Chapter II: Part 2

You are as familiar with this truth as I am. At the moment when her soil was invaded, Belgium numbered seven million seven hundred thousand inhabitants. It is estimated that between two hundred and fifty and three hundred thousand have perished in battle or massacre, or as the result of misery and privation; and I am not speaking of the infant children, the sacrifice of whom, owing to the dearth of milk, has, it appears, been frightful. Five or six hundred thousand unfortunates have fled to Holland, France or England. There remain therefore in the country nearly seven million inhabitants; and more than half of these seven millions are living almost exclusively on American charity. In what is above all an industrial country, producing normally, in time of peace, less than a third part of the wheat necessary for home consumption, the enemy has systematically requisitioned everything, carried off everything, for the upkeep of his armies, and has sent into Germany what he could not consume on the spot. The result of so monstrous a proceeding may readily be divined: on all that soil, once so happy and so rich, to-day taxed and pillaged and pillaged again, ravaged and devastated by fire and the sword, there is nothing left. And the situation of suffering Belgium is so cruelly paradoxical that her best friends, her dearest allies, even those whom she has saved, are powerless to succour her. Isolated as she is from the rest of the world, she would have starved even though nothing had been taken from her. Now she has been despoiled of all that she possessed, while France and England can send her neither money nor provisions, for they would fall into the hands of those engaged in torturing her, so much so that every attempt on their part to alleviate her sufferings would but retard her deliverance still further. Did history ever witness a more poignant, a more desperate tragedy? It is a fact that in the midst of this war we are constantly finding ourselves confronted with events such as history hitherto has never beheld. A people resembling an enormous beast of prey, in order to punish a loyalty and heroism which, if it retained the slightest notion of justice and injustice, the smallest sense of human dignity and honour, it ought to worship on its knees: this vast predatory race stealthily resolved to exterminate an inoffensive little nation whose soul it felt was too great to be enslaved or reduced to the semblance of its conqueror's. It was on the point of succeeding, amid the silence, the impotence, or the terror of the world, when from beyond the Atlantic a generous nation took that heroic little people under its protection. It understood that what was involved was not merely an act of justice and elementary pity, but also and more particularly a higher duty towards the morality and the eternal conscience of mankind. Thanks to this great nation's intervention, it will not be said, in the days to come, that justice, loyalty, honesty and heroism are no more than dangerous illusions and a fool's bargain, or that evil must necessarily, at all times and places, conquer whenever it is backed by force, or that the only reward which duty magnificently done may hope to receive on this earth is every manner of grief and disaster, ending in death by starvation. So immense and triumphant an example of iniquity would strike the ideals of mankind a blow from which they would not recover for centuries.

3

But already this help is becoming exhausted; it cannot be indefinitely prolonged; and very soon it will be insufficient. It is, moreover, at the mercy of the slightest diplomatic or political complication; and its failure will be irreparable. It will mean utter famine, unexampled extermination, which till the end of the world will cry to heaven for vengeance. It is no longer a question of weeks or months, but one of days. That is where we stand; and these are the last hours granted by destiny to an inactive Europe wherein to expunge the shame of her indifference.

These hours belong almost solely to you, for others have not your power. Whatever may happen, however long you may postpone the issue, one of these days you will be obliged to join in the fray. Everything advises, everything orders you to do so; and I can see nothing on the side of honour, justice or humanity, on the side of the will of the centuries or the human race, nor even on the side of prudence and self-interest, that allows you to avoid it. Is it not better and more worthy of yourselves than all the subtleties, plottings and petty bargainings of diplomacy?

The one hour, the peremptory hour has struck when your aid can break the balance between the powers of good and evil which, for more than two hundred days, have kept the future of Europe hanging over the abyss.

Fate has granted you the magnificent boon, the all but divine privilege, of saving from the most horrible of deaths four or five millions of innocent human beings, four or five millions of martyrs who have performed the finest action that a people could perform and who are perishing because they defended the ideals which your fathers taught them. I know that we are faced by duties which until to-day had never entered into the morality of States; for it is but too true that this morality still lags a thousand miles behind that of the meanest peasant. But, if such a thing has never yet been done, it is all the more glorious to be the first to do it, to make an effort that will raise the life of nations to a level which the life of the individual has long since attained. And no people is better qualified than the Italian to make this effort which the world and the future are awaiting as a deliverance.

But I will say no more. I have been reproached for speaking of matters which, as a foreigner, I ought not to discuss. I believed that these great questions of humanity interested the whole human race. Perhaps I was wrong. I will respect the profound silence in which great actions are developed; and I leave to the meditation of your hearts that which I am constrained to leave unsaid. They will tell you very much better than I could all that I had to say to you.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: Delivered in Rome, before the Associazione della Stampa, 13 March, 1915.]

