Chapter II: Recruiting (10)

Everything has been said about her material resources. She has money, but her credit is sinking, and it is not apparent where she can borrow. She needs nitrates for her explosives, oil for her motors, bread for her sixty-five millions of inhabitants. For all this she has made provision, but the day will come when her granaries will be empty and her reservoirs dry. How will she fill them? War as she practices it consumes a frightful number of her men, and here, too, all revitalization is impossible; no aid will come from without, since an enterprise launched to impose German domination, German "culture," German products, does not and never will interest those who are not Germans. Such is the situation of Germany confronting a France who keeps her credit intact and her ports open, who procures provisions and ammunition according to her need, who reinforces her army with all that her Allies bring to her, and who can count--since her cause is that of humanity itself--upon the increasingly active sympathy of the civilized world.

But it is not merely a question of material force, of visible force. What of the moral force that cannot be seen and that is more important than the other--which to a certain degree can be supplied--that is essential, since without it nothing avails?

The moral energy of nations, like that of individuals, can only be sustained by some ideal superior to themselves, stronger than they are, to which they can cling with a strong grip when they feel their courage vacillate. Where lies the ideal of contemporary Germany? The time has past when her philosophers proclaimed the inviolability of justice, the eminent dignity of the person, (the individual?), the obligation laid upon nations to respect one another. Germany militarized by Prussia has thrust far from her those noble ideas which came to her formerly for the most part from the France of the eighteenth century and the Revolution. She has made for herself a new soul, or rather, she has docilely accepted that which Bismarck has given her. To that statesman has been attributed the famous phrase: "Might makes right." As a matter of fact Bismarck never said it, because he was unable to distinguish between might and right; in his eyes right was simply that which is desired by the strongest, that which is declared in the law imposed by the victor upon the vanquished. His whole moral philosophy is summed up in that. The Germany of the present knows no other. She also worships brute force. And as she believes herself strongest she is entirely absorbed in adoration of herself. Her energy has its origin in this pride. Her moral force is only the confidence by which her material force inspires her. That is to say, that here also she lives on her reserves, that she has no means of revitalization. Long before England was blockading her coasts she had blockaded herself, morally, by isolating herself from all ideals capable of revivifying her.

Therefore she will see her strength and her courage worn out. But the energy of our soldiers is linked to something which cannot be worn out, to an ideal of justice and liberty. Time has no hold on us. To a force nourished only by its own brutality we oppose one that seeks outside of itself, above itself, a principle of life and of renewal. While the former is little by little exhausted, the latter is constantly revived. The former already is tottering, the latter remains unshaken. Be without fear: the one will be destroyed by the other.

*France Through English Eyes*

With Rene Bazin's Appreciation.

_Referring to the article printed below, which appeared in The
London Times Literary Supplement of Oct. 1, and which the French
Government ordered to be read in all Parisian schools, M. Rene
Bazin writes in l'Echo de Paris:_

Is not this language admirable? What full and flowing phrases. They are like a ship filled with grain sailing into port with her sails full. Preserve them, these fugitive lines written by a neighbor, and read them to your children. They will teach them the greatness of France and the greatness of England.

The whole world recognizes two qualities in the Englishman: his bravery and his common sense. We know that the Englishman is true to his given word, and that even in the antipodes he never changes his habits. As I write, the postman brings me a letter from the front, dated Oct. 17. The cavalryman who sends it tells of our Allies. "We are fighting the enemy's cavalry," he writes, "and for two days my brigade was in action with the British. They know how to fight and they astonish us by their marvelous powers of organization and their coolness."

Yes, we know that of old. We also know that England never closes her doors to liberty. We have a confused memory of the hospitality given to our priests in the times of the Revolution. Now England provides us with fresh proof of her kindness of heart. You have heard the news--the professors and students of the Catholic University of Louvain invited to Cambridge. The destroyed Belgian university reconstituted in the home of the celebrated English university. What a magnificent idea!

I do not know whether the author who has spoken so well of France in the great English newspaper has ever visited this country. But he has surely meditated on our history and has divined the reason of the very existence of France; why she merits love beyond her frontiers, and why she should be defended "like a treasure." England is not made up of traders, soldiers, sailors, politicians, but also--and that is what the French people will learn better every day--of poets, subtle philosophers, and of thoughtful and religious spirits.

In truth, the day which Joan of Arc foresaw has arrived. She did not hate the English. It was only their intolerable rule of the kingdom which was hateful to her. The good maid of Lorraine said that after having driven the English out of France she would reconcile them with the French and lead them together in a crusade. This has become true. Her dream is accomplished. The crusade is not against the Saracens, but it is a crusade all the same.

