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THE FORERUNNERS
THE FORERUNNERS
BY ROMAIN ROLLAND TRANSLATED BY EDEN AND CEDAR PAUL TO THE MEMORY OF THE MARTYRS OF THE NEW FAITH IN THE HUMAN INTERNATIONAL. TO JEAN JAURÈS, KARL LIEBKNECHT, ROSA LUXEMBURG, KURT EISNER, GUSTAV LANDAUER, THE VICTIMS OF BLOODTHIRSTY STUPIDITY AND MURDEROUS FALSEHOOD, THE LIBERATORS OF THE MEN WHO KILLED THEM. R. R. August, 1919. T HIS book is a sequel to Above the Battle . It consists of a number of articles written and published in Switzerland between the end of 1915 and the beginning of 1919.
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
T HIS book is a sequel to Above the Battle . It consists of a number of articles written and published in Switzerland between the end of 1915 and the beginning of 1919. As collective title for the work, I have chosen "The Forerunners," for nearly all the essays relate to the dauntless few who, the world over, amid the tempests of war and universal reaction, have been able to keep their thoughts free, their international faith inviolate. The future will reverence the names of these great harbinge
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THE FORERUNNERS I
THE FORERUNNERS I
ARA PACIS D E profundis clamans, out of the abyss of all the hates, To thee, Divine Peace, will I lift up my song. The din of the armies shall not drown it. Imperturbable, I behold the rising flood incarnadine, Which bears the beauteous body of mutilated Europe, And I hear the raging wind which stirs the souls of men. Though I stand alone, I shall be faithful to thee. I shall not take my place at the sacrilegious communion of blood. I shall not eat my share of the Son of Man. I am brother to all
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II
II
UPWARDS, ALONG A WINDING ROAD I F I have kept silence for a year, it is not because the faith to which I gave expression in Above the Battle has been shaken (it stands firmer than ever); but I am well assured that it is useless to speak to him who will not hearken. Facts alone will speak, with tragical insistence; facts alone will be able to penetrate the thick wall of obstinacy, pride, and falsehood with which men have surrounded their minds because they do not wish to see the light. But we, as
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III
III
TO THE MURDERED PEOPLES T HE horrors that have taken place during the last two and a half years have given a rude spiritual shock to the western world. No one can ever forget the martyrdom of Belgium, Serbia, Poland, of all the unhappy lands of the west and of the east trampled by invaders. Yet these iniquitous deeds, by which we are revolted because we ourselves are the sufferers—for half a century or more, European civilisation has been doing them or allowing them to be done. Who will ever kno
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IV
IV
TO THE UNDYING ANTIGONE T HE most potent action within the competence of us all, men and women alike, is individual action, the action of man on man, of soul on soul, action by word, by example, by the whole personality. Women of Europe, you fail to use this power as you should. You are now attempting to extirpate the plague which afflicts the world, to wage war against the war. You do well, but your action comes too late. You could have fought, you ought to have fought, against this war before
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V
V
A WOMAN'S VOICE FROM OUT THE TUMULT [13] A WOMAN with compassion and who dares to avow it; a woman who dares to avow her horror of war, her pity for the victims, for all the victims ; a woman who refuses to add her voice to the chorus of murderous passions; a woman genuinely French who does not endeavour to ape the heroines of Corneille. What a solace! I wish to avoid saying anything which could hurt wounded souls. I know how much grief, how much suppressed tenderness, are hidden, in thousands o
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VI
VI
FREEDOM T HE war has shown us how fragile are the treasures of our civilisation. Of all our goods, freedom, on which we prided ourselves most, has proved the frailest. It had been won by degrees through centuries of sacrifice, of patient effort, of suffering, of heroism, and of stubborn faith; we inhaled its golden atmosphere; our enjoyment of it seemed as natural as our enjoyment of the fresh air which sweeps across the surface of the earth and floods our lungs. A few days were enough to steal
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VII
VII
FREE RUSSIA, THE LIBERATOR! R USSIAN brothers, who have just achieved your great revolution, we have not merely to congratulate you; we have in addition to thank you. In your conquest of freedom, you have not been working for yourselves alone, but for us likewise, for your brothers of the old west. Human progress has been a secular evolution. Quickly getting out of breath, flagging again and again, progress slackens, jibs at obstacles, or lies down in the road like a lazy mule. To bring about a
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VIII
VIII