* * * * *

PRO PATRIA: III

VIII

PRO PATRIA: III[4]

1

Although nothing entitles me to the honour of addressing you in the name of my refugee countrymen, nevertheless it is only fitting, since a kindly insistence brings me here, that I should in the first place give thanks to England for the manner in which she welcomed them in their distress. I am but a voice in the crowd; and, if my words exceed the limits of this hall and lend to him who utters them an authority which he himself does not possess, it is only because they are filled with unbounded gratitude.

In this horrible war, whose stakes are the salvation and the future of mankind, let us first of all salute our wonderful sister, France, who is supporting the heaviest burden and who, for more than eleven months, having broken its first and most formidable onslaught, has been struggling, foot by foot, at closest quarters, without faltering, without remission, with an heroic smile, against the most formidable organization of pillage, massacre and devastation that the world or hell itself has seen since man first learnt the history of the planet on which he lives. We have here a revelation of qualities and virtues surpassing all that we expected from a nation which nevertheless had accustomed us to expect of her all that goes to make the beauty and the glory of humanity. One must reside in France, as I have done for many years, to understand and admire as it deserves the incomparable lesson in courage, abnegation, firmness, determination, coolness, conscious dignity, self-mastery, good-humour, chivalrous generosity and utter charity and self-sacrifice which this great and noble people, which has civilized more than half the globe, is at the present moment teaching the civilized world.

Let us also salute boundless Russia, with her wonderful soldiers, innocent and ingenuous as the saints of old, ignorant of fear as children who do not yet know the meaning of death. Yonder, along a formidable front running from the Baltic to the Black Sea, with silent multitudinous heroism, amid defeats which are but victories delayed, she is beginning the great work of our deliverance, Lastly let us greet Servia, small but prodigious, whom we must one day place on the summit of that monument of glory which Europe will raise to-morrow to the memory of those who have freed her from her chains.

So much for them. They have a right to all our gratitude, to all our admiration. They are doing magnificently all that had to be done. But they occupy a place apart in duty's splendid hierarchy. They are the protagonists of direct, material, tangible, undeniable, inevitable duty. This war is their war. If they would not accept the worst of disgraces, if they were not prepared to suffer servitude, massacre, ruin and famine, they had to undertake it; they could not do otherwise. They were attacked by the born enemy, the irreducible and absolute enemy, of whom they knew enough to understand that they had nothing to expect from him but total and unremitting disaster. It was a question of their continued existence in this world. They had no choice; they had to defend themselves; and any other nation in their place would have done the same, only there are few who would have done it with the same spirit of self-abnegation, the same devotion, the same perseverance, the same loyalty and the same smiling courage.

2

But for us Belgians--and we may say as much for you English--it was not a question of this kind of duty. The horrible drama did not concern us. It demanded only the right to pass us by without touching us; and, far from doing us any harm, it would have flooded us with the unclaimed riches which armies on the march drag in their wake. We Belgians in particular, peaceable, hospitable, inoffensive and almost unarmed, should, by the very treaties which assured our existence, have remained complete strangers to this war. To be sure, we loved France, because we knew her as well as we knew ourselves and because she makes herself beloved by all who know her. But we entertained no hatred of Germany. It is true that, in spite of the virtues which we believed her to possess but which were merely the mask of a spy, our hearts barely responded to her obsequiously treacherous advances. For the German, of all the inhabitants of our planet, has this one and singular peculiarity, that he arouses in us, from the onset, a profound, instinctive, intuitive feeling of antipathy. But, even so and wherever our preferences may have lain, our treaties, our pledged word, the very reason of our existence, all forbade us to take part in the conflict. Then came the incredible ultimatum, the monstrous demand of which you know, which gave us twelve hours to choose between ruin and death or dishonour. As you also know, we did not need twelve hours to make our choice. This choice was no more than a cry of indignation and resolution, spontaneous, fierce and irresistible. We did not stay for a moment to ponder the extenuating circumstances which our weakness might have invoked. We did not for a moment consider the absolution which history would have granted us later, on realizing that a conflict between forces so completely disproportioned was futile, that we must inevitably be crushed, massacred and annihilated and that the sacrifice of a little people in its entirety could prevent nothing, could barely cause delay and would have no weight in the immense balance into which the world's destinies were about to be flung. There was no question of all this; we saw one thing only: our plighted word. For that word we must die; and since then we have been dying. Trace the course of history as far back as you will; question the nations of the earth; then name those who have done or who would have done what we did. How many will you find? I am not judging those whom I pass over in silence, for to do so would be to enter into the secret of men's hearts which I have not the right to violate; but in any case there is one which I can name aloud, without fear of being mistaken; and that is the British nation. This people too entered into the conflict, not through interest or necessity or inherited hatred, but simply for a matter of honour. It has not suffered what we have suffered; it has not risked what we have risked, which is all that we possessed beneath the arch of heaven; but it owes this immunity only to outside circumstances. The principle and the quality of the act are the same. We stand on the same plane, one step higher than the other combatants. While the others are the soldiers of necessity, we are the volunteers of honour; and, without detracting from their merits, this title adds to ours all that a pure and disinterested idea adds to the noblest acts of courage. There is not a doubt but that in our place you would have done precisely what we did. You would have done it with the same simplicity, the same calm and confident ardour, the same good faith. You would have thrown yourselves into the breach as whole-heartedly, with the same scorn of useless phrases and the same stubborn conscientiousness. And the reason why I do not shrink from singing in your presence the praises of what we have done is that these praises also affect yourselves, who would not have hesitated to do the selfsame things.

