You have splendid opportunities: you have an exuberant young life; you have wide areas of virgin land. Your day has just begun. You are not wearied by the toil of a previous day. You are unencumbered by the heritage of the past. All that comes down to you from the past is a voice like the sound of many waters, the voice of a great herald whose work seems a homeric foreshadowing of the task that awaits you. I speak of the American master, Walt Whitman.—Surge et age.
"Revue mensuelle," Geneva, February, 1917.
XII
FREE VOICES FROM AMERICA
I HAVE often deplored that during the war the Swiss press has failed to play the great part which was assigned to it. I have not hesitated to express my regret to Swiss journalists of my acquaintance. I do not reproach the Swiss periodicals for their lack of impartiality. It is natural, it is human, to have preferences, and to show them passionately. We have all the less reason to complain seeing that (at least among the Latin Swiss) the preferences are in our favour.
My chief grievance is that, since the beginning of the war, our Swiss friends have failed to keep us fully informed of what is going on around us. We do not ask a friend to judge for us; when we are carried away by passion, we do not ask him to be wiser than we are. But if he is in a position to see and know things that are hidden from us, we have a right to reproach him if he leaves us in ignorance. He does us wrong, for through his fault we are likely to fall into errors of judgment and are likely to act wrongly.
Neutral countries enjoy an inestimable advantage. They can look the problems of the war in the face, in a way that is utterly impossible to the belligerent nations. Above all, the neutrals enjoy the advantage of being able to speak freely, a piece of good fortune which they fail to esteem at its true value. Switzerland, in the very centre of the battlefield, between the fighting camps, with inhabitants drawn from three of the belligerent stocks, is peculiarly favoured. I have had occasion to perceive and to profit by the wealth of information at the disposal of the Swiss. Hither, from all parts of Europe, comes an abundance of news, evidence, printed matter.
Yet the Swiss press makes little use of this abundance. With few exceptions, Swiss periodicals are content to reproduce the official bulletins from the armies, and the semi-official statements issued by agencies that are open to suspicion, statements inspired by the governments or by the occult forces which to-day have far more governing power than the nominal heads of governments. Rarely do we find that the Swiss papers subject these interested statements to critical discussion. Hardly ever do we find contrasted views; hardly ever are we enabled to listen to independent voices from the opposing trenches.[17] Thus official truth, dictated by the powers that be, is imposed upon the masses with the potency of a dogma. Thought concerning the war has a catholicity which will not permit heresy to exist. Such a development is strange in Switzerland, and above all in this republic of Geneva, whose historic origins and whose reasons for existence were free opposition and fertilising heresy.
I do not propose to study the psychological causes of the suppression of thoughts which conflict with official dogma. I am inclined to think that partisan feeling is of less effect in this matter than, in some, ignorance of the facts and lack of critical faculty, and in others, really well-informed persons, failure to verify alleged facts, or an unwillingness to correct the errors of an overwrought public opinion—errors which, quite unknown to themselves, they really desire to believe. It is easier, and at the same time it is safer, to rest content with the news supplied from house to house by the great purveyors, rather than put oneself to the pains of going to the fountain head in order to revise or to supplement current information.
These errors and these lacunae are serious, however they originate, as the public is beginning to realise.[18] It is perfectly natural that the ideas of this or that social or political party, in one or other of the belligerent nations, should conflict with the ideas of this or that journal in a neutral land. No one need be surprised that such a neutral journal should openly express its dissent. Vigilant criticism would be equally in place. But it is not permissible that a neutral journal should ignore or distort everything of which it disapproves.