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ABOVE THE BATTLE
ABOVE THE BATTLE
{2} "The fire smouldering in the forest of Europe was beginning to burst into flames. In vain did they try to put it out in one place; it only broke out in another. With gusts of smoke and a shower of sparks it swept from one point to another, burning the dry brushwood. Already in the East there were skirmishes as the prelude to the great war of the nations. All Europe, Europe that only yesterday was sceptical and apathetic, like a dead wood, was swept by the flames. All men were possessed by th
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ABOVE THE BATTLE
ABOVE THE BATTLE
TRANSLATED BY C. K. OGDEN, M. A. (Editor of The Cambridge Magazine ) CHICAGO THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 1916 {5} {6} Copyright 1916 The Open Court Pub. Co., Chicago. First published in 1916. ( All rights reserved. ) {7} Introduction Contents Preface Notes Footnotes...
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
These lines of Walt Whitman will be recalled by many who read the following pages: for not only does Rolland himself refer to Whitman in his brief Introduction, but, were it not for a certain bizarrerie apart from their context, the words "Over the Carnage" might perhaps have stood on the cover of this volume as a striking variant on Au-dessus de la Mêlée . Yet though the voice comes to us over the carnage, its message is not marred by the passions of the moment. After eighteen months of war we
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PREFACE
PREFACE
A great nation assailed by war has not only its frontiers to protect: it must also protect its good sense. It must protect itself from the hallucinations, injustices, and follies which the plague lets loose. To each his part: to the armies the protection of the soil of their native land; to the thinkers the defense of its thought. If they subordinate that thought to the passions of their people they may well be useful instruments of passion; but they are in danger of betraying the spirit, which
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I. AN OPEN LETTER TO GERHART HAUPTMANN
I. AN OPEN LETTER TO GERHART HAUPTMANN
Saturday, August 29, 1914. [4] I am not, Gerhart Hauptmann, one of those Frenchmen who regard Germany as a nation of barbarians. I know the intellectual and moral greatness of your mighty race. I know all that I owe to the thinkers of old Germany; and even now, at this hour, I recall the example and the words of our Goethe—for he belongs to the whole of humanity—repudiating all national hatreds and preserving the calmness of his soul on those heights " where we feel the happiness and the misfort
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II. PRO ARIS[5]
II. PRO ARIS[5]
Among the many crimes of this infamous war which are all odious to us, why have we chosen for protest the crimes against things and not against men, the destruction of works and not of lives? Many are surprised by this, and have even reproached us for it—as if we have not as much pity as they for the bodies and hearts of the thousands of victims who are crucified! Yet over the armies which fall, there flies the vision of their love, and of la Patrie , to which they sacrifice themselves—over thes
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III. ABOVE THE BATTLE
III. ABOVE THE BATTLE
O young men that shed your blood with so generous a joy for the starving earth! O heroism of the world! What a harvest for destruction to reap under this splendid summer sun! Young men of all nations, brought into conflict by a common ideal, making enemies of those who should be brothers; all of you, marching to your death, are dear to me. [9] Slavs, hastening to the aid of your race; Englishmen fighting for honor and right; intrepid Belgians who dared to oppose the Teutonic colossus, and defend
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IV. THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS: PANGERMANISM, PANSLAVISM
IV. THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS: PANGERMANISM, PANSLAVISM
I do not hold the doctrine expounded by a certain saintly king, that it is useless to enter into discussion with heretics—and we regard all those who do not agree with our opinions as heretics nowadays—but that it is sufficient to brain them. I feel the need of understanding my enemy's reasons. I am unwilling to believe in unfairness. Doubtless my enemy is as passionately sincere as I am. Why, then, should we not attempt to understand each other? For such an understanding, though it will not sup
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V. INTER ARMA CARITAS
V. INTER ARMA CARITAS
Once more I address myself to our friends the enemy. But this time I shall attempt no discussion, for discussion is impossible with those who avow that they do not seek for but possess the truth. For the moment there is no spiritual force that can pierce the thick wall of certitude by which Germany is barricaded against the light of day—the terrible certitude, the pharisaical satisfaction which pervades the monstrous letter of a Court preacher who glorifies God for having made him impeccable, ir
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VI. TO THE PEOPLE THAT IS SUFFERING FOR JUSTICE
VI. TO THE PEOPLE THAT IS SUFFERING FOR JUSTICE
(For King Albert's Book . [20] ) Belgium has just written an Epic, whose echoes will resound throughout the ages. Like the three hundred Spartans, the little Belgian army confronts for three months the German Colossus; Leman-Leonides; the Thermopylæ of Liège; Louvain, like Troy, burnt; the deeds of King Albert surrounded by his valiant men: with what legendary grandeur are these figures already invested, and history has not yet completed their story! The heroism of this people, who, without a mu
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VII. LETTER TO MY CRITICS[21]
VII. LETTER TO MY CRITICS[21]
November 17, 1914. There has reached me, after much delay, at Geneva, where I am engaged on the International work of Prisoners of War, the echo of attacks against me in certain newspapers, roused by the articles that I have published in the Journal de Genève , or rather by two or three passages arbitrarily chosen from those articles (for they themselves are scarcely known to anybody in France). My best reply will be to collect what I have written and publish it in Paris. I would not add a word
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VIII. THE IDOLS
VIII. THE IDOLS
