Romain Rolland Part 14

CHAPTER VI

THE CONTROVERSY WITH GERHART HAUPTMANN

Romain Rolland had never been personally acquainted with Gerhart Hauptmann. He was familiar with the German's writings, and admired their pa.s.sionate partic.i.p.ation in all that is human, loved them for the goodness with which the individual figures are intentionally characterized. On a visit to Berlin, he had called at Hauptmann's house, but the playwright was away. The two had never before exchanged letters.

Nevertheless, Rolland decided to address Hauptmann as a representative German author, as writer of _Die Weber_ and as creator of many other figures typifying suffering. He wrote on August 29, 1914, the day on which a telegram issued by Wolff's agency, ludicrously exaggerating in pursuit of the policy of "frightfulness," had announced that "the old town of Louvain, rich in works of art, exists no more to-day." An outburst of indignation was a.s.suredly justified, but Rolland endeavored to exhibit the utmost self-control. He began as follows: "I am not, Gerhart Hauptmann, one of those Frenchmen who regard Germany as a nation of barbarians. I know the intellectual and moral greatness of your mighty race. I know all that I owe to the thinkers of Old Germany; and even now, at this hour, I recall the example and the words of _our_ Goethe--for he belongs to the whole of humanity--repudiating all national hatreds and preserving the calmness of his soul on those heights 'where we feel the happiness and the misfortunes of other peoples as our own.'" He goes on with a pathetic self-consciousness for the first time noticeable in the work of this most modest of writers.

Recognizing his mission, he lifts his voice above the controversies of the moment. "I have labored all my life to bring together the minds of our two nations; and the atrocities of this impious war in which, to the ruin of European civilization, they are involved, will never lead me to soil my spirit with hatred."

Now Rolland sounds a more impa.s.sioned note. He does not hold Germany responsible for the war. "War springs from the weakness and stupidity of nations." He ignores political questions, but protests vehemently against the destruction of works of art, asking Hauptmann and his countrymen, "Are you the grandchildren of Goethe or of Attila?"

Proceeding more quietly, he implores Hauptmann to refrain from any attempt to justify such things. "In the name of our Europe, of which you have hitherto been one of the most ill.u.s.trious champions, in the name of that civilization for which the greatest of men have striven all down the ages, in the name of the very honor of your Germanic race, Gerhart Hauptmann, I adjure you, I challenge you, you and the intellectuals of Germany, among whom I reckon so many friends, to protest with the utmost energy against this crime which will otherwise recoil upon yourselves." Rolland's hope was that the Germans would, like himself, refuse to condone the excesses of the war-makers, would refuse to accept the war as a fatality. He hoped for a public protest from across the Rhine. Rolland was not aware that at this time no one in Germany had or could have any inkling of the true political situation. He was not aware that such a public protest as he desired was quite impossible.

Gerhart Hauptmann's answer struck a fiercer note than Rolland's letter.

Instead of complying with the Frenchman's plea, instead of repudiating the German militarist policy of frightfulness, he attempted, with sinister enthusiasm, to justify that policy. Accepting the maxim, "war is war," he, somewhat prematurely, defended the right of the stronger.

"The weak naturally have recourse to vituperation." He declared the report of the destruction of Louvain to be false. It was, he said, a matter of life or death for Germany that the German troops should effect "their peaceful pa.s.sage" through Belgium. He referred to the p.r.o.nouncements of the general staff, and quoted, as the highest authority for truth, the words of "the Emperor himself."

Therewith the controversy pa.s.sed from the spiritual to the political plane. Rolland, embittered in his turn, rejected the views of Hauptmann, who was lending his moral authority to the support of Schlieffen's aggressive theories. Hauptmann, declared Rolland, was "accepting responsibility for the crimes of those who wield authority." Instead of promoting harmony, the correspondence was fostering discord. In reality the two had no common ground for discussion. The attempt was ill-timed, pa.s.sion still ran too high; the mists of prevalent falsehood still obscured vision on both sides. The waters of the flood continued to rise, the infinite deluge of hatred and error. Brethren were as yet unable to recognize one another in the darkness.