3

In short, we have both the same conception of honour; and a like idea must needs bear like fruits. In your eyes as in ours, a formal promise, a word once given is the most sacred thing that can pass between man and man. Now far more than the valour of a man--because it rises to much greater heights and extends to much greater distances--the valour of a people depends upon the conception of its honour which that people holds and, above all, upon the sacrifices which it is capable of making for the sake of that honour. We may differ upon all the other ideas that guide the actions of mankind, notably upon the religious idea; but those who do not agree on this one point are unworthy of the name of man. It represents the purest flame, the ever more ardent focus of all human dignity and virtue.

You have sacrificed yourselves wholly to this idea; and, in the name of this idea, which is as vital and as powerful in your souls as in ours, you came to our aid, as we knew that you would come, for we counted on you as surely as you counted on us. You are ready to make the same sacrifices; and already you are proudly supporting the heaviest of sacrifices. Thus, in this stupendous struggle, we are united by bonds even more fraternal than those which bind the other Allies. Our union is more lofty and more generous, for it is based wholly upon the noblest thoughts and feelings that can inspire the heart. And this union, which is marked by a mutual confidence and affection that grow hourly deeper and wider, is helping us both to go even beyond our duty.

For we have gone beyond it; and we are exceeding it daily. We have done and are doing far more than we were bound to do. It was for us Belgians to resist, loyally, vigorously, to the utmost of our strength, as we had promised. But the most sensitive honour would have allowed us to lay down our arms after the immense and heroic effort of the first few days and to trust to the victor's clemency when he recognized that we were beaten. Nothing compelled us to immolate ourselves entirely, to surrender, in succession, as a burnt-offering to our ideals, all that we possessed on earth and to continue the struggle after we were crushed, even in the last torments of starvation, which to-day holds three millions of us in its grip. Nothing compelled us to this course, other than the increasingly lofty ideal of duty held by those who began by putting it into practice and are now living in its fulfilment.

As for you English, you had to come to our assistance, that is to say, to send us the troops which you had ready under arms; but nothing compelled you either, after the first useless engagements, to devote yourselves with unparalleled ardour and self-sacrifice, to hurl into the mortal and stupendous battle the whole of your youth, the fairest upon earth, and all your riches, the most prodigious in this world, nor to conjure up from your soil, by a miracle which was thought impossible, in fewer months than the years that would have seemed needful, the most gallant, determined and tenacious armies that have yet been marshalled in this war. Nothing compelled you, save the spirit of emulation, the same mad love of duty, the same passion for justice, the same idolatry of the given word which, that it may be sure of doing all that it promised, performs far more than it would have dared to promise.

4

Now, during the last few weeks, a new combatant has entered the lists, one who occupies a place quite apart in the sacred hierarchy of duty and honour and in the moral history of this war. I speak of Italy; and I pay her the tribute of homage which is her due and which I well know that you will render with me, for you of all nations are qualified to do so.

