THE WRACK OF THE STORM

+----------------------------------------------+| || THE WORKS OF MAURICE MAETERLINCK || || ESSAYS || || The Treasure of the Humble || Wisdom and Destiny || The Life of the Bee || The Buried Temple || The Double Garden || The Measure of the Hours || On Emerson, and Other Essays || Our Eternity || The Unknown Guest || The Wrack of the Storm || || PLAYS || || Sister Beatrice, and Ardiane and Barbe Bleue || Joyzelle, and Monna Vanna || The Blue Bird, A Fairy Play || Mary Magdalene || Pélléas and Mélisande, and Other Plays || Princess Maleine || The Intruder, and Other Plays || Aglavaine and Selysette || || HOLIDAY EDITIONS || || Our Friend the Dog || The Swarm || The Intelligence of the Flowers || Death || Thoughts from Maeterlinck || The Blue Bird || The Life of the Bee || News of Spring and Other Nature Studies || Poems |+----------------------------------------------+

TheWrack of the Storm

BY

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

_Translated by_

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

NEW YORKDODD, MEAD AND COMPANY1916

COPYRIGHT, 1916BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. 

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

The reader taking up this volume will, for the first time in the workof one who hitherto had cursed no man, find words of hatred andmalediction. I would gladly have avoided them, for I hold that he whotakes upon himself to write pledges himself to say nothing that canderogate from the respect and love which we owe to all men. I have hadto utter these words; and I am as much surprised as saddened at what Ihave been constrained to say by the force of events and of truth. Iloved Germany and numbered friends there, who now, dead or living, arealike dead to me. I thought her great and upright and generous; and tome she was ever kindly and hospitable. But there are crimes thatobliterate the past and close the future. In rejecting hatred Ishould have shown myself a traitor to love. 

I tried to lift myself above the fray; but, the higher I rose, themore I saw of the madness and the horror of it, of the justice of onecause and the infamy of the other. It is possible that one day, whentime has wearied remembrance and restored the ruins, wise men willtell us that we were mistaken and that our standpoint was not loftyenough; but they will say it because they will no longer know what weknow, nor will they have seen what we have seen. 

 MAURICE MAETERLINCK. 

 NICE, 1916. 

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

The present volume contains, in the chronological order in which theywere produced, all the essays published and all the speeches deliveredby M. Maeterlinck since the beginning of the war, upon which, as willbe perceived, each one of them has a direct bearing. They are printedas written; and they throw an interesting light upon the successivephases of the author's psychology during the Titanic and hideousstruggle that has affected the mental attitude of us all. 

_In Italy_ forms the preface to M. Jules Destrée's book, _En Italieavant la guerre, 1914-15_. Of the remaining essays, some have appearedin various English and American periodicals; others are now printed intranslation for the first time. 

I have also had M. Maeterlinck's leave to include in this volume hisfirst published work, _The Massacre of the Innocents_. This powerfulsketch in the Flemish manner saw the light originally in the_Pléïade_, in 1886, and may at the present time, to use the author'sown words in a note to myself, be regarded as "a sort of vaguesymbolic prophecy. " An English version by Mrs. Edith Wingate Rinderwas printed in the _Dome_ in 1899; another has since been issued by anEnglish and by an American firm of publishers; but the only authorizedtranslation to appear in book form is that now added as an epilogue to_The Wrack of the Storm_. 

 ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS. 

 CHELSEA, 1916. 

CONTENTS

 PAGE

AUTHOR'S PREFACE 5

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE 7

 I AFTER THE VICTORY 11

 II KING ALBERT 21

 III THE HOSTAGE CITIES 31

 IV TO SAVE FOUR CITIES 37

 V PRO PATRIA: I 45

 VI HEROISM 59

 VII PRO PATRIA: II 75

 VIII PRO PATRIA: III 89

 IX BELGIUM'S FLAG DAY 109

 X ON THE DEATH OF A LITTLE SOLDIER 117

 XI THE HOUR OF DESTINY 131

 XII IN ITALY 147

 XIII ON REREADING THUCYDIDES 161

 XIV THE DEAD DO NOT DIE 179

 XV IN MEMORIAM 191

 XVI SUPERNATURAL COMMUNICATIONS IN WAR-TIME 197

 XVII EDITH CAVELL 217

XVIII THE LIFE OF THE DEAD 229

 XIX THE WAR AND THE PROPHETS 241

 XX THE WILL OF EARTH 257

 XXI FOR POLAND 271

 XXII THE MIGHT OF THE DEAD 279

XXIII WHEN THE WAR IS OVER 291

 XXIV THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS 303

 * * * * *

AFTER THE VICTORY

THE WRACK OF THE STORM

I

AFTER THE VICTORY[1]

1

At these moments of tragedy, none should be allowed to speak whocannot shoulder a rifle, for the written word seems so monstrouslyuseless, so overwhelmingly trivial, in front of this mighty dramawhich shall for a long time, it may be for ever, free mankind from thescourge of war: the one scourge among all that cannot be excused, thatcannot be explained, since alone among all it issues entire from thehands of man. 

2

But it is while this scourge is upon us, while we have our being inits very centre, that we shall do well to balance the guilt of thosewho have committed this inexpiable crime. It is now, while we are inthe thick of the horror, undergoing it, feeling it, that we have theenergy, the clear-sightedness needed to judge it; from the depths ofthe most fearful injustice justice is best perceived. When the hourshall have come for settling accounts--and it will not long delay--weshall have forgotten much of what we have suffered and a blameworthypity will creep over us and cloud our eyes. This is the moment, therefore, for us to frame our inexorable resolution. After the finalvictory, when the enemy is crushed--as crushed he will be--effortswill be made to enlist our sympathy, to move us to pity. We shall betold that the unfortunate German people were merely the victims oftheir monarch and their feudal caste; that no blame attaches to theGermany we know, which is so sympathetic and so cordial--the Germanyof quaint old houses and open-hearted greeting, the Germany that sitsunder its lime-trees beneath the clear light of the moon--but only toPrussia, hateful, arrogant Prussia; that the homely, peace-loving, Bavarian, the genial and hospitable dwellers on the banks of theRhine, the Silesian and Saxon and I know not who besides--for allthese will suddenly have become whiter than snow and more inoffensivethan the sheep in an English fold--that they all have merely obeyed, have been compelled to obey orders which they detested but were unableto resist. We are face to face with reality now; let us look at itwell and pronounce our sentence; for this is the moment when we holdthe proofs in our hands, when the elements of crime are hot before usand shout out the truth that soon will fade from our memory. Let ustell ourselves now, therefore, now, that all that we shall be toldhereafter will be false; and let us unflinchingly adhere to what wedecide at this moment, when the glare of the horror is on us. 

3

It is not true that in this gigantic crime there are innocent andguilty, or degrees of guilt. They stand on one level, all those whohave taken part in it. The German from the North has no more specialcraving for blood and outrage than he from the South has specialtenderness or pity. It is, very simply, the German, from one end ofhis country to the other, who stands revealed as a beast of prey whichthe firm will of our planet finally repudiates. We have here nowretched slaves dragged along by a tyrant king who alone isresponsible. Nations have the government which they deserve, orrather, the government which they have is truly no more than themagnified and public projection of the private morality and mentalityof the nation. If eighty million innocent people select and support amonstrous king, those eighty million innocent people merely expose theinherent falseness and superficiality of their innocence; and it isthe monster they maintain at their head who stands for all that istrue in their nature, because it is he who represents the eternalaspirations of their race, which lie far deeper than their apparentand transient virtues. Let there be no suggestion of error, of havingbeen led astray, of an intelligent people having been tricked ormisled. No nation can be deceived that does not wish to be deceived;and it is not intelligence that Germany lacks. In the sphere ofintellect such things are not possible; nor in the region ofenlightened, reflecting will. No nation permits herself to be coercedto the one crime that man cannot pardon. It is of her own accord thatshe hastens towards it; her chief has no need to persuade, it is shewho urges him on. 

4

We have forces here quite different from those on the surface, forcesthat are secret, irresistible and profound. It is these that we mustjudge, these that we must crush under our heel, once and for all; forthey are the only ones that will not be improved or softened orbrought into line by experience or progress, or even by the bitterestlesson. They are unalterable and immovable, their springs lie farbeneath hope or influence; and they must be destroyed as we destroy anest of wasps, since we know that these never can change into a nestof bees. And, even though individually and singly the Germans were allinnocent and merely led astray, they would be none the less guilty inthe mass. This is the guilt that counts, that alone is actual andreal, because it lays bare, underneath their superficial innocence, the subconscious criminality of all. 

5

No influence can prevail on the unconscious or the subconscious. Itnever evolves. Let there come a thousand years of civilization, athousand years of peace, with all possible refinements of art andeducation, the subconscious element of the German spirit, which is itsunvarying element, will remain absolutely the same as it is to-day andwould declare itself, when the opportunity came, under the sameaspect, with the same infamy. Through the whole course of history, twodistinct willpowers have been noticed that would seem to be theopposed, elemental manifestations of the spirit of our globe, the oneseeking only evil, injustice, tyranny and suffering, while the otherstrives for liberty, the right, radiance and joy. These two powersstand once again face to face; our opportunity is now to annihilatethe one that comes from below. Let us know how to be pitiless that wemay have no more need for pity. It is a measure of organic defence. Itis essential that the modern world should stamp out Prussianmilitarism as it would stamp out a poisonous fungus that for half acentury had disturbed and polluted its days. The health of our planetis in question. To-morrow the United States of Europe will have totake measures for the convalescence of the earth. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Translated by Alfred Sutro. ]

 * * * * *

KING ALBERT

II

KING ALBERT

1

Of all the heroes of this stupendous war, heroes who will live in thememory of man, one assuredly of the most unsullied, one of those whomwe can never love enough, is the great young king of my littlecountry. 

He was indeed at the critical hour the appointed man, the man for whomevery heart was waiting. With sudden beauty he embodied the mightyvoice of his people. He stood, upon the moment, for Belgium, revealedunto herself and unto others. He had the wonderful good fortune torealize and bestow a conscience in one of those dread hours of tragedyand perplexity when the best of consciences waver. 

Had he not been at hand, there is no doubt but that all would havehappened differently; and history would have lost one of her fairestand noblest pages. Certainly Belgium would have been loyal and true toher word; and any government would have been swept away, pitilesslyand irresistibly, by the indignation of a people that had never, however far we probe into the past, played false. But there would havebeen much of that confusion and irresolution inevitable in a hostsuddenly threatened with disaster. There would have been vain talking, mistaken measures, excusable but irreparable vacillations; and, aboveall, the much-needed words, the precise and final words, would nothave been spoken and the deeds, than which we can picture none moreresolute, none greater, would not have been done at the right moment. 

Thanks to the king, the peerless act shines forth and is maintainedcomplete, unfaltering; and the path of heroism is straight andclearly defined and splendid as that of Thermopylæ indefinitelyextended. 

2

But what he has suffered, what he suffers day by day only those canunderstand who have had the privilege of access to this hero: the mostsensitive and the gentlest of men, silent and reserved; a man ofcontrolled emotions, modest with a timidity that is at once bafflingand delightful; loving his people less as a father loves his childrenthan as a son loves his adoring mother. Of all that cherished kingdom, his pride and his joy, the seat of his happiness, the centre of hislove and his security, there is left intact but a handful of cities, which are threatened at every moment by the foulest invader that theworld has ever borne. 

All the others--so quaint or so beautiful, so bright, so serene, happyto be there, so inoffensive--jewels in the crown of Peace, models ofpure and upright family life, homes of loyal and dutiful industry, ofready, ever-smiling geniality, with the natural welcome, theever-proffered hand and the ever-open heart: all the others are deadcities, of which not one stone is left upon another; and the verycountry-side, one of the fairest in this world, with its gentlepastures, is now no more than one vast field of horror. 

Treasures have perished that were numbered among the noblest anddearest possessions of mankind; monuments have disappeared whichnothing can replace; and the half of a nation, among all nations themost attached to its old simple habits, its humble homes, is atpresent wandering along the roads of Europe. Thousands of innocentpeople have been massacred; and of those who remain nearly all aredoomed to poverty and hunger. 

But that remainder has but one soul, which has taken refuge in thespacious soul of its king. Not a murmur, not a word of reproach! Butyesterday a town of thirty thousand inhabitants received the order toforsake its white houses, its churches, its ancient streets andsquares, the scene of a light-hearted and industrious life. The thirtythousand inhabitants, women and children and old men, set forth toseek an uncertain refuge in a neighbouring city, which is threatenedalmost as directly as their own and which to-morrow, it may be, mustin its turn set forth, but whither none can say, for the country is sosmall that its boundaries are quickly reached, its shelter soonexhausted. 

No matter: they obey in silence and one and all approve and blesstheir sovereign. He did what had to be done, what every one in hisplace would have done; and, though they are all suffering as nopeople has suffered since the barbarous invasions of the earliestages, they know that he suffers more than any of them, for in him alltheir sorrows find a goal; in him they are reflected and enhanced. They do not even harbour the idea that they might have been saved by asacrifice of honour. They draw no distinction between duty anddestiny. To them that duty, with its frightful consequences, seems asinevitable as a natural force against which we cannot even dream ofstruggling, so great is it and so invincible. 

3

Here is an example of the collective bravery of nameless heroes, aningenuous and almost unconscious courage, which rivals and at timesexceeds the most exalted deeds in legend and history, for since thedays of the great martyrs men have never suffered death more simplyfor a simple idea. 

And, if amid the anguish of our struggle it were seemly to speak ofaught but tears and lamentations, we should find a magnificentconsolation in the spectacle of the unexpected heroism that suddenlysurrounds us on every side. It may well be said that never in thememory of mankind have men sacrificed their lives with such zest, suchself-abnegation, such enthusiasm; and that the immortal virtues whichto this day have uplifted and preserved the flower of the human racehave never shone more brilliantly, never manifested greater power, energy or youth. 

 * * * * *

THE HOSTAGE CITIES

III

THE HOSTAGE CITIES

1

Thanks to the heroism of the Allies, the hour is approaching when thehordes of William the Madman will quit the soil of afflicted Belgium. 

After what they have done in cold blood, what excesses, what disastersmust we not expect of the last convulsions of their rage? Our anguishis all the more poignant in that they are at this moment fighting inthe most ancient and most precious portion of Flanders. Above allcountries, this is historic and hallowed land. They have destroyedTermonde, Roulers, Charleroi, Mons, Namur, Thielt and more besides;happy, charming little towns, which will rise again from their ashes, more beautiful than before. They have annihilated Louvain andMalines; they have but lately levelled Dixmude; their torches, theirincendiary squirts and their bombs are about to attack Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres and Furnes, which are like so manyliving museums, forming one of the most delightful, delicate andfragile ornaments of Europe. The things which are beginning here andwhich may be completed would be irreparable. They would mean a loss toour race for which nothing could atone. A quite peculiaraspect--familiar, kindly, racy of the soil and unique--of that beautywhich a long series of comely human lives is able to acquire and tohoard would disappear for ever from the face of the earth; and wecannot, in the trouble and confusion of these too tragic hours, realize the extent, the meaning or the consequences of such a crime. 

2

We have made every sacrifice without complaining; but this wouldexceed all measure. What can be done? How are we to stop them? Theyseem to be no longer accessible to reason or to any of the feelingswhich men hold in honour; they are sensible only to blows. Very soon, as they must know, we shall have the power to strike them shrewdly. Why do not the Allies, this very day, swiftly, while yet there istime, name so many hostage cities, which would be answerable, stonefor stone, for the existence of our own dear towns? If Brussels, forexample, should be destroyed, then Berlin should be razed to theground. If Antwerp were devastated, Hamburg would disappear. Nuremburgwould guarantee Bruges; Munich would stand surety for Ghent. 

At the present moment, when they are feeling the wind of defeat thatblows through their tattered standard, it is possible that thissolemn threat, officially pronounced, would force them to reflect, ifindeed they are still at all capable of reflection. It is the onlyexpedient that remains to us and there is no time to be lost. Withcertain adversaries the most barbarous threats are legitimate andnecessary, for these threats speak the only language which they canunderstand. And our children must not one day be able to reproach uswith not having attempted everything--even that which is mostrepugnant--to save the treasures which are theirs by right. 

 * * * * *

TO SAVE FOUR CITIES

IV

TO SAVE FOUR CITIES

1

First Louvain, Malines, Termonde, Lierre, Dixmude, Nieuport (and I amspeaking only of the disasters of Flanders); now Ypres is no more andFurnes is half in ruins. By the side of the great Flemish cities, Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent and Bruges, those vast and incomparableliving museums which have been watchfully preserved by a whole people, a people above all others attached to its traditions, they formed aconstellation of little towns, delightful and hospitable, too littleknown to travellers. Each of them wore its own expression, of peace, pleasantness, innocent mirth, or meditation. Each possessed itstreasures, jealously guarded: its belfries, its churches, its canals, its old bridges, its quiet convents, its ancient houses, which gaveit a special physiognomy, never to be forgotten by those who hadbeheld it. 

But the indisputable queen of these beautiful forsaken cities wasYpres, with its enormous market-place, bordered by littledwelling-houses with stepped gables, and its prodigiousmarket-buildings, which occupied one whole side of the immense oblong. This market-place haunted for ever the memory of those who had seenit, were it but once, while waiting to change trains; it was sounexpected, so magical, so dream-like almost, in its disproportion tothe rest of the town. While the ancient city, whose life had withdrawnitself from century to century, was gradually shrinking all around it, the Grand'Place itself remained an immovable, gigantic, magnificentwitness to the might and opulence of old, when Ypres was, with Ghentand Bruges, one of the three queens of the western world, one of themost strenuous centres of human industry and activity and the cradleof our great liberties. Such as it was yesterday--alas, that I cannotsay, such as it is to-day!--this square, with the enormous butunspeakably harmonious mass of those market-buildings, at oncepowerful and graceful, wild, gloomy, proud, yet genial, was one of themost wonderful and perfect spectacles that could be seen in any townon this old earth of ours. While of a different order of architecture, built of other elements and standing under sterner skies, it shouldhave been as precious to man, as sacred and as intangible as thePiazza di San Marco at Venice, the Signoria at Florence or the Piazzadel Duomo at Pisa. It constituted a peerless specimen of art, which atall times wrung a cry of admiration from the most indifferent, anornament which men hoped was imperishable, one of those things ofbeauty which, in the words of the poet, are a joy forever. 

2

I cannot believe that it no longer exists; and yet in this horriblewar we have to believe everything and, above all, the worst. Now, fatally and inevitably, it will be the turn of the Belfry of Bruges;and then the tide of barbarians will rise against Ghent and Antwerpand Brussels; and there will forthwith disappear one of those portionsof the world's surface in which was hoarded the greatest wealth ofbeauty and of memories and of the stuff of history. We did what wecould to preserve it; we could do no more. The most heroic of armiesare powerless to prevent the bandits whom they are driving back frommurdering the women and children or from deliberately and uselesslydestroying all that they find along their path of retreat. There isonly one hope left us: the immediate and imperious intervention ofthe neutral powers. It is towards them that we turn our tortured gaze. Two great nations notably--Italy and the United States--hold in theirhands the fate of these last treasures, whose loss would one day bereckoned among the heaviest and the most irreparable that have beensuffered in the course of long centuries of human civilization. Theycan do what they will; it is time for them to do that which it is nolonger lawful to leave undone. By its frantic lies, the beast fromover the Rhine, standing at bay and in peril of death, shows plainlyenough the importance which it attaches to the opinion of the onlynations which the execration of all that lives and breathes have notyet armed against it. It is afraid. It feels that all is crumblingunder foot, that it is being shunned and abandoned. It seeks in everydirection a glance that does not curse it. It must not, it shall notfind that glance. It is not necessary to tell Italy what ourimperilled cities are worth; for Italy is preeminently the land ofnoble cities. 

Our cause is her cause; she owes us her support. When a work of beautyis destroyed, her own genius and her own eternal gods are outraged. Asfor America, she more than any other country stands for the future. She should think of the days that will follow after this war. When thegreat peace descends upon the earth, let not the earth be found desertand robbed of all its jewels. The places at which the earth isbeautiful because of centuries of effort, because of the successfulzeal and patience and genius of a race, are not so many. This cornerof Flanders, over which death now hovers, is one of those consecratedspots. Were it to perish, men as yet unborn, men who at last, perhaps, will achieve happiness, would lack memories and examples which nothingcould replace. 

 * * * * *

PRO PATRIA: I

V

PRO PATRIA: I[2]

1

I need not here recall the events that hurled Belgium into the depthsof distress most glorious where she is struggling to-day. She has beenpunished as never nation was punished for doing her duty as nevernation did before. She saved the world while knowing that she couldnot be saved. She saved it by flinging herself in the path of theoncoming barbarians, by allowing herself to be trampled to death inorder to give the defenders of justice time, not to rescue her, forshe was well aware that rescue could not come in time, but to collectthe forces needed to save our Latin civilization from the greatestdanger that has ever threatened it. She has thus done thiscivilization, which is the only one whereunder the majority of men arewilling or able to live, a service exactly similar to that whichGreece, at the time of the great Asiatic invasions, rendered to themother of this civilization. But, while the service is similar, theact surpasses all comparison. We may ransack history in vain for aughtto approach it in grandeur. The magnificent sacrifice at Thermopylæ, which is perhaps the noblest action in the annals of war, is illuminedwith an equally heroic but less ideal light, for it was lessdisinterested and more material. Leonidas and his three hundredSpartans were in fact defending their homes, their wives, theirchildren, all the realities which they had left behind them. KingAlbert and his Belgians, on the other hand, knew full well that, inbarring the invader's road, they were inevitably sacrificing theirhomes, their wives and their children. Unlike the heroes of Sparta, instead of possessing an imperative and vital interest in fighting, they had everything to gain by not fighting and nothing to lose--savehonour. In the one scale were fire and the sword, ruin, massacre, theinfinite disaster which we see; in the other was that little wordhonour, which also represents infinite things, but things which we donot see, or which we must be very pure and very great to see quiteclearly. It has happened now and again in history that a man standinghigher than his fellows perceives what this word represents andsacrifices his life and the life of those whom he loves to what heperceives; and we have not without reason devoted to such men a sortof cult that places them almost on a level with the gods. But what hadnever yet happened--and I say this without fear of contradiction fromwhosoever cares to search the memory of man--is that a whole people, great and small, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, deliberatelyimmolated itself thus for the sake of an unseen thing. 

