The Forerunners Part 21

[28] Since the article above quoted was published, the American Senate has imposed heavy taxation on war profits.

[29] E. D. Morel, having served his sentence, has given a number of lectures in various parts of Britain, arousing the sympathetic indignation of his audiences by his account of the illegalities in his trial and of the undercurrents in the whole business. He was able to show that there were influences at work emanating from certain persons whose interests had been injuriously affected prior to the war by Morel's press campaign against the Congo atrocities.--Cf. _The Persecution of E. D. Morel_, Reformer's Series, Glasgow, 1919.

[30] The allusion is to Victor Hugo's _Les Burgraves_. Burgrave Job is eighty years of age; Burgrave Magnus, his son, is sixty.--Translators'

Note.

[31] The section of Bellinzona, or of Ticino, was founded quite recently, in November, 1916. At the inaugural ceremony, the president, Julius Schmidhauser, delivered a speech in which he sounded an excellent European note. He contrasted the union of the three races of Switzerland with the spectacle of contemporary Europe still living in the prehistoric age, a Europe "wherein the Frenchman can see in the German nothing but an enemy, wherein the German can see in the Frenchman nothing but an enemy, and wherein neither can regard the other as a human being. For our part, we have a way in Switzerland of discovering the human element in all mankind."--"Centralblatt des Zofingervereins,"

December, 1916.

[32] The text was written in the summer of 1917. Shortly afterwards, fresh dissensions arose in the Zofingia. These discords have been accentuated by the Russian revolution.

[33] The program of the new committee (Der Centralausschuss an die Sektionen), published in the "Centralblatt" for October, 1916, was reproduced, in part, in the "Journal de Geneve" for October 19th, under the caption Le programme de la Jeunesse. This program affirms the "supernationalist" and anti-imperialist faith on the lines expounded in the discussion of which a summary will shortly be given in the text. I quote from the program: "We do not live upon the wors.h.i.+p of our warlike past.... Placed as we are in the centre of a system of great imperialist powers which aim at domination through force, at material greatness, and at glory, it is our task to fight openly, boldly, trusting in the future, against imperialism and on behalf of the ideal of humanity."

A keen interest in social questions, solidarity with the common people, with the disinherited of the earth, are likewise plainly manifested.

[34] None the less I am impressed by the bold and perspicuous idealism displayed by some of these young Latin Swiss in the discussions summarised in the sequel.

[35] Serment du Jeu de Paume, Versailles, June 20, 1789.--Translators'

Note.

[36] Le Feu, Journal d'une Escouade, par Henri Barbusse, Flammarion, Paris, 1916. English translation, Under Fire, The Story of a Squad, Dent, London, 1917.

[37] Words of Farewell (issue of May, 1917).

[38] Among these I may mention my article, To the Murdered Nations (Chapter III, above) from which the censors.h.i.+p deleted one hundred lines. The gaps were filled by Wullens with Belot's fine engravings (issue of May, 1917).

[39] Notwithstanding the sentence pa.s.sed upon Guilbeaux since the pa.s.sage in the text was written, my confidence in him is unshaken. I differ from him in many respects, but I admire his courage. To those who have known Guilbeaux intimately, his good faith is above suspicion.--R.

R., August, 1919.

[40] G. Thuriot-Franchi, Les Marches de France.

[41] Andreas Latzko, _Menschen im Krieg_, Rascher, Zurich, 1917; English translation, _Men in Battle_, Ca.s.sell, London, 1918.

[42] Andreas Latzko is a Hungarian officer. He was wounded on the Italian front during the fighting of 1915-16.

[43] Stefan Zweig, _Jeremias, eine dramatische Dichtung in neun Bildern_, Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, 1917.

[44] _Les Temps maudits_, "demain," Geneva.

[45] _Vous etes des hommes_, "Nouvelle Revue Francaise," Paris; and _Poeme contre le grand crime_, "demain," Geneva; above all the admirable _Danse des Morts_, "Les Tablettes," Geneva, republished by "L'Action Sociale," La-Chaux-de-Fonds.

[46] _Mr. Britling sees it Through_, Ca.s.sell, London, 1916.

[47] _The Fortune, a Romance of Friends.h.i.+p_, Maunsel, Dublin and London, 1917.

[48] G. F. Nicolai, M.D., sometime professor of physiology at Berlin University, _Die Biologie des Krieges, Betrachtungen eines Naturforschers den Deutschen zur Besinnung_, Orell Fussli, Zurich, 1917; English translation, _The Biology of War_, Dent, London, 1919.

