The Forerunners Part 2

The most potent action within the competence of us all, men and women alike, is individual action, the action of man on man, of soul on soul, action by word, by example, by the whole personality. Women of Europe, you fail to use this power as you should. You are now attempting to extirpate the plague which afflicts the world, to wage war against the war. You do well, but your action comes too late. You could have fought, you ought to have fought, against this war before it broke out; to have fought it in the hearts of men. You do not realise your power over us.

Mothers, sisters, helpmates, friends, sweethearts, you are able, and you will, to mould man's soul. The soul of the child is in your hands; and in relation to a woman whom he respects and loves, a man is ever a child. Why do you not guide his footsteps? If I may give a personal example, let me say that to certain among you I owe what is best or what is least bad in my own nature. If, during this whirlwind, I have been able to maintain unshaken my faith in human brotherhood, my love of love, and my scorn of hate, I owe this to a few women. To name but two among them: I owe it to my mother, a true Christian, who in early childhood inspired me with a pa.s.sion for the eternal; and I owe it to the great European, Malvida von Meysenbug, the sublime idealist, who in her serene old age was the friend of my youth. If a woman can save one man's soul, why do not you women save all men's souls? The reason, doubtless, is that too few among you have as yet saved your own souls.

Begin at the beginning! Here is a matter more urgent than the conquest of political rights (whose practical importance I am far from under-rating). The most urgent matter is the conquest of yourselves.

Cease to be man's shadow; cease to be the shadow of man's pa.s.sions, of his pride and of his impulse towards destruction. Gain a clear vision of the brotherly duty of sympathy, of mutual aid, of the community of all beings; these make up the supreme law prescribed to Christians by the voice of Christ, and to free spirits by the free reason. Yet how many of you in Europe to-day are carried away by the gusts of pa.s.sion which have overpowered the minds of men; how many of you, instead of enlightening men, add their own fever to the universal delirium!

Begin by making peace within yourselves. Rid yourselves of the spirit of blind combativeness. Do not allow yourselves to be embroiled in the struggle. You will not make an end of the war by making war on the war; your first step should be to save your own hearts from the war, by saving from the general conflagration the FUTURE WHICH IS WITHIN YOU. To each word of hatred uttered by the combatants, make answer by an act of kindness and love toward all the victims. Let your simple presence show a calm disavowal of errant pa.s.sions; make of yourselves onlookers whose luminous and compa.s.sionate gaze compels us to blush at our own unreason.

Amid war, be the living embodiment of peace. Be the undying Antigone, who renounces hatred, and who makes no distinction between her suffering and warring brethren.

"Jus Suffragii," London, May, 1915; "demain," Geneva, January, 1916.

V

A WOMAN'S VOICE FROM OUT THE TUMULT[13]

A woman with compa.s.sion and who dares to avow it; _a woman who dares to avow her horror of war, her pity for the victims, for all the victims_; a woman who refuses to add her voice to the chorus of murderous pa.s.sions; a woman genuinely French who does not endeavour to ape the heroines of Corneille. What a solace!

I wish to avoid saying anything which could hurt wounded souls. I know how much grief, how much suppressed tenderness, are hidden, in thousands of women, beneath the armour of a dogged enthusiasm. They stiffen their sinews for fear of falling. They walk, they talk, they laugh, with an open wound in the side through which the heart's blood is gushing. _No prophetic faculty is needed to foresee that the time is at hand when they will throw off this inhuman constraint, and when the world, surfeited with b.l.o.o.d.y heroism, will not hesitate to proclaim its disgust and its execration._

From childhood onwards our minds are distorted by a state education which instills into us a rhetorical ideal, a compost of fragments torn from the vast field of cla.s.sical thought, revivified by the genius of Corneille and the glories of the revolution. It is an ideal which exultantly sacrifices the individual to the state, _which sacrifices common sense to crazy ideas_. For the minds of those who have undergone this discipline, life becomes a pretentious and cruel syllogism, whose premises are obscure but whose conclusion is remorseless. Every one of us, in his time, has been subjected to its sway. No one has better reason to know than myself how terrible a struggle is required to free the spirit from this second nature which tends to stifle the first. The history of these struggles is the history of our contradictions. G.o.d be thanked, this war--nay, it is more than a war, this convulsion of mankind--will clear away our doubts, put an end to our hesitations, compel us to choose.

