. He had feared this disaster since early boyhood. He had made Olivier cry in torment of soul: "I dread war so greatly, I have dreaded it for so long. It has been a nightmare to me, and it poisoned my childhood's days." Now, what he had prophetically anticipated had become a terrible reality for hundreds of millions of human beings. The agony of the hour was nowise diminished because he had foreseen its coming to be inevitable. On the contrary, while others hastened to deaden their senses with the opium of false conceptions of duty and with the hashish dreams of victory, Rolland's pitiless sobriety enabled him to look far out into the future. On August 3rd he wrote in his diary: "I feel at the end of my resources. I wish I were dead. It is horrible to live when men have gone mad, horrible to witness the collapse of civilization. This European war is the greatest catastrophe in the history of many centuries, the overthrow of our dearest hopes of human brotherhood." A few days later, in still greater despair, he penned the following entry: "My distress is so colossal an accumulation of distresses that I can scarcely breathe. The ravaging of France, the fate of my friends, their deaths, their wounds. The grief at all this suffering, the heartrending sympathetic anguish with the millions of sufferers. I feel a moral death-struggle as I look on at this mad humanity which is offering up its most precious possessions, its energies, its genius, its ardors of heroic devotion, which is sacrificing all these things to the murderous and stupid idols of war. I am heartbroken at the absence of any divine message, any divine spirit, any moral leadership, which might upbuild the City of God when the carnage is at an end. The futility of my whole life has reached its climax. If I could but sleep, never to reawaken."
Frequently, in this torment of mind, he desired to return to France; but he knew that he could be of no use there. In youth, undersized and delicate, he had been unfit for military service. Now, hard upon fifty years of age, he would obviously be of even less account. The merest semblance of helping in the war would have been repugnant to his conscience, for his acceptance of Tolstoi's teaching had made his convictions steadfast. He knew that it was incumbent upon him to defend France, but to do so in another sense than that of the combatants and that of the intellectuals clamorous with hate. "A great nation," he wrote more than a year later, in the preface to Au-dessus de la mêlée, "has not only its frontiers to protect; it must also protect its good sense. It must protect itself from the hallucinations, injustices, and follies which war lets loose. To each his part. To the armies, the protection of the soil of their native land. To the thinkers, the defense of its thought.... The spirit is by no means the most insignificant part of a people's patrimony." In these opening days of misery, it was not yet clear to him whether and how he would be called upon to speak. Yet he knew that if and when he did speak, he would take up his parable on behalf of intellectual freedom and supranational justice.
But justice must have freedom of outlook. Nowhere except in a neutral country could the observer listen to all voices, make acquaintance with all opinions. From such a country alone could he secure a view above the smoke of the battle-field, above the mist of falsehood, above the poison gas of hatred. Here he could retain freedom of judgment and freedom of speech. In Jean Christophe, he had shown the dangerous power of mass suggestion. "Under its influence," he had written, "in every country the firmest intelligences felt their most cherished convictions melting away." No one knew better than Rolland "the spiritual contagion, the all-pervading insanity, of collective thought." Knowing these things so well, he wished all the more to remain free from them, to shun the intoxication of the crowd, to avoid the risk of having to follow any other leadership than that of his conscience. He had merely to turn to his own writings. He could read there the words of Olivier: "I love France, but I cannot for the sake of France kill my soul or betray my conscience. This would indeed be to betray my country. How can I hate when I feel no hatred? How can I truthfully act the comedy of hate?" Or, again, he could read this memorable confession: "I will not hate. I will be just even to my enemies. Amid all the stresses of passion, I wish to keep my vision clear, that I may understand everything and thus be able to love everything." Only in freedom, only in independence of spirit, can the artist aid his nation. Thus alone can he serve his generation, thus alone can he serve humanity. Loyalty to truth is loyalty to the fatherland.
What had befallen through chance was now confirmed by deliberate choice. During the five years of the war Romain Rolland remained in Switzerland, Europe's heart; remained there that he might fulfil his task, "de dire ce qui est juste et humain." Here, where the breezes blow freely from all other lands, and whence a voice could pass freely across all the frontiers, here where no fetters were imposed upon speech, he followed the call of his invisible duty. Close at hand the endless waves of blood and hatred emanating from the frenzy of war were foaming against the frontiers of the cantonal state. But throughout the storm, the magnetic needle of one intelligence continued to point unerringly towards the immutable pole of life—to point towards love.