CHAPTER VII

THE CORRESPONDENCE WITH VERHAEREN

Having written to Gerhart Hauptmann, the German, Rolland almost simultaneously addressed himself to Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian, who had been an enthusiast for European unity, but had now become one of Germany's bitterest foes. Perhaps no one is better ent.i.tled than the present writer to bear witness that Verhaeren's hostility to Germany was a new thing. As long as peace lasted, the Belgian poet had known no other ideal than that of international brotherhood, had detested nothing more heartily than he detested international discord. Shortly before the war, in his preface to Henri Guilbeaux's anthology of German poetry, Verhaeren had spoken of "the ardor of the nations," which, he said, "in defiance of that other pa.s.sion which tends to make them quarrel, inclines them towards mutual love." The German invasion of Belgium taught him to hate. His verses, which had hitherto been odes to creative force, were henceforward dithyrambs in favor of hostility.

Rolland had sent Verhaeren a copy of his protest against the destruction of Louvain and the bombardment of Rheims cathedral. Concurring in this protest, Verhaeren wrote: "Sadness and hatred overpower me. The latter feeling is new in my experience. I cannot rid myself of it, although I am one of those who have always regarded hatred as a base sentiment.

Such love as I can give in this hour is reserved for my country, or rather for the heap of ashes to which Belgium has been reduced."

Rolland's answer ran as follows: "Rid yourself of hatred. Neither you nor we should give way to it. Let us guard against hatred even more than we guard against our enemies! You will see at a later date that the tragedy is more terrible than people can realize while it is actually being played.... So stupendous is this European drama that we have no right to make human beings responsible for it. It is a convulsion of nature.... Let us build an ark as did those who were threatened with the deluge. Thus we can save what is left of humanity." Without acrimony, Verhaeren rejected this adjuration. He deliberately chose to remain inspired with hatred, little as he liked the feeling. In _La Belgique sanglante_, he declared that hatred brought a certain solace, although, dedicating his work "to the man I once was," he manifested his yearning for the revival of his former sentiment that the world was a comprehensive whole. Vainly did Rolland return to the charge in a touching letter: "Greatly, indeed, must you have suffered, to be able to hate. But I am confident that in your case such a feeling cannot long endure, for souls like yours would perish in this atmosphere. Justice must be done, but it is not a demand of justice that a whole people should be held responsible for the crimes of a few hundred individuals.

Were there but one just man in Israel, you would have no right to pa.s.s judgment upon all Israel. Surely it is impossible for you to doubt that many in Germany and Austria, oppressed and gagged, continue to suffer and struggle.... Thousands of innocent persons are being everywhere sacrificed to the crimes of politics! Napoleon was not far wrong when he said: 'Politics are for us what fate was for the ancients.' Never was the destiny of cla.s.sical days more cruel. Let us refuse, Verhaeren, to make common cause with this destiny. Let us take our stand beside the oppressed, beside all the oppressed, wherever they may dwell. I recognize only two nations on earth, that of those who suffer, and that of those who cause the suffering."

Verhaeren, however, was unmoved. He answered as follows: "If I hate, it is because what I saw, felt, and heard, is hateful.... I admit that I cannot be just, now that I am filled with sadness and burn with anger. I am not simply standing near the fire, but am actually amid the flames, so that I suffer and weep. I can no otherwise." He remained loyal to hatred, and indeed loyal to the hatred-for-hate of Romain Rolland's Olivier. Notwithstanding this grave divergence of view between Verhaeren and Rolland, the two men continued on terms of friends.h.i.+p and mutual respect. Even in the preface he contributed to Loyson's inflammatory book, _etes-vous neutre devant le crime_, Verhaeren distinguished between the person and the cause. He was unable, he said, "to espouse Rolland's error," but he would not repudiate his friends.h.i.+p for Rolland. Indeed, he desired to emphasize its existence, seeing that in France it was already "dangerous to love Romain Rolland."

In this correspondence, as in that with Hauptmann, two strong pa.s.sions seemed to clash; but the opponents in reality remained out of touch.

Here, likewise, the appeal was fruitless. Practically the whole world was given over to hatred, including even the n.o.blest creative artists, and the finest among the sons of men.