Italy had no treaty except with our enemies. Her first act of justice, when confronted with an iniquitous aggression, was to discard this treaty, which was about to draw her into a crime which she had the courage to judge and condemn from the outset, while her former allies were still in the full flush of a might that seemed unshakable. After this verdict, which was worthy of the land where justice first saw the light, she found herself free; she now owed no obligations to any one. There was nothing left to compel her to rush into this carnage, which she could contemplate calmly from the vantage of her delightful cities; and she had only to wait till the twelfth hour to gather its first fruits. There was no longer any compact, any written bond, signed by the hands of kings or peoples, that could involve her destiny. But now, at the spectacle, unforeseen and daily more abominable and disconcerting, of the barbarian invasion, words half-effaced and secret treaties written by unknown hands on the souls and consciences of all men revealed themselves and slowly gathered life and radiance. To some extent I was a witness of these things; and I was able, so to speak, to follow with my eyes the awakening and the irresistible promulgation of those great and mysterious laws of justice, pity and love which are higher and more imperishable than all those which we have engraved in marble or bronze. With the increase of the crimes, the power of these laws increased and extended. We may regard the intervention of Italy in many ways. Like every human action and, above all, like every political action, it is due to a thousand causes, many of which are trifling. Among them we may see the legitimate hatred and the eternal resentment felt towards an hereditary enemy. We may discover an interested intention to take part, without too much risk, in a victory already certain and in its previously allotted spoils. We may see in it anything that we please: the resolves of men contain factors of all kinds; but we must pity those who are able to consider none but the meaner sides of the matter, for these are the only sides which never count and which are always deceptive. To find the real and lasting truth, we must learn to view the great masses and the great feelings of mankind from above. It is in them and in their great and simple movements that the will of the soul and of destiny is asserted, for these two form the eternal substance of a people. And, in the present case, the movement of the great masses and the great feelings of the people took the form of an immense impulse of sympathy and indignation, which gradually increased, penetrating farther and farther into the popular strata and gathering volume as it progressed, until it urged a whole nation to assume the burden of a war which it knew to be crushing and merciless, a war which each of those who called for it knew to be a war which he himself must wage, with his own hands, with his own body, a war which would wrest him from the pleasant ways of peace, from his labours and his comforts, which would weigh terribly upon all those whom he loved, which would expose him for weeks, perhaps for months, to incredible sufferings and which meant almost certain death to a third or a half of those who demanded the right to brave it. And all this, I repeat, occurred without any material necessity, from no other motive than a fine sense of honour and a magnificent surge of admiration and pity for a small foreign nation that was being unjustly martyred. We cannot repeat it too often: here, as in the case of the sacrifice which Belgium and England offered to the ideal of honour, is a new and unprecedented fact in history.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: Delivered in London, at the Queen's Hall, 7 July, 1915.]

* * * * *

BELGIUM'S FLAG DAY

IX

BELGIUM'S FLAG DAY

1

To-day our flag will quiver in every French hand as a symbol of love and gratitude. This day should be a day of hope and glory for all Belgium.

Let us forget for a moment our terrible distress; let us forget our plains and meadows, the fairest and most fertile in Europe, now ravaged to such a degree that the utmost that one can say is powerless to give any idea of a desolation which seems irremediable. Let us forget--if to forget them be possible--the women, the children, the old men, peaceable and innocent, who have been massacred in their thousands, the tale of whom will amaze the world when once the grim barrier is broken behind which so many secret horrors are being committed. Let us forget those who are dying of hunger in our country, a land without harvests and without homes, a land methodically taxed, pillaged and crushed until it is drained of the last drop of its life-blood. Let us forget those remnants of our people who are scattered hither and thither, who have trodden the path of exile, who are living on public charity, which, though it show itself full of brotherhood and affection, is yet so oppressive to those supremely industrious hands, which had never known the grievous burden of alms. Let us forget even those last of our cities to be menaced, the fairest, the proudest, the most beloved of our cities, which constitute the very face of our country and which only a miracle could now save. Let us forget, in a word, the greatest calamity and the most crying injustice of history and think to-day only of our approaching deliverance. It is not too early to hail it. It is already in all our thoughts, as it is in all our hearts. It is already in the air which we breathe, in all the eyes that smile at us, in all the voices that welcome us, in all the hands outstretched to us, waving the laurels which they hold; for what is bringing us deliverance is the wonder, the admiration of the whole world!

2

To-morrow we shall go back to our homes. We shall not mourn though we find them in ruins. They will rise again more beautiful than of old from the ashes and the shards. We shall know days of heroic poverty; but we have learnt that poverty is powerless to sadden souls upheld by a great love and nourished by a noble ideal. We shall return with heads erect, regenerated in a regenerated Europe, rejuvenated by our magnificent misfortune, purified by victory and cleansed of the littleness that obscured the virtues which slumbered within us and of which we are not aware. We shall have lost all the goods that perish but as readily come to live again. And in their place we shall have acquired those riches which shall not again perish within our hearts. Our eyes were closed to many things; now they have opened upon wider horizons. Of old we dared not avert our gaze from our wealth, our petty comforts, our little rooted habits. But now our eyes have been wrested from the soil; now they have achieved the sight of heights that were hitherto unnoticed. We did not know ourselves; we used not to love one another sufficiently; but we have learnt to know ourselves in the amazement of glory and to love one another in the grievous ardour of the most stupendous sacrifice that any people has ever accomplished. We were on the point of forgetting the heroic virtues, the unfettered thoughts, the eternal ideas that lead humanity. To-day, not only do we know that they exist: we have taught the world that they are always triumphant, that nothing is lost while faith is left, while honour is intact, while love continues, while the soul does not surrender and that the most monstrous of powers will never prevail against those ideal forces which are the happiness and the glory of man and the sole reason for his existence.

* * * * *

ON THE DEATH OF A LITTLE SOLDIER

X

ON THE DEATH OF A LITTLE SOLDIER

1

When I speak of this little soldier who fell a few days ago, up there in the Vosges, it is not that I may mourn him publicly. It behoves us in these days to mourn our dead in secret. Personal sorrows no longer count; and we must learn how to suppress them in the presence of that greater sorrow which extends over all the world, the particular sorrow of the mothers who are setting us an example of the most heroic silence that human suffering has been taught to observe since suffering first visited womankind. For the admirable silence of the mothers is one of the great and striking lessons of this war. Amid that tragic and sublime silence no regret dare make itself heard.