CHAPTER IV
THE SERVICE OF MAN
IN Rolland's view it was the artist's duty to serve his fatherland by conscientious service to all mankind, to play his part in the struggle by waging war against the suffering the war was causing and against the thousandfold torments entailed by the war. He rejected the idea of absolute aloofness. "An artist has no right to hold aloof while he is still able to help others." But this aid, this participation, must not take the form of fostering the murderous hatred which already animated the millions. The aim must be to unite the millions further, where unseen ties already existed, in their infinite suffering. He therefore took his part in the ranks of the helpers, not weapon in hand, but following the example of Walt Whitman, who, during the American Civil War, served as hospital assistant.
Hardly had the first blows been struck when cries of anguish from all lands began to be heard in Switzerland. Thousands who were without news of fathers, husbands, and sons in the battlefields, stretched despairing arms into the void. By hundreds, by thousands, by tens of thousands, letters and telegrams poured into the little House of the Red Cross in Geneva, the only international rallying point that still remained. Isolated, like stormy petrels, came the first inquiries for missing relatives; then these inquiries themselves became a storm. The letters arrived in sackfuls. Nothing had been prepared for dealing with such an inundation of misery. The Red Cross had no space, no organization, no system, and above all no helpers.
Romain Rolland was one of the first to offer personal assistance. The Musée Rath was quickly made available for the purposes of the Red Cross. In one of the small wooden cubicles, among hundreds of girls, women, and students, Rolland sat for more than eighteen months, engaged each day for from six to eight hours side by side with the head of the undertaking, Dr. Ferrière, to whose genius for organization myriads owe it that the period of suspense was shortened. Here Rolland filed letters, wrote letters, performed an abundance of detail work, seemingly of little importance. But how momentous was every word to the individuals whom he could help, for in this vast universe each suffering individual is mainly concerned about his own particular grain of unhappiness. Countless persons to-day, unaware of the fact, have to thank the great writer for news of their lost relatives. A rough stool, a small table of unpolished deal, the turmoil of typewriters, the bustle of human beings questioning, calling one to another, hastening to and fro—such was Romain Rolland's battlefield in this campaign against the afflictions of the war. Here, while other authors and intellectuals were doing their utmost to foster mutual hatred, he endeavored to promote reconciliation, to alleviate the torment of a fraction among the countless sufferers by such consolation as the circumstances rendered possible. He neither desired, nor occupied, a leading position in the work of the Red Cross; but, like so many other nameless assistants, he devoted himself to the daily task of promoting the interchange of news. His deeds were inconspicuous, and are therefore all the more memorable.
When he was allotted the Nobel peace prize, he refused to retain the money for his own use, and devoted the whole sum to the mitigation of the miseries of Europe, that he might suit the action to the word, the word to the action. Ecce homo! Ecce poeta!
CHAPTER V
THE TRIBUNAL OF THE SPIRIT
NO one had been more perfectly forearmed than Romain Rolland. The closing chapters of Jean Christophe foretell the coming mass illusion. Never for a moment had he entertained the vain hope of certain idealists that the fact (or semblance) of civilization, that the increase of human kindliness which we owe to two millenniums of Christianity, would make a future war, comparatively humane. Too well did he know as historian that in the initial outbursts of war passion the veneer of civilization and Christianity would be rubbed off; that in all nations alike the naked bestiality of human beings would be disclosed; that the smell of the shed blood would reduce them all to the level of wild beasts. He did not conceal from himself that this strange halitus is able to dull and to confuse even the gentlest, the kindliest, the most intelligent of souls. The rending asunder of ancient friendships, the sudden solidarity among persons most opposed in temperament now eager to abase themselves before the idol of the fatherland, the total disappearance of conscientious conviction at the first breath of the actualities of war—in Jean Christophe these things were written no less plainly than when of old the fingers of the hand wrote upon the palace wall in Babylon.