Marcelle Capy has chosen. The strength of her book is to be found in this, that through her _Woman's Voice from out the Tumult_ there breathes the common sense of the French people, which has shaken off the sophisms of ideology and rhetoric. This free vision, living, thrilling, never deceived, is sensitive to every hint of suffering or ridicule. For in the sightless epic which racks the nations of Europe, every type of experience abounds: great exploits and great crimes, sublime acts of devotion and sordid interests, heroes and grotesques. If to laugh be permissible, if it be French to laugh amid the worst trials, how much more justifiable is laughter when it becomes a weapon against hypocrisy, a weapon employed for the vindication of stifled common sense! Never was hypocrisy more widespread and more disastrous than in these days, when in every land it is a mask a.s.sumed by force. Hypocrisy, it has been said, is the homage vice pays to virtue. Well and good; but the homage is excessive. Charming comedy, in which instincts, interests, and private revenges take shelter beneath the sacred cloak of patriotism.

These Tartufes of heroism, prepared to offer up a splendid holocaust--of others! These poor Orgons, duped and sacrificed, eager to destroy those who would defend them and who seek to enlighten them! What a spectacle for a Moliere or a Ben Jonson. Marcelle Capy's book presents us with a fecund collection of these perennial types which teem in our epoch, much as poisonous toadstools of uncla.s.sified species teem on rotting wood.

Yet the old stumps on which they batten throw out green shoots. We perceive that the heart of the French forest is still sound; that the poison has not eaten into our vitals.[14]

Take courage, good friends, all who love France. Rest a.s.sured that the best way of doing honour to France is to maintain her reputation for good sense, geniality, and humour. Let the voice of Marcelle Capy's book, tender and valiant, be an example and a guide. Use your eyes, let your heart speak. Be not fooled by big words. _Peoples of Europe, throw off this herd mentality, the mentality of sheep who would ask the shepherds and the sheep-dogs to tell them where to feed._ Take heart!

Not all the furies in the universe shall prevent the world from hearing the cry of faith and hope uttered by a single free spirit, from hearing the song of the Gallic lark winging its way heavenward!

_March 21, 1916._

VI

FREEDOM

The war has shown us how fragile are the treasures of our civilisation.

Of all our goods, freedom, on which we prided ourselves most, has proved the frailest. It had been won by degrees through centuries of sacrifice, of patient effort, of suffering, of heroism, and of stubborn faith; we inhaled its golden atmosphere; our enjoyment of it seemed as natural as our enjoyment of the fresh air which sweeps across the surface of the earth and floods our lungs. A few days were enough to steal from us this jewel of life; within a few hours, the world over, the quivering wings of liberty were enmeshed as in a net. The peoples had delivered her up.

Nay more, they hailed their own enslavement with acclamations. We have relearned the old truth. "No conquest is ever achieved once for all.

Conquest is a continued action which must be sustained day by day under penalty of forfeiture."

Betrayed liberty, take sanctuary in the hearts of the faithful, fold your wounded pinions! In days to come you will resume your splendid flight. Then you will again be the idol of the mult.i.tude. Those who now oppress you, will then sing your praises. But in my eyes never have you seemed more beautiful than in this time of trial, when you are poor, despoiled, and stricken. You have nothing left to offer those who love you, nothing but danger and the smile of your undaunted eyes.

Nevertheless, not all the wealth of the world can be compared with this gift. The lackeys of public opinion, the worshippers of success, will never compete with us for it. But we shall be true to you, Christ despised and rejected, for we know that you will rise again from the tomb.

"Avanti," Milan, May 1, 1916.

VII

FREE RUSSIA, THE LIBERATOR!

Russian brothers, who have just achieved your great revolution, we have not merely to congratulate you; we have in addition to thank you. In your conquest of freedom, you have not been working for yourselves alone, but for us likewise, for your brothers of the old west.

Human progress has been a secular evolution. Quickly getting out of breath, flagging again and again, progress slackens, jibs at obstacles, or lies down in the road like a lazy mule. To bring about a fresh start, to ensure movement from stage to stage, there must be renewed awakenings of energy, vigorous revolutionary outbursts, which stimulate the will, brace the muscles, and blow the obstacle to smithereens. Our revolution of 1789 was one of these outbursts of heroic energy, dragging mankind out of the rut wherein it had become wedged, and compelling a fresh start. But as soon as the effort has been made and the chariot set in motion, mankind has been only too ready to stick fast in the mire again.