But, though my grief remains dumb, my admiration can still raise its voice; and in speaking of this young soldier, who had not reached man's estate and who died as the bravest of men, I speak of all his brothers-in-arms and hail thousands like him in his name, which name becomes a great and glorious symbol; for at this time, when a prodigious wave of unselfishness and courage, surging up from the very depths of the human race, uplifts the men who are fighting and giving their lives for its future, they all resemble one another in the same perfection.

2

My friend Raymond Bon was a sergeant in the 27th battalion of the Chasseurs Alpins. He left for the front in August, 1914, with the other recruits of the 1915 class, which means that he was hardly twenty years of age; and he won his stripes on the battlefield, after being twice named in dispatches. The second time was on returning from a murderous assault at Thann, in Upper Alsace, in which he had greatly distinguished himself. I quote the exact words:

"Corporal Bon is mentioned in the orders of the battalion
for his gallantry under fire and his indifference to danger.
When the leader of his section was killed, Bon took command,
rushed to the front and, shouting to his men to follow him,
gave proofs of the greatest initiative and courage. He was
the first in the enemy's trenches with his section."

That day he was promoted to sergeant and complimented by the general in front of his battalion in the following terms:

"This is the second time, my friend, that I am told what
you have done; next time you shall be told what I have
done."

To-day men tell of his death, but also of the undying glory which death alone confers.

"At Hartmannsviller," writes one of Bon's comrades,
"according to his captain's story, our friend's company was
held in reserve, waiting to support the attack delivered by
a regiment of infantry. The order came to support and
reinforce the attack. The company at once leapt from the
trenches, with the captain and Bon at its head. There was a
salvo of artillery; and the bursting of a great shell caught
Raymond almost full in the body, smashing his right leg and
his chest. The captain was hit in the right hand.
Notwithstanding his horrible wounds, Bon did not lose
consciousness; he was able to stammer out a few words and to
press the hand which the captain gave him. In less than two
minutes all was over."

And the captain adds:

"Always ready to sacrifice himself; a brave among the
brave."

These are modest and yet glorious details: modest because they are so very common, because they are constantly being repeated in their noble monotony and springing up from every side, numberless as the essential actions of our daily life; and glorious because before this war they seemed so rare and almost legendary and incomprehensible.

3

Raymond Bon was a child of the south, of that Provence which, day after day, is shedding torrents of its blood to wipe out slanders which we can no longer remember without turning pale with anger and indignation. He was born at Avignon, the old city of the Popes and the cicadas, where men have louder accents and lighter hearts than elsewhere. He was a little boxing-master, who earned a livelihood at Nice for himself and his destitute parents by giving lessons in the noble art of self-defence with the good, ever-ready weapons which nature has bestowed upon us. He boasted no other education than that which a lad picks up at the primary school; but, almost illiterate as he was, he possessed all the refinement, the innate culture, the unconscious delicacy and tact, the kindliness of speech and feeling and the beautiful heart of that comely race whose foremost sons seem to be purified and spiritualized from their first childish steps by the most radiant sunshine in the world. One would say that they were directly related to those exquisite ephebes of ancient Greece who sprang into existence ready to understand all things and to experience life's purest emotions before they themselves had lived. My reason for insisting upon the point is that, in this respect above all, he represented thousands and thousands of young men from that wonderful region where all the best and most lovable qualities of mankind lie hidden all around beneath the indifferent surface of everyday existence, only awaiting a favourable occasion to blossom into astonishing flowers of grace and generosity and heroism.

4

When I heard that he had gone to the front, I felt a melancholy certainty that I should never set eyes on him again. He was of those whose fate there is no mistaking. He was one of those predestined heroes whose courage marks them out beforehand for death and laurels. I but too well knew his eagerness, his unbounded sincerity and single-mindedness and his great heart: that admirable heart devoid of all caution or ulterior motive or calculation, that heart turned, at all times and with all its might, purely towards honour and duty. He was bound to be in the trenches and in the bayonet-charge the same man that I had so often seen in the ring, taking risks from the start, taking them wholesale, unremittingly, blindly and cheerfully and always ready with his pleasant smile, like that of a shy child, at any time to face whatever giant might have challenged him.

I remember that one day in the year 1914, he was training Georges Carpentier, who was to meet some negro heavy-weight or other. The disproportion in the strength of the two men struck my friends and me as rather alarming; and we took the champion of the world aside and begged him not to hit too hard and to spare our little instructor as much as he could. That good fellow Carpentier, who is full of chivalrous gentleness, promised to do what we asked; but after the first round he came back to us and said:

"I can't let him off just as lightly as I should like. The little chap is too plucky and too sensitive; and I have to hit out in earnest. Besides, he overheard you and what he says is, 'Never mind what the gentlemen say; they are much too considerate and are always afraid of my getting smashed up. There's no fear of that. You go for me hard, else we sha'n't be doing good work.'"