Nevertheless, even this prophetic soul had underestimated the cruel reality. During the opening days of the war, Rolland was horrified to note how all previous wars were being eclipsed in the atrocity of the struggle, in its material and spiritual brutality, in its extent, and in the intensity of its passion. All possible anticipations had been outdone. Although for thousands of years, by twos or variously allied, the peoples of Europe had almost unceasingly been warring one with another, never before had their mutual hatreds, as manifested in word and deed, risen to such a pitch as in this twentieth century after the birth of Christ. Never before in the history of mankind did hatred extend so widely through the populations; never did it rage so fiercely among the intellectuals; never before was oil pumped into the flames as it was now pumped from innumerable fountains and tubes of the spirit, from the canals of the newspapers, from the retorts of the professors. All evil instincts were fostered among the masses. The whole world of feeling, the whole world of thought, became militarized. The loathsome organization for the dealing of death by material weapons was yet more loathsomely reflected in the organization of national telegraphic bureaus to scatter lies like sparks over land and sea. For the first time, science, poetry, art, and philosophy became no less subservient to war than mechanical ingenuity was subservient. In the pulpits and professorial chairs, in the research laboratories, in the editorial offices and in the authors' studies, all energies were concentrated as by an invisible system upon the generation and diffusion of hatred. The seer's apocalyptic warnings were surpassed.
A deluge of hatred and blood such as even the blood-drenched soil of Europe had never known, flowed from land to land. Romain Rolland knew that a lost world, a corrupt generation, cannot be saved from its illusions. A world conflagration cannot be extinguished by a word, cannot be quelled by the efforts of naked human hands. The only possible endeavor was to prevent others adding fuel to the flames, and with the lash of scorn and contempt to deter as far as might be those who were engaged in such criminal undertakings. It might be possible, too, to build an ark wherein what was intellectually precious in this suicidal generation might be saved from the deluge, might be made available for those of a future day when the waters of hatred should have subsided. A sign might be uplifted, round which the faithful could rally, building a temple of unity amid, and yet high above, the battlefields.
Among the detestable organizations of the general staffs, mechanical ingenuity, lying, and hatred, Rolland dreamed of establishing another organization, a fellowship of the free spirits of Europe. The leading imaginative writers, the leading men of science, were to constitute the ark he desired; they were to be the sustainers of justice in these days of injustice and falsehood. While the masses, deceived by words, were raging against one another in blind fury, the artists, the writers, the men of science, of Germany, France, and England, who for centuries had been coöperating for discoveries, advances, ideals, could combine to form a tribunal of the spirit which, with scientific earnestness, should devote itself to extirpating the falsehoods that were keeping their respective peoples apart. Transcending nationality, they could hold intercourse on a higher plane. For it was Rolland's most cherished hope that the great artists and great investigators would refuse to identify themselves with the crime of the war, would refrain from abandoning their freedom of conscience and from entrenching themselves behind a facile "my country, right or wrong." With few exceptions, intellectuals had for centuries recognized the repulsiveness of war. More than a thousand years earlier, when China was threatened by ambitious Mongols, Li Tai Peh had exclaimed: "Accursed be war! Accursed the work of weapons! The sage has nothing to do with these follies." The contention that the sage has naught to do with such follies seems to rise like an unenunciated refrain from all the utterances of western men of learning since Europe began to have a common life. In Latin letters (for Latin, the medium of intercourse, was likewise the symbol of supranational fellowship), the great humanists whose respective countries were at war exchanged their regrets, and offered mutual philosophical solace against the murderous illusions of their less instructed fellows. Herder was speaking for the learned Germans of the eighteenth century when he wrote: "For fatherland to engage in a bloody struggle with fatherland is the most preposterous, barbarism." Goethe, Byron, Voltaire, and Rousseau, were at one in their contempt for the purposeless butcheries of war. To-day, in Rolland's view, the leading intellectuals, the great scientific investigators whose minds would perforce remain unclouded, the most humane among the imaginative writers, could join in a fellowship whose members would renounce the errors of their respective nations. He did not, indeed, venture to hope that there would be a very large number of persons whose souls would remain free from the passions of the time. But spiritual force is not based upon numbers; its laws are not those of armies. In this field, Goethe's saying is applicable: "Everything great, and everything most worth having comes from a minority. It cannot be supposed that reason will ever become popular. Passion and sentiment may be popularized, the reason will always remain a privilege of the few." This minority, however, may acquire authority through spiritual force. Above all, it may constitute a bulwark against falsehood. If men of light and leading, free men of all nationalities, were to meet somewhere, in Switzerland perhaps, to make common cause against every injustice, by whomever committed, a sanctuary would at length be established, an asylum for truth which was now everywhere bound and gagged. Europe would have a span of soil for home; mankind would have a spark of hope. Holding mutual converse, these best of men could enlighten one another; and the reciprocal illumination on the part of such unprejudiced persons could not fail to diffuse its light over the world.