2

And observe that we are not discussing one of those heroic resolutionswhich are taken in a moment of enthusiasm, when man easily surpasseshimself, and which have not to be maintained when, forgetting hisintoxication, he lapses on the morrow to the dead level of hiseveryday life. We are concerned with a resolution that has had to betaken and maintained every morning, for now nearly four months, in themidst of daily increasing distress and disaster. And not only has thisresolution not wavered by a hair's breadth, but it grows as steadilyas the national misfortune; and to-day, when this misfortune isreaching its full, the national resolution is likewise attaining itszenith. I have seen many of my refugee fellow-countrymen: some used tobe rich and had lost their all; others were poor before the war andnow no longer owned even what the poorest own. I have received manyletters from every part of Europe where duty's exiles had sought abrief instant of repose. In them there was lamentation, as was onlytoo natural, but not a reproach, not a regret, not a word ofrecrimination. I did not once come upon that hopeless but excusablecry which, one would think, might so easily have sprung fromdespairing lips:

"If our king had not done what he did, we should not be suffering whatwe are suffering to-day. "

The idea does not even occur to them. It is as though this thoughtwere not of those which can live in that atmosphere purified bymisfortune. They are not resigned, for to be resigned means torenounce the strife, no longer to keep up one's courage. They areproud and happy in their distress. They have a vague feeling that thisdistress will regenerate them after the manner of a baptism of faithand glory and ennoble them for all time in the remembrance of men. Anunexpected breath, coming from the secret reserves of the human raceand from the summits of the human heart, has suddenly passed overtheir lives and given them a single soul, formed of the same heroicsubstance as that of their great king. 

3

They have done what had never before been done; and it is to be hopedfor the happiness of mankind that no nation will ever again be calledupon for a like sacrifice. But this wonderful example will not belost, even though there be no longer any occasion to imitate it. At atime when the universal conscience seemed about to bend under theweight of long prosperity and selfish materialism, suddenly it raisedby several degrees what we may term the political morality of theworld and lifted it all at once to a height which it had not yetreached and from which it will never again be able to descend, forthere are actions so glorious, actions which fill so great a place inour memory, that they found a sort of new religion and definitely fixthe limits of the human conscience and of human loyalty and courage. 

They have really, as I have already said and as history will one dayestablish with greater eloquence and authority than mine, they havereally saved Latin civilization. They had stood for centuries at thejunction of two powerful and hostile forms of culture. They had tochoose and they did not hesitate. Their choice was all the moresignificant, all the more instructive, inasmuch as none was so wellqualified as they to choose with a full knowledge of what they weredoing. You are all aware that more than half of Belgium is of Teutonicstock. She was therefore, thanks to her racial affinities, better ablethan any other to understand the culture that was being offered her, together with the imputation of dishonour which it included. Sheunderstood it so well that she rejected it with an outbreak of horrorand disgust unparalleled in violence, spontaneous, unanimous andirresistible, thus pronouncing a verdict from which there was noappeal and giving the world a peremptory lesson sealed with every dropof her blood. 

4

But to-day she is at the end of her resources. She has exhausted nother courage but her strength. She has paid with all that she possessesfor the immense service which she has rendered to mankind. Thousandsand thousands of her children are dead; all her riches have perished;almost all her historic memories, which were her pride and herdelight, almost all her artistic treasures, which were numbered amongthe fairest in this world, are destroyed for ever. She is nothing morethan a desert whence stand out, more or less intact, four great townsalone, four towns which the Rhenish hordes, for whom the epithet ofbarbarians is in point of fact too honourable, appear to have sparedonly so that they may keep back one last and monstrous revenge for theday of the inevitable rout. It is certain that Antwerp, Ghent, Brugesand Brussels are doomed beyond recall. In particular, the admirableGrand'Place, the Hôtel de Ville and the Cathedral at Brussels are, Iknow, undermined: I repeat, I know it from private and trustworthytestimony against which no denial can prevail. A spark will be enoughto turn one of the recognized marvels of Europe into a heap of ruinslike those of Ypres, Malines and Louvain. Soon after--for, short ofimmediate intervention, the disaster is as certain as though it werealready accomplished--Bruges, Antwerp and Ghent will suffer the samefate; and in a moment, as I was saying the other day, there willvanish from sight one of the corners of this earth in which thegreatest store of memories, of historic matter and artistic beautieshad been accumulated. 

5

The time has come to end this foolery! The time has come foreverything that draws breath to rise up against these systematic, insane and stupid acts of destruction, perpetrated without anymilitary excuse or strategic object. The reason why we are at lastuttering a great cry of distress, we who are above all a silentpeople, the reason why we turn to your mighty and noble country isthat Italy is to-day the only European power that is still in aposition to stop the unchained brute on the brink of his crime. Youare ready. You have but to stretch out a hand to save us. We have notcome to beg for our lives: these no longer count with us and we havealready offered them up. But, in the name of the last beautiful thingsthat the barbarians have left us, we come with our prayers to the landof all beautiful things. It must not be, it shall not be that, on theday when at last we return, not to our homes, for most of these aredestroyed, but to our native soil, that soil is so laid waste as tohave become an unrecognizable desert. You know better than any otherswhat memories mean, what masterpieces mean to a nation, for yourcountry is covered with memories and masterpieces. It is also theland of justice and the cradle of the law, which is simply justicethat has taken cognizance of itself. On this account, Italy owes usjustice. And she owes it to herself to put a stop to the greatestiniquity in the annals of history, for not to put a stop to it whenone has the power is almost tantamount to taking part in it. It is forItaly as much as for France that we have suffered. She is the source, she is the very mother of the ideal for which we have fought and forwhich the last of our soldiers are still fighting in the last of ourtrenches. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Delivered at the Scala Theatre, Milan, 30 November, 1914. ]

 * * * * *

HEROISM

VI

HEROISM

1

One of the consoling surprises of this war is the unlooked-for and, soto speak, universal heroism which it has revealed among all thenations taking part in it. 

We were rather inclined to believe that courage, physical and moralfortitude, self-denial, stoicism, the renunciation of every sort ofcomfort, the faculty of self-sacrifice and the power of facing deathbelonged only to the more primitive, the less happy, the lessintelligent nations, to the nations least capable of reasoning, ofappreciating danger and of picturing in their imagination the dreadfulabyss that separates this life from the life unknown. We were evenalmost persuaded that war would one day cease for lack of soldiers, that is to say, of men foolish enough or unhappy enough to risk theonly absolute realities--health, physical comfort, an unimpaired bodyand, above all, life, the greatest of earthly possessions--for thesake of an ideal which, like all ideals, is more or less invisible. 

And this argument seemed the more natural and convincing because, asexistence grew gentler and men's nerves more sensitive, the means ofdestruction by war showed themselves more cruel, ruthless andirresistible. It seemed more and more probable that no man would everagain endure the infernal horrors of a battlefield and that, after thefirst slaughter, the opposing armies, officers and men alike, allseized with insuppressible panic, would turn their backs upon oneanother, in simultaneous, supernatural affright, and flee fromunearthly terrors exceeding the most monstrous anticipations of thosewho had let them loose. 

2

To our great astonishment the very opposite is now proclaimed. 

We realize with amazement that until to-day we had but an incompleteand inaccurate conception of man's courage. We looked upon it as anexceptional virtue and one which is the more admired as being also therarer the farther we go back in history. Remember, for instance, Homer's heroes, the ancestors of all the heroes of our day. Study themclosely. These models of antiquity, the first professors, the firstmasters of bravery, are not really very brave. They have a wholesomedread of being hit or wounded and an ingenuous and manifest fear ofdeath. Their mighty conflicts are declamatory and decorative but notso very bloody; they inflict more noise than pain upon theiradversaries, they deliver many more words than blows. Their defensiveweapons--and this is characteristic--are greatly superior to theirarms of offence; and death is an unusual, unforeseen and almostindecorous event which throws the ranks into disorder and most oftenputs a stop to the combat or provokes a headlong flight that seemsquite natural. As for the wounds, these are enumerated and described, sung and deplored as so many remarkable phenomena. On the other hand, the most discreditable routs, the most shameful panics are frequent;and the old poet relates them, without condemning them, as ordinaryincidents to be ascribed to the gods and inevitable in any warfare. 

This kind of courage is that of all antiquity, more or less. We willnot linger over it, nor delay to consider the battles of the MiddleAges or the Renascence, in which the fiercest hand-to-hand encountersof the mercenaries often left not more than half-a-dozen victims onthe field. Let us rather come straight to the great wars of theEmpire. Here the courage displayed begins to resemble our own, butwith notable differences. In the first place, those concerned weresolely professionals. We see not a whole nation fighting, but adelegation, a martial selection, which, it is true, becomes graduallymore extensive, but never, as in our time, embraces every man betweeneighteen and fifty years of age capable of shouldering a weapon. Again--and above all--every war was reduced to two or three pitchedbattles, that is to say, two or three culminating moments; immenseefforts, but efforts of a few hours, or a day at most, towards whichthe combatants directed all the vigour and all the heroism accumulatedduring long weeks or months of preparation and waiting. Afterwards, whether the result was victory or defeat, the fighting was over;relaxation, respite and rest followed; men went back to their homes. Destiny must not be defied more than once; and they knew that in themost terrible affray the chances of escaping death were as twenty toone. 

3

Nowadays, everything is changed; and death itself is no longer what itwas. Formerly, you looked it in the face, you knew whence it came andwho sent it to you. It had a dreadful aspect, but one that remainedhuman. Its ways were not unknown: its long spells of sleep, its briefawakenings, its bad days and dangerous hours. At present, to all thesehorrors it adds the great, intolerable fear of mystery. It no longerhas any aspect, no longer has habits or spells of sleep and it isnever still. It is always ready, always on the watch, everywherepresent, scattered, intangible and dense, stealthy and cowardly, diffuse, all-encompassing, innumerous, looming at every point of thehorizon, rising from the waters and falling from the skies, indefatigable, inevitable, filling the whole of space and time fordays, weeks and months without a minute's lull, without a second'sintermission. Men live, move and sleep in the meshes of its fatal web. They know that the least step to the right or left, a head bowed orlifted, a body bent or upright is seen by its eyes and draws itsthunder. 

Hitherto we had no example of this preponderance of the destructiveforces. We should never have believed that man's nerves could resistso great a trial. The nerves of the bravest man are tempered to facedeath for the space of a second, but not to live in the hourlyexpectation of death and nothing else. Heroism was once a sharp andrugged peak, reached for a moment but soon quitted, formountain-peaks are not inhabitable. To-day it is a boundless plain, asuninhabitable as the peaks; but we are not permitted to descend fromit. And so, at the very moment when man appeared most exhausted andenervated by the comforts and vices of civilization, at the momentwhen he was happiest and therefore most selfish, when, possessing theminimum of faith and vainly seeking a new ideal, he seemed leastcapable of sacrificing himself for an idea of any kind, he findshimself suddenly confronted with an unprecedented danger, which he isalmost certain that the most heroic nations of history would not havefaced nor even dreamed of facing, whereas he does not even dream thatit is possible to do aught but face it. And let it not be said that wehad no choice, that the danger and the struggle were thrust upon us, that we had to defend ourselves or die and that in such cases thereare no cowards. It is not true: there was, there always has been, there still is a choice. 

4

It is not man's life that is at stake, but the idea which he forms ofthe honour, the happiness and the duties of his life. To save his lifehe had but to submit to the enemy; the invader would not haveexterminated him. You cannot exterminate a great people; it is noteven possible to enslave it seriously or to inflict great sorrow uponit for long. He had nothing to be afraid of except disgrace. He didnot so much as see the infamous temptation appear above the horizon ofhis most instinctive fears; he does not even suspect that it is ableto exist; and he will never perceive it, whatever sacrifices may yetawait him. We are not, therefore, speaking of a heroism that would bebut the last resource of despair, the heroism of the animal driven tobay and fighting blindly to delay death's coming for a moment. No, itis heroism freely donned, deliberately and unanimously hailed, heroismon behalf of an idea and a sentiment, in other words, heroism in itsclearest, purest and most virginal form, a disinterested andwhole-hearted sacrifice for that which men regard as their duty tothemselves, to their kith and kin, to mankind and to the future. Iflife and personal safety were more precious than the idea of honour, of patriotism and of fidelity to tradition and the race, there was, Irepeat, and there is still a choice to be made; and never perhaps inany war was the choice easier, for never did men feel more free, neverindeed were they more free to choose. 

But this choice, as I have said, did not dare show its faintest shadowon the lowest horizons of even the most ignoble consciences. Are youquite sure that, in other times which we think better and morevirtuous than our own, men would not have seen it, would not havespoken of it? Can you find a nation, even among the greatest, which, after six months of a war compared with which all other wars seemchild's-play, of a war which threatens and uses up all that nation'slife and all its possessions, can you find, I say, in history, not aninstance--for there is no instance--but some similar case which allowsyou to presume that the nation would not have faltered, would not atleast, were it but for a second, have looked down and cast its eyesupon an inglorious peace?

5

Nevertheless, they seemed much stronger than we are, all those whocame before us. They were rude, austere, much closer to nature, poorand often unhappy. They had a simpler and a more rigid code ofthought; they had the habit of physical suffering, of hardship and ofdeath. But I do not believe that any one dares contend that these menwould have done what our soldiers are now doing, that they would haveendured what is being endured all around us. Are we not entitled toconclude from this that civilization, contrary to what was feared, sofar from enervating, depraving, weakening, lowering and dwarfing man, elevates him, purifies him, strengthens him, ennobles him, makes himcapable of acts of sacrifice, generosity and courage which he did notknow before? The fact is that civilization, even when it seems toentail corruption, brings intelligence with it and that intelligence, in days of trial, stands for potential pride, nobility and heroism. That, as I said in the beginning, is the unexpected and consolingrevelation of this horrible war: we can rely on man implicitly, placethe greatest trust in him, nor fear lest, in laying aside hisprimitive brutality, he should lose his manly qualities. The greaterhis progress in the conquest of nature and the greater his apparentattachment to material welfare, the more does he become capable, nevertheless, unconsciously, deep down in the best part of him, ofself-detachment and of self-sacrifice for the common safety and themore does he understand that he is nothing when he compares himselfwith the eternal life of his forbears and his children. 

It was so great a trial that we dared not, before this war, havecontemplated it. The future of the human race was at stake; and themagnificent response that comes to us from every side reassures usfully as to the issue of other struggles, more formidable still, whichno doubt await us when it will be a question no longer of fighting ourfellow-men, but rather of facing the more powerful and cruel of thegreat mysterious enemies that nature holds in reserve against us. Ifit be true, as I believe, that humanity is worth just as much as thesum total of latent heroism which it contains, then we may declarethat humanity was never stronger nor more exemplary than now and thatit is at this moment reaching one of its highest points and capable ofbraving everything and hoping everything. And it is for this reasonthat, despite our present sadness, we are entitled to congratulateourselves and to rejoice. 

 * * * * *

PRO PATRIA: II

VII

PRO PATRIA: II[3]

1

More than three months ago, I was in one of the grandest of yourcities, a city that welcomed in a manner which I shall never forgetthe cause which I had come among you to represent. I was there, as Itold my hearers at the time, in the name of the last remnants ofbeauty that the barbarians had left us, to plead with the land ofevery kind of beauty. Those threatened beauties, our only cities yetintact, the treasures and sanctuaries of our whole past and of all ourrace, are still reeling on the brink of the same abyss and, failing amiracle which we dare not hope for, they will suffer the fate ofYpres, Louvain, Malines, Termonde, Dixmude and so many other lessillustrious victims. The danger in which they stand has no doubtaroused the indignation of the civilized world; but not a hand hasarmed itself to defend them. I blame no one; I reproach no one; themorality of the nations is a virtue that has not yet emerged from thestate of infancy; and fortunately, by the hazard of war, it is not yettoo late to save four innocent cities. 

To-day I have not come to speak of monuments, of historical relics, nor even of the wrongs committed, of the violation of all the rightsand laws of warfare and every international convention, ofincendiarism, pillage and massacre; I have come simply to utter beforeyou the last distressful cry of a dying nation. 

At this moment a tragedy is being enacted in Belgium such as has noprecedent in the history of civilized peoples, nor even in that ofthe barbarians, for the barbarians, when committing their moststupendous crimes, lacked the infernal deliberation and thescientific, all-powerful means of working evil which to-day are in thehands of those who profit by the resources and benefits ofcivilization only to turn them against it and to seek the annihilationof all its noblest and most generous characteristics. The despairingrumours of this tragedy come to us only through the chinks of thatensanguined well which isolates it from the rest of the world. Nothingreaches our ears but the lies of the enemy. In reality, the whole ofBelgium is one huge Prussian prison, where every cry is cruelly andmethodically stifled and where no voices are heard save those of thegaolers. Only now and again, after a thousand adventures, despite athousand perils, a letter from some kinsman or captive friend arrivesfrom the depths of that great living cemetery, bringing us a gleam ofauthentic truth. 

2

You are as familiar with this truth as I am. At the moment when hersoil was invaded, Belgium numbered seven million seven hundredthousand inhabitants. It is estimated that between two hundred andfifty and three hundred thousand have perished in battle or massacre, or as the result of misery and privation; and I am not speaking of theinfant children, the sacrifice of whom, owing to the dearth of milk, has, it appears, been frightful. Five or six hundred thousandunfortunates have fled to Holland, France or England. There remaintherefore in the country nearly seven million inhabitants; and morethan half of these seven millions are living almost exclusively onAmerican charity. In what is above all an industrial country, producing normally, in time of peace, less than a third part of thewheat necessary for home consumption, the enemy has systematicallyrequisitioned everything, carried off everything, for the upkeep ofhis armies, and has sent into Germany what he could not consume on thespot. The result of so monstrous a proceeding may readily be divined:on all that soil, once so happy and so rich, to-day taxed and pillagedand pillaged again, ravaged and devastated by fire and the sword, there is nothing left. And the situation of suffering Belgium is socruelly paradoxical that her best friends, her dearest allies, eventhose whom she has saved, are powerless to succour her. Isolated asshe is from the rest of the world, she would have starved even thoughnothing had been taken from her. Now she has been despoiled of allthat she possessed, while France and England can send her neithermoney nor provisions, for they would fall into the hands of thoseengaged in torturing her, so much so that every attempt on their partto alleviate her sufferings would but retard her deliverance stillfurther. Did history ever witness a more poignant, a more desperatetragedy? It is a fact that in the midst of this war we are constantlyfinding ourselves confronted with events such as history hitherto hasnever beheld. A people resembling an enormous beast of prey, in orderto punish a loyalty and heroism which, if it retained the slightestnotion of justice and injustice, the smallest sense of human dignityand honour, it ought to worship on its knees: this vast predatory racestealthily resolved to exterminate an inoffensive little nation whosesoul it felt was too great to be enslaved or reduced to the semblanceof its conqueror's. It was on the point of succeeding, amid thesilence, the impotence, or the terror of the world, when from beyondthe Atlantic a generous nation took that heroic little people underits protection. It understood that what was involved was not merely anact of justice and elementary pity, but also and more particularly ahigher duty towards the morality and the eternal conscience ofmankind. Thanks to this great nation's intervention, it will not besaid, in the days to come, that justice, loyalty, honesty and heroismare no more than dangerous illusions and a fool's bargain, or thatevil must necessarily, at all times and places, conquer whenever it isbacked by force, or that the only reward which duty magnificently donemay hope to receive on this earth is every manner of grief anddisaster, ending in death by starvation. So immense and triumphant anexample of iniquity would strike the ideals of mankind a blow fromwhich they would not recover for centuries. 

3

But already this help is becoming exhausted; it cannot be indefinitelyprolonged; and very soon it will be insufficient. It is, moreover, atthe mercy of the slightest diplomatic or political complication; andits failure will be irreparable. It will mean utter famine, unexampledextermination, which till the end of the world will cry to heaven forvengeance. It is no longer a question of weeks or months, but one ofdays. That is where we stand; and these are the last hours granted bydestiny to an inactive Europe wherein to expunge the shame of herindifference. 

These hours belong almost solely to you, for others have not yourpower. Whatever may happen, however long you may postpone the issue, one of these days you will be obliged to join in the fray. Everythingadvises, everything orders you to do so; and I can see nothing on theside of honour, justice or humanity, on the side of the will of thecenturies or the human race, nor even on the side of prudence andself-interest, that allows you to avoid it. Is it not better and moreworthy of yourselves than all the subtleties, plottings and pettybargainings of diplomacy?

The one hour, the peremptory hour has struck when your aid can breakthe balance between the powers of good and evil which, for more thantwo hundred days, have kept the future of Europe hanging over theabyss. 

