One who is aware of values which he regards as a hundredfold more precious than the wellbeing of the "fatherland," of society, of the kinships of blood and race, values which stand above fatherlands and races, international values, such a man would prove himself hypocrite should he try to play the patriot. It is a degradation of mankind to encourage national hatred, to admire it, or to extol it.
Nietzsche, Vorreden Material im Nachlass.
La vocation ne peut être connue et prouvée que par le sacrifice que fait le savant et l'artiste de son repos et son bien-être pour suivre sa vocation.
Letter de Tolstoi a Romain Rolland.
4, Octobre, 1887.
CHAPTER I
THE WARDEN OF THE INHERITANCE
THE events of August 2, 1914, broke Europe into fragments. Therewith collapsed the faith which the brothers in the spirit, Jean Christophe and Olivier, had been building with their lives. A great heritage was cast aside. The idea of human brotherhood, once sacred, was buried contemptuously by the grave-diggers of all the lands at war, buried among the million corpses of the slain.
Romain Rolland was faced by an unparalleled responsibility. He had presented the problems in imaginative form. Now they had come up for solution as terrible realities. Faith in Europe, the faith which he had committed to the care of Jean Christophe, had no protector, no advocate, at a time when it was more than ever necessary to raise its standard against the storm. Well did the poet know that a truth remains naught but a half-truth while it exists merely in verbal formulation. It is in action that a thought becomes genuinely alive. A faith proves itself real in the form of a public confession.