Such was the mood in which Rolland took up his pen for the first time after the outbreak of war. He wrote an open letter to Hauptmann, to the author whom among Germans he chiefly honored for goodness and humaneness. Within the same hour he wrote to Verhaeren, Germany's bitterest foe. Rolland thus stretched forth both his hands, rightward and leftward, in the hope that he could bring his two correspondents together, so that at least within the domain of pure spirit there might be a first essay towards spiritual reconciliation, what time upon the battlefields the machine-guns with their infernal clatter were mowing down the sons of France, Germany, Belgium, Britain, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.
CHAPTER VI
THE CONTROVERSY WITH GERHART HAUPTMANN
ROMAIN ROLLAND had never been personally acquainted with Gerhart Hauptmann. He was familiar with the German's writings, and admired their passionate participation in all that is human, loved them for the goodness with which the individual figures are intentionally characterized. On a visit to Berlin, he had called at Hauptmann's house, but the playwright was away. The two had never before exchanged letters.
Nevertheless, Rolland decided to address Hauptmann as a representative German author, as writer of Die Weber and as creator of many other figures typifying suffering. He wrote on August 29, 1914, the day on which a telegram issued by Wolff's agency, ludicrously exaggerating in pursuit of the policy of "frightfulness," had announced that "the old town of Louvain, rich in works of art, exists no more to-day." An outburst of indignation was assuredly justified, but Rolland endeavored to exhibit the utmost self-control. He began as follows: "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.'" He goes on with a pathetic self-consciousness for the first time noticeable in the work of this most modest of writers. Recognizing his mission, he lifts his voice above the controversies of the moment. "I have labored 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 European civilization, they are involved, will never lead me to soil my spirit with hatred."
Now Rolland sounds a more impassioned note. He does not hold Germany responsible for the war. "War springs from the weakness and stupidity of nations." He ignores political questions, but protests vehemently against the destruction of works of art, asking Hauptmann and his countrymen, "Are you the grandchildren of Goethe or of Attila?" Proceeding more quietly, he implores Hauptmann to refrain from any attempt to justify such things. "In the name of our Europe, of which you have hitherto been one of the most illustrious champions, in the name of that civilization for which the greatest of men have striven all down the ages, in the name of the very honor of your Germanic race, Gerhart Hauptmann, I adjure you, I challenge you, you and the intellectuals of Germany, among whom I reckon so many friends, to protest with the utmost energy against this crime which will otherwise recoil upon yourselves." Rolland's hope was that the Germans would, like himself, refuse to condone the excesses of the war-makers, would refuse to accept the war as a fatality. He hoped for a public protest from across the Rhine. Rolland was not aware that at this time no one in Germany had or could have any inkling of the true political situation. He was not aware that such a public protest as he desired was quite impossible.
Gerhart Hauptmann's answer struck a fiercer note than Rolland's letter. Instead of complying with the Frenchman's plea, instead of repudiating the German militarist policy of frightfulness, he attempted, with sinister enthusiasm, to justify that policy. Accepting the maxim, "war is war," he, somewhat prematurely, defended the right of the stronger. "The weak naturally have recourse to vituperation." He declared the report of the destruction of Louvain to be false. It was, he said, a matter of life or death for Germany that the German troops should effect "their peaceful passage" through Belgium. He referred to the pronouncements of the general staff, and quoted, as the highest authority for truth, the words of "the Emperor himself."