Fate has granted you the magnificent boon, the all but divineprivilege, of saving from the most horrible of deaths four or fivemillions of innocent human beings, four or five millions of martyrswho have performed the finest action that a people could perform andwho are perishing because they defended the ideals which your fatherstaught them. I know that we are faced by duties which until to-day hadnever entered into the morality of States; for it is but too true thatthis morality still lags a thousand miles behind that of the meanestpeasant. But, if such a thing has never yet been done, it is all themore glorious to be the first to do it, to make an effort that willraise the life of nations to a level which the life of the individualhas long since attained. And no people is better qualified than theItalian to make this effort which the world and the future areawaiting as a deliverance. 

But I will say no more. I have been reproached for speaking of matterswhich, as a foreigner, I ought not to discuss. I believed that thesegreat questions of humanity interested the whole human race. Perhaps Iwas wrong. I will respect the profound silence in which great actionsare developed; and I leave to the meditation of your hearts that whichI am constrained to leave unsaid. They will tell you very much betterthan I could all that I had to say to you. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: Delivered in Rome, before the Associazione della Stampa, 13 March, 1915. ]

 * * * * *

PRO PATRIA: III

VIII

PRO PATRIA: III[4]

1

Although nothing entitles me to the honour of addressing you in thename of my refugee countrymen, nevertheless it is only fitting, sincea kindly insistence brings me here, that I should in the first placegive thanks to England for the manner in which she welcomed them intheir distress. I am but a voice in the crowd; and, if my words exceedthe limits of this hall and lend to him who utters them an authoritywhich he himself does not possess, it is only because they are filledwith unbounded gratitude. 

In this horrible war, whose stakes are the salvation and the future ofmankind, let us first of all salute our wonderful sister, France, whois supporting the heaviest burden and who, for more than elevenmonths, having broken its first and most formidable onslaught, hasbeen struggling, foot by foot, at closest quarters, without faltering, without remission, with an heroic smile, against the most formidableorganization of pillage, massacre and devastation that the world orhell itself has seen since man first learnt the history of the planeton which he lives. We have here a revelation of qualities and virtuessurpassing all that we expected from a nation which nevertheless hadaccustomed us to expect of her all that goes to make the beauty andthe glory of humanity. One must reside in France, as I have done formany years, to understand and admire as it deserves the incomparablelesson in courage, abnegation, firmness, determination, coolness, conscious dignity, self-mastery, good-humour, chivalrous generosityand utter charity and self-sacrifice which this great and noblepeople, which has civilized more than half the globe, is at thepresent moment teaching the civilized world. 

Let us also salute boundless Russia, with her wonderful soldiers, innocent and ingenuous as the saints of old, ignorant of fear aschildren who do not yet know the meaning of death. Yonder, along aformidable front running from the Baltic to the Black Sea, with silentmultitudinous heroism, amid defeats which are but victories delayed, she is beginning the great work of our deliverance, Lastly let usgreet Servia, small but prodigious, whom we must one day place on thesummit of that monument of glory which Europe will raise to-morrow tothe memory of those who have freed her from her chains. 

So much for them. They have a right to all our gratitude, to all ouradmiration. They are doing magnificently all that had to be done. Butthey occupy a place apart in duty's splendid hierarchy. They are theprotagonists of direct, material, tangible, undeniable, inevitableduty. This war is their war. If they would not accept the worst ofdisgraces, if they were not prepared to suffer servitude, massacre, ruin and famine, they had to undertake it; they could not dootherwise. They were attacked by the born enemy, the irreducible andabsolute enemy, of whom they knew enough to understand that they hadnothing to expect from him but total and unremitting disaster. It wasa question of their continued existence in this world. They had nochoice; they had to defend themselves; and any other nation in theirplace would have done the same, only there are few who would have doneit with the same spirit of self-abnegation, the same devotion, thesame perseverance, the same loyalty and the same smiling courage. 

2

But for us Belgians--and we may say as much for you English--it wasnot a question of this kind of duty. The horrible drama did notconcern us. It demanded only the right to pass us by without touchingus; and, far from doing us any harm, it would have flooded us with theunclaimed riches which armies on the march drag in their wake. WeBelgians in particular, peaceable, hospitable, inoffensive and almostunarmed, should, by the very treaties which assured our existence, have remained complete strangers to this war. To be sure, we lovedFrance, because we knew her as well as we knew ourselves and becauseshe makes herself beloved by all who know her. But we entertained nohatred of Germany. It is true that, in spite of the virtues which webelieved her to possess but which were merely the mask of a spy, ourhearts barely responded to her obsequiously treacherous advances. Forthe German, of all the inhabitants of our planet, has this one andsingular peculiarity, that he arouses in us, from the onset, aprofound, instinctive, intuitive feeling of antipathy. But, even soand wherever our preferences may have lain, our treaties, our pledgedword, the very reason of our existence, all forbade us to take part inthe conflict. Then came the incredible ultimatum, the monstrous demandof which you know, which gave us twelve hours to choose between ruinand death or dishonour. As you also know, we did not need twelve hoursto make our choice. This choice was no more than a cry of indignationand resolution, spontaneous, fierce and irresistible. We did not stayfor a moment to ponder the extenuating circumstances which ourweakness might have invoked. We did not for a moment consider theabsolution which history would have granted us later, on realizingthat a conflict between forces so completely disproportioned wasfutile, that we must inevitably be crushed, massacred and annihilatedand that the sacrifice of a little people in its entirety couldprevent nothing, could barely cause delay and would have no weight inthe immense balance into which the world's destinies were about to beflung. There was no question of all this; we saw one thing only: ourplighted word. For that word we must die; and since then we have beendying. Trace the course of history as far back as you will; questionthe nations of the earth; then name those who have done or who wouldhave done what we did. How many will you find? I am not judging thosewhom I pass over in silence, for to do so would be to enter into thesecret of men's hearts which I have not the right to violate; but inany case there is one which I can name aloud, without fear of beingmistaken; and that is the British nation. This people too entered intothe conflict, not through interest or necessity or inherited hatred, but simply for a matter of honour. It has not suffered what we havesuffered; it has not risked what we have risked, which is all that wepossessed beneath the arch of heaven; but it owes this immunity onlyto outside circumstances. The principle and the quality of the act arethe same. We stand on the same plane, one step higher than the othercombatants. While the others are the soldiers of necessity, we are thevolunteers of honour; and, without detracting from their merits, thistitle adds to ours all that a pure and disinterested idea adds to thenoblest acts of courage. There is not a doubt but that in our placeyou would have done precisely what we did. You would have done it withthe same simplicity, the same calm and confident ardour, the same goodfaith. You would have thrown yourselves into the breach aswhole-heartedly, with the same scorn of useless phrases and the samestubborn conscientiousness. And the reason why I do not shrink fromsinging in your presence the praises of what we have done is thatthese praises also affect yourselves, who would not have hesitated todo the selfsame things. 

3

In short, we have both the same conception of honour; and a like ideamust needs bear like fruits. In your eyes as in ours, a formalpromise, a word once given is the most sacred thing that can passbetween man and man. Now far more than the valour of a man--because itrises to much greater heights and extends to much greaterdistances--the valour of a people depends upon the conception of itshonour which that people holds and, above all, upon the sacrificeswhich it is capable of making for the sake of that honour. We maydiffer upon all the other ideas that guide the actions of mankind, notably upon the religious idea; but those who do not agree on thisone point are unworthy of the name of man. It represents the purestflame, the ever more ardent focus of all human dignity and virtue. 

You have sacrificed yourselves wholly to this idea; and, in the nameof this idea, which is as vital and as powerful in your souls as inours, you came to our aid, as we knew that you would come, for wecounted on you as surely as you counted on us. You are ready to makethe same sacrifices; and already you are proudly supporting theheaviest of sacrifices. Thus, in this stupendous struggle, we areunited by bonds even more fraternal than those which bind the otherAllies. Our union is more lofty and more generous, for it is basedwholly upon the noblest thoughts and feelings that can inspire theheart. And this union, which is marked by a mutual confidence andaffection that grow hourly deeper and wider, is helping us both to goeven beyond our duty. 

For we have gone beyond it; and we are exceeding it daily. We havedone and are doing far more than we were bound to do. It was for usBelgians to resist, loyally, vigorously, to the utmost of ourstrength, as we had promised. But the most sensitive honour would haveallowed us to lay down our arms after the immense and heroic effort ofthe first few days and to trust to the victor's clemency when herecognized that we were beaten. Nothing compelled us to immolateourselves entirely, to surrender, in succession, as a burnt-offeringto our ideals, all that we possessed on earth and to continue thestruggle after we were crushed, even in the last torments ofstarvation, which to-day holds three millions of us in its grip. Nothing compelled us to this course, other than the increasingly loftyideal of duty held by those who began by putting it into practice andare now living in its fulfilment. 

As for you English, you had to come to our assistance, that is to say, to send us the troops which you had ready under arms; but nothingcompelled you either, after the first useless engagements, to devoteyourselves with unparalleled ardour and self-sacrifice, to hurl intothe mortal and stupendous battle the whole of your youth, the fairestupon earth, and all your riches, the most prodigious in this world, nor to conjure up from your soil, by a miracle which was thoughtimpossible, in fewer months than the years that would have seemedneedful, the most gallant, determined and tenacious armies that haveyet been marshalled in this war. Nothing compelled you, save thespirit of emulation, the same mad love of duty, the same passion forjustice, the same idolatry of the given word which, that it may besure of doing all that it promised, performs far more than it wouldhave dared to promise. 

4

Now, during the last few weeks, a new combatant has entered the lists, one who occupies a place quite apart in the sacred hierarchy of dutyand honour and in the moral history of this war. I speak of Italy; andI pay her the tribute of homage which is her due and which I well knowthat you will render with me, for you of all nations are qualified todo so. 

Italy had no treaty except with our enemies. Her first act ofjustice, when confronted with an iniquitous aggression, was to discardthis treaty, which was about to draw her into a crime which she hadthe courage to judge and condemn from the outset, while her formerallies were still in the full flush of a might that seemed unshakable. After this verdict, which was worthy of the land where justice firstsaw the light, she found herself free; she now owed no obligations toany one. There was nothing left to compel her to rush into thiscarnage, which she could contemplate calmly from the vantage of herdelightful cities; and she had only to wait till the twelfth hour togather its first fruits. There was no longer any compact, any writtenbond, signed by the hands of kings or peoples, that could involve herdestiny. But now, at the spectacle, unforeseen and daily moreabominable and disconcerting, of the barbarian invasion, wordshalf-effaced and secret treaties written by unknown hands on thesouls and consciences of all men revealed themselves and slowlygathered life and radiance. To some extent I was a witness of thesethings; and I was able, so to speak, to follow with my eyes theawakening and the irresistible promulgation of those great andmysterious laws of justice, pity and love which are higher and moreimperishable than all those which we have engraved in marble orbronze. With the increase of the crimes, the power of these lawsincreased and extended. We may regard the intervention of Italy inmany ways. Like every human action and, above all, like everypolitical action, it is due to a thousand causes, many of which aretrifling. Among them we may see the legitimate hatred and the eternalresentment felt towards an hereditary enemy. We may discover aninterested intention to take part, without too much risk, in avictory already certain and in its previously allotted spoils. We maysee in it anything that we please: the resolves of men contain factorsof all kinds; but we must pity those who are able to consider none butthe meaner sides of the matter, for these are the only sides whichnever count and which are always deceptive. To find the real andlasting truth, we must learn to view the great masses and the greatfeelings of mankind from above. It is in them and in their great andsimple movements that the will of the soul and of destiny is asserted, for these two form the eternal substance of a people. And, in thepresent case, the movement of the great masses and the great feelingsof the people took the form of an immense impulse of sympathy andindignation, which gradually increased, penetrating farther andfarther into the popular strata and gathering volume as itprogressed, until it urged a whole nation to assume the burden of awar which it knew to be crushing and merciless, a war which each ofthose who called for it knew to be a war which he himself must wage, with his own hands, with his own body, a war which would wrest himfrom the pleasant ways of peace, from his labours and his comforts, which would weigh terribly upon all those whom he loved, which wouldexpose him for weeks, perhaps for months, to incredible sufferings andwhich meant almost certain death to a third or a half of those whodemanded the right to brave it. And all this, I repeat, occurredwithout any material necessity, from no other motive than a fine senseof honour and a magnificent surge of admiration and pity for a smallforeign nation that was being unjustly martyred. We cannot repeat ittoo often: here, as in the case of the sacrifice which Belgium andEngland offered to the ideal of honour, is a new and unprecedentedfact in history. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: Delivered in London, at the Queen's Hall, 7 July, 1915. ]

 * * * * *

BELGIUM'S FLAG DAY

IX

BELGIUM'S FLAG DAY

1

To-day our flag will quiver in every French hand as a symbol of loveand gratitude. This day should be a day of hope and glory for allBelgium. 

Let us forget for a moment our terrible distress; let us forget ourplains and meadows, the fairest and most fertile in Europe, nowravaged to such a degree that the utmost that one can say is powerlessto give any idea of a desolation which seems irremediable. Let usforget--if to forget them be possible--the women, the children, theold men, peaceable and innocent, who have been massacred in theirthousands, the tale of whom will amaze the world when once the grimbarrier is broken behind which so many secret horrors are beingcommitted. Let us forget those who are dying of hunger in our country, a land without harvests and without homes, a land methodically taxed, pillaged and crushed until it is drained of the last drop of itslife-blood. Let us forget those remnants of our people who arescattered hither and thither, who have trodden the path of exile, whoare living on public charity, which, though it show itself full ofbrotherhood and affection, is yet so oppressive to those supremelyindustrious hands, which had never known the grievous burden of alms. Let us forget even those last of our cities to be menaced, thefairest, the proudest, the most beloved of our cities, whichconstitute the very face of our country and which only a miracle couldnow save. Let us forget, in a word, the greatest calamity and the mostcrying injustice of history and think to-day only of our approachingdeliverance. It is not too early to hail it. It is already in all ourthoughts, as it is in all our hearts. It is already in the air whichwe breathe, in all the eyes that smile at us, in all the voices thatwelcome us, in all the hands outstretched to us, waving the laurelswhich they hold; for what is bringing us deliverance is the wonder, the admiration of the whole world!

2

To-morrow we shall go back to our homes. We shall not mourn though wefind them in ruins. They will rise again more beautiful than of oldfrom the ashes and the shards. We shall know days of heroic poverty;but we have learnt that poverty is powerless to sadden souls upheld bya great love and nourished by a noble ideal. We shall return withheads erect, regenerated in a regenerated Europe, rejuvenated by ourmagnificent misfortune, purified by victory and cleansed of thelittleness that obscured the virtues which slumbered within us and ofwhich we are not aware. We shall have lost all the goods that perishbut as readily come to live again. And in their place we shall haveacquired those riches which shall not again perish within our hearts. Our eyes were closed to many things; now they have opened upon widerhorizons. Of old we dared not avert our gaze from our wealth, ourpetty comforts, our little rooted habits. But now our eyes have beenwrested from the soil; now they have achieved the sight of heightsthat were hitherto unnoticed. We did not know ourselves; we used notto love one another sufficiently; but we have learnt to know ourselvesin the amazement of glory and to love one another in the grievousardour of the most stupendous sacrifice that any people has everaccomplished. We were on the point of forgetting the heroic virtues, the unfettered thoughts, the eternal ideas that lead humanity. To-day, not only do we know that they exist: we have taught the world thatthey are always triumphant, that nothing is lost while faith is left, while honour is intact, while love continues, while the soul does notsurrender and that the most monstrous of powers will never prevailagainst those ideal forces which are the happiness and the glory ofman and the sole reason for his existence. 

 * * * * *

ON THE DEATH OF A LITTLE SOLDIER

X

ON THE DEATH OF A LITTLE SOLDIER

1

When I speak of this little soldier who fell a few days ago, up therein the Vosges, it is not that I may mourn him publicly. It behoves usin these days to mourn our dead in secret. Personal sorrows no longercount; and we must learn how to suppress them in the presence of thatgreater sorrow which extends over all the world, the particular sorrowof the mothers who are setting us an example of the most heroicsilence that human suffering has been taught to observe sincesuffering first visited womankind. For the admirable silence of themothers is one of the great and striking lessons of this war. Amidthat tragic and sublime silence no regret dare make itself heard. 

But, though my grief remains dumb, my admiration can still raise itsvoice; and in speaking of this young soldier, who had not reachedman's estate and who died as the bravest of men, I speak of all hisbrothers-in-arms and hail thousands like him in his name, which namebecomes a great and glorious symbol; for at this time, when aprodigious wave of unselfishness and courage, surging up from the verydepths of the human race, uplifts the men who are fighting and givingtheir lives for its future, they all resemble one another in the sameperfection. 

2

My friend Raymond Bon was a sergeant in the 27th battalion of theChasseurs Alpins. He left for the front in August, 1914, with theother recruits of the 1915 class, which means that he was hardlytwenty years of age; and he won his stripes on the battlefield, afterbeing twice named in dispatches. The second time was on returning froma murderous assault at Thann, in Upper Alsace, in which he had greatlydistinguished himself. I quote the exact words:

 "Corporal Bon is mentioned in the orders of the battalion for his gallantry under fire and his indifference to danger. When the leader of his section was killed, Bon took command, rushed to the front and, shouting to his men to follow him, gave proofs of the greatest initiative and courage. He was the first in the enemy's trenches with his section. "

That day he was promoted to sergeant and complimented by the generalin front of his battalion in the following terms:

 "This is the second time, my friend, that I am told what you have done; next time you shall be told what I have done. "

To-day men tell of his death, but also of the undying glory whichdeath alone confers. 

 "At Hartmannsviller, " writes one of Bon's comrades, "according to his captain's story, our friend's company was held in reserve, waiting to support the attack delivered by a regiment of infantry. The order came to support and reinforce the attack. The company at once leapt from the trenches, with the captain and Bon at its head. There was a salvo of artillery; and the bursting of a great shell caught Raymond almost full in the body, smashing his right leg and his chest. The captain was hit in the right hand. Notwithstanding his horrible wounds, Bon did not lose consciousness; he was able to stammer out a few words and to press the hand which the captain gave him. In less than two minutes all was over. "

And the captain adds:

 "Always ready to sacrifice himself; a brave among the brave. "

These are modest and yet glorious details: modest because they are sovery common, because they are constantly being repeated in their noblemonotony and springing up from every side, numberless as the essentialactions of our daily life; and glorious because before this war theyseemed so rare and almost legendary and incomprehensible. 

3

Raymond Bon was a child of the south, of that Provence which, dayafter day, is shedding torrents of its blood to wipe out slanderswhich we can no longer remember without turning pale with anger andindignation. He was born at Avignon, the old city of the Popes and thecicadas, where men have louder accents and lighter hearts thanelsewhere. He was a little boxing-master, who earned a livelihood atNice for himself and his destitute parents by giving lessons in thenoble art of self-defence with the good, ever-ready weapons whichnature has bestowed upon us. He boasted no other education than thatwhich a lad picks up at the primary school; but, almost illiterate ashe was, he possessed all the refinement, the innate culture, theunconscious delicacy and tact, the kindliness of speech and feelingand the beautiful heart of that comely race whose foremost sons seemto be purified and spiritualized from their first childish steps bythe most radiant sunshine in the world. One would say that they weredirectly related to those exquisite ephebes of ancient Greece whosprang into existence ready to understand all things and toexperience life's purest emotions before they themselves had lived. Myreason for insisting upon the point is that, in this respect aboveall, he represented thousands and thousands of young men from thatwonderful region where all the best and most lovable qualities ofmankind lie hidden all around beneath the indifferent surface ofeveryday existence, only awaiting a favourable occasion to blossominto astonishing flowers of grace and generosity and heroism. 

4

When I heard that he had gone to the front, I felt a melancholycertainty that I should never set eyes on him again. He was of thosewhose fate there is no mistaking. He was one of those predestinedheroes whose courage marks them out beforehand for death and laurels. I but too well knew his eagerness, his unbounded sincerity andsingle-mindedness and his great heart: that admirable heart devoid ofall caution or ulterior motive or calculation, that heart turned, atall times and with all its might, purely towards honour and duty. Hewas bound to be in the trenches and in the bayonet-charge the same manthat I had so often seen in the ring, taking risks from the start, taking them wholesale, unremittingly, blindly and cheerfully andalways ready with his pleasant smile, like that of a shy child, at anytime to face whatever giant might have challenged him. 

I remember that one day in the year 1914, he was training GeorgesCarpentier, who was to meet some negro heavy-weight or other. Thedisproportion in the strength of the two men struck my friends and meas rather alarming; and we took the champion of the world aside andbegged him not to hit too hard and to spare our little instructor asmuch as he could. That good fellow Carpentier, who is full ofchivalrous gentleness, promised to do what we asked; but after thefirst round he came back to us and said:

"I can't let him off just as lightly as I should like. The little chapis too plucky and too sensitive; and I have to hit out in earnest. Besides, he overheard you and what he says is, 'Never mind what thegentlemen say; they are much too considerate and are always afraid ofmy getting smashed up. There's no fear of that. You go for me hard, else we sha'n't be doing good work. '"

5

"Good work. " That is evidently what he did down at the front and whatall of them there are doing. It is indeed fine work, the most gloriousthat a man can perform, to die like that for a cause whose triumph hewill not behold, for benefits which he does not reap and which willaccrue solely to his fellow-men whom he will never see again. For, apart from those benefits, like so many other men, like almost all theothers, he had nothing to gain and nothing to lose by this war. Allthat he possessed in the world was the strength of his two arms; andthat strength finds a country everywhere. 