For more than forty centuries it has been the effort of great minds who have attained liberty to extend this blessing to others; to liberate humanity and to teach men to see reality without fear or error, to look themselves in the face without false pride or false humility and to recognize their weakness and their strength, that they may know their true position in the universe. They have illumined the path with the brightness of their lives and their example, like the star of the magi, that man
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IX. FOR EUROPE: MANIFESTO OF THE WRITERS AND THINKERS OF CATALONIA
IX. FOR EUROPE: MANIFESTO OF THE WRITERS AND THINKERS OF CATALONIA
National passions are triumphant. For five months they have rent our Europe. They think they will soon have compassed its destruction and effaced its image in the hearts of the last of these who remain faithful to it. But they are mistaken. They have renewed the faith that we had in it. They have made us recognize its value and our love. And from one country to another we have discovered our unknown brothers, sons of the same mother, who in the hour when she is denied, consecrate themselves to h
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X. FOR EUROPE: AN APPEAL FROM HOLLAND TO THE INTELLECTUALS OF ALL NATIONS
X. FOR EUROPE: AN APPEAL FROM HOLLAND TO THE INTELLECTUALS OF ALL NATIONS
In the preceding chapter, in which I put before my readers the fine manifesto of the Catalonian intellectuals "For the Moral Unity of Europe," I stated that after this appeal from the Mediterranean South I would make known those of the North. Amongst the latter here is the voice of Holland:— The Nederlandsche Anti-Oorlog Road (Dutch Anti-War Council) is perhaps the most important attempt that these last months has seen to unify pacifist thought. Whilst recognizing the value of what has been done
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XI. LETTER TO FREDERIK VAN EEDEN
XI. LETTER TO FREDERIK VAN EEDEN
January 12, 1915. My Dear Friend : You offer me the hospitality of your paper De Amsterdammer . I thank you and accept. It is good to take one's stand with those free souls who resist the unrestrained fury of national passions. In this hideous struggle, with which the conflicting peoples are rending Europe, let us at least preserve our flag, and rally round that. We must re-create European opinion. That is our first duty. Among these millions who are only conscious of being Germans, Austrians, F
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XII. OUR NEIGHBOR THE ENEMY
XII. OUR NEIGHBOR THE ENEMY
March 15, 1915. While the war tempest rages, uprooting the strongest souls and dragging them along in its furious cyclone, I continue my humble pilgrimage, trying to discover beneath the ruins the rare hearts who have remained faithful to the old ideal of human fraternity. What a sad joy I have in collecting and helping them! I know that each of their efforts—like mine—that each of their words of love, rouses and turns against them the hostility of the two hostile camps. The combatants, pitted a
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XIII. A LETTER TO SVENSKA DAGBLADET OF STOCKHOLM[28]
XIII. A LETTER TO SVENSKA DAGBLADET OF STOCKHOLM[28]
The European thought of tomorrow is with the armies. The furious intellectuals in one camp and the other who insult one another do not represent it at all. The voice of the peoples who will return from the war, after having experienced the terrible reality, will send back into the silence of obscurity these men who have revealed themselves as unworthy to be spiritual guides of the human race. Amongst those who thus retire more than one St. Peter will then hear the cock crow, and will weep saying
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XIV. WAR LITERATURE
XIV. WAR LITERATURE
The intellectuals on both sides have been much in evidence since the beginning of the war; they have, indeed, brought so much violence and passion to bear upon it, that it might almost be called their war! It seems to me, however, that attention has not been sufficiently drawn to the fact that, with a few exceptions, it is only the voice of the older generation that has been heard—the voice of Academicians, and Professoren, of distinguished members of the press and the universities, of poets of
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XV. THE MURDER OF THE ÉLITE
XV. THE MURDER OF THE ÉLITE
The phrase is not new-coined today; [37] but the fact is. Never in any period, have we seen humanity throwing into the bloody arena all its intellectual and moral reserves, its priests, its thinkers, its scholars, its artists, the whole future of the spirit—wasting its geniuses as food for cannon. A great thing, doubtless, when the struggle is great, when a people fights for an eternal cause, the fervor of which fires the whole nation, from the smallest to the greatest; when it fuses all the ego
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XVI. JAURÈS
XVI. JAURÈS
Battles are being fought under our eyes in which thousands of men are dying, yet the sacrifice of their lives does not always influence the issue of the combat. In other cases the death of a single man may be a great battle lost for the whole of humanity. The murder of Jaurès was such a disaster. Whole centuries were needed to produce such a life; rich civilizations of North and South, of past and present, spread out on the good soil of France, matured beneath our Western skies. The mysterious c
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NOTES
NOTES
To Page 19 ("Letter To Gerhart Hauptmann") The letter to Gerhart Hauptmann, written after the destruction of Louvain, and in the stress of the emotion aroused by the first news, was provoked by a high-sounding article of Hauptmann which appeared a few days previously. In that letter he rebutted the accusation of barbarism hurled against Germany, and returned it ... against Belgium. The article ended as follows: " ... I assure M. Maeterlinck that no one in Germany thinks of imitating the act of h
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THE OPEN COURT INTERNATIONAL SERIES OF BOOKS ON THE GREAT WAR
THE OPEN COURT INTERNATIONAL SERIES OF BOOKS ON THE GREAT WAR
Above the Battle. By Romain Rolland. An eloquent appeal to the youth of the world to declare a strike against war. Cloth, $1.00. Justice in War Time. An appeal to intellectuals. By Hon. Bertrand Russell, Trinity College, Cambridge, England. Pp. 300. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. Carlyle and the War. By Marshall Kelly of London, England. Pp. 260. Cloth, $1.00. Germany Misjudged. An appeal to international good will. By Roland Hugins, Cornell University. Pp. 155. Cloth, $1.00. Belgium and Germany
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