Therewith the controversy passed from the spiritual to the political plane. Rolland, embittered in his turn, rejected the views of Hauptmann, who was lending his moral authority to the support of Schlieffen's aggressive theories. Hauptmann, declared Rolland, was "accepting responsibility for the crimes of those who wield authority." Instead of promoting harmony, the correspondence was fostering discord. In reality the two had no common ground for discussion. The attempt was ill-timed, passion still ran too high; the mists of prevalent falsehood still obscured vision on both sides. The waters of the flood continued to rise, the infinite deluge of hatred and error. Brethren were as yet unable to recognize one another in the darkness.
CHAPTER VII
THE CORRESPONDENCE WITH VERHAEREN
HAVING written to Gerhart Hauptmann, the German, Rolland almost simultaneously addressed himself to Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian, who had been an enthusiast for European unity, but had now become one of Germany's bitterest foes. Perhaps no one is better entitled than the present writer to bear witness that Verhaeren's hostility to Germany was a new thing. As long as peace lasted, the Belgian poet had known no other ideal than that of international brotherhood, had detested nothing more heartily than he detested international discord. Shortly before the war, in his preface to Henri Guilbeaux's anthology of German poetry, Verhaeren had spoken of "the ardor of the nations," which, he said, "in defiance of that other passion which tends to make them quarrel, inclines them towards mutual love." The German invasion of Belgium taught him to hate. His verses, which had hitherto been odes to creative force, were henceforward dithyrambs in favor of hostility.
Rolland had sent Verhaeren a copy of his protest against the destruction of Louvain and the bombardment of Rheims cathedral. Concurring in this protest, Verhaeren wrote: "Sadness and hatred overpower me. The latter feeling is new in my experience. I cannot rid myself of it, although I am one of those who have always regarded hatred as a base sentiment. Such love as I can give in this hour is reserved for my country, or rather for the heap of ashes to which Belgium has been reduced." Rolland's answer ran as follows: "Rid yourself of hatred. Neither you nor we should give way to it. Let us guard against hatred even more than we guard against our enemies! You will see at a later date that the tragedy is more terrible than people can realize while it is actually being played.... So stupendous is this European drama that we have no right to make human beings responsible for it. It is a convulsion of nature.... Let us build an ark as did those who were threatened with the deluge. Thus we can save what is left of humanity." Without acrimony, Verhaeren rejected this adjuration. He deliberately chose to remain inspired with hatred, little as he liked the feeling. In La Belgique sanglante, he declared that hatred brought a certain solace, although, dedicating his work "to the man I once was," he manifested his yearning for the revival of his former sentiment that the world was a comprehensive whole. Vainly did Rolland return to the charge in a touching letter: "Greatly, indeed, must you have suffered, to be able to hate. But I am confident that in your case such a feeling cannot long endure, for souls like yours would perish in this atmosphere. Justice must be done, but it is not a demand of justice that a whole people should be held responsible for the crimes of a few hundred individuals. Were there but one just man in Israel, you would have no right to pass judgment upon all Israel. Surely it is impossible for you to doubt that many in Germany and Austria, oppressed and gagged, continue to suffer and struggle.... Thousands of innocent persons are being everywhere sacrificed to the crimes of politics! Napoleon was not far wrong when he said: 'Politics are for us what fate was for the ancients.' Never was the destiny of classical days more cruel. Let us refuse, Verhaeren, to make common cause with this destiny. Let us take our stand beside the oppressed, beside all the oppressed, wherever they may dwell. I recognize only two nations on earth, that of those who suffer, and that of those who cause the suffering."
Verhaeren, however, was unmoved. He answered as follows: "If I hate, it is because what I saw, felt, and heard, is hateful.... I admit that I cannot be just, now that I am filled with sadness and burn with anger. I am not simply standing near the fire, but am actually amid the flames, so that I suffer and weep. I can no otherwise." He remained loyal to hatred, and indeed loyal to the hatred-for-hate of Romain Rolland's Olivier. Notwithstanding this grave divergence of view between Verhaeren and Rolland, the two men continued on terms of friendship and mutual respect. Even in the preface he contributed to Loyson's inflammatory book, Êtes-vous neutre devant le crime, Verhaeren distinguished between the person and the cause. He was unable, he said, "to espouse Rolland's error," but he would not repudiate his friendship for Rolland. Indeed, he desired to emphasize its existence, seeing that in France it was already "dangerous to love Romain Rolland."