But we are no longer concerned with the personal and immediateinterests that guide nearly all the actions of everyday life. Aloftier ideal has visited men's minds and occupies them wholly; andthe least prepared, the humblest, the minds that seemed to understandhardly anything of the existence that came before the tremendoustrial, now feel it and live it as thoroughly and with the sameinfinite ampleness as do those minds which thought themselves alonecapable of grasping it, of considering it from above or contemplatingit from every side. Never did a sheer ideal sink so deeply into somany hearts or abide there for so long without wavering or faltering. And therefore, beyond a doubt, somewhere on high, in the heart of theunknown powers that rule us, there is being piled up at this momentthe most wonderful treasure of immaterial forces that man has everpossessed, one upon which he will draw until the end of time; for inthat superhuman treasure-house nothing is lost and we are still livingday by day on the virtues stored in it long centuries ago by theheroes of Greece and Rome, by the saints and martyrs of the primitiveChurch and by the flower of mediæval chivalry. 

 * * * * *

THE HOUR OF DESTINY

XI

THE HOUR OF DESTINY

1

We are already free to speak of this war as if it were ended and ofvictory as if it were assured. In principle, in the region of moralcertainties, Germany has been beaten since the battle of the Marne;and reality, which is always slower, because it goes burdened beneaththe weight of matter, must needs come obediently to join the ranks ofthose certainties. The last agony may be prolonged for weeks andmonths, for the animal is endowed with the stubborn and almostinextinguishable vitality of the beasts of prey; but it is wounded tothe death; and we have only to wait patiently, weapon in hand, for thefinal convulsions that announce the end. The historic event, thegreatest beyond doubt since man possessed a history, is thereforeaccomplished; and, strange to say, it seems as though it had beenaccomplished in spite of history, against its laws and contrary to itswishes. It is rash, I know, to speak of such things; and it behoves usto be very cautious in these speculations which pass the scope ofhuman understanding; but, when we consider what the annals of thisearth of ours have taught us, it seemed written in the book of theworld's destinies that Germany was bound to win. It was not only, aswe are too ready at the first glance to believe, the megalomania of anautocrat drunk with vanity, the gross vanity of some brainlessbuffoon; it was not the warlike impulses, the blind infatuation andegoism of a feudal caste; it was not even the impatient anddeliberately fanned envy and covetousness of a too prolific raceclose-cramped on a dreary and ungrateful soil: it was none of thesethat let loose the hateful war. All these causes, adventitious orfortuitous as they were, only settled the hour of the decision; butthe decision itself was taken and written, probably ages ago, in otherspheres which cannot be reached by the conscious will of man, spheresin which dark and mighty laws hold sway over illimitable time andspace. The whole line, the whole huge curve of history showed to themind of whosoever tried to read its sacred and fearful hieroglyphicsthat the day of a new, a formidable and inexorable event was at hand. 

The theories built up on this point in the last sixty years by theGerman professors, notably by Giesbrecht, the historian of the Ottosand the Hohenstaufens, and Treitschke, the historian of theHohenzollerns, do not necessarily carry conviction but are at leastimpressive; and the work of these two writers, which we do not knowas well as we should, and of Treitschke in particular possessed inGermany an influence that sank deep into every mind, far exceedingthat of Nietzsche, which we looked upon as preponderant. 

But let us ignore for the moment all that belongs to a remote past, the study of which would call for more space than we have at ourdisposal. Let us not question the empire of the Ottos, theHohenstaufens or the Hapsburgs, in which Germany, at least as a nationand a race, played but a secondary part and was still unconscious ofher existence. Let us rather see what is happening nearer to us and, so to speak, before our very eyes. 

2

A hundred years ago, under Napoleon, France enjoyed her spell ofhegemony, which she was not able to prolong because this hegemony wasmore the work of a prodigious but accidental genius than the fruit ofa real and intrinsic power. Next came the turn of England, who to-daypossesses the greatest empire that the world has seen since the daysof ancient Rome, that is to say, more than a fifth part of thehabitable globe. But this vast empire rests no more than didNapoleon's upon an incontestible force, inasmuch as up to this day itwas defended only by an army less numerous and less well-equipped thanthat of many a smaller nation, thus almost inevitably inviting war, asProfessor Cramb pointed out a year or two ago in his prophetic book, _Germany and England_, which has only recently aroused the interestwhich it deserves. 

It seemed, therefore, as if between these two Powers, which were moreillusory than real, pending the advent of Russia, whose hour had notyet struck; in this gap in history, between a nation on the verge ofits decline, or at least seemingly incapable of defending itself, anda nation that was still too young and incapable of attack, fateoffered a magnificent place to whoso cared to take it. This is whatGermany felt, at first instinctively, urged by all the ill-definedforces that impel mankind, and subsequently, in these latter years, with a consciousness that became ever clearer and more persistent. Shegrasped the fact that her turn had come to reign over the earth, thatshe must take her chance and seize the opportunity that comes butonce. She prepared to answer the call of fate and, supported by themysterious aid which it lends to those whom it summons, she didanswer, we must admit, in an astonishing and most formidable manner. 

She was within a hair's breadth of succeeding. A little less prolongedand less gallant resistance on the part of Belgium, a suspiciousmovement from Italy, a false step made upon the banks of the Marne;and we can picture Paris falling; France overrun and fightingheroically to her last gasp; Russia, not crushed, but weary of seekingvictory and making terms for good or ill with a conqueror impotent toharm her; the neutral nations more or less reluctantly siding with thestrongest; England isolated, giving up her colonies to staunch thewounds of her invaded isle; the fasces of justice broken asunder by aseparate peace here, a separate peace there, each equally humiliating;and Germany, monstrous, ferocious, implacable, finally towering aloneover the ruins of Europe. 

3

Now it seems that we have turned aside the inflexible decree. It seemsthat we have averted the fate that was about to be accomplished. Itwas bearing down upon us with the weight of the ages, with all theweight of all the vague but irresistible aspirations of the past and, perhaps, the future. Thanks to the greatest effort which mankind hasever opposed to the unknown gods that rule it, we are entitled tobelieve that the decree has broken down and that we have driven itinto the evil cave where never human force before had compelled it tohide its defeat. 

I say, "It seems;" I say, "We are entitled to believe. " The fact isthat the ordeal is not yet past. Even on the day when the war is endedand when victory is in our hands, destiny will not yet be conquered. It has happened--seldom, it is true, but still it has happened twiceor thrice--that a nation has compelled the course of fate to turnaside or to fall back. The nation congratulated herself, even as webelieve that we have the right to do. But events were not slow inproving that she had congratulated herself too soon. Fatality, that isto say, the enormous mass of causes and effects of which we have nounderstanding, was not overcome; it was only delayed, it awaited itsrevenge and its day, or at least what we call its day, which mayextend over a hundred years and more where nations are concerned, forfatality does not reckon in the manner of men, but after the fashionof the great movements of nature. It is important at this time to knowwhether we shall be able to escape that revenge and that day. If menand nations were swayed only by reason, if, after being so often theabsolute masters of their happiness and their future, they had not sooften destroyed that which they had just achieved, then we mightsay--and indeed ought to say--that our escape depends only uponourselves. In point of fact, three-quarters of the risk are run andthe fourth is in our power; we have only to keep it so. Almost all thechances of the fight are on our side at last; and, when the war isover, there will be nothing but our wisdom and our will confronting adestiny which from that time onward will be powerless to take itscourse, unless it first succeed in blinding and perverting them. 

In this hour all that lies hidden under that mysterious word will bewaiting on our decision, waiting to know if victory is with us or withit. It is after we have won that we must really vanquish; it is in thehour of peace that the actual war will begin against an invisible foe, a hundred times as dangerous as the one of whom we have seen too much. If at that hour we do not profit by all our advantages; if we do notdestroy, root and branch, the military power of an enemy who is insecret alliance with the evil influences of the earth; if we do nothere and now, by an irrevocable compact, forearm ourselves againstour sense of pity and generosity, our weakness, our imprudence, ourfuture rivalries and discords; if we leave a single outlet to thebeast at bay; if, through our negligence, we give it a single hope, asingle opportunity of coming to the surface and taking breath, thenthe vigilant fatality which has but one fixed idea will resume itsprogress and pursue its way, dragging history with it and laughingover its shoulder at man once more tricked and discomfited. Everythingthat we have done and suffered, the ruins, the sacrifices, thenameless tortures and the numberless dead, will have served no purposeand will be lost beyond redemption. Everything will not have to bedone over again, for nothing is ever done over again and fortunateopportunities do not occur twice; but everything except our woes andall their consequences will be as though it had never been. 

4

It will therefore be a matter of holding our own against the enemywhom we do not see and mastering him until the turn or chance of theaccursed race is past. How long will that be? We cannot tell; but, inthe swift-moving history of to-day, it seems probable that the waitingand the struggle will be much shorter than they would have been informer times. Is it possible that fatality--by which I mean whatperhaps for a moment was the unacknowledged desire of theplanet--shall not regain the upper hand? At the stage which man hasreached, I hope and believe so. He had never conquered it before; butalso he had not yet risen to the height which he has now attained. There is no reason why that which has never happened should not takeplace one day; and everything seems to tell us that man is approachingthe day whereon, seizing the most glorious opportunity that has everpresented itself since he acquired a consciousness, he will at lastlearn that he is able, when he pleases, to control his whole fate inthis world. 

 * * * * *

IN ITALY

XII

IN ITALY

1

A few days before Italy formed her great resolve, the following linesappeared in one of the leading Pangermanic organs of the peoplesbeyond the Rhine, the _Kreuzzeitung_:

 "We have already observed that it will not do to be too optimistic as to Italy's decision; in point of fact, the situation is very serious. If none but moderate considerations had ruled Italy's intentions, there is little doubt as to which path she would choose; but we know the height which the wave of Germanophobia has attained in that country, a significant mark of the popular sentiment being the declaration of the Italian Socialists upon the reasons of their inability to oppose the war. An equal source of danger is the fact that the government feels that it no longer controls the current of public opinion. "

The whole drama of Italian intervention is summed up in these lines, which explain it better than would the longest and most learnedcommentaries. 

The Italian government, restrained by a politic wisdom and prudence, excessive, perhaps, but very excusable, did not wish for war. To theutmost limits of patience, until its dignity and its sense of securitycould bear no more, it did all that could be done to spare its peoplethe greatest calamity that can befall a land. It held out until it wasliterally submerged and carried away by the flood of Germanophobia ofwhich the passage which I have quoted speaks. I witnessed the risingof this flood. When I arrived in Milan, at the end of November, 1914, to speak a few sentences at a charity-fête organized for the benefitof the Belgian refugees, the hatred of Germany was already storingitself up in men's hearts, but had not as yet come to the surface. Here and there it did break out, but it was still fearful, circumspectand hesitating. One felt it brewing, seething in the depths of men'ssouls, but it seemed as yet to be feeling its way, to be reckoningitself up, to be painfully attaining self-consciousness. When Ireturned to Italy in March, 1915, I was amazed to behold theunhoped-for height to which the invading flood had so swiftly risen. That pious hatred, that necessary hatred, which in this case is merelya magnificent passion for justice and humanity, had swept overeverything. It had come out into the full sunlight; it thrilled andquivered at the least appeal, proud and happy to assert itself, tomanifest itself with the beautiful tumultuous ostentation of theSouth; and it was the "neutrals" that now hid themselves after themanner of unspeakable insects. That species had all but disappeared, annihilated by the storm that was gathering on every hand. The Germansthemselves had gone to earth, no one knew where; and from that momentit was certain that war was imminent and inevitable. 

In the space of three months a stupendous work had been accomplished. It is impossible for the moment to weigh and determine the part ofeach of those who performed it. But we can even now say that in Italy, which is governed preeminently by public opinion and which, more thanany other nation, has in its blood the traditions and the habits ofthe forum and the ancient republics, it is above all the spoken wordthat changes men's hearts and urges them to action. 

2

From this point of view, the admirable campaign of agitation andpropaganda undertaken by M. Jules Destrée, author of _En Italie_, wasof an importance and possessed consequences which are beyondcomparison with anything else accomplished and which are difficult torealize by those who were not present at one or other of the meetingsat which, for more than six months, indefatigably, travelling fromtown to town, from the smallest to the most populous, he uttered thedistressful complaint of martyred Belgium, unveiling the lies, thefelonies, the monstrosities and the acts of devastation perpetrated bythe barbarian horde and making heard, with sovran eloquence, theaugust voice of outraged justice and of baffled right. 

I heard him more than once and was able to judge for myself of themagical effect--the term is by no means too strong--which he producedon the Italian crowd. It was a magnificent spectacle, which I shallnever forget. I then perceived for the first time in my life themysterious, incantatory, supernatural powers of great eloquence. 

He would come forward wearing a languid, dejected and overburdenedair. The crowd, like all crowds awaiting their master, sat thronged athis feet, silently humming, undecided, unshaped, not yet knowing whatit wanted or intended. He would begin; his voice was low, leisurely, almost hesitating; he seemed to be painfully searching for his ideasand expressions, but in reality he was feeling for the sensitive andmagnetic points of the huge and unknown being whose soul he wished toreach. At the outset it was evident that he did not know exactly whathe was going to say. He swept his words across the assembly as thoughthey had been antennæ. They came back to him charged with sympathyand strength and precise information. Then his delivery became morerapid, his body drew itself erect, his stature and his very sizeincreased. His voice grew fuller; it became tremendous, seductive orsarcastic, overwhelming like a hurricane all the ideas of hisaudience, beating against the walls of the largest buildings, flowing, through the doors and windows, out into the surging streets, there tokindle the ardour and hatred which already thrilled the hall. Hisface--tawny, brutal, ravaged, furrowed with shade and slashed withlight, powerful and magnificent in its ugliness--became the very mask, the visible symbol of the furious and generous passions of the crowd. At moments such as this, he truly merited the name which I heard thoseabout me murmuring, the name which the Italians gave him in that kindof helpless fear and delight which men feel in the presence of anirresistible force: he was "the Terrible Orator. "

But all this power, which seemed so blindly released, was in realityextremely circumspect, extremely subtle and marvellously disciplined. The handling of those shy though excited crowds called for the utmostprudence, as a certain French speaker, whom I will not name, but whowished to make a like attempt, learnt to his cost. The Italian isgenerous, courteous, hospitable, expansive and enthusiastic, but alsoproud and susceptible. He does not readily allow another to dictatehis conduct, to reproach him with his shortcomings or to offer himadvice. He is conscious of his own worth; he knows that he is theeldest son of our civilization and that no one has the right topatronize him. It is necessary, therefore, beneath the appearance ofthe most fiery and unbridled eloquence, to observe perfectself-mastery, combined with infinite tact and discretion. It is oftenessential to divine instantaneously the temper of the crowd, to bowbefore the most varied and unexpected circumstances and to profit bythem. I remember, among others, a singularly prickly meeting atNaples. The Neapolitans are hardly warlike people; but they none theless felt on this occasion that they must not appear indifferent tothe generous movement which was thrilling the rest of Italy. At thelast moment, we were warned that we might speak of Belgium and hermisfortunes, but that any too pointed allusion to the war, any tooviolent attack upon the Teutonic bandits would arouse protests whichmight injure our cause. I, being no orator, had only my poor writtenspeech, which, as I could not alter it, became dangerous. It wasnecessary to prepare the ground. Destrée mounted the platform and, ina masterly improvisation, began by establishing a long, patient andscholarly parallel between Flemish and Italian art, between the greatpainters of Florence and Venice and those of Flanders and Brabant; andthence, by imperceptible degrees, he shifted his ground to the presentdistress in Belgium, to the atrocities and infamies committed by heroppressors, to the whole story, to the whole series of injustices, tothe whole danger of this nameless war. He was applauded; the barrierswere broken down. Anything added to what he had said was superfluous;but everything was permissible. 

3

For the rest, it must be admitted that a wonderful impulse of pity andadmiration for Belgium sustained the orator and lent his every word arange and a potency which it could not otherwise have possessed. Thisunanimous and spontaneous sympathy assumed at times the most touchingand unexpected forms. All difficulties were smoothed away before us asby magic; the sternest prohibitions were ingeniously evaded orbenevolently removed. From the towns which we were due to visit thehotel-keepers telegraphed to us, begging as a favour permission togive us lodging; and, when the time came to settle our account, it wasimpossible to get them to accept the slightest remuneration; and thewhole staff, from the majestic porter to the humblest boot-boy, heroically refused to be tipped. If we entered a restaurant and wererecognized, the customers would rise, take counsel together and ordera bottle of some famous wine; then one among them would come forward, requesting, gracefully and respectfully, that we would do them thehonour of drinking with them to the deliverance of our martyredmotherland. At the memory of what that unhappy country had sufferedfor the salvation of the world, a sort of discreet and affectingfervour was visible in the looks of all; it may be said that nowherewas the heroic sacrifice of Belgium more nobly and more affectionatelyadmired and understood; and it will be recognized one day, when timehas done its work, that, although other causes induced Italy to takeupon her shoulders the terrible burden of what was not an inevitablewar, the only causes that really, in the depths of her soul, liberatedher resolve were the admiration, the indignation and the heroic pityinspired by the spectacle, incessantly renewed, of our unmeritedafflictions. You will not find in history a nobler sacrifice nor onemade for a nobler cause. 

 * * * * *

ON REREADING THUCYDIDES

XIII

ON REREADING THUCYDIDES

1

At moments above all when history is in the making, in these timeswhen great and as yet incomplete pages are being traced, pages by theside of which all that had already been written will pale, it is agood and salutary thing to turn to the past in search of instruction, warning and encouragement. In this respect, the unwearying andimplacable war which Athens kept up against Sparta for twenty-sevenyears, with the hegemony of Greece for a stake, presents more than oneanalogy with that which we ourselves are waging and teaches lessonsthat should make us reflect. The counsels which it gives us are allthe more precious, all the more striking or profound inasmuch as thewar is narrated to us by a man who remains, with Tacitus, despite thestriving of the centuries, the progress of life and all theopportunities of doing better, the greatest historian that the earthhas ever known. Thucydides is in fact the supreme historian, at thesame time swift and detailed, scrupulously sifting his evidence butgiving free play to intuition, setting forth none but incontestablefacts, yet divining the most secret intentions and embracing at aglance all the present and future political consequences of the eventswhich he relates. He is withal one of the most perfect writers, one ofthe most admirable artists in the literature of mankind; and from thispoint of view, in an entirely different and almost antagonistic world, he has not an equal save Tacitus. But Tacitus is before everything awonderful tragic poet, a painter of foul abysses, of fire and blood, who can lay bare the souls of monsters and their crimes, whereasThucydides is above all a great political moralist, a statesmanendowed with extraordinary perspicacity, a painter of the open air andof a free state, who portrays the minds of those sane, ingenious, subtle, generous and marvellously intelligent men who peopled ancientGreece. The one piles on the gloom with a lavish hand, gathers darkshadows which he pierces at each sentence with lightning flashes, butremains sombre and oppressed on the very summits, whereas the othercondenses nothing but light, groups together judgments that are somany radiant sheaves and remains luminous and breathes freely in thevery depths. The first is passionate, violent, fierce, indignant, bitter, sincerely but pitilessly unjust and all made up of magnificentanimosities; the second is always even, always at the same high level, which is that which the noblest endeavour of human reason can attain. He has no passion but a passion for the public weal, for justice, glory and intelligence. It is as though all his work were spread outin the blue sky; and even his famous picture of the plague of Athensseems covered with sunshine. 

2

But there is no need to follow up this parallel, which is not myobject. I will not dwell any longer--though perhaps I may return tothem one day--upon the lessons which we might derive from thatPeloponnesian War, in which the position of Athens towards Lacedaemonprovides more than one point of comparison with that of France towardsGermany. True, we do not there see, as in our own case, civilizednations fighting a morally barbarian people: it was a contest betweenGreeks and Greeks, displaying however in the same physical race twodifferent and incompatible spirits. Athens stood for human life inits happiest development, gracious, cheerful and peaceful. She took noserious interest except in the happiness, the imponderous riches, theinnocent and perfect beauties, the sweet leisures, the glories and thearts of peace. When she went to war, it was as though in play, withthe smile still on her face, looking upon it as a more violentpleasure than the rest, or as a duty joyfully accepted. She boundherself down to no discipline, she was never ready, she improvisedeverything at the last moment, having, as Pericles said, "with habitsnot of labour but of ease and courage not of art but of nature, thedouble advantage of escaping the experience of hardship inanticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly asthose who are never free from them. "[5]

For Sparta, on the other hand, life was nothing but endless work, anincessant strain, having no other objective than war. She was gloomy, austere, strict, morose, almost ascetic, an enemy to everything thatexcuses man's presence on this earth, a nation of spoilers, looters, incendiaries and devastators, a nest of wasps beside a swarm of bees, a perpetual menace and danger to everything around her, as hard uponherself as upon others and boasting an ideal which may appear lofty, if it can be man's ideal to be unhappy and the contented slave ofunrelenting discipline. On the other hand, she differed entirely fromthose whom we are now fighting in that she was generally honest, loyaland upright and showed a certain respect for the gods and theirtemples, for treaties and for international law. It is none the lesstrue that, if she had from the beginning reigned alone or withoutencountering a long resistance, Hellas would never have been theHellas that we know. She would have left in history but a precarioustrace of useless warlike virtues and of minor combats without glory;and mankind would not have possessed that centre of light towardswhich it turns to this day. 

