He knows the truth now, and wishes to strengthen his own faith. He goes to some of his fellows and talks to them. Most of them do not understand him. Others refuse to understand him. Some, however, among whom Perrotin the academician is notable, are yet more alarming. They know the truth. To their penetrating vision the nature of the popular idols has long been plain. But they are cautious folk. They compress their lips and smile at one another like the augurs of ancient Rome. Like Buddha, they take refuge in Nirvana, looking down calmly upon the madness of the world, tranquilly seated upon their pedestals of stone. Clerambault calls to mind that other Indian saint, who took a solemn vow that he would not withdraw from the world until he had delivered mankind from suffering. The truth still glows too fiercely within him; he feels as if it would stifle him as it strives to gush forth in volcanic eruption. Once again he plunges into the solitude of a wakeful night. Men's words have sounded empty. He listens to his conscience, and it speaks with the voice of his son. Truth knocks at the door of his soul, and he opens to truth. In this lonely night Clerambault begins to speak to his fellows; no longer to individuals, but to all mankind. For the first time the man of letters becomes aware of the poet's true mission, his responsibility for all persons and for everything. He knows that he is beginning a new war, he who alone must wage war for all. But the consciousness of truth is with him, his heroism has begun.
"Forgive us, ye Dead," the dialogue of the country with its children, is published. At first no one heeds the pamphlet. But after a time it arouses public animosity. A storm of indignation bursts upon Clerambault, threatening to lay his life in ruins. Friends forsake him. Envy, which had long been crouching for a spring, now sends whole regiments to the attack. Ambitious colleagues seize the opportunity of proclaiming their patriotism in contrast with his deplorable sentiments. Worst of all for Clerambault in that his innocent wife and daughter have to suffer on his account. They do not upbraid him, but he feels as if he had aimed a shaft against them. He who has hitherto sunned himself in the warmth of family life and has enjoyed the comforts of modest fame, is now absolutely alone.
Nevertheless he continues on his course, although these stations of the cross become harder and harder. Rolland shows how Clerambault finds new friends, only to discover that they too fail to understand him. How his words are mutilated, his ideas misapplied. How he is overwhelmed to learn that his fellows, those whom he wishes to help, have no desire for truth, but are nourished by falsehood; that they are continually in search, not of freedom, but of some new form of slavery. (In these wonderful passages the reader is again and again reminded of Dostoievsky's Grand Inquisitor.) He perseveres in his pilgrimage even when he has lost faith in his power to help his fellow men, for this is no longer his goal. He passes men by, marching onward towards the unseen, towards truth; his love for truth exposing him ever more pitilessly to the hatred of men. By degrees he becomes entangled in a net of calumnies; his troubles develop into a "Clerambault affair"; at length a prosecution is initiated. The state has recognized its enemy in the free man. But while the case is still in progress, the "defeatist" meets his fate from the pistol bullet of a fanatic. Clerambault's end recalls the opening of the world catastrophe with the assassination of Jaurès.
Never has the tragedy of conscience been more simply and more poignantly depicted than in this account of the martyrdom of an average man. Rolland's ripe spiritual powers, his magical faculty for combining mastery with the human touch, are here at their highest. Never was his outlook over the world so extensive, never was the view so serene, as from this last summit. And yet, though we are thus led upwards to the consideration of the ultimate problems of the spirit, we start from the plain of everyday life. It is the soul of a commonplace man, the soul it might seem of a weakling, which moves through this long passion. Herein lies the marvel of the moral solace which the book conveys. Rolland was the first to recognize the defect of his previous writings, considered as means of helping the average man. In the heroic biographies, heroism is displayed only by those in whom the heroic soul is inborn, only by those whose flight is winged with genius. In Jean Christophe, the moral victory is a triumph of native energy. But in Clerambault we are shown that even the weakling, even the mediocre man, every one of us, can be stronger than the whole world if he have but the will. It is open to every man to be true, open to every man to win spiritual freedom, if he be at one with his conscience, and if he regard this fellowship with his conscience as of greater value than fellowship with men and with the age. For each man there is always time, for each man there is always opportunity, to become master of realities. Aërt, the first of Rolland's heroes to show himself greater than fate, speaks for us all when he says: "It is never too late to be free!"
CHAPTER XXI
THE LAST APPEAL
FOR five years Romain Rolland was at war with the madness of the times. At length the fiery chains were loosened from the racked body of Europe. The war was over, the armistice had been signed. Men were no longer murdering one another; but their evil passions, their hate, continued. Romain Rolland's prophetic insight celebrated a mournful triumph. His distrust of victory, his reiterated warnings that conquerors are merciless, were more than justified by the revengeful reality. "Victory in arms is disastrous to the ideal of an unselfish humanity. Men find it extraordinarily difficult to remain gentle in the hour of triumph." These forecasts were terribly fulfilled. Forgotten were all the fine words anent the victory of freedom and right. The Versailles conference devoted itself to the installation of a new regime of force and to the humiliation of a defeated enemy. What the idealism of simpletons had expected to be the end of all wars, proved, as the true idealists who look beyond men towards ideas had foreseen, the seed of fresh hatred and renewed acts of violence.
Once again, at the eleventh hour, Rolland raised his voice in an address to the man whom sanguine persons then regarded as the last representative of idealism, as the advocate of perfect justice. Woodrow Wilson, when he landed in Europe, was received by the exultant cries of millions. But the historian is aware "that universal history is but a succession of proofs that the conqueror invariably grows arrogant and thus plants the seed of new wars." Rolland felt that there was never greater need for a policy that should be moral, not militarist, that should be constructive, not destructive. The citizen of the world, the man who had endeavored to free the war from the stigma of hate, now tried to perform the same service on behalf of the peace. The European addressed the American in moving terms: "You alone, Monsieur le Président, among all those whose dread duty it now is to guide the policy of the nations, you alone enjoy world-wide moral authority. You inspire universal confidence. Answer the appeal of these passionate hopes! Take the hands which are stretched forth, help them to clasp one another.... Should this mediator fail to appear, the human masses, disarrayed and unbalanced, will almost inevitably break forth into excesses. The common people will welter in bloody chaos, while the parties of traditional order will fly to bloody reaction.... Heir of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, take up the cause, not of a party, not of a single people, but of all! Summon the representatives of the peoples to the Congress of Mankind! Preside over it with the full authority which you hold in virtue of your lofty moral consciousness and in virtue of the great future of America! Speak, speak to all! The world hungers for a voice which will overleap the frontiers of nations and of classes. Be the arbiter of the free peoples! Thus may the future hail you by the name of Reconciler!"
The prophet's voice was drowned by the clamors for revenge. Bismarckism triumphed. Literally fulfilled was the prophecy that the peace would be as inhuman as the war had been. Humanity could find no abiding place among men. When the regeneration of Europe might have been begun, the sinister spirit of conquest continued to prevail. "There are no victors, but only vanquished."
CHAPTER XXII
DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE MIND
DESPITE all disillusionments, Romain Rolland, the indomitable, continued his addresses to the ultimate court of appeal, to the spirit of fellowship. On the day when peace was signed, June 26, 1919, he published in "L'Humanité" a manifesto composed by himself and subscribed by sympathizers of all nationalities. In a world falling to ruin, it was to be the cornerstone of the invisible temple, the refuge of the disillusioned. With masterly touch Rolland sums up the past, and displays it as a warning to the future. He issues a clarion call.