In this correspondence, as in that with Hauptmann, two strong passions seemed to clash; but the opponents in reality remained out of touch. Here, likewise, the appeal was fruitless. Practically the whole world was given over to hatred, including even the noblest creative artists, and the finest among the sons of men.
CHAPTER VIII
THE EUROPEAN CONSCIENCE
AS on so many previous occasions in his life of action, this man of inviolable faith had issued to the world an appeal for fellowship, and had issued it once more in vain. The writers, the men of science, the philosophers, the artists, all took the side of the country to which they happened to belong; the Germans spoke for Germany, the Frenchmen for France, the Englishmen for England. No one would espouse the universal cause; no one would rise superior to the device, my country right or wrong. In every land, among those of every nation, there were to be found plenty of enthusiastic advocates, persons willing blindly to justify all their country's doings, including its errors and its crimes, to excuse these errors and crimes upon the plea of necessity. There was only one land, the land common to them all, Europe, motherland of all the fatherlands, which found no advocate, no defender. There was only one idea, the most self-evident to a Christian world, which found no spokesman—the idea of ideas, humanity.
During these days, Rolland may well have recalled sacred memories of the time when Leo Tolstoi's letter came to give him a mission in life. Tolstoi had stood alone in the utterance of his celebrated outcry, "I can no longer keep silence." At that time his country was at war. He arose to defend the invisible rights of human beings, uttering a protest against the command that men should murder their brothers. Now his voice was no longer heard; his place was empty; the conscience of mankind was dumb. To Rolland, the consequent silence, the terrible silence of the free spirit amid the hurly-burly of the slaves, seemed more hateful than the roar of the cannon. Those to whom he had appealed for help had refused to answer the call. The ultimate truth, the truth of conscience, had no organized fellowship to sustain it. No one would aid him in the struggle for the freedom of the European soul, the struggle of truth against falsehood, the struggle of human lovingkindness against frenzied hate. Rolland once again was alone with his faith, more alone than during the bitterest years of solitude.
But Rolland has never been one to resign himself to loneliness. In youth he had already felt that those who are passive while wrong is being done are as criminal as the very wrongdoer. "Ceux qui subissent le mal sont aussi criminels que ceux qui le font." Upon the poet, above all, it seemed to him incumbent to find words for thought, and to vivify the words by action. It is not enough to write ornamental comments upon the history of one's time. The poet must be part of the very being of his time, must fight to make his ideas realize themselves in action. "The elite of the intellect constitutes an aristocracy which would fain replace the aristocracy of birth. But the aristocracy of intellect is apt to forget that the aristocracy of birth won its privileges with blood. For hundreds of years men have listened to the words of wisdom, but seldom have they seen a sage offering himself up to the sacrifice. If we would inspire others with faith we must show that our own faith is real. Mere words do not suffice." Fame is a sword as well as a laurel crown. Faith imposes obligations. One who had made Jean Christophe utter the gospel of a free conscience, could not, when the world had fashioned his cross, play the part of Peter denying the Lord. He must take up his apostolate, be ready should need arise to face martyrdom. Thus, while almost all the artists of the day, in their "passion d'abdiquer," in their mad desire to shout with the crowd, were not merely extolling force and victory as the masters of the hour, but were actually maintaining that force was the very meaning of civilization, that victory was the vital energy of the world, Rolland stood forth against them all, proclaiming the might of the incorruptible conscience. "Force is always hateful to me," wrote Rolland to Jouve in this decisive hour. "If the world cannot get on without force, it still behooves me to refrain from making terms with force. I must uphold an opposing principle, one which will invalidate the principle of force. Each must play his own part; each must obey his own inward monitor." He did not fail to recognize the titanic nature of the struggle into which he was entering, but the words he had written in youth still resounded in his memory. "Our first duty is to be great, and to defend greatness on earth."