*France*

*From The London Times Literary Supplement*

Among all the sorrows of this war there is one joy for us in it: that it has made us brothers with the French as no other two nations have ever been brothers before. There has come to us, after ages of conflict, a kind of millennium of friendship; and in that we feel there is a hope for the world that outweighs all our fears, even at the height of the worldwide calamity. There were days and days, during the swift German advance, when we feared that the French armies were no match for the German, that Germany would be conquered on the seas and from her eastern frontier, that after the war France would remain a power only through the support of her Allies. For that fear we must now ask forgiveness; but at least we can plead in excuse that it was unselfish and free from all national vanity. If, in spite of ultimate victory, France had lost her high place among the nations, we should have felt that the victory itself was an irreparable loss for the world. And now we may speak frankly of that fear because, however unfounded it was, it reveals the nature of the friendship between France and England.

That is also revealed in the praise which the French have given to our army. There is no people that can praise as they can: for they enjoy praising others as much as some nations enjoy praising themselves, and they lose all the reserve of egotism in the pleasure of praising well. But in this case they have praised so generously because there was a great kindliness behind their praise, because they, like us, feel that this war means a new brotherhood stronger than all the hatreds it may provoke, a brotherhood not only of war but of the peace that is to come after it. That welcome of English soldiers in the villages of France, with food and wine and flowers, is only a foretaste of what is to be in both countries in a happier time. It is what we have desired in the past of silly wrangles and misunderstandings, and now we know that our desire is fulfilled.

*"That Sweet Enemy."*

For behind all those misunderstandings, and in spite of the difference of character between us, there was always an understanding which showed itself in the courtesies of Fontenoy and a hundred other battles. When Sir Philip Sidney spoke of France as that sweet enemy, he made a phrase for the English feeling of centuries past and centuries to be. We quarrelled bitterly and long; but it was like a man and woman who know that some day their love will be confessed and are angry with each other for the quarrels that delay the confession. We called each other ridiculous, and knew that we were talking nonsense; indeed, as in all quarrels without real hatred, we made charges against each other that were the opposite of the truth. We said that the French were frivolous; and they said that we were gloomy. Now they see the gayety of our soldiers and we see the deep seriousness of all France at this crisis of her fate. She, of all the nations at war, is fighting with the least help from illusion, with the least sense of glory and romance. To her the German invasion is like a pestilence; to defeat it is merely a necessity of her existence; and in defeating it she is showing the courage of doctors and nurses, that courage which is furthest removed from animal instinct and most secure from panic reaction. There is no sign in France now of the passionate hopes of the revolutionary wars; 1870 is between them and her; she has learned, like no other nation in Europe, the great lesson of defeat, which is not to mix material dreams with spiritual; she has passed beyond illusions, yet her spirit is as high as if it were drunk with all the illusions of Germany.

And that is why we admire her as we have never admired a nation before. We ourselves are an old and experienced people, who have, we hope, outlived gaudy and dangerous dreams; but we have not been tested like the French, and we do not know whether we or any other nation could endure the test they have endured. It is not merely that they have survived and kept their strength. It is that they have a kind of strength new to nations, such as we see in beautiful women who have endured great sorrows and outlived all the triumphs and passions of their youth, who smile where once they laughed; and yet they are more beautiful than ever, and seem to live with a purpose that is not only their own, but belongs to the whole of life. So now we feel that France is fighting not merely for her own honor and her own beautiful country, still less for a triumph over an arrogant rival, but for what she means to all the world; and that now she means far more than ever in the past.

*Furia Francese.*

This quarrel, as even the Germans confess, was not made by her. She saw it gathering, and she was as quiet as if she hoped to escape war by submission. The chance of revenge was offered as it had never been offered in forty years; yet she did not stir to grasp it. Her enemy gave every provocation, yet she stayed as still as if she were spiritless; and all the while she was the proudest nation on the earth, so proud that she did not need to threaten or boast. Then came the first failure, and she took it as if she had expected nothing better. She had to make war in a manner wholly contrary to her nature and genius, and she made it as if patience, not fire, were the main strength of her soul. Yet behind the new patience the old fire persisted; and the _Furia Francese_ is only waiting for its chance. The Germans believe they have determined all the conditions of modern war, and, indeed of all modern competition between the nations to suit their own national character. It is their age, they think, an age in which the qualities of the old peoples, England and France, are obsolete. They make war, after their own pattern, and we have only to suffer it as long as we can. But France has learned what she needs from Germany so that she may fight the German idea as well as the German armies; and when the German armies were checked before Paris there was an equal check to the German idea. Then the world, which was holding its breath, knew that the old nations, the old faith and mind and conscience of Europe, were still standing fast and that science had not utterly betrayed them all to the new barbarism. Twice before, at Tours and in the Catalaunian fields, there had been such a fight upon the soil of France, and now for the third time it is the heavy fate and the glory of France to be the guardian nation. That is not an accident, for France is still the chief treasury of all that these conscious barbarians would destroy. They knew that while she stands unbroken there is a spirit in her that will make their Kultur seem unlovely to all the world. They know that in her, as in Athens long ago, thought remains passionate and disinterested and free. Their thought is German and exercised for German ends, like their army; but hers can forget France in the universe, and for that reason her armies and ours will fight for it as if the universe were at stake. Many forms has that thought taken, passing through disguises and errors, mocking at itself, mocking at the holiest things; and yet there has always been the holiness of freedom in it. The French blasphemer has never blasphemed against the idea of truth even when he mistook falsehood for it. In the Terror he said there was no God, because he believed there was none, but he never said that France was God so that he might encourage her to conquer the world. Voltaire was an imp of destruction perhaps, but with what a divine lightning of laughter would he have struck the Teutonic Antichrist, and how the everlasting soul of France would have risen in him if he could have seen her most sacred church, the visible sign of her faith and her genius, ruined by the German guns. Was there ever a stupidity so worthy of his scorn as this attempt to bombard the spirit? For, though the temple is ruined, the faith remains; and whatever war the Germans may make upon the glory of the past, it is the glory of the future that France fights for. Whatever wounds she suffers now she is suffering for all mankind; and now, more than ever before in her history, are those words become true which one poet who loved her gave to her in the Litany of Nations crying to the earth:

