Chapter X: Part FOUR (2)

This is why when the axes of those heroic woodsmen, Lenine and Trotzky, were heard in the forest, many oppressed hearts thrilled with joy and hope, and in every country there was sharpening of hatchets. The leading classes rose up against the common danger, all over Europe, in both opposing camps. There was no negotiation needed for them to reach an agreement on this subject, for their instinct spoke loudly. The fiercest enemies of Germany, through the organs of the _bourgeoisie_, tacitly gave a free hand to the Kaiser to strangle Russian liberty which struck at the root of that social injustice on which they all lived. In the absurdity of their hatred, they could not conceal their delight when they saw Prussian Militarism--that monster who afterwards turned on them--avenge them on these daring rebels. Naturally this only increased the admiration for these excommunicated defiers of the world, on the part of the down-trodden masses and the small number of independent spirits.

The pot began to boil with a vengeance, and to stop it the governments of Europe shut down the lid and sat on it. The stupid class in control kept throwing fuel on the flame, and then wondered at the alarming rumblings. This revolt of the elements was attributed to the wicked designs of some free speakers, to mysterious intrigues, to the enemy's gold, to the pacifists; and none of them saw--though a child would have known it--that, if they wanted to prevent an explosion, the first thing to do was to put out the fire. The god of all these powers was force; no matter what they were called, empires, or republics, it was the mailed fist, disguised, gloved but hard and sure of itself. It became also, like a rising tide, the law of the oppressed, a dark struggle between two contrary pressures. Where the metal had worn thin--in Russia first--the boiler had burst. Where there were cracks in the cover--as in neutral countries--the hissing steam escaped, but a deceitful calm reigned over the countries at war, kept down by oppression. To the oppressors this calm was reassuring; they were armed equally against the enemy or their own citizens. The machine of war is double-ended, the cover strong, made of the best steel, and firmly screwed down; that, at least, cannot be torn off--no, but suppose the whole thing blows up together!

Repressed, like everyone else, Clerambault saw rebellion gathering around him. He understood it, thought it inevitable; but that was not a reason for loving it. He did not believe in the _Amor Fati_. It was enough to understand; the tyrant has no claim to be loved.

Clerambault's young friends were not sparing of their ideas, and it surprised them to see how little warmth he showed towards the new idol from the North: the rule of the proletariat. They had no timorous scruples or half-measures, they meant to make the world happy in their way--perhaps not in its own. At one stroke they decreed the suppression of all liberties in opposition to theirs; the fallen middle classes were not to be allowed to meet, or to vote, or to have the freedom of the press.

"This is all very well," said Clerambault, "but at this rate they will be the new proletariat, tyranny will merely change places."

"Only for a time," was the answer, "the last oppression, which will kill tyranny."

"Yes, the same old war for right and liberty; which is always going to be the war to end war; but in the meantime it is stronger than ever, and rights like liberty are trampled under foot."

Of course they all protested indignantly against this comparison; in their eyes war and those who waged it were equally infamous.

"None the less," said Clerambault gently, "many of you have fought, and nearly all of you have believed in it ... no, do not deny it! Besides, the feeling that inspired you had its noble side; a great wickedness was shown to you, and you threw yourselves upon it to root it out, in a very fine spirit. Only you seem to think that there is only one wickedness in the world, and, that when that has been purged away, we shall all return to the Golden Age. The same thing happened at the time of the Dreyfus Case; all the well-meaning people of Europe--I among them--seemed never to have heard before of the condemnation of an innocent man. They were terribly upset by it, and they turned the world inside out to wash off the impurity. Alas! this was done, but both washers and washed grew discouraged in the process, and when it was all over, lo,--the world was just as black as ever! It seems as if man were incapable of grasping the whole of human misery; he dreads to see the extent of the evil, and in order not to be overwhelmed by it, he fixes on some one point, where he localises all the trouble, and will see nothing further. All this is human nature, and easy enough to understand, my friends; but we should have more courage, and acknowledge the truth that the evil is everywhere; among ourselves, as well as with the enemy. You have found this out little by little in our own country, and seeing the tares in the wheat, you want to throw yourselves against your governments with the same fury that made you see incarnate evil in the person of the enemy. But if ever you recognise that the tares are in you also, then you may turn on yourselves in utter despair. Is not this much to be feared, after the revolutions we have seen, where those who came to bring justice found themselves, without knowing why, with soiled hands and hearts? You are like big children. When will you cease to insist on the absolute good?"

