VICTORY AND PEACE
Toi qui nous apportas l'épée—
Le glaive de Justice—
Et nous ordonnas de l'acheter
Fût ce an prix de nos tuniques,
Toi qui renversas les tables des marchants
Installés sous Tes portiques,
Donne à nos bras la foi et la rage à nos coeurs
Afin que la Victoire couronne de fleurs
Le front de nos enfants.—
EMILE CAMMAERTS, "Prière Pâques," 1915.
A few still perhaps remain of those who, as under-graduates at the time of the Franco-German War, remember Dean Stanley's first sermons after many years of exclusion from the Oxford University pulpit. Using in one of them his favourite plan of giving life to ancient literature by modern illustrations and conversely making modern tendencies clearer by references to ancient thought, he took the words of the Hebrew prophet, applying them to the troubles and strife of the time. "Who is this that cometh from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah?" What will emerge from the bloodshed of war and the chaos of communal revolution? The answer was given—"It may be, it must be a united Germany; it may be, it must be a regenerate France."
Truly it has been a regenerate France that, with firm resolve and calm courage, has suffered and withstood invasion, far different from the France which in 1870 went to war with light heart, excited and unprepared, anticipating easy victory. War shattered the Empire and the true soul of France was found.
Well might the "Song before Sunrise" again greet the purified France:—
Who is this that rises red with wounds and splendid.
All her breast and brow made beautiful with scars?
May we soon be able to add the conclusion!—
In her eyes the light and fire of long pain ended,
In her lips a song as of the morning stars.
The prophecy in both parts was fulfilled. Germany did indeed become united, united not only by closer political ties between all its divisions, but united in its aims and in its methods, conscious of union and of strength, marvellous in its power of organisation, fitting each member into his special position in the consolidated state, and moulding him for the place he was to occupy; drilled from earliest youth how to act and how to think, his commonest acts done, and very gestures made, according to rule. Yet they, too, had their ideals. I remember in 1871, the year after the Franco-German War, meeting a party of Germans who were unveiling a tablet by the Pasterze Glacier in memory of a comrade fallen in the war—Karl Hoffman, a pioneer of mountaineering in the Glockner district—and hearing their impassioned speeches. The mountains of Austrian Tyrol were to them "die Alpen seines Vaterlandes," and the song with the refrain, "Lieb Vaterland muss grösser sein" echoed from the rocks, "My beloved Fatherland must be greater"; may not this be the expression of a noble patriotism? But it so easily turns to "my country must have more, must take more," and becomes the very watchword of greed. "Deutschland über Alles" might perhaps mean first to the German "My country before everything to me." Corruptio optimi pessima, it easily becomes "Germany over all,"—the country which dominates an inferior world and is thus the condensed motto of supreme insolence. "Insolence breeds the tyrant," and the doom the ancient poet prophesies is the divine ordinance to be fulfilled by the action of man. "Insolence, swollen with vain thought, mounts to the highest place, and is hurled down to the doom decreed."
Insolence seems the nearest equivalent for the Greek word [Greek: hybris], which implies much more. Some
translate it "pride." It is a sense of superiority, greater strength, higher culture, leading to a claim to dominate the minds and the lives, the destinies, of others, and then in its arrogant self-assertion to override all laws and all restraints imposed by justice. It is the exact opposite of the Christian precept: "Let each esteem other better than himself." This, like some other Christian precepts, may never have been meant to express the whole truth, but only that side which men are naturally apt to neglect. It was hardly necessary to insist that men should defend themselves against attack, maintain their rights, and keep their self-respect. There are some crimes, too, which it required no special revelation to condemn; man revolts from them as contra naturam. One of these crimes is refusal to aid their fellow-countrymen who are fighting against aggression.
With the spirit that claims to dominate in its "will to power," to override the eternal laws of justice, there can be no compromise. Until that spirit is vanquished, the answer to the question, "Is it peace?" must be, "What hast thou to do with peace, so long as thy brutal acts and thy tyrannies are so many?" The order is given to smite. With profit now we may recall the old narrative,—"And he smote thrice, and stayed. And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten" the enemy till thou hadst destroyed his evil will. The work must be completed thoroughly; but that task once accomplished, to continue war, whether open or veiled, either to satisfy national hatred and the mere wish for vengeance, or, still more, in the desire of gain, would be to become—to use George Herbert's words—"parcel devils in damnation" with those who have driven or beguiled Germany to crime against humanity and to her own undoing. It is but too easy for heroic effort and firm determination to defend the right, to be corrupted either by a spirit of insolence or greed. Even as we sow the seeds for a fruitful harvest of good, the arch-enemy may be sowing the tares. On
the other hand, to cease from work and from struggle, either through fear or slackness or weariness, or even from that pacific temperament which shrinks from contest of any kind, may have results almost equally fatal. That other prayer of the Greek poet is for us also. "But I ask that the god will never relax that struggle which is for the State's true welfare"—"the contest in which citizen vies with citizen who shall best serve the State."