5

"Good work." That is evidently what he did down at the front and what all of them there are doing. It is indeed fine work, the most glorious that a man can perform, to die like that for a cause whose triumph he will not behold, for benefits which he does not reap and which will accrue solely to his fellow-men whom he will never see again. For, apart from those benefits, like so many other men, like almost all the others, he had nothing to gain and nothing to lose by this war. All that he possessed in the world was the strength of his two arms; and that strength finds a country everywhere.

But we are no longer concerned with the personal and immediate interests that guide nearly all the actions of everyday life. A loftier ideal has visited men's minds and occupies them wholly; and the least prepared, the humblest, the minds that seemed to understand hardly anything of the existence that came before the tremendous trial, now feel it and live it as thoroughly and with the same infinite ampleness as do those minds which thought themselves alone capable of grasping it, of considering it from above or contemplating it from every side. Never did a sheer ideal sink so deeply into so many hearts or abide there for so long without wavering or faltering. And therefore, beyond a doubt, somewhere on high, in the heart of the unknown powers that rule us, there is being piled up at this moment the most wonderful treasure of immaterial forces that man has ever possessed, one upon which he will draw until the end of time; for in that superhuman treasure-house nothing is lost and we are still living day by day on the virtues stored in it long centuries ago by the heroes of Greece and Rome, by the saints and martyrs of the primitive Church and by the flower of mediæval chivalry.

* * * * *

THE HOUR OF DESTINY

XI

THE HOUR OF DESTINY

1

We are already free to speak of this war as if it were ended and of victory as if it were assured. In principle, in the region of moral certainties, Germany has been beaten since the battle of the Marne; and reality, which is always slower, because it goes burdened beneath the weight of matter, must needs come obediently to join the ranks of those certainties. The last agony may be prolonged for weeks and months, for the animal is endowed with the stubborn and almost inextinguishable vitality of the beasts of prey; but it is wounded to the death; and we have only to wait patiently, weapon in hand, for the final convulsions that announce the end. The historic event, the greatest beyond doubt since man possessed a history, is therefore accomplished; and, strange to say, it seems as though it had been accomplished in spite of history, against its laws and contrary to its wishes. It is rash, I know, to speak of such things; and it behoves us to be very cautious in these speculations which pass the scope of human understanding; but, when we consider what the annals of this earth of ours have taught us, it seemed written in the book of the world's destinies that Germany was bound to win. It was not only, as we are too ready at the first glance to believe, the megalomania of an autocrat drunk with vanity, the gross vanity of some brainless buffoon; it was not the warlike impulses, the blind infatuation and egoism of a feudal caste; it was not even the impatient and deliberately fanned envy and covetousness of a too prolific race close-cramped on a dreary and ungrateful soil: it was none of these that let loose the hateful war. All these causes, adventitious or fortuitous as they were, only settled the hour of the decision; but the decision itself was taken and written, probably ages ago, in other spheres which cannot be reached by the conscious will of man, spheres in which dark and mighty laws hold sway over illimitable time and space. The whole line, the whole huge curve of history showed to the mind of whosoever tried to read its sacred and fearful hieroglyphics that the day of a new, a formidable and inexorable event was at hand.

The theories built up on this point in the last sixty years by the German professors, notably by Giesbrecht, the historian of the Ottos and the Hohenstaufens, and Treitschke, the historian of the Hohenzollerns, do not necessarily carry conviction but are at least impressive; and the work of these two writers, which we do not know as well as we should, and of Treitschke in particular possessed in Germany an influence that sank deep into every mind, far exceeding that of Nietzsche, which we looked upon as preponderant.

But let us ignore for the moment all that belongs to a remote past, the study of which would call for more space than we have at our disposal. Let us not question the empire of the Ottos, the Hohenstaufens or the Hapsburgs, in which Germany, at least as a nation and a race, played but a secondary part and was still unconscious of her existence. Let us rather see what is happening nearer to us and, so to speak, before our very eyes.

2

A hundred years ago, under Napoleon, France enjoyed her spell of hegemony, which she was not able to prolong because this hegemony was more the work of a prodigious but accidental genius than the fruit of a real and intrinsic power. Next came the turn of England, who to-day possesses the greatest empire that the world has seen since the days of ancient Rome, that is to say, more than a fifth part of the habitable globe. But this vast empire rests no more than did Napoleon's upon an incontestible force, inasmuch as up to this day it was defended only by an army less numerous and less well-equipped than that of many a smaller nation, thus almost inevitably inviting war, as Professor Cramb pointed out a year or two ago in his prophetic book, _Germany and England_, which has only recently aroused the interest which it deserves.