They might have replied that you must will the absolute, in order to arrive at the real; the mind can dally with shades of meaning, which are impossible to action, where it must be all or nothing. Clerambault had the choice between them and their adversaries; there was no other.

Yes, he knew it well enough; there was no other choice in the field of action, where all is determined in advance. Just as the unjust victory leads inevitably to the revenge which in its turn will be unjust, so capitalistic oppression will provoke the proletarian revolution, which will follow the bad example and oppress, when it has the power--an endless chain. Here is a stern Greek justice which the mind can accept and even honour as the rule of the universe. But the heart cannot submit, cannot accept it. Its mission is to break the law of universal warfare. Can it ever come to pass? Who can tell! But in any case it is clear that the hopes and wishes of the heart are outside the order of nature; her mission is rather above nature, and in its essence _religious_.

Clerambault, who was filled with this spirit, did not as yet dare to avow it; or at least he did not venture to use the word "religious," that word which the religions, that have so little of its spirit, have discredited in the eyes of today.

If Clerambault himself could not see clearly into his own thought, it was hardly to be expected that his young friends should do so, and even if they had seen, they would never have understood. They could not bear the idea that a man who condemned the present state of things as bad and destructive, should hesitate at the most energetic methods for its suppression. They were not wrong from their point of view, which was that of immediate action, but the field of the mind is greater, its battles cover a wider space; it does not waste its energies in bloody skirmishes. Even admitting the methods advocated by his friends, Clerambault could not accept their axiom, that "the end justifies the means." For, on the contrary, he believed that the means are even more important to real progress than the end ... what end? Will there ever be such a thing?

This idea was irritating and confusing to these young minds; it served to increase a dangerous hostility, which had arisen in the last five years among the working class, against the intellectuals. No doubt the latter had richly deserved it; how far away seemed the time when men of thought marched at the head of revolutions! Whereas now they were one with the forces of reaction. Even the limited number of those who had kept aloof, while blaming the mistakes of the ring, were, like Clerambault, unable to give up their individualism, which had saved them once, but now held them prisoners, outside the new movement of the masses. This conclusion once reached by the revolutionists, it was but one step to a declaration that the intellectuals must fall, and not a very long step. The pride of the working class already showed itself in articles and speeches, while waiting for the moment when, as in Russia, it could pass to action; and it demanded that the intellectuals should submit servilely to the proletarian leaders. It was even remarkable how some of the intellectuals were among the most eager in demanding this lowering of the position of their group. One would have thought that they did not wish it to be supposed that they belonged to it. Perhaps they had forgotten that they did.

Moreau, however, had not forgotten it; he was all the more bitter in repudiating this class, whose shirt of Nessus still clung to his skin, and it made him extremely violent.

He now began to display singularly aggressive sentiments towards Clerambault; during a discussion he would interrupt him rudely, with a kind of sarcastic and bitter irritation. It almost seemed as if he meant to wound him.

Clerambault did not take offence; he rather felt great pity for Moreau; he knew what he suffered, and he could imagine the bitterness of a young life spoiled like his. Patience and resignation, the moral nourishment on which stomachs fifty years old subsist, were not suited to his youth.

One evening Moreau had shown himself particularly disagreeable, and yet he persisted in walking home with Clerambault, as if he could not make up his mind to leave him. He walked along by his side, silent and frowning. All at once Clerambault stopped, and putting his hand through Moreau's arm with a friendly gesture said with a smile:

"It's all wrong, isn't it, old fellow?"

