IX
France has suffered, suffers and will suffer more deeply than all the other countries of the world. She is at once the altar and the holocaust. She has sacrificed her men, her cities, and her soil. It is in the heart of her beautiful fields that the devastating storm whirls and roars.
In the depths of my soul I hope that, because of this great grief, it will be France that will give the signal for redemption. I hope that the reign of the heart will begin just here where the old civilization will leave imperishable traces of its murderous folly.
The resources of the French people in perseverance, in self-reliance, in goodness, in subtle delicacy are so great that one feels a word would suffice to rally all hearts and give them their bearings. One feels that at the mere phrase “moral civilization” thousands and thousands of noble heads will nod approval, thousands of hands will reach out to find each other.
People who have obstinate views on the political meaning of wars, on the eminently economic nature of the peril that has been run by humanity, and on the efficacy of the industrial and scientific civilization, will not fail to proclaim that France ought first of all to return to its furious task and apply itself to surpassing the peoples that have outstripped it along this path.
But France has always been the country of initiation and revelation. It is the chosen land of spiritual revolutions. May the bloody baptism it has received give it precedence in the discussion of the future!
Do you wish it to lose the glorious rank it holds in the moral order, at the head of the nations, that it may fall in line behind the peoples who are enslaved by automatism and swear allegiance to a worn-out, condemned, bankrupt social and economic religion?
If the destiny of our country is to make a humanity that is plunged in affliction give ear to the words of peace, consolation and love, let it accomplish this beautiful mission, let it teach the other peoples the generous laws of the true possession of the world.