3

What was to be the issue of this war? Here begins the lesson which itwere well to study thoroughly. It would seem indeed as if, with thefirst encounters in that conflict, as in our own, the inexplicable willthat governs nations was favourable to the less civilized; and in factLacedaemon gained the upper hand, at least temporarily and sufficientlyto abuse her victory to such a degree that she soon lost its fruits. But Athens held the evil will in check for seven-and-twenty years; fortwenty-seven summers and twenty-seven winters, to use Thucydides'reckoning, she proved to us that it is possible, in defiance ofprobability, to fight against what seems written in the book of heavenand hell. Nay more, at a time when Sparta, whose sole industry, whosesole training, whose only reason for existence and whose only idealwas war, was hugging the thought of crushing in a few weeks, under theweight of her formidable hoplites, a frivolous, careless andill-organized city, Athens, notwithstanding the treacherous blow whichfate dealt her by sending a plague that carried off a third of hercivil population and a quarter of her army, Athens for seventeen yearsdefinitely held victory in her grasp. 

During this period, she more than once had Lacedaemon at her mercy anddid not begin to descend the stony path of ruin and defeat until afterthe disastrous expedition to Sicily, in which, carried away by herrhetoricians and bitten with inconceivable folly, she hurled all herfleet, all her soldiers and all her wealth into a remote, unprofitable, unknown and desperate adventure. She resisted thedecline of her fortunes for yet another ten years, heaping up her sinsagainst wisdom and simple common sense and with her own hands drawingtighter the knot that was to strangle her, as though to show us thatdestiny is for the most part but our own madness and that what we callunavoidable fatality has its root only in mistakes that might easilybe avoided. 

4

To point this moral was again not my real object. In these days whenwe have so many sorrows to assuage and so many deaths to honour, Iwished merely to recall a page written over two thousand years ago, tothe glory of the Athenian heroes who fell for their country in thefirst battles of that war. According to the custom of the Greeks, thebones of the dead that had been burnt on the battlefield weresolemnly brought back to Athens at the end of the year; and the peoplechose the greatest speaker in the city to deliver the funeral oration. This honour fell to Pericles, son of Xanthippus, the Pericles of thegolden age of human beauty. After pronouncing a well-merited andmagnificent eulogium on the Athenian nation and institutions, heconcluded with the following words:

 "Indeed, if I have dwelt at some length upon the character of our country, it has been to show that our stake in the struggle is not the same as theirs who have no such blessing to lose and also that the panegyric of the men over whom I am now speaking might be by definite proofs established. That panegyric is now in a great measure complete; for the Athens that I have celebrated is only what the heroism of these and their like have made her, men whose fame, unlike that of most Hellenes, will be found to be only commensurate with their deserts. And, if a test of worth be wanted, it is to be found in their closing scene; and this not only in the cases in which it set the final seal upon their merit, but also in those in which it gave the first intimation of their having any. For there is justice in the claim that steadfastness in his country's battles should be as a cloak to cover a man's other imperfections, since the good action has blotted out the bad and his merit as a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as an individual. But none of these allowed either wealth with its prospect of future enjoyment to unnerve his spirit, or poverty with its hope of a day of freedom and riches to tempt him to shrink from danger. No, holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings and reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk, to make sure of their vengeance and to let their wishes wait; and, while committing to hope the uncertainty of final success, in the business before them they thought fit to act boldly and trust in themselves. Thus choosing to die resisting rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonour, but met danger face to face and, after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune, escaped not from their fear but from their glory. 

 "So died these men as became Athenians. You, their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier issue. And, not contented with ideas derived only from words of the advantages which are bound up with the defence of your country, though these would furnish a valuable text to a speaker even before an audience so alive to them as the present, you must yourselves realize the power of Athens and feed your eyes upon her from day to day, till love of her fills your hearts; and then, when all her greatness shall break upon you, you must reflect that it was by courage, sense of duty and a keen feeling of honour in action that men were enabled to win all this and that no personal failure in an enterprise could make them consent to deprive their country of their valour, but they laid it at her feet as the most glorious contribution that they could offer. For by this offering of their lives made in common by them all they each of them individually received that renown which never grows old and, for a sepulchre, not so much that in which their bones have been deposited, but that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be eternally remembered upon every occasion on which deed or story shall call for its commemoration. For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart. These take as your model and, judging happiness to be the fruit of freedom and freedom of valour, never decline the dangers of war. For it is not the miserable that would most justly be unsparing of their lives: these have nothing to hope for; it is rather they to whom continued life may bring reverses as yet unknown and to whom a fall, if it came, would be most tremendous in its consequences. And surely, to a man of spirit, the degradation of cowardice must be immeasurably more grievous than the unfelt death which strikes him in the midst of his strength and patriotism!

 "Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is what I have to offer to the parents of the dead who may be here. Numberless are the chances to which, as they know, the life of man is subject; but fortunate indeed are they who draw for their lot a death so glorious as that which has caused your mourning and to whom life has been so exactly measured as to terminate in the happiness in which it has been passed. Still I know that this is a hard saying, especially when those are in question of whom you will be constantly reminded by seeing in the homes of others blessings of which once you also boasted; for grief is felt not so much for the want of what we have never known as for the loss of that to which we have been long accustomed. Yet you who are still of an age to beget children must bear up in the hope of having others in their stead: not only will they help you to forget those whom you have lost, but they will be to the state at once a reinforcement and a security; for never can a fair or just policy be expected of the citizen who does not, like his fellows, bring to the decision the interests and apprehensions of a father. While those of you who have passed your prime must congratulate yourselves with the thought that the best part of your life was fortunate and that the brief span that remains will be cheered by the fame of the departed. For it is only the love of honour that never grows old; and honour it is, not gain, as some would have it, that rejoices the heart of age and helplessness. 

 "And, now that you have brought to a close your lamentations for your relatives, you may depart. "

These words spoken twenty-three centuries ago ring in our hearts asthough they were uttered yesterday. They celebrate our dead betterthan could any eloquence of ours, however poignant it might be. Let usbow before their paramount beauty and before the great people thatcould applaud and understand. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: This and the later passage from Pericles' funeral orationI have quoted from the late Richard Crawley's admirable translation ofThucydides' _Peloponnesian War_, now published in the _TempleClassics_. --A. T. De M. ]

 * * * * *

THE DEAD DO NOT DIE

XIV

THE DEAD DO NOT DIE

1

When we behold the terrible loss of so many young lives, when we seeso many incarnations of physical and moral vigour, of intellect and ofglorious promise pitilessly cut off in their first flower, we are onthe verge of despair. Never before have the fairest energies andaspirations of men been flung recklessly and incessantly into an abysswhence comes no sound or answer. Never since it came into existencehas humanity squandered its treasure, its substance and its prospectsso lavishly. For more than twelve months, on every battlefield, wherethe bravest, the truest, the most ardent and self-sacrificing arenecessarily the first to die and where the less courageous, the lessgenerous, the weak, the ailing, in a word the less desirable, alonepossess some chance of escaping the carnage, for over twelve months asort of monstrous inverse selection has been in operation, one whichseems to be deliberately seeking the downfall of the human race. Andwe wonder uneasily what the state of the world will be after the greattrial and what will be left of it and what will be the future of thisstunted race, shorn of all the best and noblest part of it. 

The problem is certainly one of the darkest that have ever vexed theminds of men. It contains a material truth before which we remaindefenceless; and, if we accept it as it stands, we can discover noremedy for the evil that threatens us. But material and tangibletruths are never anything but a more or less salient angle of greaterand deeper-lying truths. And, on the other hand, mankind appears to besuch a necessary and indestructible force of nature that it hasalways, hitherto, not only survived the most desperate ordeals, butsucceeded in benefiting by them and emerging greater and stronger thanbefore. 

2

We know that peace is better than war; it were madness to compare thetwo. We know that, if this cataclysm let loose by an act ofunutterable folly had not come upon the world, mankind would doubtlesshave reached ere long a zenith of wonderful achievement whosemanifestations it is impossible to foreshadow. We know that, if athird or a fourth part of the fabulous sums expended on exterminationand destruction had been devoted to works of peace, all the iniquitiesthat poison the air we breathe would have been triumphantly redressedand that the social question, the one great question, that matter oflife and death which justice demands that posterity should face, would have found its definite solution, once and for all, in ahappiness which now perhaps even our sons and grandsons will notrealize. We know that the disappearance of two or three million youngexistences, cut down when they were on the point of bearing fruit, will leave in history a void that will not be easily filled, even aswe know that among those dead were mighty intellects, treasures ofgenius which will not come back again and which contained inventionsand discoveries that will now perhaps be lost to us for centuries. Weknow that we shall never grasp the consequences of this thrusting backof progress and of this unprecedented devastation. But, granting allthis, it is a good thing to recover our balance and stand upon ourfeet. There is no irreparable loss. Everything is transformed, nothingperishes and that which seems to be hurled into destruction is notdestroyed at all. Our moral world, even as our physical world, is avast but hermetically sealed sphere, whence naught can issue, whencenaught can fall, to be dissolved in space. All that exists, all thatcomes into being upon this earth remains there and bears fruit; andthe most appalling wastage is but material or spiritual riches flungaway for an instant, to fall to the ground again in a new form. Thereis no escape or leakage, no filtering through cracks, no missing themark, not even waste or neglect. All this heroism poured out on everyside does not leave our planet; and the reason why the courage of ourfighters seems so general and yet so extraordinary is that all themight of the dead has passed into the survivors. All those forces ofwisdom, patience, honour and self-sacrifice which increase day by dayand which we ourselves, who are far from the field of danger, feelrising within us without knowing whence they come are nothing but thesouls of the heroes gathered and absorbed by our own souls. 

3

It is well at times to contemplate invisible things as though we sawthem with our eyes. This was the aim of all the great religions, whenthey represented under forms appropriate to the civilization of theirday, the latent, deep, instinctive, general and essential truths whichare the guiding principles of mankind. All have felt and recognizedthat loftiest of all truths, the communion of the living and the dead, and have given it various names designating the same mysteriousverity: the Christians know it as revival of merit, the Buddhists asreincarnation, or transmigration of souls, and the Japanese asShintoism, or ancestor-worship. The last are more fully convinced thanany other nation that the dead do not cease to live and that theydirect all our actions, are exalted by our virtues and become gods. 

Lafcadio Hearn, the writer who has most closely studied and understoodthat wonderful ancestor-worship, says:

 "One of the surprises of our future will certainly be a return to beliefs and ideas long ago abandoned upon the mere assumption that they contained no truth--beliefs still called barbarous, pagan, mediæval, by those who condemn them out of traditional habit. Year after year the researches of science afford us new proof that the savage, the barbarian, the idolater, the monk, each and all have arrived, by different paths, as near to some point of eternal truth as any thinker of the nineteenth century. We are now learning also, that the theories of the astrologers and of the alchemists were but partially, not totally, wrong. We have reason even to suppose that no dream of the invisible world has ever been dreamed, that no hypothesis of the unseen has ever been imagined--which future science will not prove to have contained some germ of reality. "[6]

There are many things which might be added to these lines, notably allthat the most recent of our sciences, metapsychics, is engaged indiscovering with regard to the miraculous faculties of oursubconsciousness. 

But, to return more directly to what we were saying, was it notobserved that, after the great battles of the Napoleonic era, thebirth-rate increased in an extraordinary manner, as though the livessuddenly cut short in their prime were not really dead and were eagerto be back again in our midst and complete their career? If we couldfollow with our eyes all that is happening in the spiritual world thatrises above us on every side, we should no doubt see that it is thesame with the moral force that seems to be lost on the field ofslaughter. It knows where to go, it knows its goal, it does nothesitate. All that our wonderful dead relinquish they bequeath to us;and when they die for us, they leave us their lives not in anystrained metaphorical sense, but in a very real and direct way. Virtuegoes out of every man who falls while performing a deed of glory; andthat virtue drops down upon us; and nothing of him is lost and nothingevaporates in the shock of a premature end. He gives us in onesolitary and mighty stroke what he would have given us in a long lifeof duty and love. Death does not injure life; it is powerless againstit. Life's aggregate never changes. What death takes from those whofall enters into those who are left standing. The number of lampsgrows less, but the flame rises higher. Death is in no wise the gainerso long as there are living men. The more it exercises its ravages, the more it increases the intensity of that which it cannot touch; themore it pursues its phantom victories, the better does it prove to usthat man will end by conquering death. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: _Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Life_, chapterxiv. , "Some thoughts about Ancestor-Worship. "]

 * * * * *

IN MEMORIAM

XV

IN MEMORIAM

1

Those who die for their country should not be numbered with the dead. We must call them by another name. They have nothing in common withthose who end in their beds a life that is worn out, a life almostalways too long and often useless. Death, which every elsewhere is butthe object of fear and horror, bringing naught but nothingness anddespair, this death, on the field of battle, in the clash of glory, becomes more gracious than birth and exhales a beauty greater thanthat of love. No life will ever give what their youth is offering us, that youth which gives in one moment the days and the years that laybefore it. There is no sacrifice to be compared with that which theyhave made; for which reason there is no glory that can soar so highas theirs, no gratitude that can surpass the gratitude which we owethem. They have not only a right to the foremost place in ourmemories: they have a right to all our memories and to everything thatwe are, since we exist only through them. 

2

And now it is in us that their life, so suddenly cut short, mustresume its course. Whatever be our faith and whatever the God whom itadores, one thing is almost certain and, in spite of all appearances, is daily becoming more certain: it is that death and life arecommingled; the dead and the living alike are but moments, hardlydissimilar, of a single and infinite existence and members of oneimmortal family. They are not beneath the earth, in the depths oftheir tombs; they lie deep in our hearts, where all that they oncewere will continue to live to to act; and they live in us even as wedie in them. They see us, they understand us more nearly than whenthey were in our arms; let us then keep a watch upon ourselves, sothat they witness no actions and hear no words but words and actionsthat shall be worthy of them. 

 * * * * *

SUPERNATURAL COMMUNICATIONS IN WAR-TIME

XVI

SUPERNATURAL COMMUNICATIONS IN WAR-TIME

1

In a volume entitled _The Unknown Guest_, published not long ago, among other essays I devoted one in particular[7] to certain phenomenaof intuition, clairvoyance or clairaudience, vision at great distanceand even vision of the future. These phenomena were grouped togetherunder the somewhat unsuitable and none too well-constructed title of"psychometry, " which, to borrow Dr. Maxwell's excellent definition, is"the faculty possessed by certain persons of placing themselves inrelation, either spontaneously or, for the most part, through theintermediary of some object, with unknown and often very distantthings and people. "

The existence of this faculty is no longer seriously denied by any onewho has given some little attention to metapsychics; and it is easilyverified by those who will take the necessary trouble, for itspossessors, though few in number, are not inaccessible. It has beenthe subject of many experiments and of a few treatises, among which Iwill name one by M. Duchatel, _Enquête sur des cas de psychométrie_, and Dr. Osty's recent book, _Lucidité et intuition_, which is the mostcomplete and searching work that we have had upon this question untilnow. 

Psychometry is one of the most curious faculties of oursubconsciousness and doubtless contains the clue to many of thosemanifestations which appear to proceed from another world. Let us see, with the aid of a living example, how it is employed. 

One of the best mediums of this class is a lady to whom I referred in_The Unknown Guest_ as Mme. M. Her visitor gives her an object of somekind that has belonged to or been touched or handled by the personabout whom he proposes to question her. Mme. M. Operates in a state oftrance; but there are other celebrated psychometers who retain alltheir normal consciousness, so that the hypnotic or somnambulisticstate is not, generally speaking, by any means indispensable when wewish to arouse this extraordinary clairvoyance. 

After placing the object, usually a letter, in the medium's hands, yousay to her:

"I wish you to put yourself in communication with the writer of thisletter, " or "the owner of this article, " as the case may be. 

Forthwith the medium not only perceives the person in question, hisphysical appearance, his character, his habits, his interests, hisstate of health, but also, in a series of swift and changing visionsthat follow one another like the pictures of a cinematograph, sees anddescribes exactly that person's environment, the surrounding country, the rooms in which he lives, the people who live with him and who wishhim well or ill, the mentality and the most secret and unexpectedintentions of all the various characters that figure in his existence. If by means of your questions you direct her towards the past, shetraces the whole course of the subject's history. If you turn hertowards the future, she seems often to discover it as clearly as thepast. 

But here we must make certain reservations. We are entering uponforbidden tracts; errors are almost the rule and proper supervision isall but impossible. It is better therefore not to venture into thosedangerous regions. Pending fuller investigation of the question, wemay say that the foretelling of the future, when it claims to cover adefinite space of time, is nearly always illusory. There is scarcelyany accuracy of vision, except when the events concerned are very nearat hand, already developing or actually being consummated; and it thenbecomes difficult to distinguish it from presentiments, which in theirturn are rarely true except where the immediate future is concerned. To sum up, in the present state of our experience, we observe thatwhat the psychometers and clairvoyants foretell us possesses a certainvalue and some chance of proving correct only in so far as they putinto words our own forebodings, forebodings which again may be quiteunknown to us and which they discover deep down in our subconsciousness. They confine themselves--I speak of the genuine mediums--to bringingto light and revealing to us our unconscious and personal intuitionof an event that is hanging over us. But, when they venture to predicta general event, such as the result of a war, an epidemic, anearthquake, which does not interest ourselves exclusively or which istoo remote to come within the somewhat limited scope of our intuition, they almost invariably deceive themselves and us. 

It is very difficult to fathom the nature of this intuition. Does itrelate to events partly or wholly realized, but still in a latentstate and perceived before the knowledge of them reaches us throughthe normal channels of the mind or brain? Does our ever-watchfulinstinct of self-preservation notice causes or traces which escape ourever-inattentive and slumbering reason? Are we to believe in a sort ofautosuggestion that induces us to realize things which we have beenforetold or of which we have had presentiments? This is not the placeto examine so complex a problem, which brings us into contact withall the mysteries of subconsciousness and the preexistence of thefuture. 

There remains another point to which it is well to draw attention inorder to avoid misunderstanding and disappointment. Experience showsus that the medium perceives the person in question quite clearly, inhis present and usual state, but not necessarily in the exactaccidental state of the moment. She will tell you, for instance, thatshe sees him ailing slightly, lying in a deck-chair in a garden ofsuch and such a kind, surrounded by certain flowers and petting a dogof a certain size and breed. On enquiring, you will find that allthese details are strictly correct, with one exception, that at thatprecise moment this person, who ordinarily spends his time in thegarden, was inside his house or calling on a neighbour. Mistakes intime therefore are comparatively frequent and simultaneity betweenaction and vision comparatively rare. In short, the habitual oftenmasks the accidental action. This, I insist, is a point of which wemust not lose sight, lest we ask of psychometry more than it isobviously able to give us. 

2

Having said so much, is it open to us, amid all the mental anguish andsuffering which this terrible war has engendered, without profaningthe sorrow of our fellow-men and women, to give to those who are inmortal fear as to the fate of some one whom they love the hope offinding, among those extrahuman phenomena which have been unjustly andfalsely disparaged, a consoling gleam of light that shall not be amere mockery or delusion? I venture to declare--and I am doing so notthoughtlessly, but after studying the problem with the conscientiousattention which it demands and after personally making a number ofexperiments or causing them to be made under my supervision--I ventureto declare, without for a moment losing sight of the respect due togrief, that we possess here, in these indisputable cases where nonormal mode of communication is possible, a strange but real andserious source of information and comfort. I could mention a largenumber of tests that have been made, so to speak, before my eyes byabsolutely trustworthy relatives or friends. 

As my space is limited, I will relate only one, which typifies andsummarizes all the others very fairly. A mother had three sons at thefront. She was hearing pretty regularly from the eldest and thesecond; but for some weeks the youngest, who was in the Belgiantrenches, where the fighting was very fierce, had given no sign oflife. Wild with anxiety, she was already mourning him as dead whenher friends advised her to consult Mme. M. The medium consoled herwith the first words that she spoke and told her that she saw her sonwounded, but in no danger whatever, that he was in a sort of shedfitted up as a hospital, that he was being very well looked after bypeople who spoke a different language, that for the time being he wasunable to write, which was a great worry to him, but that she wouldreceive a letter from him in a few days. The mother did, in fact, receive a card from this son a few days later, worded a little stifflyand curtly and written in an unnatural hand, telling her that all waswell and that he was in good health. Greatly relieved, she dismissedthe matter from her mind, merely said to herself that of course themedium, like all mediums, had been wrong and thought no more of it. But two or three messages following on the first, all couched inshort, stilted phrases that seemed to be hiding something, ended byalarming her so much that she was unable to bear the strain any longerand entreated her son to tell her the whole truth, whatever it mightbe. He then admitted that he had been wounded, though not seriously, adding that he was in a sort of shed fitted up as a hospital, where hewas being capitally looked after by English doctors and nurses, inshort, just as the medium had seen him. 

I repeat, mediumistic experience can show other instances of thiskind. If it stood alone, it would be valueless, for it might well beexplained by mere coincidence. But it forms part of a very normalseries; and I could easily enumerate many others within my ownknowledge. This, however, would merely mean repeating, withuninteresting variations, the essential features of the present case, a proceeding for which there would be no excuse save in a technicalwork. 

Is success then practically certain? Yes, rash and surprising thoughthe statement may seem, mistakes upon the whole are very rare, provided that the medium be carefully chosen and that the objectserving as an intermediary have not passed through too many hands, forit will contain and reveal as many distinct personalities as it hasundergone contacts. It will be necessary, therefore, first toeliminate all these accessory personalities, so as to fix the medium'sattention solely on the subject of the consultation. On the otherhand, we must beware of calling for details which the nature of themedium's vision does not allow her to give us. If asked, for instance, about a soldier who is a prisoner in Germany, she will see the soldierin question very plainly, will perceive his state of health and mind, the manner in which he is treated, his companions, the fortress orgroup of huts in which he is interned, the appearance of the camp, ofthe town, of the surrounding district; but she will very seldom indeedbe able to mention the name of the camp, town or district. In fact, she can describe only what she sees; and, unless the town or camp havea board bearing its name, there will be nothing to enable her toidentify it with sufficient accuracy. Let us add, lastly, that, withmediums in a state of trance, who are not conscious of what they aresaying, we are exposed to terrible shocks. If they see death, theyannounce the fact bluntly, without suspecting that they are in thepresence of a horror-stricken mother, wife or sister, so much so that, in the case of Mme. M. Particularly, it has been found necessary totake certain precautions to obviate any such shock. 

