Chapter XXI: The Last Appeal

For five years Romain Rolland was at war with the madness of the times. At length the fiery chains were loosened from the racked body of Europe. The war was over, the armistice had been signed. Men were no longer murdering one another; but their evil passions, their hate, continued. Romain Rolland's prophetic insight celebrated a mournful triumph. His distrust of victory, his reiterated warnings that conquerors are merciless, were more than justified by the revengeful reality. "Victory in arms is disastrous to the ideal of an unselfish humanity. Men find it extraordinarily difficult to remain gentle in the hour of triumph." These forecasts were terribly fulfilled. Forgotten were all the fine words anent the victory of freedom and right. The Versailles conference devoted itself to the installation of a new regime of force and to the humiliation of a defeated enemy. What the idealism of simpletons had expected to be the end of all wars, proved, as the true idealists who look beyond men towards ideas had foreseen, the seed of fresh hatred and renewed acts of violence.

Once again, at the eleventh hour, Rolland raised his voice in an address to the man whom sanguine persons then regarded as the last representative of idealism, as the advocate of perfect justice. Woodrow Wilson, when he landed in Europe, was received by the exultant cries of millions. But the historian is aware "that universal history is but a succession of proofs that the conqueror invariably grows arrogant and thus plants the seed of new wars." Rolland felt that there was never greater need for a policy that should be moral, not militarist, that should be constructive, not destructive. The citizen of the world, the man who had endeavored to free the war from the stigma of hate, now tried to perform the same service on behalf of the peace. The European addressed the American in moving terms: "You alone, Monsieur le Président, among all those whose dread duty it now is to guide the policy of the nations, you alone enjoy world-wide moral authority. You inspire universal confidence. Answer the appeal of these passionate hopes! Take the hands which are stretched forth, help them to clasp one another.... Should this mediator fail to appear, the human masses, disarrayed and unbalanced, will almost inevitably break forth into excesses. The common people will welter in bloody chaos, while the parties of traditional order will fly to bloody reaction.... Heir of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, take up the cause, not of a party, not of a single people, but of all! Summon the representatives of the peoples to the Congress of Mankind! Preside over it with the full authority which you hold in virtue of your lofty moral consciousness and in virtue of the great future of America! Speak, speak to all! The world hungers for a voice which will overleap the frontiers of nations and of classes. Be the arbiter of the free peoples! Thus may the future hail you by the name of Reconciler!"

The prophet's voice was drowned by the clamors for revenge. Bismarckism triumphed. Literally fulfilled was the prophecy that the peace would be as inhuman as the war had been. Humanity could find no abiding place among men. When the regeneration of Europe might have been begun, the sinister spirit of conquest continued to prevail. "There are no victors, but only vanquished."