III
TO THE MURDERED PEOPLES
THE horrors that have taken place during the last two and a half years have given a rude spiritual shock to the western world. No one can ever forget the martyrdom of Belgium, Serbia, Poland, of all the unhappy lands of the west and of the east trampled by invaders. Yet these iniquitous deeds, by which we are revolted because we ourselves are the sufferers—for half a century or more, European civilisation has been doing them or allowing them to be done.
Who will ever know at what a price the Red Sultan has purchased from his mutes of the European press and European diplomacy their silence concerning the slaughter of two hundred thousand Armenians during the first massacres, those of 1894 to 1896? Who will voice the sufferings of the peoples delivered over to rapine during colonial enterprises? When a corner of the veil has been lifted, when in Damaraland or the Congo we have been given a glimpse of one of these fields of pain, who has been able to bear the sight without a shudder? What "civilised" man can think without a blush of the massacres of Manchuria and of the expedition to China in 1900 and 1901, when the German emperor held up Attila as an example to his soldiers, when the allied armies of the "civilised world" rivalled one another in acts of vandalism against a civilisation older and nobler than that of the west?[1] What help has the western world given to the persecuted races of eastern Europe, to the Jews the Poles, the Finns, etc.?[2] What aid to Turkey and to China in their efforts towards regeneration? Sixty years ago, China, poisoned by Indian opium, wished to free herself from the deadly vice. But after two wars and a humiliating peace, she had to accept from England this poison, which is said during a century to have brought to the East India Company profits amounting to £440,000,000. Even in our own day, when China, by a heroic effort, had within ten years cured herself of this disastrous sickness, the sustained pressure of public opinion was requisite to compel the most highly civilised of the European states to renounce the profits derived from the poisoning of a nation. The facts need hardly surprise us, seeing that this same western state continues to draw revenues from the poisoning of its own subjects.
"On the Gold Coast," writes M. Arnold Porret, "a missionary once told me how the negroes account for the European's white skin. God Almighty asked him, 'What hast thou done with thy brother?' And he turned white with fear."[3]
European civilisation stinks of the dead-house. "Jam foetet.…" Europe has called in the grave-diggers. Asia is on the watch.
On June 18, 1916, at the Imperial University of Tokyo, Rabindranath Tagore, the great Hindu, spoke as follows: "The political civilisation which has sprung from the soil of Europe and is overrunning the whole world, like some prolific weed, is based upon exclusiveness. It is always watchful to keep the aliens at bay or to exterminate them. It is carnivorous and cannibalistic in its tendencies, it feeds upon the resources of other peoples and tries to swallow their whole future. It is always afraid of other races achieving eminence, naming it as a peril, and tries to thwart all symptoms of greatness outside its own boundaries, forcing down races of men who are weaker, to be eternally fixed in their weakness.… This political civilisation is scientific, not human. It is powerful because it concentrates all its forces upon one purpose, like a millionaire acquiring money at the cost of his soul. It betrays its trust, it weaves its meshes of lies without shame, it enshrines gigantic idols of greed in its temples, taking great pride in the costly ceremonials of its worship, calling this patriotism. And it can safely be prophesied that this cannot go on.…"[4]
"This cannot go on." Do you hear, Europeans? Are you stopping your ears? Listen to the voice within! We ourselves must question ourselves. Let us not resemble those who ascribe to their neighbour all the sins of the world, and think themselves blameless. For the curse under which we are labouring to-day, each one of us must bear his share of responsibility. Some have erred by deliberate choice, others through weakness, and it is not the weak who are the least guilty. The apathy of the majority, the timorousness of the well-meaning, the selfishness and scepticism of listless rulers, the ignorance or cynicism of the press, the rapacity of profiteers, the faint-hearted servility of the thinkers who make themselves the apostles of devastating prejudices which it should be their mission to uproot; the ruthless pride of intellectuals who value their own ideas more than they value the lives of their fellow-men, and who will send millions to death to prove themselves in the right; the counsels of expediency of a church that is too Roman, a church in which St. Peter the fisherman has become the ferryman of diplomacy; pastors with arid souls, with souls keen-edged as a knife, immolating their flocks in the hope of purifying them; the blind submission of the silly sheep.… Who among us is free from blame? Who among us can wash his hands of the blood of a butchered Europe? Let each one admit his fault and endeavour to expiate it!—But let us turn to the most immediate task.