I am she that was thy sign and standard bearer,
Thy voice and cry;
She that washed thee with her blood and left thee fairer,
The same am I.
Are not these the hands that raised thee fallen, and fed thee,
These hands defiled?
Am not I thy tongue that spake, thine eye that led thee,
Not I thy child?

*The Soldier of 1914*

*By Rene Doumic.*

_In spite of the great European war, which struck France with the
full force of its horrors, the Institute of France, which includes
the world-famous French Academy, held its regular session on Oct.
26 last. The feature of this session, widely heralded beforehand,
was the address of the celebrated critic, M. Rene Doumic of the
Academy, on "The Soldier of 1914." "Every sentence, every word of
it, was punctuated with acclamations from the audience," says Le
Figaro in its report. Below is a translation of M. Doumic's
address:_

The soldier of 1914. We think only of him. We live only for him, just as we live only through him. I have not chosen this subject; it has forced itself upon me. My only regret is that I come here in academician's costume, with its useless sword, to speak to you about those whose uniforms are torn by bullets, whose rifles are black with powder.

And I am ashamed, above all, of placing so feeble a voice at the service of so great a cause. But what do words matter, when the most brilliant of them would pale before acts of which each day makes us the witnesses? For these acts we have only words, but let us hope that these, coming from the heart, may bring to those who are fighting for their country somewhere near the frontier the spirit of our gratitude and the fervor of our admiration.

Our history is nothing but the history of French valor, so ingenious in adopting new forms and adapting itself each time to the changing conditions of warfare. Soldiers of the King or of the republic, old "grognards" of Napoleon, who always growled yet followed just the same, youngsters who bit their cartridges with childish lips, veterans of fights in Africa, cuirassieurs of Reichshofen, gardes-mobiles of the Loire, all, at the moment of duty and sacrifice, did everything that France expected of her sons.

So, too, for this war, the soldier needed has arisen. After so many heroes he has invented a new form of heroism.

I say the soldier, for the soldier is what one must say. Here begins what is clearly expressed in one phrase only--the French miracle. This national union in which all opinions have become fused is merely a reflection of the unity which has been suddenly created in our army.

*When War Broke Out.*

When war broke out it found military France ready and armed; mere troopers, officers none of whom ever thought that he would one day lead his men under fire, and that admirable General Staff which, never allowing itself to be deflected from its purpose, did its work silent and aloof.

But there was beside this France another France, the France of civilians, accustomed by long years of peace to disbelieve in war; which, in conjuring up a picture of Europe delivered over to fire and blood, could not conceive that any human being in the world would assume the responsibility for such an act before history. War surprised the employe at his desk, the workman in his workshop, the peasant in his field. It snatched them from the intimacy of their hearths, from the amenities of family life which in France is sweeter than elsewhere. These men were obliged to leave behind beings whom they loved tenderly. For the last time they clasped in their arms the beloved partners of their lives, so deeply moved yet so proud, and their children, the eldest of whom have understood and will never forget. And all of them, artist and artisan, priest and teacher, those who dreamed of revenge and those who dreamed of the fraternity of nations, those of every mind, every profession, every age, as they stepped into their places, were endowed with the soul of the soldier of France, every one of them, and became thus the same soldier.

The war which lay in wait for these men, many of whom did not seem made for war, was a war of which nobody had ever seen the like. We have heard tell of wars of giants, of battles of nations, but nobody had ever seen a war extending from the Marne to the Vistula, nor battles with a front of hundreds of kilometers, lasting weeks without respite day or night, fought by millions of men. Never in its worst nightmares had hallucinated imagination conjured up the progress made in the art of mowing down human lives. The German Army, to which the German Nation has never refused anything, either moral support or money, the nerve of war, has been able to profit by all this progress, to reduce to a formula the violence which drives forward the attack, to prepare the spy system which watches over the unarmed foe, to organize even incendiarism, and to become thus, forged by forty-four years of hatred, the most formidable tool of destruction that has ever sown ruin and death.