Just as in those earlier days, when he had wished by means of his dramas to restore faith to his nation, when he had set up the images of the heroes as examples to a petty time, when throughout a decade of quiet effort he had summoned the people towards love and freedom, so now, Rolland set to work alone. He had no party, no newspaper, no influence. He had nothing but his passionate enthusiasm, and that indomitable courage to which the forlorn hope makes an irresistible appeal. Alone he began his onslaught upon the illusions of the multitude, when the European conscience, hunted with scorn and hatred from all countries and all hearts, had taken sanctuary in his heart.
CHAPTER IX
THE MANIFESTOES
THE struggle had to be waged by means of newspaper articles. Since Rolland was attacking prevalent falsehoods, and their public expression in the form of lying phrases, he had perforce to fight them upon their own ground. But the vigor of his ideas, the breath of freedom they conveyed, and the authority of the author's name, made of these articles, manifestoes which spoke to the whole of Europe and aroused a spiritual conflagration. Like electric sparks given off from invisible wires, their energy was liberated in all directions, leading here to terrible explosions of hatred, throwing there a brilliant light into the depths of conscience, in every case producing cordial excitement in its contrasted forms of indignation and enthusiasm. Never before, perhaps, did newspaper articles exercise so stupendous an influence, at once inflammatory and purifying, as was exercised by these two dozen appeals and manifestoes issued in a time of enslavement and confusion by a lonely man whose spirit was free and whose intellect remained unclouded.
From the artistic point of view the essays naturally suffer by comparison with Rolland's other writings, carefully considered and fully elaborated. Addressed to the widest possible public, but simultaneously hampered by consideration for the censorship (seeing that to Rolland it was all important that the articles published in the "Journal de Genève" should be reproduced in the French press), the ideas had to be presented with meticulous care and yet at the same time to be hastily produced. We find in these writings marvelous and ever-memorable cries of suffering, sublime passages of indignation and appeal. But they are a discharge of passion, so that their stylistic merits vary much. Often, too, they relate to casual incidents. Their essential value lies in their ethical bearing, and here they are of incomparable merit. In relation to Rolland's previous work we find that they display, as it were, a new rhythm. They are characterized by the emotion of one who is aware that he is addressing an audience of many millions. The author was no longer speaking as an isolated individual. For the first time he felt himself to be the public advocate of the invisible Europe.
Will those of a later generation, to whom the essays have been made available in the volumes Au-dessus de la mêlée and Les précurseurs, be able to understand what they signified to the contemporary world at the time of their publication in the newspapers? The magnitude of a force cannot be measured without taking the resistance into account; the significance of an action cannot be understood without reckoning up the sacrifices it has entailed. To understand the ethical import, the heroic character, of these manifestoes, we must recall to mind the frenzy of the opening year of the war, the spiritual infection which was devastating Europe, turning the whole continent into a madhouse. It has already become difficult to realize the mental state of those days. We have to remember that maxims which now seem commonplace, as for instance the contention that we must not hold all the individuals of a nation responsible for the outbreak of a war, were then positively criminal, that to utter them was a punishable offense. We must remember that Au-dessus de la mêlée, whose trend already seems to us a matter of course, was officially denounced, that its author was ostracised, and that for a considerable period the circulation of the essays was forbidden in France, while numerous pamphlets attacking them secured wide circulation. In connection with these articles we must always evoke the atmospheric environment, must remember the silence of their appeal amid a vastly spiritual silence. To-day, readers are apt to think that Rolland merely uttered self-evident truths, so that we recall Schopenhauer's memorable saying: "On earth, truth is allotted no more than a brief triumph between two long epochs, in one of which it is scouted as paradoxical, while in the other it is despised as commonplace." To-day, for the moment at any rate, we may have entered into a period, when many of Rolland's utterances are accounted commonplace because, since he wrote, they have become the small change of thousands of other writers. Yet there was a day when each of these words seemed to cut like a whip-lash. The excitement they aroused gives us the historic measure of the need that they should be spoken. The wrath of Rolland's opponents, of which the only remaining record is a pile of pamphlets, bears witness to the heroism of him who was the first to take his stand "above the battle." Let us not forget that it was then the crime of crimes, "de dire ce qui est juste et humain." Men were still so drunken with the fumes of the first bloodshed that they would have been fain, as Rolland himself has phrased it, "to crucify Christ once again should he have risen; to crucify him for saying, Love one another."
