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nearly a year this has gone on. Certain socialist or syndicalist papers may have succeeded here and there in getting some fragments through,[1] but it was only in the month of June 1915 that for the first time my chief article, the one which was the object of the most violent criticism, "Above the Battle," dating from September 1914, could be published in full (almost in full), thanks to the malevolent zeal of a maladroit pamphleteer, to whom I am indebted for bringing my words before the French public for the first time.

A Frenchman does not judge his adversary unheard. Whoever does so judges and condemns himself: for he shows that he fears the light. I place before the world the texts they have slandered.[2] I shall not defend them. Let them defend themselves!

  1. One article only, "The Idols," may, I think, have been published in its entirety in La Bataille syndicaliste.
  2. I leave my articles in their chronological order. I have changed nothing in them. The reader will notice, in the stress of events, certain contradictions and hasty judgments which I would modify to-day… In general, the sentiments expressed have arisen out of indignation and pity. In proportion as the immensity of the ruin extends one feels the poverty of protest, as before an earthquake. "There is more than one war," wrote the aged Rodin to me on the 1st of October, 1914. "What is happening is like a punishment which falls on the world."