Above the Battle Part 21

[23] The Evangelical pastor Schrenck in an article on "War and the New Testament," quoted with approval by the Rev. Ch. Correvon in the _Journal religieus_ of Neuchatel, November 14th.

[24] In a declaration to the editor of the Swedish paper _Dagen_.

[25] The famous "Appeal to the Civilized Nations" had been sent out shortly before this by the ninety-three German intellectuals.

[26] Holland.

[27] "To let a people," he said, "or still more a fraction of a people, decide international questions, for instance, which state shall control them, is as good as making the children of a house vote for their father. It is the most ridiculous fallacy that human wit has ever invented."

[28] The _Svenska Dagbladet_ sent to the princ.i.p.al intellectuals of Europe an inquiry on the subject of the results which the war would have, "for international collaboration, in the domain of the spirit." It asked "with anxiety, to what extent it would be possible, once peace was concluded, to establish relations between the scientists, writers, and artists of the different nations."

[29] The literary appreciation of the work cited is here treated as of secondary importance, in order that evidence may be discovered with regard to the thought of Germany.

[30] See the article of Josef Luitpol Stern, "Dichter," in _Die Weissen Blatter_, March 1915.

[31] Hohe Gemeinschaft.

[32] Fremde sind wir auf der Erde alle.

[33] _Die Ueberschatzung der Kunst_ (December 1914).

[34] _Von der Vaterlandsliebe_ (January 1915).

[35] December 1914.

[36] _Hymne auf den Schmerz_ (January 1915).--It is to be noted that the _Forum_ is read in the trenches, and that it has received many letters of approval from the front. (_Der Phrasenrausch und seine Bekaempfer_, February 1915.)

[37] I take the phrase from M. Lucien Maury in an article written before the war: (_Journal de Geneve_) March 30, 1914. This is quoted recently by M. Adolphe Ferriere who, in his remarkable Doctor's thesis, _La loi du Progres_ attempts to solve the tragic problem of the part played by the elite.

[38] The review _Die Tat_, published by Eug. Diederichs at Jena, prints long extracts from them in its issue for May 1915.

[39] With an introduction by C. E. Babut.

[40] His princ.i.p.al philosophical work is his Doctor's thesis: _La realite du monde sensible_ (1891). Another thesis (in Latin) dates from the same year: _Des origines du socialisme allemand_, in which he goes back to the Christian socialism of Luther.

His great historical work is his _Histoire sociale de la Revolution_.

Very interesting is his discussion with Paul Lafargue on _l'Idealisme et le materialisme dans la conception de l'histoire_.

[41] "The need of unity is the profoundest and n.o.blest of the human mind" (_La realite du monde sensible_).

[42] "This young democracy must be given a taste for liberty. It has a pa.s.sion for equality; it has not in the same degree an idea of liberty, which is acquired much more slowly and with greater difficulty. We must give the children of the people, by means of a sufficiently lofty exercise of their powers of thinking, a sense of the value of man and consequently of the value of liberty, without which man does not exist."

(To the teachers, January 15, 1888.)

[43] "As for myself, I have never made use of violence to attack beliefs, whatever they may be; nay, more, I have always abstained even from that form of violence which consists in insult. Insult expresses a weak and feverish revolt, rather than the liberty of reason." (1901.)

[44] "The true formula of patriotism is the equal right of all countries to liberty and justice; it is the duty of every citizen to increase in his own country the forces of liberty and justice. Those are but sorry patriots who in order to love and serve one country, find it necessary to decry the others, the other great moral forces of humanity." (1905.)

[45] Or the extracts given by Charles Rappoport in his excellent book _Jean Jaures, l'homme, le penseur, le socialiste_ (1915, Paris, _l'Emanc.i.p.atrice_), with an introduction by Anatole France. From this book are quoted the pa.s.sages referred to in the notes which follow.

_Jean Jaures_, a brochure by Rene Legand, should also be read.

[46] Rappoport, _op. cit._, pp. 70-77.

[47] Rappoport, p. 234.

[48] In his speech at Vaise, near Lyon, July 25, 1914, six days before his death, he said: "Every people appears throughout the streets of Europe carrying its little torch; and now comes the conflagration."

[49] Rappoport, p. 61.

[50] Rappoport p. 369-70.

[51] "Throughout the world there are six millions of us, organized workmen, for whom the name of Jaures was the incarnation of the n.o.blest and most complete aspiration.... I remember what he was for the workmen of other countries. I see still the foreign delegates who awaited his words before forming their final opinions; even when they were not in agreement with him they were glad to approach his point of view. He was more than the Word: he was the Conscience."

[52] Who has spoken more n.o.bly than he of the eternal France, "the true France, that is not summed up by an epoch or by a day, neither by the day of long ago, nor the day that has just pa.s.sed, but the whole of France complete in the succession of her days, of her nights, of her dawns, of her shadows, of her heights and of her depths; of France, who, across all these mingled shades, all these half-lights and all these vicissitudes, goes forward towards a brilliance which she has not yet attained, but which is foreshadowed in her thought!" (1910.)

See his masterly picture of French history, and his magnificent eulogy of France, at the Conference of 1905, which he was prevented from delivering in Berlin, and which Robert Fischer read in his place.

[53] The terms Asia and Africa have not, of course, a geographical but an ethnological signification. Turkey is not, and never has been, European; and it is difficult to decide up to what points certain of the Balkan Powers are European.