CHAPTER VIII

THE EUROPEAN CONSCIENCE

As on so many previous occasions in his life of action, this man of inviolable faith had issued to the world an appeal for fellows.h.i.+p, and had issued it once more in vain. The writers, the men of science, the philosophers, the artists, all took the side of the country to which they happened to belong; the Germans spoke for Germany, the Frenchmen for France, the Englishmen for England. No one would espouse the universal cause; no one would rise superior to the device, my country right or wrong. In every land, among those of every nation, there were to be found plenty of enthusiastic advocates, persons willing blindly to justify all their country's doings, including its errors and its crimes, to excuse these errors and crimes upon the plea of necessity. There was only one land, the land common to them all, Europe, motherland of all the fatherlands, which found no advocate, no defender. There was only one idea, the most self-evident to a Christian world, which found no spokesman--the idea of ideas, humanity.

During these days, Rolland may well have recalled sacred memories of the time when Leo Tolstoi's letter came to give him a mission in life.

Tolstoi had stood alone in the utterance of his celebrated outcry, "I can no longer keep silence." At that time his country was at war. He arose to defend the invisible rights of human beings, uttering a protest against the command that men should murder their brothers. Now his voice was no longer heard; his place was empty; the conscience of mankind was dumb. To Rolland, the consequent silence, the terrible silence of the free spirit amid the hurly-burly of the slaves, seemed more hateful than the roar of the cannon. Those to whom he had appealed for help had refused to answer the call. The ultimate truth, the truth of conscience, had no organized fellows.h.i.+p to sustain it. No one would aid him in the struggle for the freedom of the European soul, the struggle of truth against falsehood, the struggle of human lovingkindness against frenzied hate. Rolland once again was alone with his faith, more alone than during the bitterest years of solitude.

But Rolland has never been one to resign himself to loneliness. In youth he had already felt that those who are pa.s.sive while wrong is being done are as criminal as the very wrongdoer. "Ceux qui subissent le mal sont aussi criminels que ceux qui le font." Upon the poet, above all, it seemed to him inc.u.mbent to find words for thought, and to vivify the words by action. It is not enough to write ornamental comments upon the history of one's time. The poet must be part of the very being of his time, must fight to make his ideas realize themselves in action. "The elite of the intellect const.i.tutes an aristocracy which would fain replace the aristocracy of birth. But the aristocracy of intellect is apt to forget that the aristocracy of birth won its privileges with blood. For hundreds of years men have listened to the words of wisdom, but seldom have they seen a sage offering himself up to the sacrifice.

If we would inspire others with faith we must show that our own faith is real. Mere words do not suffice." Fame is a sword as well as a laurel crown. Faith imposes obligations. One who had made Jean Christophe utter the gospel of a free conscience, could not, when the world had fas.h.i.+oned his cross, play the part of Peter denying the Lord. He must take up his apostolate, be ready should need arise to face martyrdom. Thus, while almost all the artists of the day, in their "pa.s.sion d'abdiquer," in their mad desire to shout with the crowd, were not merely extolling force and victory as the masters of the hour, but were actually maintaining that force was the very meaning of civilization, that victory was the vital energy of the world, Rolland stood forth against them all, proclaiming the might of the incorruptible conscience. "Force is always hateful to me," wrote Rolland to Jouve in this decisive hour.

"If the world cannot get on without force, it still behooves me to refrain from making terms with force. I must uphold an opposing principle, one which will invalidate the principle of force. Each must play his own part; each must obey his own inward monitor." He did not fail to recognize the t.i.tanic nature of the struggle into which he was entering, but the words he had written in youth still resounded in his memory. "Our first duty is to be great, and to defend greatness on earth."

Just as in those earlier days, when he had wished by means of his dramas to restore faith to his nation, when he had set up the images of the heroes as examples to a petty time, when throughout a decade of quiet effort he had summoned the people towards love and freedom, so now, Rolland set to work alone. He had no party, no newspaper, no influence.

He had nothing but his pa.s.sionate enthusiasm, and that indomitable courage to which the forlorn hope makes an irresistible appeal. Alone he began his onslaught upon the illusions of the mult.i.tude, when the European conscience, hunted with scorn and hatred from all countries and all hearts, had taken sanctuary in his heart.

