Yesterday evening I was strangely touched. I happened to see a convoy of prisoners and I talked to one of them, a colleague of mine, Professor of classical philology in the college of F——. Such an open-minded, intelligent man, and with such a fine military bearing, like all his fellows, although they had just been through a terrible experience of machine-gun fire.... It was a proof to me of the senselessness of the war. I thought how much one would have liked to be the friend of these men, who are so near us in their education, their mode of life, the circle of their thought and their interest. We started talking about a book on Rousseau and we began to dispute like old philologists.... How much we are alike in force and worth! And how little truth there is in what our papers tell us of the shaken and exhausted conditions of the French troops! As true, or rather as untrue, as what the French newspapers write about us.... My French colleague showed in his remarks such a balanced mind and such understanding and admiration of German thought! To think that we were made so clearly to be friends and that we had to be separated! I was altogether overcome, and sat down crushed by it. I thought and thought and could not escape my mood by any sophistry. No end, no end to war, which for nearly six months now has swallowed in its gulf men, fortunes, and happiness! And this feeling is the same with us as with the other side. It is always the same picture: we do the same thing, we suffer the same thing, we are the same thing. And it is precisely for this reason that we are so bitterly at enmity....
The same accent of troubled anguish, together[{177}] with a despair which at moments nearly reaches to madness, and at others breathes a religious fervor, are seen in the letters of a German soldier to a teacher in German Switzerland. (We have known of these at the Prisoners' Agency for three or four months and they were published in Foi et Vie of April 15th.[39] They have been passed over in silence, so we shall persist in calling attention to them, for they thoroughly deserve it). In these letters, which cover from the second fortnight of August to the end of December, we see from the 25th of August onwards the evidence of a desire for peace among the German soldiers.
We all, even those who were hottest for the fight at the beginning, want nothing now but peace, our officers just as much as ourselves.... Convinced as we are of the necessity to conquer, warlike enthusiasm does not exist among us; we fulfil our duty, but the sacrifice is hard. We suffer in our souls.... I cannot tell you the sufferings I endure....
September 20th. A friend writes to me: "On the 20th to 25th of August I took part in big battles; since then I suffer morally even to complete exhaustion, both physical and spiritual. My soul finds no repose.... This war will show us how much of the beast still survives in man,[{178}] and this revelation will cause us to make a great step out of animalism: if not, it is all up with us!"
November 28th. (A splendid passage where one almost hears the voice of Tolstoi.) What are all the torments of war compared to the thoughts that obsess us night and day? When I am on some hill from which my view commands the plain, this is the idea which ceaselessly tortures me: down there in the valley the war rages; those brown lines which furrow the landscape are full of men who are facing one another as enemies. And up there on the hill opposite you there is, perhaps, a man who, like you, is contemplating the woods and the blue sky and perhaps ruminating the same thoughts as you, his enemy! This continual proximity might make one mad! And one is tempted to envy one's comrades who can kill time in sleeping and playing cards.
December 17th. The desire for peace is intense in every one; at least, in all those who are at the front and who are obliged to assassinate and be assassinated. The newspapers say that it's hardly possible to restrain the warlike ardor of the fighters.... They lie—consciously or unconsciously. Our chaplains in their sermons dispute the legend that our military ardor is slackening.... You can hardly believe how such tittle-tattle annoys us. Let them be silent, and let them not talk about things of which they can know nothing! Or better still, let them come not as almoners who keep to the rear, but into the firing-line, rifle in hand! Perhaps then they will get to know of the inner changes which take place in so many of us. According to these chaplains, any one who is without warlike[{179}] enthusiasm is not a man such as our age demands. To me it seems that we are greater heroes than the others, we, who without being upheld by warlike enthusiasm, accomplish faithfully our duty, while hating war with our whole souls.... They talk of a holy war ... I know of no holy war. I only know of one war which is the sum of all that is inhuman, impious, and bestial in man; it is God's chastisement and a call to repentance for the people that throws itself into war or lets itself be drawn into it. God sends men through this hell so that they may learn to love heaven. For the German people this war seems to me to be a punishment and a call to repentance,—and most of all for our German Church. I have friends who suffer at the idea of being unable to do anything for the fatherland. Let them stay at home with a calm conscience! All depends on their peaceful work. But let the war enthusiasts come! Perhaps they will learn to keep silent.
* * *
"Why publish these pages?" I shall be asked by some people in France. "What good is it, when once war is let loose, to arouse pity for our adversaries, at the risk of blunting the ardor of the combatants?"—I answer, because it is the truth, and because the truth substantiates our judgment, the judgment of the whole world against the German leaders and their policy. What their armies have done we know; but that they were able to do it[{180}] containing as they did such elements as those whose confessions we have just heard, incriminates still more deeply their masters. From the depths of the battlefield, these voices of a sacrificed minority rise up as a vengeful condemnation of the oppressors. To the accusations drawn up against predatory Empires and their inhuman pride, in the name of violated right, of outraged humanity by the victim peoples and by the combatants, is added the cry of pain of the nobler souls of their own people whom the bad shepherds who let loose this war have led and constrained into murder and madness. To sacrifice one's body is not the worst suffering, but also to sacrifice, to deny, to kill one's own soul!—You who die at least for a just cause, and who, full of sap and loaded with faith, fall like ripe fruit, how sweet is your lot beside this torture! But we shall so act that these sufferings shall not be vain.
Let the conscience of humanity hear and accept their complaint! It will resound in the future above the glory of battles; and whether she wills or no, History will place it on her register. History will do justice between the hangmen and their peoples. And the peoples will learn how to deliver themselves from their hangmen.
Journal de Genève, June 14, 1915.[{181}]