AN APPEAL TO THE INTELLECTUALS OF EUROPE.[1]
Leibniz, writing to a French correspondent at a time when France and Hanover were at war, speaks of "this war, in which philosophy takes no interest" (Philosophische Werke, Gerhardt’s edition, I., p. 420). We have travelled far since those days. In modern times, philosophers, professors, and intellectuals generally undertake willingly to provide their respective governments with those ingenious distortions and those subtle untruths by which it is made to appear that all good is on one side and all wickedness on the other. Side by side, in the pages of Scientia, are to be read articles by learned men, all betraying shamelessly their national bias, all as incapable of justice as any cheap newspaper, all as full of special pleading and garbled history. And all accept, as a matter of course, the inevitability of each other's bias; disagreeing with each other’s conclusions, yet they agree perfectly with each other’s spirit. All agree that the whole of a writer’s duty is to make out a case for his own country.
To this attitude there have been notable exceptions among literary men—for example, Romain Rolland
- ↑ This article was written in April, before the Russian defeats, the participation of Italy, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the Bryce Report. I have not altered anything, though if it were written now some alterations would be required. It was to have appeared in the Italian review, Scientia, in June, and was already in proof, but was withdrawn in Consequence of Italy's joining in the war. It appeared. with some omissions, in Nos. 4 and 5 of the Swiss International Review.