Moreau was somewhat taken aback, but he pulled himself together and asked drily what made anyone think that things were "all wrong."

"I thought so because you were so cross tonight," said Clerambault good naturally, and in answer to a protesting murmur. "Yes, you certainly were trying to hurt me,--just a little ... I know of course that you would not really,--but when a man like you tries to inflict pain on others it is because he is suffering himself ... isn't that true?"

"Yes, it is true," said Moreau, "you must forgive me, but it hurts me when I see that you are not in sympathy with our action."

"And are you?" demanded Clerambault. Moreau did not seem to understand. "You yourself," repeated Clerambault, "do you believe in it?"

"Of course I do! What a question!" said Moreau indignantly.

"I doubt it," said Clerambault gently. Moreau seemed to be on the point of losing his temper, but in a moment he said more quietly: "You are mistaken." Clerambault turned to walk on. "All right," said he, "you know your own thoughts better than I do."

For some minutes they continued in silence; then Moreau seized his old friend's arm, and said excitedly:

"How did you know it?"--and his resistance having broken down, he confessed the despair hidden under his aggressive determination to believe and act. He was eaten up with pessimism, a natural consequence of his excessive idealism which had been so cruelly disappointed. The religious souls of former times were tranquil enough; they placed the kingdom of God so far away that no event could touch it; but those of today have established it on earth, by the work of human love and reason, so that when life deals a blow at their dream all life seems horrible to them. There were days when Moreau was tempted to cut his throat! Humanity seemed made of rotteness; he saw with despair the defeats, failures, flaws carved on the destiny of the race from the very beginning--the worm in the bud--and he could not endure the idea of this absurd and tragic fate, which man can never escape. Like Clerambault, he recognized the poison which is in the intelligence, since he had it in his veins, but unlike his elder, who had passed the crisis and only saw danger in the irregularity of thought and not in its essence, Moreau was maddened by the idea that the poison was a necessary part of intelligence. His diseased imagination tortured him by all sorts of bugbears; thought appeared to him as a sickness, setting an indelible mark on the human race; and he pictured to himself in advance all the cataclysms to which it led. Already, thought he, we behold reason staggering with pride before the forces that science has put at her disposal--demons of nature, obedient to the magical formulas of chemistry and distracted by this suddenly-acquired power, turning to self-destruction.

Nevertheless Moreau was too young to remain in the grip of these terrors. He wanted action at any price, anything sooner than to be left alone with them. Why not urge him to act, instead of trying to hold him back?

"My dear boy," said Clerambault, "it is not right to urge another man to a dangerous act, unless you are ready to share it. I have no use for agitators, even if they are sincere, who send others to the stake and do not set the example of martyrdom themselves. There is but one truly sacred type of revolutionary, the Crucified; but very few men are made for the aureole of the cross. The trouble is that we always assign duties to ourselves which are superhuman or inhuman. It is not good for the ordinary man to strive after the "_Uebermenschheit_," and it can only prove to him a source of useless suffering; but each man can aspire to shed light, order, peace, and kindness around him in his little circle; and that should be happiness enough."

"Not quite enough for me," said Moreau. "Doubt would creep in; it must be all or nothing."

"I know. Your revolution would leave no place for doubt. Your hearts are hard and burning; your brains like geometric patterns. Everything or nothing. No shading! But what would life be without it? It is its greatest charm and its chief merit as well; fragile beauty and goodness, weakness everywhere. We must offer love and help; day by day, and step by step. The world is not transformed by force, or by a miracle, in the twinkling of an eye; but second by second it moves forward in infinity and the humblest who feels it partakes of infinity. Patience, and let us not think that one wrong effaced will save humanity; it will only make one day bright, but other days and more light will come; each will bring its sun. You would not wish to stay its course?"