It seemed, therefore, as if between these two Powers, which were more illusory than real, pending the advent of Russia, whose hour had not yet struck; in this gap in history, between a nation on the verge of its decline, or at least seemingly incapable of defending itself, and a nation that was still too young and incapable of attack, fate offered a magnificent place to whoso cared to take it. This is what Germany felt, at first instinctively, urged by all the ill-defined forces that impel mankind, and subsequently, in these latter years, with a consciousness that became ever clearer and more persistent. She grasped the fact that her turn had come to reign over the earth, that she must take her chance and seize the opportunity that comes but once. She prepared to answer the call of fate and, supported by the mysterious aid which it lends to those whom it summons, she did answer, we must admit, in an astonishing and most formidable manner.

She was within a hair's breadth of succeeding. A little less prolonged and less gallant resistance on the part of Belgium, a suspicious movement from Italy, a false step made upon the banks of the Marne; and we can picture Paris falling; France overrun and fighting heroically to her last gasp; Russia, not crushed, but weary of seeking victory and making terms for good or ill with a conqueror impotent to harm her; the neutral nations more or less reluctantly siding with the strongest; England isolated, giving up her colonies to staunch the wounds of her invaded isle; the fasces of justice broken asunder by a separate peace here, a separate peace there, each equally humiliating; and Germany, monstrous, ferocious, implacable, finally towering alone over the ruins of Europe.

3

Now it seems that we have turned aside the inflexible decree. It seems that we have averted the fate that was about to be accomplished. It was bearing down upon us with the weight of the ages, with all the weight of all the vague but irresistible aspirations of the past and, perhaps, the future. Thanks to the greatest effort which mankind has ever opposed to the unknown gods that rule it, we are entitled to believe that the decree has broken down and that we have driven it into the evil cave where never human force before had compelled it to hide its defeat.

I say, "It seems;" I say, "We are entitled to believe." The fact is that the ordeal is not yet past. Even on the day when the war is ended and when victory is in our hands, destiny will not yet be conquered. It has happened--seldom, it is true, but still it has happened twice or thrice--that a nation has compelled the course of fate to turn aside or to fall back. The nation congratulated herself, even as we believe that we have the right to do. But events were not slow in proving that she had congratulated herself too soon. Fatality, that is to say, the enormous mass of causes and effects of which we have no understanding, was not overcome; it was only delayed, it awaited its revenge and its day, or at least what we call its day, which may extend over a hundred years and more where nations are concerned, for fatality does not reckon in the manner of men, but after the fashion of the great movements of nature. It is important at this time to know whether we shall be able to escape that revenge and that day. If men and nations were swayed only by reason, if, after being so often the absolute masters of their happiness and their future, they had not so often destroyed that which they had just achieved, then we might say--and indeed ought to say--that our escape depends only upon ourselves. In point of fact, three-quarters of the risk are run and the fourth is in our power; we have only to keep it so. Almost all the chances of the fight are on our side at last; and, when the war is over, there will be nothing but our wisdom and our will confronting a destiny which from that time onward will be powerless to take its course, unless it first succeed in blinding and perverting them.

In this hour all that lies hidden under that mysterious word will be waiting on our decision, waiting to know if victory is with us or with it. It is after we have won that we must really vanquish; it is in the hour of peace that the actual war will begin against an invisible foe, a hundred times as dangerous as the one of whom we have seen too much. If at that hour we do not profit by all our advantages; if we do not destroy, root and branch, the military power of an enemy who is in secret alliance with the evil influences of the earth; if we do not here and now, by an irrevocable compact, forearm ourselves against our sense of pity and generosity, our weakness, our imprudence, our future rivalries and discords; if we leave a single outlet to the beast at bay; if, through our negligence, we give it a single hope, a single opportunity of coming to the surface and taking breath, then the vigilant fatality which has but one fixed idea will resume its progress and pursue its way, dragging history with it and laughing over its shoulder at man once more tricked and discomfited. Everything that we have done and suffered, the ruins, the sacrifices, the nameless tortures and the numberless dead, will have served no purpose and will be lost beyond redemption. Everything will not have to be done over again, for nothing is ever done over again and fortunate opportunities do not occur twice; but everything except our woes and all their consequences will be as though it had never been.

4

It will therefore be a matter of holding our own against the enemy whom we do not see and mastering him until the turn or chance of the accursed race is past. How long will that be? We cannot tell; but, in the swift-moving history of to-day, it seems probable that the waiting and the struggle will be much shorter than they would have been in former times. Is it possible that fatality--by which I mean what perhaps for a moment was the unacknowledged desire of the planet--shall not regain the upper hand? At the stage which man has reached, I hope and believe so. He had never conquered it before; but also he had not yet risen to the height which he has now attained. There is no reason why that which has never happened should not take place one day; and everything seems to tell us that man is approaching the day whereon, seizing the most glorious opportunity that has ever presented itself since he acquired a consciousness, he will at last learn that he is able, when he pleases, to control his whole fate in this world.