CHAPTER X
ABOVE THE BATTLE
ON September 22, 1914, the essay Au-dessus de la mêlée was published in "Le Journal de Genève." After the preliminary skirmish with Gerhart Hauptmann, came this declaration of war against hatred, this foundation stone of the invisible European church. The title, "Above the Battle," has become at once a watchword and a term of abuse; but amid the discordant quarrels of the factions, the essay was the first utterance to sound a clear note of imperturbable justice, bringing solace to thousands.
It is animated by a strange and tragical emotion, resonant of the hour when countless myriads were bleeding and dying, and among them many of Rolland's intimate friends. It is the outpouring of a riven heart, the heart of one who would fain move others, breathing as it does the heroic determination to try conclusions with a world that has fallen a prey to madness. It opens with an ode to the youthful fighters. "O young men that shed your blood for the thirsty earth with so generous a joy! 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, ... all of you, marching to your deaths, are dear to me.... Those years of skepticism and gay frivolity in which we in France grew up are avenged in you.... Conquerors or conquered, quick or dead, rejoice!" But after this ode to the faithful, to those who believe themselves to be discharging their highest duty, Rolland turns to consider the intellectual leaders of the nations, and apostrophises them thus: "For what are you squandering them, these living riches, these treasures of heroism entrusted to your hands? What ideal have you held up to the devotion of these youths so eager to sacrifice themselves? Mutual slaughter! A European war!" He accuses the leaders of taking cowardly refuge behind an idol they term fate. Those who understood their responsibilities so ill that they failed to prevent the war, inflame and poison it now that it has begun. A terrible picture. In all countries, everything becomes involved in the torrent; among all peoples, there is the same ecstasy for that which is destroying them. "For it is not racial passion alone which is hurling millions of men blindly one against another.... 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 among the leaders of thought in each country who does not proclaim that the cause of his people is the cause of God, the cause of liberty and of human progress." He mockingly alludes to the preposterous duels between philosophers and men of science; and to the failure of what professed to be the two great internationalist forces of the age, Christianity and socialism, to stand aloof from the fray. "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 defense of them. There is in this theory a ferocious absurdity, a Neronian dilettantism, which revolts me to the very depths of my being. No! Love of my country does not demand that I should hate and slay those noble and faithful souls who also love theirs, but rather that I should honor them and seek to unite with them for our common good." After some further discussion of the attitude of Christians and of socialists towards the war, he continues: "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 the diffusion of hatred; but our peoples, I know, ask for peace and liberty, and for that alone." It was a scandal, therefore, that at the outbreak of the war the intellectual leaders should have allowed the purity of their thought to be besmirched. It was monstrous that intelligence should permit itself to be enslaved by the passions of a puerile and absurd policy of race. Never should we forget, in the war now being waged, the essential unity of all our fatherlands. "Humanity is a symphony of great collective souls. He who cannot understand it and love it until he has destroyed a part of its elements, is a barbarian.... For the finer spirits of Europe, there are two dwelling places: our earthly fatherland, and the City of God. Of the one we are the guests, of the other the builders.... It is our duty to build the walls of this city ever higher and stronger, that it may dominate the injustice and the hatred of the nations. Then shall we have a refuge wherein the brotherly and free spirits from out all the world may assemble." This faith in a lofty ideal soars like a sea-mew over the ocean of blood. Rolland is well aware how little hope there is that his words can make themselves audible above the clamor of thirty million warriors. "I know that such thoughts have little chance of being heard to-day. I do not speak to convince. I speak only to solace my conscience. And I know that at the same time I shall solace the hearts of thousands of others who, in all lands, cannot and dare not speak for themselves." As ever, he is on the side of the weak, on the side of the minority. His voice grows stronger, for he knows that he is speaking for the silent multitude.