"We have not the time to wait for all this," said Moreau. "Every day brings us frightful problems which must be decided on the spot. If we are not to be the masters, then we shall be victims; ... we, do I say? Not ourselves alone, we are already victimised, but all that is dear to us, all that holds us to life, hope in the future, the salvation of humanity. See the things that press upon us, the agonising questions as to those who will come after us, and those who have children. This war is not yet over, and it is only too evident that its crimes and falsehoods have sown the seeds of new wars, near at hand. Why do we have children? For what do they grow up? To be butchered like this? Look where you will, there is no answer. Are we to leave these crazy countries, this old continent, and emigrate? But where? Are their fifty acres of ground on the globe where independent honest people can take refuge? We must be on one side or the other; you see well enough that we have to choose between patriotism and revolution. If not, what remains? Non-resistance? Is that what you would have? But there is nothing in that unless you have religious faith; otherwise it is only the resignation of the lamb led to the slaughter. Unfortunately, the greater number decide on nothing, prefer not to think, turn their eyes away from the future, blinded by the hope that what they have seen and suffered will not recur. That is why we must decide for them, whether they want it or not, make them quicken their step, save them in spite of themselves. Revolution means a few men who will for all humanity."

"I do not think that I should like it," said Clerambault, "if another decided for me. And on the other hand, I should not want to usurp another man's will; I should prefer to leave each one free, and not interfere with the liberty of others. But I know that I am asking too much."

"Only what is impossible," said Moreau. "When you begin to will, you cannot stop halfway. There are just two sorts of men, those who have too great will-power--like Lenine, and a couple of dozen men in the whole course of history--and those who have too little, who can decide nothing, like us, me, if you like. It is clear enough, despair is all that drives me to will anything...."

"Why despair?" said Clerambault. "A man's fate is made every day by himself, and none knows what it will be; it is what we are. If you are cast down, so also is your fate."

"We shall never have strength enough," answered Moreau sadly. "Don't you believe that I see what infinitely small chances of success a revolution would have now in our country, under present conditions? Think of all the destruction, the economic losses, the demoralisation, the fatal lassitude caused by the war." And he added: "It was not true what I told you the first time we met, about all my comrades feeling as I did, rebelling against the suffering. Gillot told you there are only a few of us, and the others are good fellows for the most part but weak as water! They can see how things are, clearly enough, but sooner than run their heads against a wall they would rather not think about it, or pass it off with a joke. We French are always ready to laugh, it is our treasure and our ruin. It is a fine thing, but what a hold it gives to our oppressors. 'Let them sing as long as they are willing to pay,' as the Italian said. 'Let us laugh, so long as we are ready to die.' ... we might say. And then this terrible force of habit, that Gillot was talking about. A man will get used to no matter what ridiculous or painful conditions, provided they last long enough, and that he has company. He becomes habituated to cold, to heat, to death, and to crime. His whole force for resistance is used in adapting himself; and then he curls up in his corner and does not dare to stir, for fear that any change will bring back the pain. We are all so terribly tired! When the soldiers come back, they will have only one thought--to sleep and forget."

"How about the excitable Lagneau, who talks about blowing everything to pieces?"

"I have known Lagneau since the beginning of the war, and he has been in succession, royalist, "revanchard," annexationist, internationalist, socialist, anarchist, bolshevist, and I-don't-give-a damnist. He will finish as a reactionary, and will be sent to make food for cannon against the enemy that our government will pick out among our adversaries or our friends of today. Do you suppose that the people are of our way of thinking? Perhaps, or they may agree with the others. They will take up all opinions one after the other."

"You are a revolutionary then because you are discouraged?" said Clerambault, laughing.

"There are plenty like that among us."

"Gillot came out of the war more optimistic than he went in."

"Gillot is the forgetful sort, but I don't envy him that," said Moreau bitterly.

"But you ought not to upset him," said Clerambault.

"Gillot needs all the help you can give him."

"Help from me?" said Moreau incredulously.

"He is not naturally strong, and if you would make him so, you must let him see that you believe in him."

"Do you think belief comes by willing to have it?"

