New York Times Current History The European War, Vol 1, No. 1 Part 23

*The Need of Being Merciless*

*By Maurice Maeterlinck.*

*From The London Daily Mail.*

At these moments of tragedy none should be allowed to speak who cannot shoulder a rifle, for the written word seems so monstrously useless and so overwhelmingly trivial in face of this mighty drama that will for a long time and maybe forever free mankind from the scourge of war--the one scourge among all that cannot be excused and that cannot be explained, since alone among all scourges it issues entirely from the hands of man.

But it is while this scourge is upon us--while we have our being in its very centre--that we shall do well to weigh the guilt of those who committed this inexpiable crime. It is now, when we are in the awful horror, undergoing and feeling it, that we have the energy and clearsightedness needed to judge it. From the depths of the most fearful injustice justice is best perceived. When the hour shall have come for settling accounts--it will not be long delayed--we shall have forgotten much of what we have suffered and a censurable pity will creep over us and cloud our eyes.

*Will Seek Sympathy.*

This is the moment, therefore, for us to frame our inexorable resolution. After the final victory, when the enemy is crushed--as crushed as he will be--efforts will be made to enlist our sympathy. We shall be told that the unfortunate German people are merely the victims of their monarch and their feudal caste; that no blame attaches to the Germany we know that is so sympathetic and cordial--the Germany of quaint old houses and open-hearted greetings; the Germany that sits under its lime trees beneath the clear light of the moon--but only to Prussia, hateful, arrogant Prussia; that homely, peace-loving Bavaria, the genial, hospitable dwellers on the banks of the Rhine, the Silesian and Saxon--I know not who besides--have merely obeyed and been compelled to obey orders they detested, but were unable to resist.

We are in the face of reality now. Let us look at it well and p.r.o.nounce our sentence, for this is the moment when we hold the proofs in our hands; when the elements of the crime are hot before us and should out--the truth that will soon fade from our memory. Let us tell ourselves now therefore that all we shall be told hereafter will be false. Let us unflinchingly adhere to what we decide at this moment when the glare of the horror is on us.

*No Degrees of Guilt.*

It is not true that in this gigantic crime there are innocent and guilty or degrees of guilt. They stand on one level, all who have taken part.

The German from the north has no more especial craving for blood than the German from the south has especial tenderness and pity. It is very simple. It is the German from one end of the country to the other who stands revealed as a beast of prey that the firm will of our planet finally repudiates. We have here no wretched slaves dragged along by a tyrant King who alone is responsible. Nations have the Government they deserve, or rather the Government they have is truly no more than a magnified public projection of the private morality and mentality of the nation.

If eighty million innocent people merely expose the inherent falseness and superficiality of their innocence--and it is a monster they maintain at their head who stands for all that is true in their nature, because it is he who represents the eternal aspirations of their race, which lie far deeper than their apparent transient virtues--let there be no suggestion of error, of intelligent people having been tricked and misled. No nation can be deceived that does not wish to be deceived. It is not intelligence that Germany lacks. In the sphere of intellect such things are not possible, nor in the region of the enlightened, reflecting will. No nation permits herself to be coerced into the one crime man cannot pardon. It is of her own accord she hastens toward it.

Her chief has no need to persuade. It is she who urges him on.

We have forces here quite different from those on the surface--forces that are secret, irresistible, profound. It is these we must judge, must crush under heel once for all, for they are the only ones that will not be improved, softened or brought into line by experience, progress, or even the bitterest lesson. They are unalterable, immovable. Their springs lie far beneath hope or influence. They must be destroyed as we destroy a nest of wasps, since we know these never can change into a nest of bees.

Even though individually and singly Germans are all innocent and merely led astray, they are none the less guilty in ma.s.s. This is the guilt that counts--that alone is actual and real, because it lays bare underneath their superficial innocence, the subconscious criminality of all. No influence can prevail on the unconscious or subconscious. It never evolves. Let there come a thousand years of civilization, a thousand years of peace, with all possible refinements, art, and education, the German spirit which is its underlying element will remain absolutely the same as today and would declare itself when the opportunity came under the same aspect with the same infamy.

Through the whole course of history two distinct will-powers have been noticed that would seem to be the opposing elemental manifestations of the spirit of our globe, one seeking only evil, injustice, tyranny, suffering, the other strives for liberty, right, radiance, joy. These two powers stand once again face to face. Our opportunity is to annihilate the one that comes from below. Let us know how to be pitiless that we have no more need for pity. It is the measures of organic defense--it is essential that the modern world should stamp out Prussian militarism as it would stamp out a poisonous fungus that for half a century had poisoned its days. The health of our planet is the question.