CHAPTER IX

THE MANIFESTOES

The struggle had to be waged by means of newspaper articles. Since Rolland was attacking prevalent falsehoods, and their public expression in the form of lying phrases, he had perforce to fight them upon their own ground. But the vigor of his ideas, the breath of freedom they conveyed, and the authority of the author's name, made of these articles, manifestoes which spoke to the whole of Europe and aroused a spiritual conflagration. Like electric sparks given off from invisible wires, their energy was liberated in all directions, leading here to terrible explosions of hatred, throwing there a brilliant light into the depths of conscience, in every case producing cordial excitement in its contrasted forms of indignation and enthusiasm. Never before, perhaps, did newspaper articles exercise so stupendous an influence, at once inflammatory and purifying, as was exercised by these two dozen appeals and manifestoes issued in a time of enslavement and confusion by a lonely man whose spirit was free and whose intellect remained unclouded.

From the artistic point of view the essays naturally suffer by comparison with Rolland's other writings, carefully considered and fully elaborated. Addressed to the widest possible public, but simultaneously hampered by consideration for the censors.h.i.+p (seeing that to Rolland it was all important that the articles published in the "_Journal de Geneve_" should be reproduced in the French press), the ideas had to be presented with meticulous care and yet at the same time to be hastily produced. We find in these writings marvelous and ever-memorable cries of suffering, sublime pa.s.sages of indignation and appeal. But they are a discharge of pa.s.sion, so that their stylistic merits vary much. Often, too, they relate to casual incidents. Their essential value lies in their ethical bearing, and here they are of incomparable merit. In relation to Rolland's previous work we find that they display, as it were, a new rhythm. They are characterized by the emotion of one who is aware that he is addressing an audience of many millions. The author was no longer speaking as an isolated individual.

For the first time he felt himself to be the public advocate of the invisible Europe.

Will those of a later generation, to whom the essays have been made available in the volumes _Au-dessus de la melee_ and _Les precurseurs_, be able to understand what they signified to the contemporary world at the time of their publication in the newspapers? The magnitude of a force cannot be measured without taking the resistance into account; the significance of an action cannot be understood without reckoning up the sacrifices it has entailed. To understand the ethical import, the heroic character, of these manifestoes, we must recall to mind the frenzy of the opening year of the war, the spiritual infection which was devastating Europe, turning the whole continent into a madhouse. It has already become difficult to realize the mental state of those days. We have to remember that maxims which now seem commonplace, as for instance the contention that we must not hold all the individuals of a nation responsible for the outbreak of a war, were then positively criminal, that to utter them was a punishable offense. We must remember that _Au-dessus de la melee_, whose trend already seems to us a matter of course, was officially denounced, that its author was ostracised, and that for a considerable period the circulation of the essays was forbidden in France, while numerous pamphlets attacking them secured wide circulation. In connection with these articles we must always evoke the atmospheric environment, must remember the silence of their appeal amid a vastly spiritual silence. To-day, readers are apt to think that Rolland merely uttered self-evident truths, so that we recall Schopenhauer's memorable saying: "On earth, truth is allotted no more than a brief triumph between two long epochs, in one of which it is scouted as paradoxical, while in the other it is despised as commonplace." To-day, for the moment at any rate, we may have entered into a period, when many of Rolland's utterances are accounted commonplace because, since he wrote, they have become the small change of thousands of other writers. Yet there was a day when each of these words seemed to cut like a whip-lash. The excitement they aroused gives us the historic measure of the need that they should be spoken. The wrath of Rolland's opponents, of which the only remaining record is a pile of pamphlets, bears witness to the heroism of him who was the first to take his stand "above the battle." Let us not forget that it was then the crime of crimes, "de dire ce qui est juste et humain." Men were still so drunken with the fumes of the first bloodshed that they would have been fain, as Rolland himself has phrased it, "to crucify Christ once again should he have risen; to crucify him for saying, Love one another."

CHAPTER X

ABOVE THE BATTLE

On September 22, 1914, the essay _Au-dessus de la melee_ was published in "_Le Journal de Geneve_." After the preliminary skirmish with Gerhart Hauptmann, came this declaration of war against hatred, this foundation stone of the invisible European church. The t.i.tle, "Above the Battle,"

has become at once a watchword and a term of abuse; but amid the discordant quarrels of the factions, the essay was the first utterance to sound a clear note of imperturbable justice, bringing solace to thousands.

