The world shall tell how they stood fast,
And how the fight was won,
As long as faith and freedom last
And earth goes round the sun.
Brute Force Versus Humanity
By MAURICE MAETERLINCK
[Translated for Current History Magazine from Les Annales, Paris]
The struggle of today is only a resumption of the conflict that has never ceased to redden the soil of Western Europe ever since its birth into history. The two chief episodes of this conflict, as everybody knows, are the invasion of Roman Gaul (including Northern Italy) by the Germans, and the conquest of Great Britain by the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans. Ignoring questions of race, which are complex, uncertain, and always debatable, one can, by viewing the subject from another point, see in the persistence and desperation of this war the conflict of two wills, either one of which succumbs for a moment only to rise again with more energy and determination.
On one side there is the will of earth, or of nature, which openly, in the human species, as in all others, favors physical and brutal force; on the other, the will of humanity, or at least of a part of humanity that is seeking to establish the reign of other energies more subtile and less animal. It is incontestable that brute force thus far has always triumphed. But it is equally certain that it has never triumphed save in appearance and for a brief moment. Gaul, invaded and overcome, quickly assimiliated the invaders, and England gradually transformed her conquerors. The instruments of the will of earth turned against it on the morrow of victory and armed the hand of the vanquished.
It is probable that, even today, if events followed the course prescribed by destiny, the same phenomenon would be reproduced. Germany, after having crushed and enslaved the greater part of Europe, throwing it back and overwhelming it with numberless evils, would herself end by turning against the will which she represents; and that will, which hitherto had found a docile instrument and a chosen accomplice in the German race, would be obliged to find these elsewhere, a task less easy than formerly.
But now, to the stupefaction of those who will some day examine this epoch dispassionately, behold, events are suddenly moving upward against the irresistible current, and, for the first time since man is in a position to observe it, brute force is meeting an unexpected and insurmountable resistance. If this resistance remains victorious to the end, there will, perhaps, never have been a change of course comparable to it in the history of man; it will mean a triumph over the will of earth, of nature, or of fate, a triumph infinitely more significant, more heavy with consequences, and perhaps more decisive, than all those which in other domains appear to have crowned our effort with more glory.