TOLSTOY: THE FREE SPIRIT I N his diary, of which the first French translation has just been issued by Paul Biriukov, [15] Tolstoy gives utterance to the fantasy that in an earlier life his personality had been a complex of loved beings. Each successive existence, he suggested, enlarged the circle of friends and the range and power of the soul. [16] Speaking generally, we may say that a great personality comprehends within itself more souls than one. All these souls are grouped around one among t
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X
X
TWO LETTERS FROM MAXIM GORKI Petrograd , end of December, 1916. My dear and valued comrade Romain Rolland, W ILL you be good enough to write a biography of Beethoven, suitable for children? I am simultaneously writing to H. G. Wells, whom I ask to let me have a life of Addison; Fridtjof Nansen will do the life of Christopher Columbus; I shall myself deal with the life of Garibaldi; the Hebrew poet Bialik will write the life of Moses. With the aid of the leading authors of our day I hope to produ
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XI
XI
TO THE WRITERS OF AMERICA Letter to "The Seven Arts," New York, October, 1916. I AM delighted to learn of the creation of a magazine in which the American soul will become fully aware of its own individuality. I believe in the lofty destinies of America, and the events of the hour render the realisation of that destiny urgently necessary. In the Old World, civilisation is imperilled. America must cherish the flickering flame. You possess one great advantage over us in Europe. You are free from t
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XII
XII
FREE VOICES FROM AMERICA I HAVE often deplored that during the war the Swiss press has failed to play the great part which was assigned to it. I have not hesitated to express my regret to Swiss journalists of my acquaintance. I do not reproach the Swiss periodicals for their lack of impartiality. It is natural, it is human, to have preferences, and to show them passionately. We have all the less reason to complain seeing that (at least among the Latin Swiss) the preferences are in our favour. My
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XIII
XIII
ON BEHALF OF E. D. MOREL E. D. Morel, secretary of the Union of Democratic Control, was arrested in London during August, 1917, and was sentenced to six months' imprisonment in the second division, upon the ridiculous (and incorrect) charge of having attempted to send to Romain Rolland in Switzerland one of his own political pamphlets which was being freely circulated in England. [29] The "Revue mensuelle" of Geneva asked R. R. what he thought of this affair, concerning which at that time little
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XIV
XIV
YOUNG SWITZERLAND I F we were to attempt to found our judgment upon Swiss periodical literature, we should form a very false opinion regarding the public mind of Switzerland. In this land, as everywhere, the press is from ten to twenty years behind the intellectual and moral development of the people. The Swiss papers and other periodicals are few in number, compared with those of neighbouring nations. Most of them are controlled by quite a small group of persons, and nearly every one of them se
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XV
XV
By what miracle has so truth-telling a work been able to appear unmutilated, at a time when so many free words, infinitely less free, have been censored? I shall not attempt to explain the fact, but I shall profit by it. The voice of this witness drives back into the shadow all the interested falsehoods which during the last three years have served to idealise the European slaughter-house. * * * The work is of the first rank, and is so full of matter that more than one article would be requisite
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XVI
XVI
AVE, CÆSAR, MORITURI TE SALUTANT Dedicated to the Heroic Onlookers in Safe Places. I N one of the scenes of his terrible and admirable book, Under Fire , a record of experiences in the trenches of Picardy, dedicated "To the memory of the comrades who fell by my side at Crouy and on Hill 119," Henri Barbusse depicts two privates going on leave to the neighbouring town. They quit the hell of mud and blood; for months they have been suffering unnamable tortures of body and mind; they now find thems
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XVII
XVII
AVE, CÆSAR ... THOSE WHO WISH TO LIVE SALUTE THEE I N an earlier article I referred to the writings of certain French soldiers. After Under Fire , by Henri Barbusse, L'Holocauste by Paul Husson and the poignant meditations of André Delemer gave expression to their touching and profoundly human cry. In place of the scandalous idealisations of the war, manufactured far from the front—crude Epinal images, grotesque and false—they give us the stern face of truth, they show us the martyrdom of young
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XVIII
XVIII
MEN IN BATTLE [41] [ THE MAN OF SORROWS ] A RT is stained with blood. French blood, German blood, it is always the Man of Sorrows. Yesterday we were listening to the sublime and gloomy plaint which breathes from Barbusse's Under Fire . To-day come the yet more heartrending accents of Menschen im Krieg (Men in Battle). Although they hail from the other camp, I will wager that most of our bellicose readers in France and Navarre will flee from them with stopped ears. For these tones would be a shoc