Tomorrow the United States and Europe will have to take measures for the convalescence of the earth.

*Letters to Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler*

*By Baron d'Estournelles de Constant.*

_Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, has permitted_ THE NEW YORK TIMES _to have the extracts printed herewith from letters sent to him since the beginning of the war by Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, Senator of France, and Member of the International Court at The Hague._

*First Letter.*

PARIS, Aug. 15, 1914.--* * * Today I am full of grief to feel myself impotent before the murderous conflicts now going on in Belgium and at a number of points on our northern and eastern frontiers, while awaiting the great battles and hecatombs which will follow; my thought is full of these terrible calamities willfully brought about; so many precious lives already wiped out or soon to be; so much avoidable mourning which one neither can nor wishes now to avoid!

In France there is not a single family which has not given without hesitation all its children of military age to fight for the repulse of the invader. All the men from Creans, of ages 20 to 48 years, have gone, with one exception, and he is now going; and meanwhile no work has ceased because of their absence. In all the communes, in all the hamlets of the whole of France, the women, the children, and the men over 48 have a.s.sumed all duties, in particular the gathering of the harvests, which I see already finished as in normal times. * * *

When one thinks that Servia alone, even though exhausted by two atrocious wars, is sufficient to hold in check imperial Austria; when one sees Italy remain neutral, and in reality hostile to Austria, and Russia open slowly, inexorably, her reservoir of men, resources, and infinite energy on the eastern frontier of Germany, one asks truly if the Pan-Germanists have not been the veritable plague of G.o.d for their country; the Fatherland, which men like Goethe, Kant, and Beethoven had made so cultured, so glorious, and which asked only to live and to prosper, the Pan-Germanists have isolated only to deliver it to the execration of the world. It was the same in France formerly, when she ceded to chauvinistic influences.

*Second Letter.*

PARIS, Sept. 3, 1914.

* * * May you never witness such calamities as have fallen upon Europe.

The visions of horror, which formerly we evoked in order to terrify the world and to try to conjure them away, are now surpa.s.sed; and we are only at the commencement of the war! The trains, thronged with youth and enthusiasm, which I saw leave are now returning crowded with the wounded. They have filled all the hospitals, the barracks which had been left empty, the lyceums, and the schools throughout France. In but a few days they have arrived everywhere in the south, the west and the centre of the country. At La Fleche alone we have five improvised hospitals with 1,200 beds. Creans is a hospital annex, and so it is in all the villages and in the dwellings which can provide one or more beds. The wounded who occupy these beds are happy, very happy. One of them, who has only a broken leg, but who thinks of the thousands of his comrades who remain wounded upon the fields of battle, said to me, "I am in heaven." * * *

The worst of all, (I have always said it, but it is even worse than I had thought,) the worst is that each of the combatants, for the most part incapable of cruelty under ordinary conditions, is now devoted to the horrible work of hatred and of reprisal; and even more than the combatants, their children, their orphans, all those who are to remain in mourning. * * *

As far as France is concerned, our first reverses have served to exalt the national spirit and to fortify the unanimous resolution to conquer or to die. It is important that this be well understood in the United States and that it be given due consideration if it is desired to intervene without irritating the most n.o.ble scruples. * * *

It is the Prussian military system of domination with its contagion which has done the harm and which ought to disappear, and that system itself is the fruit of Napoleonic imperialism. The struggle is always, and more now than ever, between imperialism and liberty, between force and right. May you in the United States profit by this lesson, so that you may avoid falling into the European error. * * * It is barbarity triumphant. But that triumph will be only momentary, and all agree at the conclusion of this terrible drama on having a United States of Europe with disarmament, or at least with armaments limited to a collective police force.

*Third Letter.*

PARIS, Sept. 8, 1914.

* * * You have comprehended that France is struggling for justice and peace. Be sure that she will resist even to the last man, with the certainty that she is defending not herself alone but also civilization.