3

Now what is the nature of this strange and incredible faculty? In thebook which I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I tried toexamine the different theories that suggested themselves. Theargument, unfortunately, is infinitely too long to be republishedhere, even if I were to compress it ruthlessly. I will give merely abrief summary of the conclusions, or rather of the attemptedconclusions, for the mystery, like most of the world's mysteries, isprobably unfathomable. After dismissing the spiritualistic theory, which implies the intervention of the dead or of discarnate entitiesand is not as ridiculous as the profane would think, but which nothinghitherto has adequately confirmed, we may reasonably ask ourselvesfirst of all whether this faculty exists in us or in the medium. Doesit simply decipher, as is probably the case where the future isconcerned, the latent ideas, knowledge and certainties which we bearwithin us, or does it alone, of its own initiative and independentlyof us, perceive what it reveals to us? Experience seems to show thatwe must adopt the latter hypothesis, for the vision appears just asdistinctly when the illuminating object is brought by a third personwho knows nothing and has never heard of the individual to whom theobject once belonged. It seems therefore almost certain that thestrange virtue is contained solely in the object itself, which issomehow galvanized by a complementary virtue in the medium. This beingso, we must presume that the object, having absorbed like a sponge aportion of the spirit of the person who touched it, remains inconstant communication with him, or, more probably, that it serves totrack out, among the prodigious throng of human beings, the one whoimpregnated it with his fluid, even as the dogs employed by thepolice--at least so we are told--when given an article of clothing tosmell, are able to distinguish, among innumerable cross-trails, thatof the man who used to wear the garment in question. It seems more andmore certain that, as cells of one vast organism, we are connectedwith everything that exists by an infinitely intricate network ofwaves, vibrations, influences, currents and fluids, all nameless, numberless and unbroken. Nearly always, in nearly all men, everythingtransmitted by these invisible threads falls into the depths of thesubconsciousness and passes unperceived, which is not the same assaying that it remains inactive. But sometimes an exceptionalcircumstance, such as, in the present case, the marvellous sensibilityof a first-rate medium, suddenly reveals to us the existence of theinfinite living network by the vibrations and the undeniable operationof one of its threads. 

All this, I agree, sounds incredible, but really it is hardly any moreso than the wonders of radioactivity, of the Hertzian waves, ofphotography, electricity or hypnotism, or of generation, whichcondenses into a single particle all the physical, moral andintellectual past and future of thousands of creatures. Our life wouldbe reduced to something very small indeed if we deliberately dismissedfrom it all that our understanding is unable to embrace. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: Chap. Ii. : "Psychometry. "]

 * * * * *

EDITH CAVELL

XVII

EDITH CAVELL[8]

1

To-day, in honouring the memory of Miss Edith Cavell, we honour notonly the heroine who fell in the midst of her labours of love andpiety, we honour also those, wherever they may be, who haveaccomplished or will yet accomplish the same sacrifice and who areready, in like circumstances, to face a like death. 

We are told by Thucydides that the Athenians of the age ofPericles--who, to the honour of humanity be it said, had nothing incommon with the Athenians of to-day--were accustomed, each winterduring their great war, to celebrate at the cost of the State theobsequies of those who had perished in the recent campaign. The bonesof the dead, arranged according to their tribes, were exhibited undera tent and honoured for three days. In the midst of this host of theknown dead stood an empty bed, covered with tapestry and dedicated to"the Invisible, " that is, to those whose bodies it had been impossibleto recover. Let us too, before all else, in the quiet of this hall, where none but almost religious words may be heard, raise in our midstsuch an altar, a sacred and mysterious altar, to the invisibleheroines of this war, that is to say, to all those who have died anobscure death and have left no traces and also to those who are yetliving, whose sacrifices and sufferings will never be told. Here, withthe eyes of the spirit, let us gaze upon all the heroic deeds of whichwe know; but let us reserve an honoured place for those, incomparablymore numerous and perhaps more beautiful, of which we as yet knownothing and, above all, for those of which we shall never know, forglory has its injustices even as death has its fatalities. 

2

Yet it is hardly probable that among these sacrifices we shall discernany more admirable than that of Miss Edith Cavell. I need not recallthe circumstances of her death, for they are well-known to everybodyand will never be forgotten. Destiny left nothing undone for thepurest glory to emerge from the deepest shadow. In the depths of thatshadow it concentrated all imaginable hatred, horror, villainy, cowardice and infamy, so that all pity, all innocent courage andmercy, all well-doing and all sweet charity might shine forth aboveit, as though to show us how low men may sink and how high a woman canrise, as though its express and visible intention had been to trace, with a single gesture, amid all the sorrows and the rare beauties ofthis war, an outstanding and incomparable example which should at thesame time be an immortal and consoling symbol. 

3

And one would say that destiny had taken pains to make this symbol astruthful and as general as possible. It did not select a dazzling andwarlike heroine, as it would have done in the days of old: a Judith, aLucretia, nor even a Joan of Arc. There was no need of resoundingwords, of splendid raiment, of tragic attitudes and accessories, of animposing background. The beauty which we find so touching has grownsimpler; it makes less stir and wins closer to our heart. And this iswhy destiny sought out in obscurity a little hospital nurse, one ofmany thousands of others. The sight of her unpretentious portrait doesnot tell one whether she was rich or poor, a humble member of themiddle classes or a great lady. She would pass unnoticed anywhereuntil the hour of trial, when glory recognizes its elect; and it seemsas though goodness had almost eliminated the individual contours ofher face, so that it might the more closely resemble the pensive andsad smiling faces of all the good women in the world. 

Beneath those features one might indeed have read the hidden devotionand quiet heroism of all the women who do their duty, that is, ofthose whom we see about us day by day, working, hoping, keeping vigil, solacing and succouring others, wearing themselves out withoutcomplaint, suffering in secret and mourning their dead in silence. 

4

She passed like a flash of light which for one moment illumined thatvast and innumerable multitude, confirming our confidence and ouradmiration. She has added a final beauty to the great revelations ofthis war; for the war, which has taught us many things that will neverfade from our memory, has above all revealed us to ourselves. In thefirst days of the terrible ordeal, we did not know for certain how menand women would comport themselves. In vain did we interrogate thepast, hoping thereby to learn something of the future. There was nopast that would serve for a comparison. Our eyes were drawn back tothe present; and we closed them, full of uneasiness. In what conditionshould we find ourselves facing duty, sacrifice, suffering and death, after so many years of peace, well-being and pleasure, of heedlessnessand moral indifference? What had been the vast and invisible journeyof the human conscience and of those secret forces which are thewhole of man, during this long respite, when they had never beencalled upon to confront fate? Were they asleep, were they weakened orlost, would they respond to the call of destiny, or had they sunk sodeep that they would never recover the energy to ascend to the surfaceof life? There was a moment of anguish and silence; and lo, suddenly, in the midst of this anguish and silence, the most splendid response, the most magnificent cry of resurrection, of righteousness, of heroismand sacrifice that the earth has ever heard since it began to rollalong the paths of space and time! They were still there, the idealforces! They were mounting upward, on every side, from the depths ofall those swiftly-assembling souls, not merely intact but more thanever radiant, more than ever pure, more numerous and mightier thanever! To the amazement of all of us, who possessed them withoutknowing it, they had increased in strength and stature whileapparently neglected and forgotten. 

To-day there is no longer any doubt. We may expect all things and hopeall things from the men and the women who have surmounted this longand grievous trial. If the heroism displayed by man on the battlefieldhas never been comparable with that which is being lavished at thismoment, we may also say of the women that their heroism is even morebeyond comparison. We knew that a certain number of men were capableof giving their lives for their country, for their faith or for agenerous ideal; but we did not realize that all would wrestle withdeath for endless months, in great unanimous masses; and above all wedid not imagine, or perhaps we had to some extent forgotten, since thedays of the great martyrs, that woman was ready with the same gift ofself, the same patience, the same sacrifices, the same greatness ofsoul and was about--less perhaps in blood than in tears, for it isalways on her that sorrow ends by falling--to prove herself the rivaland the peer of man. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: Delivered in Paris, at the Trocadéro, 18 December, 1915. ]

 * * * * *

THE LIFE OF THE DEAD

XVIII

THE LIFE OF THE DEAD

1

The other day I went to see a woman whom I knew before the war--shewas happy then--and who had lost her only son in one of the battles inthe Argonne. She was a widow, almost a poor woman; and, now that thisson, her pride and her joy, was no more, she no longer had any reasonfor living. I hesitated to knock at her door. Was I not about towitness one of those hopeless griefs at whose feet all words fall tothe ground like shameful and insulting lies? Which of us to-day is notfamiliar with these mournful interviews, this dismal duty?

To my great astonishment, she offered me her hand with a kindly smile. Her eyes, to which I hardly dared raise my own, were free of tears. 

"You have come to speak to me of him, " she said, in a cheerful tone;and it was as though her voice had grown younger. 

"Alas, yes! I had heard of your sorrow; and I have come. .. . "

"Yes, I too believed that my unhappiness was irreparable; but now Iknow that he is not dead. "

"What! He is not dead? Do you mean that the news. .. ? But I thoughtthat the body. .. . "

"Yes, his body is down there; and I have even a photograph of hisgrave. Let me show it to you. See, that cross on the left, the fourthcross: that is where they have laid him. One of his friends, whoburied him, sent me this card, with all the details. He did not sufferany pain. There was not even a death-struggle. And he has told me sohimself. He is quite astonished that death should be so easy, soslight a thing. .. . You do not understand? Yes, I see what it is: youare just as I used to be, as all the others are. I do not explain thematter to the others; what would be the use? They do not wish tounderstand. But you, you will understand. He is more alive than heever was; he is free and happy. He does just as he likes. He tells methat one cannot imagine what a release death is, what a weight itremoves from you, nor the joy which it brings. He comes to see me whenI call him. He loves especially to come in the evening; and we chat aswe used to do. He has not altered; he is just as he was on the daywhen he went away, only younger, stronger, handsomer. We have neverbeen happier, or more united, or nearer to one another. He divines mythoughts before I utter them. He knows everything; he sees everything;but he cannot tell me everything he knows. He says that I must bewanting to follow him and that I must wait for my hour. And, while Iwait, we are living in happiness greater than that which was oursbefore the war, a happiness which nothing can ever trouble again. .. . "

Those about her pitied the poor woman; and, as she did not weep, asshe was gay and smiling, they believed her mad. 

2

Was she as mad as they thought? At the present moment, the greatquestions of the world beyond the grave are pressing upon us fromevery side. It is probable that, since the world began, there havenever been so many dead as now. The empire of death was never somighty, so terrible; it is for us to defend and enlarge the empire oflife. In the presence of this mother, which are right or wrong, thosewho are convinced that their dead are forever swept out of existence, or those who are persuaded that their dead do not cease to live, whobelieve that they see them and hear them? Do we know what it is thatdies in our dead, or even if anything dies? Whatever our religiousfaith may be, there is at any rate one place where they cannot die. That place is within ourselves; and, if this unhappy mother wentbeyond the truth, she was yet nearer to it than those despairing oneswho nourish the mournful certainty that nothing survives of those whomthey loved. She felt too keenly what we do not feel keenly enough. Sheremembered too much; and we do not know how to remember. Between thetwo errors there is room for a great truth; and, if we have to choose, hers is the error towards which we should lean. Let us learn toacquire through reason that which a wise madness bestowed on her. Letus learn from her to live with our dead and to live with them withoutsadness and without terror. They do not ask for tears, but for a happyand confident affection. Let us learn from her to resuscitate thosewhom we regret. She called to hers, while we repulse ours; we areafraid of them and are surprised that they lose heart and pale andfade away and leave us forever. They need love as much as do theliving. They die, not at the moment when they sink into the grave, butgradually as they sink into oblivion; and it is oblivion alone thatmakes the separation irrevocable. We should not allow it to heapitself above them. It would be enough to vouchsafe them each day asingle one of those thoughts which we bestow uncounted upon so manyuseless objects: they would no longer think of leaving us; they wouldremain around us and we should no longer understand what a tomb is;for there is no tomb, however deep, whose stone may not be raised andwhose dust dispersed by a thought. 

There would be no difference between the living and the dead if we butknew how to remember. There would be no more dead. The best of whatthey were dwells with us after fate has taken them from us; all theirpast is ours; and it is wider than the present, more certain than thefuture. Material presence is not everything in this world; and we candispense with it and yet not despair. We do not mourn those who livein lands which we shall never visit, because we know that it dependson us whether we go to find them. Let it be the same with our dead. Instead of believing that they have disappeared never to return, tellyourselves that they are in a country to which you yourself willassuredly go soon; a country not so very far away. And, while waitingfor the time when you will go there once and for all, you may visitthem in thought as easily as if they were still in a region inhabitedby the living. The memory of the dead is even more alive than that ofthe living; it is as though they were assisting our memory, as thoughthey, on their side, were making a mysterious effort to join handswith us on ours. One feels that they are far more powerful than theabsent who continue to breathe as we do. 

3

Try then to recall those whom you have lost, before it is too late, before they have gone too far; and you will see that they will comemuch closer to your heart, that they will belong to you more truly, that they are as real as when they were in the flesh. In putting offthis last, they have but discarded the moments in which they loved usleast or in which we did not love at all. Now they are pure; they areclothed only in the fairest hours of life; they no longer possessfaults, littlenesses, oddities; they can no longer fall away, ordeceive themselves, or give us pain. They care for nothing now but tosmile upon us, to encompass us with love, to bring us a happinessdrawn without stint from a past which they live again beside us. 

 * * * * *

THE WAR AND THE PROPHETS

XIX

THE WAR AND THE PROPHETS

At the end of an essay occurring in _The Unknown Guest_ and entitled, _The Knowledge of the Future_, in which I examined a certain number ofphenomena relating to the anticipatory perception of events, such aspresentiments, premonitions, precognitions, predictions, etc. , Iconcluded in nearly the following terms:

 "To sum up, if it is difficult for us to conceive that the future preexists, perhaps it is just as difficult for us to understand that it does not exist; moreover, many facts tend to prove that it is as real and definite and has, both in time and eternity, the same permanence and the same vividness as the past. Now, from the moment that it preexists, it is not surprising that we should be able to know it; it is even astonishing, granted that it overhangs us from every side, that we should not discover it oftener and more easily. "

Above all is it astonishing and almost inconceivable that thisuniversal war, the most stupendous catastrophe that has overwhelmedhumanity since the origin of things, should not, while it wasapproaching, bearing in its womb innumerable woes which were about toaffect almost every one of us, have thrown upon us more plainly, fromthe recesses of those days in which it was making ready, its menacingshadow. One would think that it ought to have overcast the wholehorizon of the future, even as it will overcast the whole horizon ofthe past. A secret of such weight, suspended in time, ought surely tohave weighed upon all our lives; and presentiments or revelationsshould have arisen on every hand. There was none of these. We livedand moved without uneasiness beneath the disaster which, from year toyear, from day to day, from hour to hour, was descending upon theworld; and we perceived it only when it touched our heads. True, itwas more or less foreseen by our reason; but our reason hardlybelieved in it; and besides I am not for the moment speaking of theinductions of the understanding, which are always uncertain and whichare resigned beforehand to the capricious contradictions which theyare accustomed daily to receive from facts. 

2

But I repeat, beside or above these inductions of our everyday logic, in the less familiar domain of supernatural intuitions, of divination, prediction or prophecy properly so-called, we find that there waspractically nothing to warn us of the vast peril. This does not meanthat there was any lack of predictions or prophecies collected afterthe event; these number, it appears, no fewer than eighty-three; butnone of them, excepting those of Léon Sonrel and the Rector of Ars, which we will examine in a moment, is worthy of serious discussion. Ishall therefore mention, by way of a reminder, only the most widelyknown; and, first of all, the famous prophecy of Mayence or Strasburg, which is supposed to have been discovered by a certain Jecker in anancient convent founded near Mayence by St. Hildegard, of which theoriginal text could not be found and of which no one until lately hadever heard. Then there is another prophecy of Mayence or Fiensberg, published in the _Neue Metaphysische Rundschau_ of Berlin in February, 1912, in which the end of the German Empire is announced for the year1913. Next, we have various predictions uttered by Mme. De Thèbes, byDom Bosco, by the Blessed Andrew Bobola, by Korzenicki, the Polishmonk, by Tolstoy, by Brother Hermann and so on, which are even lessinteresting; and lastly the prophecy of "Brother Johannes, " publishedby M. Joséphin Peladan in the _Figaro_ of 16 September, 1914, whichcontains no evidence of genuineness and must therefore meanwhile beregarded merely as an ingenious literary conceit. 

3

All these, on examination, leave but a worthless residuum; but theprophecies of the Rector of Ars and of Léon Sonrel are more curiousand worthy of a moment's attention. 

Father Jean-Baptiste Vianney, Rector of Ars, was, as everybody knows, a very saintly priest, who appears to have been endowed withextraordinary mediumistic faculties. The prophecy in question wasmade public in 1862, three years after the miracle-worker's death, andwas confirmed by a letter which Mgr. Perriet addressed to the VeryRev. Dom Gréa on the 24th of February, 1908. Moreover, it was printed, as far back as 1872, in a collection entitled, _Voix prophétiques, ousignes, apparitions et prédictions modernes_. It therefore has anincontestable date. I pass over the part relating to the war of 1870, which does not offer the same safeguards; but I give that whichconcerns the present war, quoting from the 1872 text:

 "The enemies will not go altogether; they will return again and destroy everything upon their passage; we shall not resist them, but will allow them to advance; and after that we shall cut off their provisions and make them suffer great losses. They will retreat towards their country; we shall follow them and there will be hardly any who return home. Then we shall take back all that they took from us and much more. "

As for the date of the event, it is stated definitely and ratherstrikingly in these words:

"They will want to canonize me, but there will not be time. "

Now the preliminaries to the canonization of Father Vianney were begunin July, 1914, but abandoned because of the war. 

I now come to the Sonrel prediction. I will summarize it as briefly aspossible from the admirable article which M. De Vesme devoted to it inthe _Annales des sciences psychiques_. [9]

On the 3rd of June, 1914--observe the date--Professor Charles Richethanded M. De Vesme, from Dr. Amédée Tardieu, a manuscript of whichthe following is the substance: on the 23rd or 24th of July, 1869, Dr. Tardieu was strolling in the gardens of the Luxembourg with his friendLéon Sonrel, a former pupil of the Higher Normal School and teacher ofnatural philosophy at the Paris Observatory, when the latter had akind of vision in the course of which he predicted various precise andactual episodes of the war of 1870, such as the collection on behalfof the wounded at the moment of departure and the amount of the sumcollected in the soldiers' képis; incidents of the journey to thefrontier; the battle of Sedan, the rout of the French, the civil war, the siege of Paris, his own death, the birth of a posthumous child, the doctor's political career and so on: predictions all of which wereverified, as is attested by numerous witnesses who are worthy of thefullest credence. But I will pass over this part of the story andconsider only that portion which refers to the present war:

 "I have been waiting for two years, " to quote the text of Dr. Tardieu's manuscript of the 3rd of June, "for the sequel of the prediction which you are about to read. I omit everything that concerns my friend Léon's family and my private affairs. Yet there is in my life at this moment a personal matter, which, as always happens, agrees too closely with general occurrences for me to doubt what follows:

 "'O my God! My country is lost: France is dead!. .. What a disaster!. .. Ah, see, she is saved! She extends to the Rhine! O France, O my beloved country, you are triumphant; you are the queen of nations!. .. Your genius shines forth over the world. .. . All the earth wonders at you. .. . '"

These are the words contained in the document written at the Mont-Doréon the 3rd and handed to M. De Vesme on the 13th of June 1914, at amoment when no one was thinking of the terrible war which to-day isravaging half the world. 

When questioned, after the declaration of war, by M. De Vesme on thesubject of the prophetic phrase, "I have been waiting for two yearsfor the sequel of the prediction which you are about to read, " Dr. Tardieu replied, on the 12th of August:

"I have been waiting for two years; and I will tell you why. My friendLéon did not name the year, but the more general events are describedsimultaneously with the events of my own life. Now the events whichconcern me privately and which were doubtful two years ago becamecertain in April or May last. My friends know that since May last Ihave been announcing war as due before September, basing my predictionon coincidences with events in my private life of which I do notspeak. "

4

These, up to the present, are the only prophecies known to us thatdeserve any particular attention. The prediction in both is timid andlaconic; but, in those regions where the least gleam of light assumesextraordinary importance, it is not to be neglected. I admit, for therest, that there has so far been no time to carry out a seriousenquiry on this point, but I should be greatly surprised if any suchenquiry gave positive results and if it did not allowed us to statethat the gigantic event, as a whole, as a general event, was neitherforeseen nor divined. On the other hand, we shall probably learn, whenthe enquiry is completed, that hundreds of deaths, accidents, woundsand cases of individual ruin and misfortune, included in the greatdisaster, were predicted by clairvoyants, by mediums, by dreams and byevery other manner of premonition with a definiteness sufficient toeliminate any kind of doubt. I have said elsewhere what I think ofindividual predictions of this kind, which seem to be no more than thereading of the presentiments which we carry within us, presentimentswhich themselves, in the majority of cases, are but the perception, bythe as yet imperfectly known senses of our subconsciousness, ofevents, in course of formation or in process of realization, whichescape the attention of our understanding. However, it would stillremain to be explained how a wholly accidental death or wound could beperceived by these subliminal senses as an event in course offormation. In any case, it would once more be confirmed, after thisgreat test, that the knowledge of the future, so soon as it ceases torefer to a strictly personal fact and one, moreover, not at allremote, is always illusory, or rather impossible. 