*German Meets Belgian.*

The Germans arrived, with the irresistible impetus of their masses, with the fury of a tempest, with the roar of thunder, enraged at having been confronted on their road by that little Belgian Nation which has just inscribed its name among the first on the roster of heroism. Already the German chiefs imagined themselves lords of Paris, which they threatened to reduce to ashes--and which did not tremble.

It was to meet this colossus of war that our little soldier marched forth. And he made it fall back.

To this new war he brings his old qualities, the qualities of all time. Courage--let us not speak of that. Can one speak of courage? Just read the short sentences in the army orders.

Corporal Voituret of the Second Dragoons, mortally wounded on a reconnoissance, cries: "Vive la France! I die for her! I die happy!" Private Chabannes of the Eighteenth Chasseurs, unhorsed and wounded, replies to the Major who asks him why he had not surrendered: "We Frenchmen never surrender!" And remember those who, mortally wounded, stick to their posts so as to fight to the end with their men, and those wounded men who have but one desire--every one of us can vouch for this--to return to the firing line! And that one who, hopelessly mutilated, said to me: "It is not being crippled that hurts me; it is that I shall not be able to see the best part of the thing!" These, and the others, the thousands of others, shall we speak of their courage? --what would it mean to speak of their courage?

And the dash of them!--the only criticism to which they lay themselves open is that they are too fiery, that they do not wait the right moment for the charge, in order to drive back the enemy at the point of the bayonet. What spirit! What gayety! All the letters from our soldiers are overflowing with cheerfulness. Where, for instance, does that nickname come from applied by them to the enemy--the "Boches"? It comes from where so many more have come; its author is nobody and everybody; it is the spontaneous product of that Gallic humor which jokes at danger, takes liberities with it.

What pride! What sense of honor! Whereas the German officer, posted behind his men, drives them forward like a flock of sheep, revolver in his hand and insults on his lips, we, on our side, hear nothing but those beautiful, those radiant words: "Forward! For your country!"--the call of the French officer to his children, whom he impels forward by giving them the example, by plunging under fire first, before all of them, at their head.

*The Password: "Smile!"*

And--supreme adornment of all--with what grace they deck their gallantry! A few seconds before being killed by an exploding shell, Col. Doury, ordered to resist to the last gasp, replies: "All right! We will resist. And now, boys, here is the password: Smile!" It is like a flower thrown on the scientific brutality of modern war, that memory of the days when men went to war with lace on their sleeves. There we recognize the French soldier such as we have always known him through fifteen centuries of the history of France.

But now we look upon him in a form of which we did not suspect the existence, the form in which he has just revealed himself to us.

To go forward is all very well; but to fall back in good order, to understand that a retreat may be a masterpiece of strategy, to find in himself that other kind of courage which consists in not getting discouraged, to be able to wait without getting demoralized, to preserve unshaken the certainty of the final outcome--in these things lies a virtue which we did not know we possessed: the virtue of patience. It won us our victory of the Marne. One man is its personification today, that great chief, wise and prudent, who spares his men, who makes up his mind not to give battle except in his own time on his own ground, that chief toward whom at this moment the calm and confident eyes of the entire country are turned.

To carry a position by assault is one thing. But to stand impassive in a rain of shot, amid exploding shells, amid infernal din and blinding smoke; to fire at an invisible enemy, to dispute foot by foot ground covered with traps, to retake the same village ten times, to burrow into the soil and crouch there, to watch day after day for the moment when the beast at bay ventures from his lair--where have we acquired the phlegmatic coolness for such things? Has it come from the proximity of our English allies? It is in the English reports that we read the eulogies of our army for its endurance and tenacity.

We have always known how to pluck the laurels of the brave on fields of battle and to water them with our blood. We Frenchmen, all of us, are lovers of glory. The stories of war which we read in our childhood days--captures of redoubts, fiery charges, furious fights around the flag--made us thrill. And, like the Athenians who left the performance of a tragedy by Aeschylus thirsting to close their books and march on the enemy, we dreamed of combats in which we were to win fame.

But since those days military literature has undergone somewhat of a change, and the communiqués which we devour twice a day, hungry for news, give us no such tales of prowess.

"On the left wing we have progressed. On the right wing we have repulsed violent counter-attacks. On the front the situation remains without change." Where are our men? What troops are meant? What Generals? Nothing is told of such things. The veil of anonymity shrouds great actions, a barrier of impenetrable mystery protects the secret of the operations.

*Great Things Done Simply.*

Our soldiers have endured every hardship, braved every danger, never knowing whether each dawning day was their last, yet the cleverest manoeuvring, the most gallant feats, are obliterated, effaced, lost, in the calculated colorlessness of an enigmatic report. But that sacrifice also have they made. To be at the post assigned to them, to play a great or infinitesimal role in the common work, is the only reward they desire. Can it be that the disease of individualism is a thing of yesterday? The soldier of 1914 has cured us of it. Never have disinterestedness and modesty been pushed so far.