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XIX
XIX
VOX CLAMANTIS.... [43] A FTER the glacial torpor of the early days of the war, mutilated art begins to bloom anew. The irrepressible song of the soul wells up out of suffering. Man is not merely, as he is apt to boast, a reasoning animal (he might, with better ground, term himself an unreasoning one); he is a singing animal; he can no more get on without singing than without bread. We learn it amid the very trials through which we are passing to-day. Although the general suppression of liberty i
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XX
XX
A GREAT EUROPEAN: G. F. NICOLAI [48] I A RT and science have bent the knee to war. Art has become war's sycophant; science, war's hand-maiden. Few have had the strength or inclination to resist. In art, rare works, sombre French works, have blossomed on the blood-drenched soil. In science, the greatest product during these three criminal years has been the one we owe to G. F. Nicolai, a German whose spirit is free and whose thought has an enormous range. The book is, as it were, a symbol of that
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XXI
XXI
REFLECTIONS ON READING AUGUSTE FOREL T HE name of Auguste Forel is renowned in the world of European science, but within the confines of his own land his writings are perhaps less well known than they should be. Every one is familiar with the social activities of this splendid personality, of this man whose indefatigable energies and ardent convictions have not been affected either by his age or by ill-health. But Latin Switzerland, which justly admires the writings of the naturalist J. H. Fabre
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XXII
XXII
ON BEHALF OF THE INTERNATIONAL OF THE MIND This chapter relates to the plan for an Institute of the Nations, suggested by Gerhard Gran, professor at the University of Christiania, writing in the "Revue Politique Internationale" of Lausanne. My reply was first published in the same periodical, under the title "Pour une culture universelle" (On behalf of a universal civilisation). G ERHARD GRAN'S broad-minded appeal cannot fail to arouse echoes. I have read it with lively sympathy. He displays the
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XXIII
XXIII
A CALL TO EUROPEANS I N the downfall of imperial Germany, there stand out the great names of a few free spirits of Germany, the names of those who during the last four years have strenuously defended the rights of conscience and reason against the abuses of force. The name of G. F. Nicolai is one of the most illustrious among these. I devoted two articles [86] to the study of his excellent work, The Biology of War , and have recorded the conditions under which it was written. This distinguished
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XXIV
XXIV
OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT WILSON Monsieur le Président, T HE peoples are breaking their chains. The hour foreseen by you and desired by you is at hand. May it not come in vain! From one end of Europe to the other, there is rising among the peoples the will to resume control of their destinies, and to unite, that they may form a regenerated Europe. Across the frontiers, they are holding out their hands to one another for a friendly clasp. But between them there still remain abysses of mistrust and
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XXV
XXV
AGAINST VICTORIOUS BISMARCKISM "Le Populaire" asked Romain Rolland to write an article on the occasion of President Wilson's arrival in France. Romain Rolland, who was ill at the time, wrote from Villeneuve as follows. Thursday , December 12, 1918. Dear Longuet, Y OUR letter of the 6th inst. did not reach me until to-day, of course after being opened by the military censorship. It finds me in bed, where I have been for a fortnight, suffering from an obstinate attack of influenza. It is therefore
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XXVI
XXVI
DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE MIND B RAIN workers, comrades, scattered throughout the world, kept apart for five years by the armies, the censorship and the mutual hatred of the warring nations, now that barriers are falling and frontiers are being reopened, we issue to you a call to reconstitute our brotherly union, but to make of it a new union more firmly founded and more strongly built than that which previously existed. The war has disordered our ranks. Most of the intellectuals pl
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SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE TO CHAPTER XX
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE TO CHAPTER XX
A GREAT EUROPEAN: G. F. NICOLAI C OMMENT is requisite upon the reproaches addressed by G. F. Nicolai to certain Christian sects. In the various countries of Europe, opposition to the war, on the part of those he names, was far more vigorous than has been commonly supposed. Inasmuch as the authorities ruthlessly but silently suppressed all opposition, it is only since the close of the war that we have been able to glean information concerning these conscientious revolts and sacrifices. Without dw
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