[49] Cf. especially Chapter Six, an interesting account of the development of armies from ancient times down to to-day, when we have the armed nation. Also Chapter Fourteen, which deals with war and peace as reflected in the writings of ancient and modern poets and philosophers.

[50] Erfa.s.sen. Nicolai points out that the figurative meaning of the word "erfa.s.sen" like that of "apprehend" and "comprehend" [or of the native "grasp"] is a metaphysical extension of the primitive "prehension" by the hand.

[51] I ignore, in the text, the abundant proofs Nicolai draws from ethnology and from the history of the lower animals. He shows, for example, that the most primitive peoples, the Bushmen, the Fuegians, the Eskimos, etc., live in hordes even when they display no tendency towards family life. All savages are gregarious in the extreme; solitude is disastrous to them alike physically and mentally. Even civilised man finds solitude hard to bear.

[52] _Faust_, Part II, 5. Mephistopheles' words, when he hands over to Faust the proceeds of a voyage. [War, trade, and piracy are trinity in unity--inseparable.]

[53] "Everything which exists, above all everything which lives, tends towards immeasurable increase."

[54] For unicellular organisms, osmosis imposes a limit; for multicellular organisms there is a mechanical limit to size; for the groupings of individuals to form collectivities, social communities, there is a limit fixed by the amount of available energy.

[55] Pp. 160 to 163 [English edition].

[56] On p. 255 [of the English edition] will be found an ethnographical chart of Germany. It is distinctly humorous.

[57] This statement requires qualification. The reader is referred to a note at the end of the volume.

[58] Jeheber, Geneva, 1915.

[59] Buddhist Views of War, "The Open Court," May, 1904.

[60] The actual words in my play are: "The nations die that G.o.d may live."

[61] Nicolai terms them "chance products" (sind nur zufallige Produkte).

[62] It is surprising that there is but one mention of Auguste Comte in Nicolai's book; for Comte's Great Human Being is certainly akin to the German biologist's Humanity.

[63] We shall do well to note that Nicolai practically considers himself exempt from the need for these material demonstrations. As far as he is concerned, it would suffice him, as it sufficed Aristotle, to observe the play of forces among men. This simple observation would convince him that humanity must be regarded as an organism. "But moderns, although they will generally deny it, are for the most part infected with the belief that all solid fact must be material.... Even though it be not absolutely necessary to demonstrate that there exists between human beings a bridge of real substance (eine Brucke realer Substanz), even though the dynamic ties suffice us, it is desirable to satisfy the materialistic demands of our day, and to show that there does actually exist between the men of all ages and all lands an effective interconnection, which is uniform, persistent, nay eternal" [pp.

392-393, English edition].

[64] According to this theory, which was initiated by Gustav Jaeger in 1878, there occurs an eternal transmission of an inheritable germ plasm, this being temporarily housed within the perishable soma of the individual living being. The hypothesis of the undying plasma has given rise to lively discussions which are still in progress.

[65] Ueber Ursprung und Bedeutung der Amphimixis, "Biolog.

Zentralblatt," xxvi, No. 22, 1906.

[66] This seems to me the weak point in the theory. How can we reconcile the mutation and the variability of the germ plasm, with its immortality and its eternal transmission?

[67] Species and Varieties: their Origin by Mutation, Kegan Paul, London, 1905.

[68] Closing sections of Chapter Thirteen.

[69] I should like to give an account here of Nicolai's solution of the problem of liberty. He discusses the matter in one of the most important sections of his book.--How can a biologist, filled with a feeling of universal necessity, find place, amid that necessity and without prejudice to it, for human freedom? One of the most notable characteristics of this great mind, is Nicolai's power of a.s.sociating within himself two rival and complementary forces. He makes a suggestive study, at once philosophic and physiological, of the anatomy of the brain and of the almost infinite possibilities the brain holds for the future (all unknown to us to-day), of the thousands of roads which are marked out in the brain many centuries before humanity dreams of using them.--But to follow up this study would lead us beyond the scope of the present article. I must refer the reader to pp. 58-68 of _The Biology of War_ [English edition]. These pages are a model of scientific intuition.

[70] Chapter Ten, p. 309 [English edition].

[71] Chapter Fourteen.

[72] Chapter Ten, pp. 270-271 [English edition].

[73] Introduction, p. 11 [English edition].