Let us say it in a word: Never have great things been done so simply.

But he knows why he is fighting. It is not for the ambition of a sovereign or the impatience of his heir, for the arrogance of a caste of country squires or the profit of a firm of merchants. No; he fights for the land where he was born and where his dead sleep; he fights to free his invaded country and give her back her lost provinces, for her past, struck to the heart by the shells that bombarded the Cathedral of Rheims; he fights so that his children may have the right to think, speak, and feel in French, so that there may still be in the world a French race, which the world needs. For this war of destruction is aimed at the destruction of our race, and our race has been moved to its depths. It has risen as one man and assembled together; it has called up from its remotest history all its energy, in order to reincarnate them in the person of him whose duty is to defend the race today; it has inspired in him the valor of the knights of old, the endurance of the laborer bending over his furrow, the modesty of the old masters who made of our cathedrals masterpieces of anonymity, the honesty of the bourgeois, the patience of humble folk, the consciousness of duty which mothers teach to their children, all those virtues which, developed from one generation to another, become a tradition, the tradition of an industrious people, made strong by a long past and made to endure. It is these qualities, all of them together, which we admire in the soldier of 1914, the complete and superb type of the entire race.

*A Holy Intoxication.*

When it has such an aim, the noblest of all, war is sublime; all who go into it are as if transfigured. It exalts, expands, and purifies souls. On approaching the battlefield a holy intoxication, a holy happiness, takes possession of those for whom has been reserved the supreme joy of braving death for their country. Death is everywhere, but they do not believe in it any more. And when, on certain mornings, to the sound of cannon that mix their rumblings with mystic voices of bells, in the devastated church which cries to the heavens through every breach opened in its walls, the Chaplain blesses the regiment that he will accompany the next minute to the firing line, every head will be bent at the same time and all will feel on their brows the breath of God.

Alas! the beauty of the struggle does not hide from me its sadness. How many went away, full of youth and hope, to return no more. How many have fallen already without seeing realized what they so ardently desired; sowers they, who to make the land fertile have watered it with their blood, yet will not see the harvest.

But at least their sacrifice will not have been in vain. They have brought reconciliation to their divided country, they have made her become conscious of herself again, they have made her learn enthusiasm once again. They have not seen victory, but they have merited it. Honor to them, struck down first, and glory to those who will avenge them! We enfold them both in our devotion to the same sacred cause.

Would that a new era might dawn, thanks to them, that a new world might be born in which we might breathe more freely, where injustices centuries old might be made good, where France, arising from long humiliation, might resume her rank and destiny. Then, in that cured, vivified France, what an awakening, what a renewal, what a sap, what a magnificent flowering there would be! This will be thy work, soldier of 1914! To you we shall owe this resurrection of our beloved country. And later on, and always, in everything beautiful and good that may be done among us, in the creations of our poets and the discoveries of our savants, in the thousand forms of national activity, in the strength of our young men and the grace of our young women, in all that will be the France of tomorrow, there will be, soldier so brave and so simple in your greatness, a little of your heroic soul!

*Germany's Civilized Barbarism*

*By Emile Boutroux.*

*From the Revue des Deux Mondes.*

I sincerely thank M. Emile Boutroux for the letter he has been good enough to write to me; and the readers of the Revue will join me, for it is addressed to them also. No one could speak of Germany more authoritatively than M. Boutroux; no one, indeed, is better acquainted with the Germany of yesterday and that of today, or better equipped to draw a comparison between them, which for the Prussianized Germany of the present is a verdict and a condemnation. The violence, brutality, barbarism which she displays--a frightful spectacle--doubtless spring from the deepest instincts of race; but man always feels the need of justifying his conduct, and the Germans are too much philosophers not to seek justification for theirs in a scientific system in which these doctrinaires of a new sort are encouraged to persevere without the least scruple or pity. M. Boutroux explains to us the detestable sophism which has perverted the entire German soul and made of a nation which our grandfathers loved and admired, a monster whose implacable egotism weighs heavily on the world. But let M. Boutroux speak.

FRANCIS CHARMES.

* * * * *

PARIS, 28 September, 1914.

To the Director of the Revue des Deux Mondes:

Mr. Director and Dear Colleague: You have done me the honor to ask me, as I have lived in Germany and studied in part German philosophy and literature, whether I was not prepared to submit some observations touching the present war. I confess that at this moment words, and even thoughts, seem to me to amount to little. Like every Frenchman,

I am given up wholly to the task of the hour; all my interest is in our generous and admirable army, and my sole concern is to take part, however modestly, in the work of the nation. True, a thousand memories and reflections crowd my mind; the notion of pausing to express them in writing had not occurred to me, but it would be ungracious in me to decline your kind invitation. Please omit from the ideas I throw on paper whatever seems to you to be lacking in interest.