"You know whether that is true! No, I think, is the answer. Belief comes through love."

"By love of those who believe?"

"Is it not always through love, and only in that way, that we learn to trust?"

Moreau was touched; he had been a clever youth, eaten up by the craving for knowledge, and like the rest of his class, he had suffered for lack of brotherly affection. True human intercourse is banished from the education of today, but this vital sentiment, hitherto repressed, had revived in the trenches, filled with living, suffering flesh thrown together. At first it was hard to let oneself go; the general hardening, the fear of sentimentality or of ridicule, tended to put barriers between hearts; but when Moreau was laid up, his sheath of pride began to give way, and Clerambault had little difficulty in breaking through it. The best thing about this man was that false pride melted before him, for he had none of his own; people showed to him as he to them their real selves, their weakness and their troubles, which we are taught to hide from a silly idea of self-respect. Moreau had unconsciously learned to recognise at the front the superiority of men who were his social inferiors, brother-soldiers or "Non-Coms." Among these he had been much drawn to Gillot. He was glad that Clerambault should have appealed to him on behalf of his friend, for his secret wish always was to be of some use to another man.

At the next opportunity Clerambault whispered to Gillot that he ought to be optimistic for two, and cheer Moreau up; and thus each found help in the need of helping the other, according to the great principle of life: "Give, and it shall be given unto you."

No matter in what time one lives, nor what misfortunes overtake one, all is not lost as long as there remains in the heart of the race a spark of manly friendship. Blow it into a flame! Draw closer these cold solitary hearts! If only one of the fruits of this war of nations could be the fusion of the best among all classes, the union of the youth of many countries--of the manual labourers and the thinkers--the future would be re-born through their mutual aid.

But if unity is not one wanting to dominate the other, neither is it that one prefers to be dominated. But this was precisely, however, what these young revolutionaries thought, and insisted upon, with a curious sort of self-will. They snubbed Clerambault, on the principle that intelligence should be at the service of the proletariat ... "Dienen, dienen ..." which was the last word even of the proud Wagner. More than one lofty spirit brought low has said the same; if they could not rule supreme, they would serve.

Clerambault reflected: "The rarest thing is to find honest people who want to be simply my equals; but if we must choose, tyranny for tyranny, I prefer that which held the bodies of Aesop and Epictetus in slavery but left their minds free, to that which promises only material liberty and enslaves the soul."

This intolerance made him feel that he could never attach himself to any party, no matter what it was. Between the two sides, war or revolution, he could frankly state his preference for one, revolution. For it alone offered some hope for the future, which the war could only destroy. But to prefer a party does not mean that you yield to it all independence of thought. It is the error and abuse of democracies that they wish that all should have the same duties, and impose the same tasks on all; but in an advancing community there are multiple tasks. While the main body fights to gain an immediate advantage in progress, there are others who should maintain eternal values far above the victors of tomorrow or yesterday and which are beyond all the rest and throw light on the way above the smoke of battle. Clerambault had allowed himself to be too long blinded by this smoke; he could not plunge into a fresh fight; but in this short-sighted world it is an impropriety, almost a fault to see more clearly than your neighbours.

This sardonic truth was brought home to him in a discussion with these young St. Justs. They pointed out his mistakes, impertinently enough, by comparing him to the "Astrologer who fell into the Pit":

... "They said, poor creature, if your eye
What lies beneath can hardly spy,
Think you your gaze can pierce the sky?"

He had enough sense of humour to see the justice of the comparison; yes, he was of the number of:

"Those whom phantoms alarm
While some serious harm
Threatens them or their farm."

"Even so," he said, "do you think that your republic will have no need of astronomers, just as the first one could get along without chemists? Or are they all to be mobilised? In that case there would be a good chance of your all finding yourselves together at the bottom of the well! Is that what you want? I should not object so much if it were only a question of sharing your fate, but when it comes to joining in your hatreds!"