It is animated by a strange and tragical emotion, resonant of the hour when countless myriads were bleeding and dying, and among them many of Rolland's intimate friends. It is the outpouring of a riven heart, the heart of one who would fain move others, breathing as it does the heroic determination to try conclusions with a world that has fallen a prey to madness. It opens with an ode to the youthful fighters. "O young men that shed your blood for the thirsty earth with so generous a joy! O heroism of the world! What a harvest for destruction to reap under this splendid summer sun! Young men of all nations, brought into conflict by a common ideal, ... all of you, marching to your deaths, are dear to me.... Those years of skepticism and gay frivolity in which we in France grew up are avenged in you.... Conquerors or conquered, quick or dead, rejoice!" But after this ode to the faithful, to those who believe themselves to be discharging their highest duty, Rolland turns to consider the intellectual leaders of the nations, and apostrophises them thus: "For what are you squandering them, these living riches, these treasures of heroism entrusted to your hands? What ideal have you held up to the devotion of these youths so eager to sacrifice themselves?

Mutual slaughter! A European war!" He accuses the leaders of taking cowardly refuge behind an idol they term fate. Those who understood their responsibilities so ill that they failed to prevent the war, inflame and poison it now that it has begun. A terrible picture. In all countries, everything becomes involved in the torrent; among all peoples, there is the same ecstasy for that which is destroying them.

"For it is not racial pa.s.sion alone which is hurling millions of men blindly one against another.... All the forces of the spirit, of reason, of faith, of poetry, and of science, all have placed themselves at the disposal of the armies in every state. There is not one among the leaders of thought in each country who does not proclaim that the cause of his people is the cause of G.o.d, the cause of liberty and of human progress." He mockingly alludes to the preposterous duels between philosophers and men of science; and to the failure of what professed to be the two great internationalist forces of the age, Christianity and socialism, to stand aloof from the fray. "It would seem, then, that love of our country can flourish only through the hatred of other countries and the ma.s.sacre of those who sacrifice themselves in defense of them. There is in this theory a ferocious absurdity, a Neronian dilettantism, which revolts me to the very depths of my being. No! Love of my country does not demand that I should hate and slay those n.o.ble and faithful souls who also love theirs, but rather that I should honor them and seek to unite with them for our common good." After some further discussion of the att.i.tude of Christians and of socialists towards the war, he continues: "There was no reason for war between the western nations; French, English, and German, we are all brothers and do not hate one another. The war-preaching press is envenomed by a minority, a minority vitally interested in the diffusion of hatred; but our peoples, I know, ask for peace and liberty, and for that alone." It was a scandal, therefore, that at the outbreak of the war the intellectual leaders should have allowed the purity of their thought to be besmirched. It was monstrous that intelligence should permit itself to be enslaved by the pa.s.sions of a puerile and absurd policy of race.

Never should we forget, in the war now being waged, the essential unity of all our fatherlands. "Humanity is a symphony of great collective souls. He who cannot understand it and love it until he has destroyed a part of its elements, is a barbarian.... For the finer spirits of Europe, there are two dwelling places: our earthly fatherland, and the City of G.o.d. Of the one we are the guests, of the other the builders....

It is our duty to build the walls of this city ever higher and stronger, that it may dominate the injustice and the hatred of the nations. Then shall we have a refuge wherein the brotherly and free spirits from out all the world may a.s.semble." This faith in a lofty ideal soars like a sea-mew over the ocean of blood. Rolland is well aware how little hope there is that his words can make themselves audible above the clamor of thirty million warriors. "I know that such thoughts have little chance of being heard to-day. I do not speak to convince. I speak only to solace my conscience. And I know that at the same time I shall solace the hearts of thousands of others who, in all lands, cannot and dare not speak for themselves." As ever, he is on the side of the weak, on the side of the minority. His voice grows stronger, for he knows that he is speaking for the silent mult.i.tude.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Romain Rolland at the time of writing _Above the Battle_]

CHAPTER XI

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST HATRED