The Forerunners Part 18

in the issue of December 14, 1918, a special "Wilson Number."

I am no Wilsonian. I see all too plainly that the president's message, as clever as it is generous, aims (in good faith) at realising throughout the world the ideal of the bourgeois republic of the Franco-American type.

This is a conservative ideal and it no longer satisfies me.

Nevertheless, despite our personal predilections and our reserves for the future, I believe that the best thing we can do for the moment is to support the action of President Wilson. He alone will be able to curb the greedy appet.i.tes, the ambitions, and the fierce instincts, which will seat themselves at the peace banquet. Through his action alone is there any chance of bringing about a modus vivendi in Europe, one which provisionally at least shall be fairly just. This great bourgeois embodies what is purest, most disinterested, most humane, in the mentality of his cla.s.s.[91] No one is better fitted than he to act as Arbiter.

R. R.

_June, 1919._

XXV

AGAINST VICTORIOUS BISMARCKISM

"Le Populaire" asked Romain Rolland to write an article on the occasion of President Wilson's arrival in France. Romain Rolland, who was ill at the time, wrote from Villeneuve as follows.

THURSDAY, _December 12, 1918._

DEAR LONGUET,

Your letter of the 6th inst. did not reach me until to-day, of course after being opened by the military censorship. It finds me in bed, where I have been for a fortnight, suffering from an obstinate attack of influenza. It is therefore impossible for me to write the article you want.

All that I will say is that, during the last fortnight, the news from France has often made me more uneasy than my fever. The Allies believe themselves victorious. In my view (if they fail to pull themselves together) they are vanquished, beaten, infected, by Bismarckism.

Unless there is an extensive turn in events, I foresee a century of hatreds, of new wars of revenge, and the destruction of European civilisation. Let me add that the destruction of European civilisation is hardly to be regretted if the victorious nations prove thus incapable of guiding their destinies.

It is my hope that, amid the intoxicating but deceptive triumphs of the present, they may regain the consciousness of their crushing responsibilities towards the future! It is my hope that they will remember that every one of their mistakes or their sins of omission will have to be paid for by their children and their children's children!

Excuse these lines, scribbled by a convalescent, and believe me, my dear Longuet,

Yours as always,

ROMAIN ROLLAND.

"Le Populaire," Paris, December 21, 1918.

XXVI

DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE MIND

Brain workers, comrades, scattered throughout the world, kept apart for five years by the armies, the censorship and the mutual hatred of the warring nations, now that barriers are falling and frontiers are being reopened, we issue to you a call to reconst.i.tute our brotherly union, but to make of it a new union more firmly founded and more strongly built than that which previously existed.

The war has disordered our ranks. Most of the intellectuals placed their science, their art, their reason, at the service of the governments. We do not wish to formulate any accusations, to launch any reproaches. We know the weakness of the individual mind and the elemental strength of great collective currents. The latter, in a moment, swept the former away, for nothing had been prepared to help in the work of resistance.

Let this experience, at least, be a lesson to us for the future!

First of all, let us point out the disasters that have resulted from the almost complete abdication of intelligence throughout the world, and from its voluntary enslavement to the unchained forces. Thinkers, artists, have added an incalculable quant.i.ty of envenomed hate to the plague which devours the flesh and the spirit of Europe. In the a.r.s.enal of their knowledge, their memory, their imagination, they have sought reasons for hatred, reasons old and new, reasons historical, scientific, logical, and poetical. They have worked to destroy mutual understanding and mutual love among men. So doing, they have disfigured, defiled, debased, degraded Thought, of which they were the representatives. They have made it an instrument of the pa.s.sions; and (unwittingly, perchance) they have made it a tool of the selfish interests of a political or social clique, of a state, a country, or a cla.s.s. Now, when, from the fierce conflict in which the nations have been at grips, the victors and the vanquished emerge equally stricken, impoverished, and at the bottom of their hearts (though they will not admit it) utterly ashamed of their access of mania--now, Thought, which has been entangled in their struggles, emerges, like them, fallen from her high estate.

Arise! Let us free the mind from these compromises, from these unworthy alliances, from these veiled slaveries! Mind is no one's servitor. It is we who are the servitors of mind. We have no other master. We exist to bear its light, to defend its light, to rally round it all the strayed sheep of mankind. Our role, our duty, is to be a centre of stability, to point out the pole star, amid the whirlwind of pa.s.sions in the night.

Among these pa.s.sions of pride and mutual destruction, we make no choice; we reject them all. Truth only do we honour; truth that is free, frontierless, limitless; truth that knows nought of the prejudices of race or caste. Not that we lack interest in humanity. For humanity we work, but for humanity as a whole. We know nothing of peoples. We know the People, unique and universal; the People which suffers, which struggles, which falls and rises to its feet once more, and which continues to advance along the rough road drenched with its sweat and its blood; the People, all men, all alike our brothers. In order that they may, like ourselves, realise this brotherhood, we raise above their blind struggles the Ark of the Covenant--Mind which is free, one and manifold, eternal.

R. R.

VILLENEUVE, _Spring, 1919._

[This manifesto was published in "L'Humanite," June 26, 1919.]

By the end of 1919, the following signatures had been received to the above declaration.

Addams, Jane (U.S.A.).

Alain [Chartier] (France).

Alexandre, Raoul (on the staff of "L'Humanite," France).

Arco, G. von (Germany).

Arcos, Rene (France).

Barbusse, Henri (France).

Baudouin, Charles (editor of "Le Carmel," France).

Bazalgette, Leon (France).

Bernaert, Edouard (France).

Besnard, Lucien (France).

Bignami, Enrico (editor of "Coen.o.bium," Italy).

Biriukov, Paul (Russia).

Bloch, Ernest (Switzerland).

Bloch, Jean-Richard (France).

Bodin, Louise (editor of "La Voix des Femmes," France).

Bracco, Roberto (Italy).

Brooks, Van Wyck (U.S.A.).

Brouwer, L. J. (Holland).

Buchet, Samuel (France).

Burnet, E. (of the Pasteur Inst.i.tute, France).

Carpenter, Edward (England).

Chateaubriant, A. de (France).

Cheneviere, Georges (France).

Colin, Paul (editor of "L'Art Libre," Belgium).

Coomaraswamy, Ananda (Hindustan).

Costa, Benedicto (Brazil).

Croce, Benedetto (Italy).

Crucy, Francois (on the staff of "L'Humanite," France).

Desanges, Paul (on the staff of "La Forge," France).

Despres, Fernand (France).

d.i.c.kinson, G. Lowes (England).