Long ago, the French revolution brought all that it could bring to Europe. A time comes when ideas which were once fertilising, ideas which were once the forces of renewed life, are no longer anything more than idols of the past, forces tending to drag us backwards, additional obstacles. Such has been the lesson of the world war, in which the jacobins of the west have often proved the worst enemies of liberty.

For new times, new paths and new aspirations! Russian brothers, your revolution has come to awaken this Europe of ours, drowsing over the arrogant memories of whilom revolutions. March onward! We will follow in your footsteps. The nations take it in turn to lead humanity. It is for you, whose youthful vitality has been h.o.a.rded during centuries of enforced inactivity, to pick up the axe where we have let it fall. In the virgin forest of social injustice and social untruth, the forest in which mankind has lost its way, make for us clearings and sunlit glades.

Our revolution was the work of the great bourgeois, of the men whose race is now extinct. They had their rude vices and their rude virtues.

Contemporary civilisation has inherited their vices alone, their fanaticism and their greed. It is our hope that your revolution will be the uprising of a great people, hale, brotherly, humane, avoiding the excesses into which we fell.

Above all, remain united! Learn from our example. Remember how the French Convention, like Saturn, devoured its own children. Be more tolerant than we proved. Your whole strength will barely suffice for the defence of the sacred cause you represent; for its defence against the fierce and crafty enemies who at this hour perchance are arching their backs and purring like cats, but who are lurking in the jungle, awaiting the moment when you will stumble if you should be alone.

Last of all remember, Russian brothers, that you are fighting our battles as well as your own. Our fathers of 1792 wished to bring freedom to the whole world. They failed; and it may be that they did not choose the best way. But they had lofty ambitions. May these ambitions be yours likewise. Bring to Europe the gifts of peace and liberty!

"demain," Geneva, May 1, 1917.

VIII

TOLSTOY: THE FREE SPIRIT

In his diary, of which the first French translation has just been issued by Paul Biriukov,[15] Tolstoy gives utterance to the fantasy that in an earlier life his personality had been a complex of loved beings. Each successive existence, he suggested, enlarged the circle of friends and the range and power of the soul.[16]

Speaking generally, we may say that a great personality comprehends within itself more souls than one. All these souls are grouped around one among them, much as, in a company of friends, the one with the strongest character will establish an ascendancy.

In Tolstoy there are more men than one: there is the great artist; there is the great Christian; there is the being of uncontrolled instincts and pa.s.sions. But in Tolstoy, as his days lengthened and his kingdom extended, it became plain and yet more plain that there was one ruler.

This ruler was the free reason. It is to the free reason that I wish to pay homage here, for it is this above everything that we all need to-day.

Our epoch is not poor in the other energies, those energies which Tolstoy possessed in so full a measure. Our age is surfeited with pa.s.sions and with heroism; in artistic capacity it is not lacking; the fire of religion, even, has not been withheld. G.o.d--all the G.o.ds there be--have cast burning brands into the vast conflagration that rages among the nations. Christ not excepted. There is not one among the countries, belligerent or neutral, including the two Switzerlands, the German and the Romance, which has failed to discover in the gospels justification for cursing or for slaughter.

Rarer to-day than heroism, rarer than beauty, rarer than holiness, is a free spirit. Free from constraint, free from prejudices, free from every idol; free from every dogma, whether of cla.s.s, caste, or nation; free from every religion. A soul which has the courage and the straightforwardness to look with its own eyes, to love with its own heart, to judge with its own reason; to be no shadow, but a man.

To a surpa.s.sing degree, Tolstoy set such an example. He was free.

Invariably, with steadfast gaze, he looked events and men in the face without blinking. His free judgment was unperturbed even by his affections. Nothing shows this more plainly than his independence towards the one whom he valued the most, towards Christ. This great Christian was not a Christian through obedience to Christ. Though he devoted a considerable part of his life to studying, expounding, and diffusing the gospels, he never said, "This or that is true because the gospels say so." Tolstoy's outlook was, "The gospels are true because they say this or that." You yourself must be the judge, your free reason must be the judge, of truth.

There is a writing known to few, for I believe it is still unpublished.