Never have I suspected to what degree of savagery man can be degraded by unrestrained violence. I had believed that the world could never again see the time of the Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents; I deceived myself; we have returned to barbarity, and the Prussian Army leaves us no alternative between victory and extermination; should she become mistress of Paris, which I doubt, and of the half of France, she will find the other half which will bury her under its ruins. * * *

The English troops march on our roads, stop at Clermont-Creans! Oh, miracle! I see among my compatriots the worst chauvinists, those who openly desire for me the fate of Jaures, those who fought me in 1902 with cries of "Fashoda" or "Chicago," hasten to meet the English soldiers in order to aid and acclaim them, in this country still full of the memories and the ruins of the hundred years' war! It is because the English troops are also defending the land of liberty, theirs as ours and as yours. Every one except the Prussians comprehend this, and this it is which exalts their souls! * * *

The whole misfortune, I repeat, is the result of the crime committed forty-three years ago, the crime which we accepted to avoid recommencing the war. Our resignation has not sufficed; it has not caused the trouble to disappear; the German Government has none the less been obliged to confirm it each day. The misfortune has been the forcible annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. For that the Germans are paying today; for that they will pay until they have made atonement for their fault. In this regard France is irreproachable; she has resisted the chauvinists; our general elections, the conferences of Berne and of Basle, have proved that, far from seeking revenge, she wished by mutual concessions to arrive worthily at reconciliation in peace.

The Germans are paying today for their fault of 1870-71, because that fault has corrupted and poisoned them. I have said it a thousand times.

In order to keep those two unfortunate provinces under their domination it has been necessary for them to use force, to inst.i.tute a regime of force. * * * It has been necessary to prevent revolts by repressive measures, as at Saverne, which have disgusted, and even disquieted, the whole world; that ignominious brutality become sovereign mistress, by the force of circ.u.mstances, even against the will of the Kaiser and against the protestation of all the elite of Germany, of such men as Zorn, Forster, Nippold, and Bebel, has ended by being a menace and a danger to Germany itself. All this is connected, and, whatever happens, Germany cannot emerge victorious from a war which is itself but the logical result of the abuse of her victories. She cannot conquer civilization; it is impossible. * * *

Comprehend this well, repeat it, publish it if you wish; France, Belgium, and England may suffer check after check; they are prepared for this, they expect it, but they will not be discouraged. The German armies may exhaust themselves uselessly in killing, burning, and destroying. They will destroy themselves in the end. Our national policy is to take them in their own trap and to wear them out.

The day of reckoning is coming, when the inexorable advance of the Slavic race, always increasing in numbers--it little matters whether it is well or badly organized--will come from the rear to attack the Germans at the time when they are confident of victory and to drown them in the floods of blood which they have caused to flow; terrible punishment for a war which we and our friends have done everything to prevent. The victims of this punishment will be at least a half million of French, Belgians, and Englishmen, together with a whole nation which desired peace as we did, but which has allowed herself to be misled by a Government mad enough to wish to reconcile the irreconcilable, namely, the maintenance of peace and the spirit of conquest. May this punishment at least begin an era of new peace! Alas! how may we hope for this when we see the human beast awakening in a delirium of fury and getting beyond our control to destroy the masterpieces of human genius.

*Fourth Letter.*

PARIS, Sept. 11, 1914.

The Germans appear to have comprehended that the atrocities which have bitterly aggravated the remorseless violation of Belgian neutrality have only aroused general indignation, and have at the same time exasperated the opposing nations and armies. Contrary to the tales which appear in the sensational journals, which are naturally as eager today to embitter the war as they were formerly to bring it about, I am a.s.sured that the German armies in France are repudiating the unworthy excesses of the beginning of the campaign and are respecting life and private property.

This will alleviate the horrors of the war, but France nevertheless will place no limit on the sacrifices which she will make. She will wear out the German Army and destroy it, day after day, in continuous battles.

The Belgians with us at Clermont-Creans, instead of being a burden, as I had feared, are making themselves useful. They are very welcome. They are gradually recognized and appreciated as estimable people, and are employed in the homes and farms and fields. We should like to have more of them. How we shall regret them when they leave! * * *

The German Emperor must stand either as a pacifist or as a conqueror. He cannot pa.s.s as both. All the results which may follow this war could well have been obtained in peace by a general effort of good-will. On the other hand, the legacy of the war will be endless rancor, hatred, reprisal, and savagery. When it shall be understood that, in spite of Governments and Parliaments, the war has been, in large part, excited by the manoeuvres of an international band of the dealers in military supplies and by their all-powerful newspapers, when it shall be thoroughly comprehended that these dealers and these newspapers have played with rumors of war as with a scarecrow, for the purpose of keeping up a general condition of disquiet favorable to their sinister operations, then, too late, alas! there will be a revulsion of public opinion to sustain finally those men, like our friends, who have urged arbitration rather than war, and conciliation rather than arbitration.