*Mephistopheles Appears.*

In the presence of such events as are passing before our eyes, how can we keep our minds free? We have to say to ourselves: "See what has come of that philosophic, artistic, scientific development whose grandeur and idealistic character all the world has proclaimed!" "That is what the infernal cur had in his belly," said Faust as he saw the dog which was playing at his side change into Mephistopheles. What! Having declared the morality of Plato and Aristotle inadequate and mediocre, having preached duty for duty's sake, having established the unconditioned supremacy of moral worth, the royalty of the intellect, to end by officially declaring that a signed engagement is but a scrap of paper, and that juridic or moral laws do not count if they incommode us and if we are the strongest! Having given to the world marvelous music, in which the purest and deepest aspirations seem to be heard; having raised art and poetry to a sort of religion, in which man communes with the Eternal by the worship of the ideal; having exalted the universities as the most sublime of human creations, temples of science and of intellectual freedom, to come to bombarding Louvain, Malines, and the Cathedral of Rheims! Having assumed the role of representative par excellence of culture, of civilization in its loftiest form, at the end to aim at the subjugation of the world and to strive toward that aim by the methodical letting loose of brute force, wickedness, and barbarism! To boast of having attained the highest plane of human nature, and to reveal themselves as survivors of the Huns and Vandals!

Only yesterday Germany was feared throughout the world because of her power, but esteemed for her science and her heritage of idealism. Today, on the contrary, there is a common cry of reprobation and horror raised against her from one end of the earth to the other. Fear is overcome by indignation. On every side it is asserted that the victory of German imperialism and militarism would be the triumph of despotism, brutality, and barbarism. These ideas are expressed to us by Americans of the North and South, by Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, Swiss, and Rumanians. The nation which burned the University of Louvain and the Cathedral of Rheims has brought dishonor upon itself.

What shall we think of the prodigious contrast which manifests itself between the high culture of Germany and the end at which she aims, the means which she employs in the present war? Is it enough to explain this contrast, to allege that in spite of all their science the Germans are but slightly civilized, that in the sixteenth century they were still boorish and uncultivated and that their science, an affair of specialists and pundits, has never penetrated their soul or influenced their character?

This explanation is justified. Consider the German professor in the beer garden, in the relations of everyday life, in his amusements. With certain notable exceptions he excels only in discovering and collecting materials for study and in drawing from them, by mechanical operations, solutions that rest wholly upon text and argument and make no appeal whatever to ordinary judgment and good sense. What a disproportion often between his science and his real education. What vulgarity of tastes and sentiments and language. What brutality of methods on the part of this man whose authority is indisputable in his specialty. Take this learned man from his university chair, place him on that scene of war where force can alone reign and where the gross appetites are unchained, it is not surprising that his conduct approaches that of savages.

*A Culture of Violence.*

That is the current judgment and not without reason. The savant and the man, among the Germans, are only too often strangers to each other. The German in war is inhuman not merely because of an explosion of his true nature, gross and violent, but by order. His brutality is calculated and systematized. It justifies the words of La Harpe, "There is such a thing as a scientific barbarity." In 1900 the German Emperor haranguing his soldiers about to set sail for China, exhorted them to leave nothing living in their path and to bear themselves like Huns.

If, then, in this war, in the manner in which they have prepared and provoked it and now conduct it, they violate without scruple the laws of the civilized world, it is not despite their superior culture, it is in consequence of that very culture. They are barbarous because they are more civilized. How can such a combination of contradictory elements, such a synthesis, be possible?

Fichte in the famous discourses to the German Nation which he delivered at the University of Berlin during the Winter of 1807 and 1808, had one object: to arouse the German Nation by kindling its self-consciousness, that is to say, its pure Germanic essence, _Deutschheit_, in order to realize that essence when possible beyond its borders and to make it dominate the world. The general idea which must guide Germany in the accomplishment of this double task is: Germany is to all the rest of the world as good is to evil.

The appeal of Fichte was heard. During the century which followed, Germany in the most precise and practical manner, on the one hand built up the theory of Germanism or _Deutschtum_, on the other hand prepared the domination of Germanism in the world. This notion of Germanism furnishes, if I am not mistaken, the principle of the inference which I wish to indicate, the explanation of the surprising solidarity which Germans have created between culture and barbarism.

It would be interesting to probe this notion and follow its development.

In the first place how can a people come to claim for its ideas, its virtue, its achievements, not only the right to exist and to be respected by other people, but the privilege of being the sole expression of the true and the good while everything which emanates from other peoples represents nothing but error and evil?

The philosopher Fichte after having built up his system under the influence of Kant and of French ideas, notably under the influence of Rousseau--of whom he said "peace to his ashes, for he has done things"--could think of nothing better to reinforce the German soul after Jena than to persuade it that in itself and itself alone there was to be found the sense of the ideal combined with power to realize that ideal in the world.