Apart then from these strictly personal cases, which for the moment wewill agree to set aside, it appears more than ever certain that thereis no communication between ourselves and the vast store of eventswhich have not yet occurred and which nevertheless seem already toexist at some place where they await the hour to advance upon us, orrather the moment when we shall pass before them. As for theexceptional and precarious infiltrations which belong not merely tothe present that is still unknown, veiled or disguised, but really tothe future, apart from the two which we have just examined, which areinconclusive, I for my part know of but four or five that appear to berigorously verified; and these I have discussed in the essay alreadymentioned. For that matter, they have no bearing upon the present war. They are, when all is said, so exceptional that they do not provemuch; at the most, they seem to confirm the idea that a store existsfilled with future events as real, as distinct and as immutable asthose of the past; and they allow us to hope that there are pathsleading thither which as yet we do not know, but which it will not befor ever impossible to discover. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 9: August, September and October, 1915. ]

 * * * * *

THE WILL OF EARTH

XX

THE WILL OF EARTH

1

To-day's conflict is but a revival of that which has not ceased todrench the west of Europe in blood since the historical birth of thecontinent. The two chief episodes in the conflict, as we all know, arethe invasion of Roman Gaul, including the north of Italy, by theFranks and the successive conquests of England by the Anglo-Saxons andthe Normans. Without delaying to consider questions of race, which arecomplex, uncertain and always open to discussion, we may, regardingthe matter from another aspect, perceive in the persistency and thebitterness of this conflict the clash of two wills, of which one orthe other succumbs for a moment, only to rise up again with increasedenergy and obstinacy. On the one hand is the will of earth or nature, which, in the human species as in all others, openly favours brute orphysical force; and on the other hand is the will of humanity, or atleast of a portion of humanity, which seeks to establish the empire ofother more subtle and less animal forces. It is incontestable thathitherto the former has always won the day. But it is equallyincontestable that its victory has always been only apparent and ofbrief duration. It has regularly suffered defeat in its very triumph. Gaul, invaded and overrun, presently absorbs her victor, even asEngland little by little transforms her conquerors. On the morrow ofvictory, the instruments of the will of earth turn upon her and armthe hand of the vanquished. It is probable that the same phenomenonwould recur once more to-day, were events to follow the courseprescribed by destiny. Germany, after crushing and enslaving thegreater part of Europe, after driving her back and burdening her withinnumerable woes, would end by turning against the will which sherepresents; and that will, which until to-day had always found in thisrace a docile tool and its favourite accomplices, would be forced toseek these elsewhere, a task less easy than of old. 

2

But now, to the amazement of all those who will one day consider themin cold blood, events are suddenly ascending the irresistible currentand, for the first time since we have been in a position to observeit, the adverse will is encountering an unexpected and insurmountableresistance. If this resistance, as we can now no longer doubt, maintains itself victoriously to the end, there will never perhapshave been such a sudden change in the history of mankind; for manwill have gained, over the will of earth or nature or fatality, atriumph infinitely more significant, more heavily fraught withconsequences and perhaps more decisive than all those which, in otherprovinces, appear to have crowned his efforts more brilliantly. 

Let us not then be surprised that this resistance should bestupendous, or that it should be prolonged beyond anything that ourexperience of wars has taught us to expect. It was our prompt and easydefeat that was written in the annals of destiny. We had against usall the force accumulated since the birth of Europe. We have to sethistory revolving in the reverse direction. We are on the point ofsucceeding; and, if it be true that intelligent beings watch us fromthe vantage-point of other worlds, they will assuredly witness themost curious spectacle that our planet has offered them since theydiscovered it amid the dust of stars that glitters in space aroundit. They must be telling themselves in amazement that the ancient andfundamental laws of earth are suddenly being transgressed. 

3

Suddenly? That is going too far. This transgression of a lower law, which was no longer of the stature of mankind, had been preparing fora very long time; but it was within an ace of being hideouslypunished. It succeeded only by the aid of a part of those who formerlyswelled the great wave which they are to-day resisting by our side, asthough something in the history of the world or the plans of destinyhad altered, or rather as though we ourselves had at last succeeded inaltering that something and in modifying laws to which until this daywe were wholly subject. 

But it must not be thought that the conflict will end with thevictory. The deep-seated forces of earth will not be at once disarmed;for a long time to come the invisible war will be waged under thereign of peace. If we are not careful, victory may even be moredisastrous to us than defeat. For defeat, indeed, like previousdefeats, would have been merely a victory postponed. It would haveabsorbed, exhausted, dispersed the enemy, by scattering him about theworld, whereas our victory will bring upon us a twofold peril. It willleave the enemy in a state of savage isolation in which, thrown backupon himself, cramped, purified by misfortune and poverty, he willsecretly reinforce his formidable virtues, while we, for our part, nolonger held in check by his unbearable but salutary menace, will giverein to failings and vices which sooner or later will place us at hismercy. Before thinking of peace, then, we must make sure of the futureand render it powerless to injure us. We cannot take too manyprecautions, for we are setting ourselves against the manifest desireof the power that bears us. 

This is why our efforts are difficult and worthy of praise. We aresetting ourselves--we cannot too often repeat it--against the will ofearth. Our enemies are urged forward by a force that drives us back. They are marching with nature, whereas we are striving against thegreat current that sweeps the globe. The earth has an idea, which isno longer ours. She remains convinced that man is an animal in allthings like other animals. She has not yet observed that he iswithdrawing himself from the herd. She does not yet know that he hasclimbed her highest mountain-peaks. She has not yet heard tell ofjustice, pity, loyalty and honour; she does not realize what they are, or confounds them with weakness, clumsiness, fear and stupidity. Shehas stopped short at the original certitudes which were indispensableto the beginnings of life. She is lagging behind us; and the intervalthat divides us is rapidly increasing. She thinks less quickly; shehas not yet had time to understand us. Moreover, she does not reckonas we do; and for her the centuries are less than our years. She isslow because she is almost eternal, while we are prompt because wehave not many hours before us. It may be that one day her thought willovertake ours; in the meantime, we have to vindicate our advance andto prove to ourselves, as we are beginning to do, that it is lawful tobe in the right as against her, that our advance is not fatal and thatit is possible to maintain it. 

4

For it is becoming difficult to argue that earth or nature is alwaysright and that those who do not blindly follow earth's impulse arenecessarily doomed to perish. We have learnt to observe her moreattentively and we have won the right to judge her. We have discoveredthat, far from being infallible, she is continually making mistakes. She gropes and hesitates. She does not know precisely what she wants. She begins by making stupendous blunders. She first peoples the worldwith uncouth and incoherent monsters, not one of which is capable ofliving; these all disappear. Gradually she acquires, at the cost ofthe life which she creates, an experience that is the cruel fruit ofthe immeasurable suffering which she unfeelingly inflicts. At last shegrows wiser, curbs and amends herself, corrects herself, returns uponher footsteps, repairs her errors, expending her best energies and herhighest intelligence upon the correction. It is incontestable that sheis improving her methods, that she is more skillful, more prudent, less extravagant than at the outset. And yet the fact remains that, inevery department of life, in every organism, down to our own bodies, there is a survival of bad workmanship, of twofold functions, ofoversights, changes of intention, absurdities, useless complicationsand meaningless waste. We therefore have no reason to believe that ourenemies are in the right because earth is with them. Earth does notpossess the truth any more than we do. She seeks it, even as we do, and discovers it no more readily. She seems to know no more than wewhither she is going nor whither she is being led by that which leadsall things. We must not listen to her without enquiry; and we need notdistress ourselves or despair because we are not of her opinion. Weare not dealing with an infallible and unchangeable wisdom, to opposewhich in our thoughts would be madness. We are actually proving toher that it is she who is in the wrong; that man's reason forexistence is loftier than that which she provisionally assigned tohim; that he is already outstripping all that she foresaw; and thatshe does wrong to delay his advance. She is, for that matter, full ofgoodwill, is able on occasion to recognize her mistakes and to obviatetheir disastrous results and by no means takes refuge in majestic andinflexible self-conceit. If we are able to persevere, we shall be ableto convince her. This will take much time, for, I repeat, she is slow, though in no wise obstinate. It will take much time because a verylong future is in question, a very great change and the most importantvictory that man has ever hoped to win. 

 * * * * *

FOR POLAND

XXI

FOR POLAND

1

The Allies have entered into a solemn compact that none of them willconclude a separate peace. They undertook recently, by an equallyirrevocable convention, that they would not lay down their arms untilBelgium was delivered. These two acts, one of prudence, the other ofelementary justice, appear at first sight superfluous. Yet they werenecessary. It is well that nations, even more than men, because theirconscience is less stable, should secure themselves against themistakes and weakness and ingratitude which too often accompany strifeand which even more often follow victory. To-morrow they will do forServia what they have done in the case of Belgium; but there is athird victim, of whom too little is said, who has the same rights asthe other two; and to forget her would forever attaint the honour andthe justice of those who took up arms only in the name of justice andhonour. 

2

I need not recall the fate of Poland. It is in certain respects moretragic and more pitiful than that of Belgium or of Servia. She had noteven the opportunity to choose between dishonour and annihilation. 

Three successive acts of injustice, which were, until to-day, the mostshameful recorded by history, deprived her of the glory of that heroicchoice which she would have made in the same spirit, for she hadalready thrice made it in the past, a choice which this day sustainsand consoles her two martyred sisters in their profoundesttribulations. It would be too unjust if an ancient injustice, whicheven yet weighs upon the memory and the conscience of Europe, shouldbecome the sole reason of yet a last iniquity, which this time wouldbe inexpiable. 

3

True, the Grand-duke Nicolas made noble and generous promises toPoland; and these promises were repeated at the opening of the Duma. This is good and shows the irresistible force of the awakeningconscience of a great empire; but it is not enough. Such promisesinvolve only those who make them; they do not bind a nation. We willnot insult Russia by doubting her intentions; but among all thecertainties which history teaches us there is one that has beenacquired once and for all; and this is that in politics andinternational morality intentions count for nothing and that apromise, made by no matter what nations, will be kept only if thosewho make it also render it impossible for themselves to do otherwisethan keep it. For the rest, the question at present is not one ofintentions, nor confidence, nor pity, nor even of interest. Othershave spoken and will speak again, better than I could, of Poland'sterrible distress and of the danger, which is far more formidable andfar more imminent than is generally believed, of those Germanintrigues which are seeking to seduce from us and, despite themselves, to turn against us twenty millions of desperate people and nearly amillion soldiers, who will die, perhaps, rather than join our enemies, but who, in any case, cannot fight in our ranks as they would havedone had the word for which they are waiting in their anguish beenspoken before it was too late. 

4

But, however grave the peril, we are, I repeat, far less concernedwith this at the present moment than with the question of justice. Poland has an absolute and sacred right to be treated even as theother two victims of this war of justice. She is their equal, she isof the same rank and on the same level. She has suffered what theyhave suffered, for the same cause, in the same spirit and with thesame heroism; and if she has not done what the two others have done itis because only the ingratitude of all those whom she had more thanonce saved, together with one of the greatest crimes in history, prevented her from doing so. 

It is time for the Europe of to-day to repair the iniquity committedby the Europe of other days. We are nothing, we are no better than ourenemies, we have no title to deliver millions of innocent men todeath, unless we stand for justice. The idea of justice alone mustrule all that we undertake, for we are united, we have risen and weexist only in its name. At this moment we occupy all the pinnacles ofthis justice, to which we have brought such an impulse, suchsacrifices and such heroism as we shall perhaps never behold again. Weshall never rise higher; let us then form at this present timeresolutions which will forbid us to descend; and Europe would descend, to a depth greater than was hers in the unpardonable hour of thepartition of Poland, did she not before all else repair the immensefault which she committed when she had not yet discovered herconscience and did not yet know what she knows to-day. 

 * * * * *

THE MIGHT OF THE DEAD

XXII

THE MIGHT OF THE DEAD

1

In _A Beleaguered City_, a little book which, in its curious way, is amasterpiece, Mrs. Oliphant shows us the dead of a provincial townsuddenly waxing indignant over the conduct and the morals of thoseinhabiting the town which they had founded. They rise up in rebellion, invest the houses, the streets, the market-places and, by the pressureof their innumerable multitude, all-powerful though invisible, repulsethe living, thrust them out of doors and, setting a strict watch, permit them to return to their roof-trees only after a treaty of peaceand penitence has purified their hearts, atoned for their offencesand ensured a more worthy future. 

There is undoubtedly a great truth beneath this fiction, which appearstoo far-fetched because we perceive only material and ephemeralrealities. The dead live and move in our midst far more really andeffectually than the most venturesome imagination could depict. It isvery doubtful whether they remain in their graves. It even seemsincreasingly certain that they never allowed themselves to be confinedthere. Under the tombstones where we believe them to lie imprisonedthere are only a few ashes, which are no longer theirs, which theyhave abandoned without regret and which, in all probability, they nolonger deign to remember. All that was themselves continues to haveits being in our midst. How and under what aspect? After all thesethousands, perhaps millions, of years, we do not yet know; and noreligion has been able to tell us with satisfying certainty, thoughall have striven to do so; but we may, by means of certain tokens, hope to learn. 

Without further considering a mighty but obscure truth, which it isfor the moment impossible to state precisely or to render palpable, let us concern ourselves with one which cannot be disputed. As I havesaid elsewhere, whatever our religious faith may be, there is in anycase one place where our dead cannot perish, where they continue toexist as really as when they were in the flesh and often moreactively; and this living abiding-place, this consecrated spot, whichfor those whom we have lost becomes heaven or hell according as wedraw close to or depart from their thoughts and their desires, is inus. 

And their thoughts and their desires are always higher than our own. It is, therefore, by uplifting ourselves that we approach them. It iswe who must take the first steps, for they can no longer descend, whereas it is always possible for us to rise; for the dead, whateverthey have been in life, become better than the best of us. The leastworthy of them, in shedding the body, have shed its vices, itslittlenesses, its weaknesses, which soon pass from our memory as well;and the spirit alone remains, which is pure in every man and able todesire only what is good. There are no wicked dead because there areno wicked souls. This is why, as we purify ourselves, we restore lifeto those who were no more and transform our memory, which theyinhabit, into heaven. 

2

And what was always true of all the dead is far more true to-day whenonly the best are chosen for the tomb. In the region which we believeto be under the earth, which we call the kingdom of the shades andwhich in reality is the ethereal region and the kingdom of light, there are at this moment perturbations no less profound than thosewhich we are experiencing on the surface of our earth. The young deadare invading it from every side; and since the beginning of this worldthey have never been so numerous, so full of energy and zeal. Whereasin the customary sequence of the years the dwelling-place of those wholeave us receives only weary and exhausted lives, there is not one inthis incomparable host who, to borrow Pericles' expression, "has notdeparted from life at the height of glory. " Not one of them but hasgone up, not down, to his death clad in the greatest sacrifice thatman can make for an idea which cannot die. All that we have hithertobelieved, all that we have striven to attain beyond ourselves, allthat has lifted us to the level at which we stand, all that hasovercome the evil days and the evil instincts of human nature: allthis could have been no more than lies and illusions if such men asthese, such a mass of merit and of glory, were really annihilated, hadreally forever disappeared, were forever useless and voiceless, forever without influence in a world to which they have given life. 

3

It is hardly possible that this could be so as regards the externalsurvival of the dead; but it is absolutely certain that it is not soas regards their survival in ourselves. Here nothing is lost and noone perishes. Our memories are to-day peopled by a multitude of heroesstruck down in the flower of their youth and very different from thepale and languid cohort of the past, composed almost wholly of thesick and the aged, who already had ceased to exist before leaving theearth. We must tell ourselves that now, in each of our homes, both inour cities and in the country-side, both in the palace and in themeanest hovel, there lives and reigns a young dead man in the glory ofhis strength. He fills the poorest, darkest dwelling with a splendourof which it had never ventured to dream. His constant presence, imperious and inevitable, diffuses through it and maintains a religionand ideas which it had never known there before, hallows everythingaround it, forces the eyes to look higher and the spirit to refrainfrom descending, purifies the air that is breathed and the speech thatis held and the thoughts that are mustered there and, little bylittle, ennobles and uplifts a whole people on a scale of unexampledvastness. 

4

Such dead as these have a power as profound, as fruitful as life andless precarious. It is terrible that this experience should have beenmade, for it is the most pitiless and the first in such enormousmasses that mankind has ever undergone; but, now that the ordeal isalmost over, we shall soon derive from it the most unexpected fruits. It will not be long before we see the differences increase and thedestinies diverge between the nations which have acquired all thesedead and all this glory and those which were deprived of them; and weshall perceive with amazement that those nations which have lost themost are those which have kept their riches and their men. There arelosses which are inestimable gains; and there are gains whereby thefuture is lost. There are dead whom the living cannot replace and themere thought of whom accomplishes things which their bodies could notperform. There are dead whose energy surpasses death and recoverslife; and we are almost every one of us at this moment the mandatariesof a being greater, nobler, graver, wiser and more truly living thanourselves. With all those who accompany him, he will be our judge, ifit is the fact that the dead weigh the soul of the living and that ontheir verdict our happiness depends. He will be our guide and ourprotector, for it is the first time, since history has revealed itsmisfortunes to us, that man has felt so great a host of such mightydead soaring above his head and speaking within his heart. 

5

We shall live henceforward under their laws, which will be more justbut not more severe nor more cheerless than ours; for it is a mistaketo suppose that the dead love nothing but gloom; they love only thejustice and the truth which are the eternal forms of happiness. Fromthe depths of this justice and this truth in which they are allimmersed, they will help us to destroy the great falsehoods ofexistence: for war and death, if they sow innumerable miseries andmisfortunes, have at least the merit of destroying as many lies asthey occasion evils. And all the sacrifices which they have made forus will have been in vain--and this is not possible--if they do notfirst of all bring about the fall of the lies on which we live andwhich it is not necessary to name, for each of us knows his own and isashamed of them and will be eager to make an end of them. They willteach us, before all else, from the depths of our hearts which aretheir living tombs, to love those who outlive them, since it is inthem alone that they wholly exist. 

 * * * * *

WHEN THE WAR IS OVER

XXIII

WHEN THE WAR IS OVER

1

Before closing this book, I wish to weigh for the last time in myconscience the words of hatred and malediction which it has made mespeak in spite of myself. We have to do with the strangest of enemies. He has knowingly and deliberately, while in the full possession of hisfaculties and without necessity or excuse, revived all the crimeswhich we supposed to be forever buried in the barbarous past. He hastrampled under foot all the precepts which man had so painfully wonfrom the cruel darkness of his beginnings; he has violated all thelaws of justice, humanity, loyalty and honour, from the highest, whichare almost godlike, to the simplest, the most elementary, which stillbelong to the lower worlds. There is no longer any doubt on thispoint: it has been proved over and over again until we have attained afinal certitude. 

But on the other hand, it is no less certain that he has displayedvirtues which it would be unworthy of us to deny; for we honourourselves in recognizing the valour of those whom we are fighting. Hehas gone to his death in deep, compact, disciplined masses, with ablind, hopeless, obstinate heroism of which no such lurid example hadever yet been known, a heroism which has many times compelled ouradmiration and our pity. He has known how to sacrifice himself, withunprecedented and perhaps unequalled abnegation, to an idea which weknow to be false, inhuman and even somewhat mean, but which hebelieves to be just and lofty; and a sacrifice of this kind, whateverits object, is always the proof of a force which survives those whodevote themselves to making it and must command respect. 

I know very well that this heroism is not like the heroism which welove. For us, heroism must before all be voluntary, freed from anyconstraint, active, ardent, eager and spontaneous; whereas with themit has mingled with it a great deal of servility, passiveness, sadness, gloomy, ignorant, massive submission and rather base fears. It is nevertheless the fact that, in the moment of supreme peril, little remains of all these distinctions and that no force in theworld can drive to its death a people which does not bear withinitself the strength to confront it. Our soldiers make no mistake uponthis point. Question the men returning from the trenches: they detestthe enemy, they abhor the aggressor, the unjust and arrogantaggressor, uncouth, too often cruel and treacherous; but they do nothate the man: they do him justice; they pity him; and, after thebattle, in the defenceless wounded soldier or disarmed prisoner theyrecognize, with astonishment, a brother in misfortune who, likethemselves, is submitting to duties and laws which, like themselves, he too believes lofty and necessary. Under the insufferable enemy theysee an unhappy man who also is bearing the burden of life. They forgetthe things that divide them to recall only those which unite them in acommon destiny; and they teach us a great lesson. Better thanourselves, who are removed from danger, at the contact of profound andfearful verities and realities they are already beginning to discernsomething that we cannot yet perceive; and their obscure instinct isprobably anticipating the judgment of history and our own judgment, when we see more clearly. Let us learn from them to be just and todistinguish that which we are bound to despise and loathe from thatwhich we may pity, love and respect. 

