Above the Battle
the vilest is to have concealed its crimes from its people. For by depriving them of the means of protesting against those crimes, it has involved them for ever in the responsibility; it has abused their magnificent devotion. The intellectuals, however, are also guilty. For if one admits that the brave men, who in every country tamely feed upon the news which their papers and their leaders give them for nourishment, allow themselves to be duped, one cannot pardon those whose duty it is to seek truth in the midst of error, and to know the value of interested witnesses and passionate hallucinations. Before bursting into the midst of this furious debate upon which was staked the destruction of nations and of the treasures of the spirit, their first duty (a duty of loyalty as much as of common-sense) should have been to consider the problems from both sides. By blind loyalty and culpable trustfulness they have rushed head-foremost into the net which their Imperialism had spread. They believed that their first duty was, with their eyes closed, to defend the honour of their State against all accusation. They did not see that the noblest means of defending it was to disavow its faults and to cleanse their country of them.…
I have awaited this virile disavowal from the
26