* * * * *

IN ITALY

XII

IN ITALY

1

A few days before Italy formed her great resolve, the following lines appeared in one of the leading Pangermanic organs of the peoples beyond the Rhine, the _Kreuzzeitung_:

"We have already observed that it will not do to be too
optimistic as to Italy's decision; in point of fact, the
situation is very serious. If none but moderate
considerations had ruled Italy's intentions, there is little
doubt as to which path she would choose; but we know the
height which the wave of Germanophobia has attained in that
country, a significant mark of the popular sentiment being
the declaration of the Italian Socialists upon the reasons
of their inability to oppose the war. An equal source of
danger is the fact that the government feels that it no
longer controls the current of public opinion."

The whole drama of Italian intervention is summed up in these lines, which explain it better than would the longest and most learned commentaries.

The Italian government, restrained by a politic wisdom and prudence, excessive, perhaps, but very excusable, did not wish for war. To the utmost limits of patience, until its dignity and its sense of security could bear no more, it did all that could be done to spare its people the greatest calamity that can befall a land. It held out until it was literally submerged and carried away by the flood of Germanophobia of which the passage which I have quoted speaks. I witnessed the rising of this flood. When I arrived in Milan, at the end of November, 1914, to speak a few sentences at a charity-fête organized for the benefit of the Belgian refugees, the hatred of Germany was already storing itself up in men's hearts, but had not as yet come to the surface. Here and there it did break out, but it was still fearful, circumspect and hesitating. One felt it brewing, seething in the depths of men's souls, but it seemed as yet to be feeling its way, to be reckoning itself up, to be painfully attaining self-consciousness. When I returned to Italy in March, 1915, I was amazed to behold the unhoped-for height to which the invading flood had so swiftly risen. That pious hatred, that necessary hatred, which in this case is merely a magnificent passion for justice and humanity, had swept over everything. It had come out into the full sunlight; it thrilled and quivered at the least appeal, proud and happy to assert itself, to manifest itself with the beautiful tumultuous ostentation of the South; and it was the "neutrals" that now hid themselves after the manner of unspeakable insects. That species had all but disappeared, annihilated by the storm that was gathering on every hand. The Germans themselves had gone to earth, no one knew where; and from that moment it was certain that war was imminent and inevitable.

In the space of three months a stupendous work had been accomplished. It is impossible for the moment to weigh and determine the part of each of those who performed it. But we can even now say that in Italy, which is governed preeminently by public opinion and which, more than any other nation, has in its blood the traditions and the habits of the forum and the ancient republics, it is above all the spoken word that changes men's hearts and urges them to action.

2

From this point of view, the admirable campaign of agitation and propaganda undertaken by M. Jules Destrée, author of _En Italie_, was of an importance and possessed consequences which are beyond comparison with anything else accomplished and which are difficult to realize by those who were not present at one or other of the meetings at which, for more than six months, indefatigably, travelling from town to town, from the smallest to the most populous, he uttered the distressful complaint of martyred Belgium, unveiling the lies, the felonies, the monstrosities and the acts of devastation perpetrated by the barbarian horde and making heard, with sovran eloquence, the august voice of outraged justice and of baffled right.

I heard him more than once and was able to judge for myself of the magical effect--the term is by no means too strong--which he produced on the Italian crowd. It was a magnificent spectacle, which I shall never forget. I then perceived for the first time in my life the mysterious, incantatory, supernatural powers of great eloquence.

He would come forward wearing a languid, dejected and overburdened air. The crowd, like all crowds awaiting their master, sat thronged at his feet, silently humming, undecided, unshaped, not yet knowing what it wanted or intended. He would begin; his voice was low, leisurely, almost hesitating; he seemed to be painfully searching for his ideas and expressions, but in reality he was feeling for the sensitive and magnetic points of the huge and unknown being whose soul he wished to reach. At the outset it was evident that he did not know exactly what he was going to say. He swept his words across the assembly as though they had been antennæ. They came back to him charged with sympathy and strength and precise information. Then his delivery became more rapid, his body drew itself erect, his stature and his very size increased. His voice grew fuller; it became tremendous, seductive or sarcastic, overwhelming like a hurricane all the ideas of his audience, beating against the walls of the largest buildings, flowing, through the doors and windows, out into the surging streets, there to kindle the ardour and hatred which already thrilled the hall. His face--tawny, brutal, ravaged, furrowed with shade and slashed with light, powerful and magnificent in its ugliness--became the very mask, the visible symbol of the furious and generous passions of the crowd. At moments such as this, he truly merited the name which I heard those about me murmuring, the name which the Italians gave him in that kind of helpless fear and delight which men feel in the presence of an irresistible force: he was "the Terrible Orator."