Nor was it in France alone that Aux écoutes de la France qui vient attracted attention. In Germany, Karl Lamprecht, the great pangermanist historian, devoted two lectures to it at the royal court of Dresden. In Zukunft Maximilian Harden exclaimed: “The publication of such a work suffices to prove that je-m’enfichisme [the Gallio spirit] is dead in France, and that young France is turning away from the scepticism of the masters of French literature.”
Riou collaborated with Bergson, Henri Poincaré, and Charles Gide in the publication of a historical study, Le matérialisme actuel, an attempt to summarize the tendencies of contemporary thought. Of this volume a critic declared: “For France it celebrates the close of the age of negativism, and heralds the opening of an epoch of lyrical effort, of affirmation, and of activity.”
When war broke out, Gaston Riou had just returned from a journey in England, Scotland, and Wales. He went to the front among the first, took part in the fighting in Lorraine, and was mentioned in dispatches. He was wounded in the battle of Dieuze, was taken prisoner, and passed eleven months in a Bavarian fortress. This was not his first visit to Germany. A year earlier he had been sent there on an official mission, and he is personally acquainted with many Germans of note.
The fruit of his imprisonment is Journal d’un simple soldat, which we are now publishing as The Diary of a French Private. In its native land the success of the book has been extraordinary, and the sternest of French critics have with one voice declared it to be a permanent addition to literature. Paul Bourget, Emile Faguet, Camille Mauclair, and Maurice Donnay all speak of it as a masterpiece.
TO GUGLIELMO FERRERO
WE. Had we laid their hearts bare, we should have found there, not so much war, as justice and humanity.