*The Power to Realize.*

Starting from a certain notion of the absolute he found after Jena that this very notion constituted the foundation of the German genius. Soon this mystic method was merged in a more concrete method better adapted to the positive spirit of modern generations. The one science where all knowledge and ideas which concern human life are concentrated is history. To this science our epoch has devoted a veritable worship. Now the Germans have drawn from history two lessons of the highest importance. One is that history is not only the succession of events, which mark the life of humanity, it is the judgment of God upon the rivalries of peoples. Everything which is wishes to be, and to endure, struggle, and impose itself. History tells us which are the men and the things Providence has elected. The sign of that election is success. To subsist, grow, conquer, dominate is to prove that one is the confidant of the thought of Providence, the dispenser of the power of Providence. If one people appears designated by history to dominate the others then that people is the vicegerent of God upon earth, is God Himself, visible and tangible for His creatures.

The second lesson which German erudition has drawn from the study of history is that the actual existence of a people charged with representing God is not a myth, that such a people exists and that the German people is that people. From the victory of Hermann (Arminius) over Varus in the forest of Teutoburg in the year 9 A.D., the will of God is evident. The Middle Ages show it, and if in modern times Germany has appeared to efface herself it is because she was reposing to collect her force and strike more heavily. When she was not obviously the first, she was so virtually. It was in 1844 that Hoffmann von Fallersleben composed the national song, _Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt_. Germany over all, Germany over all the world, Germany extending from the Meuse to the Niemen, from the Adige to the Belt.

Not only is Germany the elect of Providence but the sole elect, and other nations are rejected. The sign of her election is the annihilation of the three legions of Quinctilius Varus, and her eternal task is to revenge herself for the insolence of the Roman General. "We shall give battle to Hermann and we shall avenge ourselves, "_und wollen Rache haben_." Thus ran the celebrated national song. _Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen liess_.

*Germanism and God.*

German civilization has developed in antagonism with the Greco-Roman civilization. To adopt the former was on the part of God to reject the latter. Therefore German consciousness, realized without hindrance in all its force, is but the Divine consciousness. _Deutschtum_ = God and God = _Deutschtum_. In practice it is enough that an idea is authentically German in order that we may and must conclude that it is true, that it is just, and that it ought to prevail.

What are the essential dogmas of this truth, which is German because it is true and which is true because it is German? German metaphysicians explain that to us more clearly than is usual by thought. The first quality of this truth is that it is in opposition to what classic or Greco-Latin thought would recognize as true. The latter has sought to discover what in man is essentially human, to render man superior to other beings, and to substitute more and more the superior elements for the inferior elements in human life--reason for blind impulse, justice for force, good for wickedness. It has undertaken to create in the world a moral force capable of controlling and humanizing material forces. To this doctrine, which rests upon man as its centre and which was essentially human, German thought opposes itself as the infinite opposes the finite, the absolute the relative, the whole the part. The disciples of the Greeks had at their disposition no light except that of human reason; the German genius possesses a transcendent reason which pierces the mysteries of the absolute, of the Divine. What would light be without the shadow from which it is detached? How could the ego exist if there was not somewhere a non ego to which it is opposed? Evil is not less indispensable than good in the transcendent symphony of the whole.

There is something more. It may be a satisfaction for a Greco-Latin, impelled by his mediocre logic to say that good is good, evil is evil, but these simple formulas are contrary to the truth per se. Good by itself is absolutely impotent to realize itself. It is only an idea, an abstraction. The power and faculty of creation belong to evil alone. So that if good is to be realized it can only be by means of evil, and by means of evil left entirely to itself. God could not exist if He were not created by the devil, and thus, in a sense, evil is good and good is bad. Evil is good because it creates. Good is bad because it is impotent. The supreme and true divine law is just this: That evil left to itself, evil as evil, gives birth to good, which, by itself, would never be able to advance from the ideal to the real. "I am," said Mephistopheles, "part of that force which always wishes evil and always creates the good." Such is the divine order. He who undertakes to do good by good will only do evil. It is only in unchaining the power of evil that one has a chance to realize any good.

From these metaphysical principles questions raised by the idea of civilization receive most remarkable solutions.

*The Essence of Civilization.*

What is civilization in the German and true sense of the word?

Nations in general, especially the Latin nations, put the essence of civilization in the moral element of human life, in the softening of human manners. To those who understand human culture in this way the Germans will apply the words of Ibsen's Brand, "You wish to do great things but you lack energy. You expect success from mildness and goodness." According to the German thought, mildness and goodness are only weakness and impotence. Force alone is strong and force _par excellence_ is science, which puts at our disposal the powers of nature and indefinitely multiplies our strength. Science, then, should be the principal object of our efforts. From science and from the culture of scientific intelligence there will necessarily result, by the effect of Divine grace, the progress of the will and of the conscience which is called moral progress. It is in this sense that Bismarck said, "Imagination and sentiment are to science and intelligence what the tares are to the wheat. The tares threaten to stifle the wheat; that is why they are cut down and burned." True civilization is a virile education, aiming at force and implying force. A civilization which under pretext of humanity and of courtesy enervates and softens man is fit only for women and for slaves.

