But I will make no comparisons between the two nations. For the present the essential thing is to show that even in Germany there are certain finer minds who are fighting against the spirit which we hate—the spirit of grasping imperialism and inhuman pride, of military caste and the megalomania of pedants. They are but a minority—we have no illusions about that—and we ought to redouble our efforts on that account to vanquish the common enemy. Why then should we trouble to make these generous but feeble voices heard? Because their merit is the greater for being so little heeded; because it is the duty of those who are fighting for justice to render justice in their turn to all those men, even when they dwell in a country in which the state represents the violation of right by Faustrecht, who are defending with us the spirit of liberty.
Journal de Genève, April 19, 1915.[{168}]
XV. THE MURDER OF THE ÉLITE
The phrase is not new-coined today;[37] but the fact is. Never in any period, have we seen humanity throwing into the bloody arena all its intellectual and moral reserves, its priests, its thinkers, its scholars, its artists, the whole future of the spirit—wasting its geniuses as food for cannon.
A great thing, doubtless, when the struggle is great, when a people fights for an eternal cause, the fervor of which fires the whole nation, from the smallest to the greatest; when it fuses all the egoisms, purifies desire, and out of many souls makes one unanimous soul. But if the cause be suspect or if it is tainted (as we judge that of our adversaries to be), what will be the situation of a[{169}] moral élite which has preserved the sad and lofty privilege of perceiving at least a part of the truth, and which must nevertheless fight and die and kill for a faith which it doubts?
Those passionate natures that are intoxicated by fighting or are voluntarily blinded by the necessities of action are not troubled by these questions. For them the enemy is a single mass; nothing else exists for them but this, for they have to break it; it is their function and their duty. And to each his special duty. But if minorities do not exist for such men, they do exist for us who, since we are not fighting, have the liberty and the duty to see every aspect of the case—we who form part of the eternal minority, the minority which has been, is, and always will be eternally oppressed. It is for us to hear and to proclaim these moral sufferings! Plenty of others repeat or invent the jubilant echoes of the struggle. May other voices be raised to give the tragic accents of the fight and its sacred horror!
I shall take my examples from the enemy camp, for several reasons: because the German cause being from the first tainted with injustice, the sufferings of the few who are just, and the still fewer who have spiritual perceptions are greater there than elsewhere; because these evidences appear openly[{170}] in publications whose boldness the German censorship has not perceived; because I bow with respect to the heroic discipline of silence which France in fighting imposes on her sufferings. (Would to God that this silence were not broken by those who, trying to deny these sufferings, profane the grandeur of the sacrifice by the revolting levity of their silly jests in newspapers which are without either gravity or dignity.)
* * *
I have shown in the last chapter that a part of the intellectual youth of Germany was far from sharing the war-madness of its elders. I cited certain energetic reproofs delivered by these young writers to the theorists of imperialism. And these writers are not, as one might think from an article in the Temps (though I gladly pay a tribute to its honesty), merely a small group as narrow as that of our symbolists. They count among them writers who appeal to a large public and who do not set out in any way (except for the group of Stefan George) to write for a select few—they wish to write for all. I stated, too, that the boldest review of all, Wilhelm Herzog's Forum, was read in the German trenches and received approbation thence.[{171}]
But what is more astonishing, this spirit of criticism has possessed some of the combatants and even made its appearance among German officers. In the November-December number of the Friedens-Warte, published in Berlin, Vienna, and Leipzig, by Dr. Alfred H. Fried, there occurs "An appeal to the Germanic peoples," addressed, at the end of October, by Baron Marschall von Biberstein, Landrat of Prussia and captain in the 1st Foot Guards reserve. This article was written in a trench north of Arras, where on the 11th of November, Biberstein was killed. He expresses unreservedly his horror of the war and his ardent desire that it may be the last: "That is the conviction of those at the front who are witnesses of the unspeakable horrors of modern warfare." Even more praiseworthy is Biberstein's frankness when he decides to begin a confession and a mea culpa for the sins of Germany. "The war has opened my eyes," he says, "to our terrible unlovableness (Unbeliebtheit). Everything has its cause; we must have given cause for this hatred; and even in part have justified it.... Let us hope that it will not be the least of the advantages of this war that Germany will turn round on herself, will search out and recognize her faults and correct them." Unfortunately even this article is spoiled[{172}] by Germanic pride which, desiring a world peace, sets out to impose it on the world. Herein it recalls in some respects the bellicose pacifism of the too celebrated Ostwald.