Setting aside the unpardonable aggression and the inexpiable violationof treaties, this war, despite its insanity, has come near to being abloody but magnificent proof of greatness, heroism and the spirit ofsacrifice. Humanity was ready to rise above itself, to surpass allthat it had hitherto accomplished. It has surpassed it. Never beforehad nations been seen capable, for months on end, perhaps for years, of renouncing their repose, their security, their wealth, theircomfort, all that they possessed and loved down to their very life, inorder to accomplish what they believed to be their duty. Never beforehad nations been seen that were able as a whole to understand andadmit that the happiness of each of those who live in this time oftrial is of no consequence compared with the honour of those who liveno more or the happiness of those who are not yet alive. We stand onheights that had not been attained before. And if, on the enemies'side, this unexampled renunciation had not been poisoned at itssource; if the war which they are waging against us had been as fine, as loyal, as generous, as chivalrous as that which we are wagingagainst them, we may well believe that it would have been the last andthat it would have ended, not in battle, but, like the awakening froman evil dream, in a noble and fraternal amazement. They have made thatimpossible; and this, we may be sure, is the disappointment which thefuture will find it most difficult to forgive them. 

2

What are we to do now? Must we hate the enemy to the end of time? Theburden of hatred is the heaviest that man can bear upon this earth;and we should faint under the weight of it. On the other hand, we donot wish once more to be the dupes and victims of confidence and love. Here again our soldiers, in their simplicity, which is so clear-seeingand so close to the truth, anticipate the future and teach us what toadmit and what to avoid. We have seen that they do not hate the man;but they do not trust him at all. They discover the human being in himonly when he is unarmed. They know, from bitter experience, that, solong as he possesses weapons, he cannot resist the frenzy ofdestruction, treachery and slaughter; and that he does not becomekindly until he is rendered powerless. 

Is he thus by nature, or has he been perverted by those who lead him?Have the rulers dragged the whole nation after them, or has the wholenation driven its rulers on? Did the rulers make the nation like untothemselves, or did the nation select and support them because theyresembled itself? Did the evil come from above or below, or was iteverywhere? Here we have the great and obscure point of this terribleadventure. It is not easy to throw light upon it and still less easyto find excuses for it. If our enemies prove that they were deceivedand corrupted by their masters, they prove, at the same time, thatthey are less intelligent, less firmly attached to justice, honour andhumanity, less civilized, in a word, than those whom they claimed theright to enslave in the name of a superiority which they themselveshave proved not to exist; and, unless they can establish that theirerrors, perfidies and cruelties, which can no longer be denied, shouldbe imputed only to those masters, then they themselves must bear thepitiless weight. I do not know how they will escape from thispredicament, nor what the future will decide, that future which iswiser than the past, even as, in the words of an old Slav proverb, thedawn is wiser than the eve. In the meanwhile, let us copy the prudenceof our soldiers, who know what to believe far better than we do. 

 * * * * *

THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS

XXIV

THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS

 _The Massacre of the Innocents_ appeared for the first time in 1886, in a little periodical called _La Pléïade_ which some friends and I had founded in the Latin Quarter and which died of inanition after its sixth number. My reason for making room in the present volume for these pages marking a very modest start--they were the first that found their way into print--is not that I am under any delusion as to the merits of this youthful work, in which I had simply aimed at reproducing as best I could the different episodes of a picture in the Brussels Museum, painted in the sixteenth century by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. But it appeared to me that circumstances had made of this humble literary effort a sort of prophetic vision; for it is but too likely that similar scenes must have been repeated in more than one of our unhappy Flemish or Brabant villages and that to describe them as they were lately enacted we should have only to change the name of the butchers and probably, alas, to accentuate their cruelty, their injustice and their hideousness!--M. M. 

It was close upon supper-time, that Friday the twenty-sixth day of themonth of December, when a little shepherd-lad came into Nazareth, sobbing bitterly. 

Some peasants drinking ale in the Blue Lion opened the shutters tolook into the village orchard and observed the child running over thesnow. They saw that he was Korneliz' boy and cried from the window:

"What's the matter? Get home with you to bed!"

But he replied in terror that the Spaniards were come, that they hadset fire to the farm, hanged his mother among the walnut-trees andbound his nine little sisters to the trunk of a big tree. 

The peasants rushed out of the inn, gathered round the child and pliedhim with questions. Then he also told them that the soldiers were onhorseback and wore mail, that they had driven away the cattle of hisuncle Petrus Krayer and that they would soon be entering the forestwith the cows and sheep. 

All ran to the Golden Sun, where Korneliz and his brother-in-law werealso drinking their pot of ale; and the inn-keeper sped into thevillage, shouting that the Spaniards were at hand. 

Then there was a great din in Nazareth. The women opened the windowsand the peasants left their houses with lights which they put out assoon as they reached the orchard, where it was bright as midday, because of the snow and the full moon. 

They crowded round Korneliz and Krayer in the market-place, in frontof the two inns. Several had brought their pitchforks and their rakesand consulted one another, terror-stricken, under the trees. 

But, as they knew not what to do, one of them went to fetch theparish-priest, who owned Korneliz' farm. He came out of his house withthe sacristan, bringing the keys of the church. All followed him intothe churchyard; and he shouted to them from the top of the tower thathe could see nothing in the fields nor in the forest, but that therewere red clouds in the neighbourhood of his farm, though the sky wasblue and full of stars over all the rest of the country. 

After deliberating for a long time in the churchyard, they decided tohide in the wood through which the Spaniards would have to pass and toattack them if they were not too many, so as to recover PetrusKrayer's cattle and the plunder which they had taken from the farm. 

They armed themselves with pitchforks and spades; and the womenremained near the church with the priest. 

Seeking a suitable spot for their ambuscade, they came to a mill onthe skirt of the forest and saw the farm burning amid the starlight. Here, under some huge oaks, in front of a frozen pool, they took uptheir position. 

A shepherd whom they called the Red Dwarf went up the hill to warn themiller, who had stopped his mill when he saw the flames on thehorizon. He invited the fellow in, however; and the two of them placedthemselves at a window to watch the distance. 

In front of them the moon was shining over the burning farm; and theysaw a long host marching over the snow. When they had taken stock ofit, the Dwarf went down to those in the forest; and presently theydescried four horsemen above a herd of animals that seemed to becropping the grass. 

As the men, in their blue hose and their red cloaks, were lookingaround them on the edge of the pool and under the snow-lit trees, thesacristan pointed to a box-hedge; and they went and hid behind it. 

The cattle and the Spaniards came over the ice; and the sheep onreaching the hedge were already beginning to nibble at the leaves, when Korneliz broke through the bushes; and the others followed withtheir pitchforks into the light. Then there was a great slaughter onthe pond, while the huddled sheep and the cows gazed at the battle intheir midst and at the moon above them. 

When the men and the horses had been killed, Korneliz ran into themeadows towards the flames; and the others stripped the dead. Thenthey went back to the village with the herds. The women watching thegloomy forest from behind the walls of the churchyard saw themapproaching through the trees and, with the priest, hurried to meetthem; and they returned dancing gleefully all amongst the children andthe dogs. 

While they made merry under the pear-trees in the orchard, where theRed Dwarf hung up lanterns as a sign of kermis, they consulted thepriest as to what they were to do. 

They at last resolved to put a horse to a cart and fetch the bodies ofthe woman and her nine little daughters to the village. The deadwoman's sisters and the other peasant-women of her family climbed intoit, as did the priest, who was not well able to walk, being advancedin years and very stout. 

They entered the forest once more and arrived in silence at thedazzling white plain, where they saw the naked men and the horseslying on their backs upon the gleaming ice among the trees. Then theywent on to the farm, which they could see burning in the distance. 

When they came to the orchard and to the house all red with flames, they stopped at the gate to mark the great misfortune that hadbefallen the farmer in his garden. His wife was hanging all naked fromthe branches of a great walnut-tree; he himself was mounting a ladderto climb the tree, around which the nine little girls were waitingfor their mother on the grass. Already he was walking among the hugeboughs, when suddenly he saw the crowd, black against the snow, watching him. Weeping, he made signs to them to help him; and theywent into the garden. Then the sacristan, the Red Dwarf, the landlordof the Blue Lion and he of the Golden Sun, the parish-priest, with alantern, and many other peasants climbed into the snow-ladenwalnut-tree to cut down the corpse, which the women of the villagereceived in their arms at the foot of the tree, even as at the descentfrom the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 

The next day they buried her; and nothing else out of the commonhappened at Nazareth that week. But, on the following Sunday, hungrywolves ran through the village after high mass and it snowed untilnoon; then the sun suddenly shone in the sky; and the peasants wentin to dinner, as was their wont, and dressed for benediction. 

At that moment there was no one in the market-place, for it wasfreezing cruelly. Only the dogs and hens remained under the trees, where some sheep were nibbling at a three-cornered patch of grass, while the priest's maid-servant swept away the snow from thepresbytery-garden. 

Then a troop of armed men crossed the stone bridge at the end of thevillage and halted in the orchard. Some peasants came out of theirhouses; but, on recognizing the Spaniards, they retreated in terrorand went to their windows to see what would happen. 

There were some thirty horsemen, clad in armour, around an old manwith a white beard. Behind them they carried red and yellowfoot-soldiers, who jumped down and ran over the snow to shake offtheir stiffness, while several of the men in armour also alighted andeased themselves against the trees to which they had fastened theirhorses. 

Then they turned to the Golden Sun and knocked at the door. It wasopened hesitatingly; and they warmed themselves at the fire and calledfor ale. 

Next they came out of the inn, carrying pots and jugs and wheatenloaves for their comrades, who sat ranked around the man with thewhite beard, waiting in the midst of the lances. 

As the street was empty, the commander sent horsemen to the back ofthe houses, to guard the village on its open side, and ordered thefoot-soldiers to bring to him all the children of two years old andunder, to be massacred, as is written in the Gospel according to St. Matthew. 

The soldiers went first to the inn of the Green Cabbage and to thebarber's cottage, which stood side by side, midway in the street. 

One of them opened a stable-door; and a litter of pigs escaped andscattered over the village. The inn-keeper and the barber came out andhumbly asked the soldiers what they wanted; but the men knew noFlemish and went in to look for the children. 

The inn-keeper had one, which sat crying in its little shirt on thetable where they had just had dinner. A man took the child in his armsand carried it away under the apple-tree, while the father and motherfollowed him with cries of lamentation. 

The soldiers also threw open the cooper's shed and the blacksmith'sand the cobbler's; and the calves, cows, asses, pigs, goats and sheepstrayed about the market-place. When the men broke the glass of thecarpenter's windows, several of the peasants, including the oldest andrichest farmers in the parish, assembled in the street and wenttowards the Spaniards. They doffed their hats and caps respectfully tothe leader in his velvet cloak and asked him what he was going to do;but even he did not understand their language; and some one went tofetch the priest. 

He was making ready for benediction and putting on a gold cope in thesacristy. The peasant called out:

"The Spaniards are in the orchard!"

Horrified, the priest ran to the church-door, accompanied by theserving-boys carrying tapers and censer. 

Then he saw the animals released from their sheds roaming on the snowand the grass, the horsemen in the village, the soldiers outside thedoors, the horses tied to the trees along the street and the men andwomen entreating him who was holding the child in its shirt. 

He rushed to the churchyard; and the peasants turned anxiously totheir priest, coming through the pear-trees like a god robed in gold, and stood around him and the man with the white beard. 

He spoke in Flemish and Latin; but the commander shrugged hisshoulders slowly up and down to show that he did not understand. 

His parishioners asked him under their breath:

"What does he say? What is he going to do?"

Others, on seeing the priest in the orchard, came timidly from theirfarms; the women hurried up and stood whispering among the groups;while some soldiers who were besieging an inn ran back at the sight ofthe great crowd that was forming in the market-place. 

Then the man who was holding by one leg the child of the landlord ofthe Green Cabbage cut off its head with his sword. 

The head fell before their eyes and the body fell after it and laybleeding on the grass. The mother picked it up and carried it away, leaving the head behind her. She ran towards the house, but stumbledagainst a tree and fell flat on the snow, where she lay in a swoon, while the father struggled between two soldiers. 

Some of the younger peasants threw stones and blocks of wood at theSpaniards, but the horsemen all lowered their lances together, thewomen fled and the priest began to cry out in horror with hisparishioners, all among the sheep, the geese and the dogs. 

However, as the soldiers were once more moving down the street, thefolk stood silent to see what they would do. 

The band entered the shop kept by the sacristan's sisters and thencame out quietly, without harming the seven women, who knelt on thedoorstep praying. 

Next they went to the inn owned by the Hunchback of St. Nicholas. Herealso the door was opened directly, to appease them; but theyreappeared amid a great outcry, with three children in their arms andsurrounded by the Hunchback, his wife and his daughters, claspingtheir hands in token of entreaty. 

On reaching the old man, the soldiers put down the children at thefoot of an elm, where they remained, sitting on the snow in theirSunday clothes. But one of them, who wore a yellow frock, rose andtoddled towards the sheep. A man ran after it with his naked sword;and the child died with its face in the grass, while the others werekilled not far from the tree. 

All the peasants and the inn-keeper's daughters took to flight, shrieking as they went, and returned to their homes. The priest, leftalone in the orchard, besought the Spaniards with loud cries, going onhis knees from horse to horse, with his arms crossed upon his breast, while the father and mother, sitting in the snow, wept piteously forthe dead children that lay in their laps. 

As the soldiers ran along the street, they remarked a big bluefarm-house. They tried to break down the door, but it was of oak andstudded with nails. Then they took some tubs that were frozen in apool in front of the house and used them to climb to the upperwindows, through which they made their way. 

There had been a kermis at this farm; and kinsfolk had come to eatwaffles, ham and custards with their family. At the sound of thebroken panes, they had assembled behind the table covered with jugsand dishes. The soldiers entered the kitchen and, after a desperatestruggle, in which many were wounded, they seized the little boys andgirls, as well as the hind, who had bitten a soldier's thumb. Thenthey left the house, locking the door behind them to prevent theinmates from going with them. 

Those of the villagers who had no children slowly left their homes andfollowed them from afar. When the soldiers carrying their victims cameto the old man, they threw them on the grass and deliberately killedthem with their spears and their swords, while all along the front ofthe blue house the men and women leant out of the windows of the upperfloor and the loft, cursing and rocking wildly in the sunshine at thesight of the red, pink and white frocks of their little ones lyingmotionless on the grass among the trees. Then the soldiers hanged thehind from the sign of the Half Moon on the other side of the street;and there was a long silence in the village. 

The massacre now began to spread. Mothers ran out of the houses andtried to escape to the open country through the gardens andkitchen-plots; but the horsemen scoured after them and drove them backinto the street. Peasants, holding their caps in their clasped hands, followed upon their knees the men who were dragging away theirchildren, among the dogs which barked deliriously amid the din. Thepriest, with his arms raised aloft, ran along the houses and under thetrees, praying desperately, like a martyr; and soldiers, shiveringwith cold, blew on their fingers as they moved about the road, or, with their hands in the pockets of their trunks and their swordstucked under their arms, waited beneath the windows of the houses thatwere being scaled. 

On seeing the grief-stricken terror of the peasants, they entered thefarm-houses in little bands; and in like fashion they acted throughoutthe length of the street. 

A woman who sold vegetables in the old red-brick cottage near thechurch seized a chair and ran after two men who were carrying off herchildren in a wheel-barrow. When she saw them die, a sickness overcameher; and she suffered the folk to press her into the chair, against atree by the road-side. 

Other soldiers climbed up the lime-trees in front of a house paintedlilac and removed the tiles in order to enter the house. When theycame out again upon the roof, the father and mother, with outstretchedarms, also appeared in the opening; and they pushed them downrepeatedly, cutting them over the head with their swords, before theycould descend into the street. 

One family, which had locked itself into the cellar of a ramblingcottage, cried through the grating, where the father stood madlybrandishing a pitchfork. An old, bald-headed man was sobbing all aloneon a dung-heap; a woman in yellow had fainted in the market-place andher husband was holding her under her arms and moaning in the shadowof a pear-tree; another, in red, was kissing her little girl, who hadlost her hands, and lifting first one arm and then the other to see ifshe would not move. Yet another ran into the country and the soldierspursued her through the hayricks that bounded the snow-clad fields. 

Beneath the inn of the Four Sons of Aymon there was a tumult as of asiege. The inhabitants had barred the door; and the soldiers wentround and round the house without being able to make their way in. They were trying to clamber up to the sign by the fruit-trees againstthe front wall, when they caught sight of a ladder behind thegarden-door. They set it against the wall and mounted one after theother. Thereupon the landlord and all his household hurled tables, chairs, dishes and cradles at them from the windows. The ladder upsetand the soldiers fell down. 

In a wooden hut, at the end of the village, another band found apeasant-woman bathing her children in a tub by the fire. Being old andalmost deaf, she did not hear them come in. Two soldiers took the tuband carried it off; and the dazed woman went after them, with thechildren's clothes, wanting to dress them. But, when she came to thedoor and suddenly saw the splashes of blood in the village, the swordsin the orchard, the cradles over-turned in the street, women on theirknees and women waving their arms around the dead, she began to cryout with all her strength and to strike the soldiers, who put down thetub to defend themselves. The priest also came hastening up and, folding his hands across his vestment, entreated the Spaniards beforethe naked children, who were whimpering in the water. Other soldiersthen came up and pushed him aside and bound the raving peasant-womanto a tree. 

The butcher had hidden his little daughter and, leaning against hishouse, looked on in unconcern. A foot-soldier and one of the men inarmour went in and discovered the child in a copper cauldron. Then thebutcher, in desperation, took one of his knives and chased them downthe street; but a band that was passing struck the knife from hisgrasp and hanged him by the hands to the hooks in his wall, among theflayed carcases, where he twitched his legs and jerked his head andcursed and swore till evening. 

Near the churchyard, a crowd had assembled outside a long greenfarm-house. The farmer stood on his threshold weeping bitter tears; ashe was very fat, with a face made for smiling, the hearts of thesoldiers softened in some measure as they sat in the sun with theirbacks to the wall, listening to him and patting his dog the while. Butthe one who was dragging the child away by the hand made gestures asthough to say:

"You may save your tears! It is not my fault!"

A peasant who was being hotly pursued sprang into a boat moored to thestone bridge and pushed across the pond with his wife and children. The soldiers, not daring to venture on the ice, strode angrily throughthe reeds. They climbed into the willows on the bank, trying to reachthem with their spears; and, when they failed, continued for a longtime to threaten the family, where they all sat cowering in the middleof the water. 

Meanwhile, the orchard was still full of people, for it was there thatmost of the children were slain, in front of the man with the whitebeard who directed the massacre. The little boys and girls who werebig enough to walk alone also collected there and, munching theirbread-and-butter, stood looking on curiously to see the others die orgathered round the village idiot, who lay upon the grass playing awhistle. 

Then suddenly a movement ran through the length of the village. Thepeasants were turning their steps toward the castle, standing on ahigh mound of yellow earth at the end of the street. They had caughtsight of the lord of the village leaning on the battlements of histower, watching the massacre. And the men, women and old folkstretched out their arms to him where he sat in his cloak of purplevelvet and cap of gold and entreated him as though he were a king inheaven. But he threw up his arms and shrugged his shoulders, to showhis helplessness; and, when they implored him in ever-increasinganguish and knelt bareheaded in the snow, uttering loud cries, heturned back slowly into the tower; and in the hearts of the peasantsall hope died. 

When all the children were killed, the tired soldiers wiped theirswords on the grass and supped under the pear-trees. Then thefoot-soldiers mounted behind the others and they all rode out ofNazareth together, by the stone bridge, as they had come. 

The setting sun lit the forest with a red light and painted thevillage a new colour. Weary with running and entreating, the priesthad sat down in the snow in front of the church; and his servant-maidstood near him, looking around. They saw the street and the orchardfilled with peasants in their holiday attire, moving about themarket-place and along the houses. Outside the doors, families, withtheir dead children on their knees, whispered in amazement and horrorof the fate wherewith they had been assailed. Others were stillmourning the child where it had fallen, near a cask, under a barrow orat a puddle's edge, or were carrying it away in silence. Several werealready washing the benches, chairs, tables and shirts all smirchedwith blood and picking up the cradles that had been flung into thestreet. But nearly all the mothers were kneeling on the grass underthe trees, before the dead bodies, which they knew by their woollenfrocks. Those who had no children were roaming about the market-place, stopping to gaze at the afflicted groups. The men who had done weepingtook the dogs and started in pursuit of their strayed beasts, ormended their broken windows or gaping roofs, while the village grewhushed and still beneath the light of the moon as it rose slowly inthe sky. 

THE END

 * * * * *

Transcriber's Notes

The following typographical errors have been corrected from theoriginal book:

Page 083: inquity changed to iniquity (example of iniquity would strike the ideals of mankind)

Page 113: magnificnt " " magnificent (rejuvenated by our magnificent misfortune, )

Page 126: alwas " " always (and always ready with his pleasant smile, )

Page 174: man " " men ("So died these men as became Athenians. )

Page 178: centuies " " centuries (These words spoken twenty-three centuries ago)

Page 183: catacylsm " " cataclysm (if this cataclysm let loose by an act of unutterable)

Page 232: sorsow " " sorrow (Alas, yes! I had heard of your sorrow;)

Page 236: Then " " They (They need love as much as do the living. )

Page 247: (section number) 2 " " 3 (3 All these, on examination, leave but a worthless residuum;)

Page 305: Breughel " " Brueghel (painted in the sixteenth century by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. )

Page 327: missing ending quotes were added ("You may save your tears! It is not my fault!")

Other spelling variations, for example, Renascence (pg. 64) andbehoves (pg. 119), have been retained.