Is that to say that the notion of right which men invoke against force has in reality no meaning, and that a highly civilized people would disregard it? We must clearly understand the relation which exists between the notion of right and the notion of force. Force is not the right. All existing forces do not have an equal right to exist; mediocre forces in reality have but a feeble share in the Divine force; but in proportion as a force becomes greater it is more noble. A universally victorious and all-powerful force would be identical with Divine force and should, therefore, be obeyed and honored in the same degree. Justice and force, moreover, belong to two different worlds--the natural and the spiritual. The former is the phenomenon and symbol of the latter. We live in a world of symbols; and so preponderant force is for us the visible and practical equivalent of right.

It is, then, puerile to admit the existence of a natural right inherent in individuals or in nations, and manifested in their aspirations, their powers, their sympathies, their wills. The right of peoples should be determined by a purely objective method.

Now in this sense people should be divided into _Naturvölker_, _Halbkulturvölker_, and _Kulturvölker_--people in the state of nature, half-cultivated people, and cultivated people. This is not all. There are people who are simply cultivated--_Naturvölker_--and people who are wholly cultivated--_Vollkulturvölker_. Now the degree of right depends on the degree of culture. As compared with the _Kulturvölker_ the _Naturvölker_ have no rights. They have only duties--submission, docility, obedience. And if there exists a people which deserves more than all others the title of _Vollkulturvölker_--completely cultured people--to this people the earth belongs and the supremacy thereof. Its mission is to bend all other peoples beneath the yoke of its omnipotence co-ordinated with its supreme culture.

*The Master Nation.*

Such is the idea of the master nation. This nation must not be simply an abstract type, it must necessarily be able to realize itself in our world. In effect the spirit is the supreme form of being; it necessarily wishes to be; and as it is infinite, it can be realized only by means of an infinite force. A nation capable of imposing its will upon everybody is the necessary instrument of the Divine will which can grant the prayer: "Our Father, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven."

As a master nation is necessary in the world there must be subordinate nations. There can be no efficient "yes" without a decided "no." The ego, says Fichte, is effort. Therefore it presupposes something that resists it, namely, that which we call matter. The master nation commands. Therefore nations must exist who are made to obey it. It is needful even that these nations, which are to the master nation what the non ego is to the ego, should resist the action of this superior nation. For this resistance is necessary to enable the latter to develop and employ its force and to become fully itself; that is, to become the whole, enriching itself by the spoils of its enemies.

The ideal nation is thus defined by a transcendental deduction, and this same deduction leads us to affirm that the master nation must be not merely an idea but a reality. Now, it is plain that this realization of the ideal nation is going on under our eyes in the German Nation, which represents the highest created race and which surpasses all other nations in science and in power. It is to her, and to her alone, that the task of accomplishing the will of God upon earth is consigned.

*Means of Success.*

To succeed in it, what means must she employ?

In the first place she must acquire complete consciousness of her superiority and of her own genius. Nothing German is found in the same degree of excellence in other nations. German women, German fidelity, German wine, the German song, hold the first rank in the world. To combat Satan, that is to say, enemies of Germany, the Germans have at their service the ancient god, the German god, _der alte, der deutsche Gott_, who identifies His cause with theirs. And as everything which is German is by that very fact unique and inimitable, so it is correspondingly true that everything which the world has of excellence belongs to Germany in fact and in right. Rembrandt, Shakespeare, Ibsen, are Germans. A German brain alone could understand them and has a right to admire them. It is doubtful if even Joan of Arc, that sublime heroine, is French. German savants have maintained her German nationality. If the people of Alsace and Lorraine are faithful to France that only proves that they ought to be German subjects, because fidelity is a German virtue.

As Germany possesses, in principle, all the virtues, all the perfections, she suffices to herself and can learn nothing from other people. By still stronger reason she owes them no duty of respect or good-will. What is called humanity has no meaning for the German. The _mot_ of William II., "Humanity for me stops at the Vosges," is not merely an instance of national egoism. The German Emperor feels that what is for the present beyond his empire can only acquire value when it shall be annexed to it.

How, then, ought Germany to behave to other nations?

There are people who wish to be loved, who believe that among nations as between individuals, courtesy may have a place and that it would be an advance for humanity to admit that justice and equity may rule international relations. But Germany, as regards other nations, makes no account of justice. She has nothing but scorn for that feminine sentiment which particularly characterizes the Latin races. The sentiment of justice and humanity is weakness and Germany is and ought to be force. _Wo Preussens Macht in Frage kommt, kenne ich kein Gesetz,_ said Bismarck--"When the power of Prussia is in question I know no law."

*Enemies Most Welcome.*