M. Duhamel, in “Vie des Martyrs,” has succeeded in making his martyrs immortal. To him has been given in a superlative degree that seeing eye, that understanding heart, that power of vision which, perhaps more than any other gift, enriches life, since it enables the fortunate possessor to rid himself of the trammels of his own narrow existence and live the lives of many.
He has made a contribution to behaviouristic psychology in these little stories, or better said sketches from life, that will endure. He has been able to convey to unenlightened man the difference between the bon and the mauvais blessé and to show that it is soul difference as well as bodily difference. He has portrayed in simple colours the desire to live, and the determination to live, factors which physicians know are most important in forecasting the chances of recovery of every sick man. And with it all there is tenderness, which the author has had the power to convey through delicacy of style that makes prose poetry of much of his narrative of the thoughts, aspirations, sentiments, and plans of individual men who, from their appearance and position, are the most commonplace of the commonplace. There is no anger, violence, hatred, or despair in any of his pictures. There is sometimes irony, but it is of so gentle a nature that it strengthens the impression of sympathy with his characters, rather than suggesting judgment of them.
“A human being suffers always in his flesh alone, and that is why war is possible,” says M. Duhamel in “Civilisation.” This is one of those marvellous epitomes of human conduct, of which he has framed many. It is vouchsafed to but few to understand and suffer another's pain. To the majority of mankind it is denied. Were it not so, the fellow-feeling that makes us wondrous kind would displace greed.
There are so many remarkable features of M. Duhamel's war books, such, for instance, as what may be called the thesis of “Vie des Martyrs”: that men suffer after their own image and in their own loneliness; or of “Civilisation”: that consciousness has outrun life; that it has created for itself reactions and inhibitions so intricate and profound that they cannot be tolerated by life, that I was keen to learn how these attitudes had developed. When questioned, this is what he said:
“I am forced to divide things in the way practiced in the sciences; that is to say, not to confuse the study of facts with conclusions drawn from them. In these two books I showed as faithfully as I could the life and sufferings of soldiers during the war. In the latter two (“The Heart's Domain” and “Interviews in the Tumult”) I drew conclusions from the facts established in the first two. This procedure seemed to me the best way to handle anti-war propaganda. The weakness of most books results from the fact that the idea or subject is confused with other, regrettably often sentimental, considerations. The procedure employed in the sciences seems to be more orderly, and therefore more convincing for the exposition of my ideas. These books awoke a great echo, because they corresponded closely to the state of mind of sensible men who are bent on doing everything to make war impossible. Because of this I was looked upon as a Pacifist, and I regard this as an honour. I have never been politically active nor do I belong to any political group. However I am a Pacifist and an Internationalist. I believe that it is only the individual that can be an Internationalist. A nation will never be Internationalist for the reason that Pacifism and Internationalism are indissolubly bound up with individualism.”
M. Duhamel's work cannot, therefore, be considered solely in the light of its literary qualities. By his own admission he is a writer with a purpose, and this purpose is the suppression of war. In the interview he stated that this purpose fills all of his work and “will be, I believe, the axis of my work all my life.”
Regarding the four war books in this light, a sincere critic can hardly escape the conviction that the author has accomplished the first part of his task with immeasurably greater success than the latter part. Of the convincing appeal of the two books which aim only to present vivid and truthful pictures of the sufferings of the soldiers during the war there can be no question. But of the author's power as a propagandist against war, as expressed in the two latter books, it is by no means easy to form so satisfactory an estimate.
Duhamel does not believe that the war developed a modus vivendi for the world. He thinks it left us where it found us, only exhausted. Unless something is devised while this exhaustion is being overcome, the conflict will be taken up again. He believes that a revolution is necessary, but not a revolution in the sense of the term that applies to the affairs of Russia or Ireland.
When Duhamel is read in the light of history, especially of the last one hundred and twenty-five years, one is less hopeful than if he were ignorant of history. If any ex cathedra statement is justifiable it would seem to be this: the world war flowed more or less directly from the revolutionary movement which began with the dissemination of the doctrine of the French philosophers, especially Rousseau, toward the end of the Eighteenth Century. His discourse “On the Origin of Inequality Amongst Men” is the fountainhead of modern socialism and the source from which the ferment that brought about the world revolution emanated. Rousseau's thesis was that civilisation had proven itself to be the curse of humanity and that man in his primitive state was free and happy.
“The first time he knew unhappiness was when convention stepped in and said 'you must not do this and you must not do that,' and the State stepped in and said 'this is private property.' The first man who bethought himself of saying 'this is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. What crimes, what wars, what murders, what miseries and horrors would he have spared the human race who, snatching away the spade and filling in the ditches, had cried out to his fellows: 'beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one.'”