CONTENTS.
| [Introduction by the Translator] | [7] | |
| [Preface] | [15] | |
| [I.] | An Open Letter to Gerhart Hauptmann | [19] |
| [II.] | Pro Aris | [23] |
| [III.] | Above the Battle | [37] |
| [IV.] | The Lesser of Two Evils: Pangermanism, Panslavism | [56] |
| [V.] | Inter Arma Caritas | [76] |
| [VI.] | To the People That Is Suffering for Justice | [93] |
| [VII.] | Letter to My Critics | [97] |
| [VIII.] | The Idols | [107] |
| [IX.] | For Europe: Manifesto of the Writers and Thinkers of Catalonia | [122] |
| [X.] | For Europe: An Appeal from Holland to the Intellectuals of all Nations | [127] |
| [XI.] | Letter To Frederik Van Eeden | [136] |
| [XII.] | Our Neighbor the Enemy | [142] |
| [XIII.] | A Letter to Svenska Dagbladet of Stockholm | [151] |
| [XIV.] | War Literature | [153] |
| [XV.] | The Murder of the Elite | [168] |
| [XVI.] | Jaurès | [181] |
| [Notes] | [193] | |
| [Index] | [195] | |
| [Footnotes] | ||
| [Notes of etext transcriber] | ||
It is my pleasant duty to thank the brave friends who have defended me during the past year, in the Parisian press:—at the end of October 1914, Amédée Dunois in l'Humanité, and Henri Guilbeaux, in the Bataille syndicaliste; in the same paper, Fernand Deprès; Georges Pioch in the Hommes du Jour; J. M. Renaitour, in the Bonnet Rouge; Rouanet, in l'Humanité; Jacques Mesnil, in the Mercure de France, and Gaston Thiesson, in the Guerre Sociale. To these faithful comrades in the struggle I express my affectionate gratitude.
R. R.
October, 1915.
PREFACE
A great nation assailed by war has not only its frontiers to protect: it must also protect its good sense. It must protect itself from the hallucinations, injustices, and follies which the plague lets loose. To each his part: to the armies the protection of the soil of their native land; to the thinkers the defense of its thought. If they subordinate that thought to the passions of their people they may well be useful instruments of passion; but they are in danger of betraying the spirit, which is not the least part of a people's patrimony. One day History will pass judgment on each of the nations at war; she will weigh their measure of errors, lies, and heinous follies. Let us try and make ours light before her!
Children are taught the Gospel of Jesus and the Christian ideal. Everything in the education they receive at school is designed to stimulate in them intellectual understanding of the great human family. Classical education makes them see, beyond[{16}] the differences of race, the roots and the common trunk of our civilization. Art makes them love the profound sources of the genius of a people. Science makes them believe in the unity of reason. The great social movement which renews the world, reveals the organized effort of the working classes all round them to unite their forces in the hopes and struggles which break the barriers of nations. The brightest geniuses of the earth, like Walt Whitman and Tolstoi, chant universal brotherhood in joy and suffering, or else like our Latin spirits, pierce with their criticism the prejudices of hatred and ignorance which separate individuals and peoples.