"You have some of your own, from what I have heard," said one of the young men. Just at this moment another man came in with a newspaper in his hand and called to Clerambault:

"Congratulations, old boy, I see your enemy Bertin is dead."

The irascible journalist had died in a few hours from an attack of pneumonia. For the last six months he had pursued with fury anyone whom he suspected of working for peace, or even of wishing for it. From one step to another he had come to look upon, not only the country, as sacred, but the war also, and among those whom he attacked most fiercely, Clerambault had a foremost place. Bertin could not pardon the resistance to his onslaughts; Clerambault's replies had at first only irritated him, but the disdainful silence with which his latest invectives had been met drove him beside himself. His swollen vanity was deeply wounded, and nothing would have satisfied him but the total annihilation of his adversary. To him Clerambault was not only a personal enemy, but a foe to the public; and in the endeavour to prove this, he made him the centre of a great pacifist plot. At any other time, this would have seemed absurd in everyone's eyes, but now no one had eyes to see with. During the last weeks Bertin's fury and violence had gone beyond anything that he had written before; they were a threat against anyone who was convicted or suspected of the dangerous heresy of Peace.

In this little reunion the news of his death was received with noisy satisfaction; and his funeral oration was preached with an energy that yielded nothing in this line to the efforts of the most famous masters. But Clerambault, absorbed in the newspaper account, scarcely seemed to hear. One of the men standing near, tapped him on the shoulder, and said:

"This ought to be a pleasure to you."

Clerambault started: "Pleasure," he said, "pleasure?"--he took his hat and went out. It was pitch dark in the street outside, all the lights having been out on account of an air-raid. Before his mind there flowered the fine clear-cut face of a boy of sixteen, with its warm pale skin and dark soft eyes, the curling hair, the mobile, smiling mouth, the tone of the sweet voice--Bertin, as he was when they first met at about the same age. Their long evening talks, the tender confidences, the discussions, the dreams ... for in those days Bertin too was a dreamer, and even his common-sense, his precocious irony did not protect him from impossible hopes and generous schemes for the renovation of the human race. How fair the future had appeared to their youthful eyes! And in those moments of ecstatic vision how their hearts had seemed to melt together in loving friendship ...

And now to see what life had made of them both! This rancorous struggle, Bertin's insane determination to trample under foot those early dreams, and the friend who still cherished them;--and he, too, Clerambault, who had let himself be carried away by the same murderous impulse, trying to render blow for blow, to draw blood from his adversary. Could it be that at the first moment, when he heard of the death of his former friend--he was horrified at himself--but did he not feel it as a relief? What is it that possesses us all? What wicked insanity that turns us against our better selves?...

Lost in these thoughts, he had wandered from the road, and now perceived that he was walking in the wrong direction. He could see the long arms of the search-lights stretching across the sky, hear the tremendous explosions of the Zeppelin bombs over the city, and the distant growlings of the forts in the aerial fight. The enraged people tearing each other to pieces! And to what end? That they all might be as Bertin was now, reach the extinction which awaited all men, and all countries. And those rebels who were planning more violence, other sanguinary idols to set up against the old ones, new gods of carnage that man carves for himself, in the vain hope of ennobling his deadly instincts!

Good God! Why do they not see the imbecility of their conduct, in face of the gulf that swallows up each man that dies, all humanity with him? These millions of creatures who have but a moment to live, why do they persist in making it infernal by their atrocious and absurd quarrels about ideas; like wretches who cut each other's throats for a handful of spurious coins thrown to them? We are all victims, under the same sentence, and instead of uniting, we fight among ourselves. Poor fools! On the brow of each man that passes I can see the sweat of agony; efface it by the kiss of peace!

As he thought this, a crowd of people rushed by--men and women, shrieking with joy. "There's one of them down! One gone! The brutes are burning up!"

And the birds of prey, in the air, rejoiced in their turn over every handful of death that they scattered on the town, like gladiators dying in the arena for the pleasure of some invisible Nero.

Alas, my poor fellow-prisoners!