Here is the outstanding fact: Europe is not free. The voice of the nations is stifled. In the history of the world, these years will be looked upon as the years of the great Slavery. One half of Europe is fighting the other half, in the name of liberty. That they may fight the better, both halves of Europe have renounced liberty. An appeal to the will of the nations is fruitless. As individual entities, the nations no longer exist. A handful of politicians, a few score journalists, have the audacity to speak in the name of this nation or of that. They have no right to speak. They represent no one but themselves. They do not even represent themselves. As early as 1905, Maurras, denouncing the tamed intelligentsia which claims to lead opinion and to represent the nation, spoke of it as "ancilla plutocratiae." … The nation! Who has the right to call himself the representative of a nation? Who knows the soul, who has ever dared to look into the soul, of a nation at war? It is a monster, composed of many myriads of conglomerated lives, of lives that are distinct and conflicting, lives that move in all directions and are yet joined at the base like the tentacles of an octopus.… It is a confused mingling of all the instincts, and of all the reasons, and of all the unreasons.… Blasts of wind from the abyss; sightless and raging forces issuing from the seething depths of animalism; a mad impulse towards destruction and self-destruction; the crude appetites of the herd; distorted religion; mystical erections of the soul enamoured of the infinite, and seeking the morbid assuagement of joy through suffering, through its own suffering, and through the suffering of others; the pretentious despotism of reason, claiming the right to impose on others the unity it lacks yet desires; romanticist flashes of an imagination kindled by memories of the past; the academic phantasmagoria of official history, of the patriotic history which is ever ready to brandish the "Vae Victis" of Brennus, or the "Gloria Victis," as circumstances may dictate.… Helter-skelter there surge upon the tide of passion all the lurking fiends which, in times of peace and order, society spurns.… Every one of us is entangled in the tentacles of the octopus. Every one of us discovers in himself the same confusion of good and of bad impulses, knotted and intertwined. A tangled skein. Who shall unravel it?… Thence comes the feeling of inexorable fate by which, in such crises, men are overwhelmed. Nevertheless this feeling derives merely from their own despondency in face of the efforts necessary to free themselves, efforts manifold and prolonged, but within the compass of their powers. If each one did what he could (no more would be required!) fate would not prove inexorable. The apparent fatality results from the universal abdication. By abandoning himself to fate, each one incurs a share of the guilt.
But the shares in the guilt are unequal. Honour to whom honour is due! In the loathsome stew which European politics constitute to-day, money is the tit-bit. Society is enchained, and the hand holding the chain is the hand of Plutus. He is the real master, the real ruler, of the states. It is he who makes of them fraudulent firms, swindling enterprises.[5] The reader must not suppose that we wish to fix the whole responsibility for the ills we are now enduring upon this or that social group, upon this or that individual. We are not such innocents; we have no wish to make a scapegoat of anyone! This would be too easy a solution. We shall not even say, "Is fecit cui prodest." We shall not say that those desired the war who are now shamelessly profiting by the war. All that they want is profit, and how the profit is made is of no moment to them. They accommodate themselves equally well to war and to peace, to peace and to war, for all is grist which comes to their mill. Let us give one example among a thousand to show how indifferent these men of money become to everything but money. It is a matter of recent history that a group of great German capitalists bought mines in Normandy and gained possession of a fifth part of the mineral wealth of France. Between 1908 and 1913, developing for their own profit the iron industry of our country, they helped in the production of the cannons whose fire is now sweeping the German lines. Such a man was the fabled Midas of antiquity, King Midas of the golden touch.… Do not suppose them to entertain hidden but far-reaching designs. They are men of short views. Their aim is to pile up as much wealth as they can, as quickly as possible. In them we see the climax of that anti-social egoism which is the curse of our day. They are merely the most typical figures in an epoch enslaved to money. The intellectuals, the press, the politicians, the very members of the cabinets (preposterous puppets!), have, whether they like it or not, become tools in the hands of the profiteers, and act as screens to hide them from the public eye.[6] Meanwhile the stupidity of the peoples, their fatalistic submissiveness, the mysticism they have inherited from their primitive ancestors, leave them defenceless before the hurricane of lying and frenzy which drives them to mutual slaughter.…
There is a wicked and cruel saying that nations always have the governments they deserve. Were this true, we should have reason to despair of mankind, for where can we find a government with which a decent man would shake hands? It is all too clear that the masses, those who work, are unable to exercise due control over the men who rule them. Enough for the masses that they invariably have to pay for the errors or the crimes of their rulers. It would be too much, in addition, to make those who are ruled responsible. The men of the people, sacrificing themselves, die for ideas. Those who send others to the sacrifice, live for interests. Thus it comes to pass that the interests live longer than the ideas. Every prolonged war, even a war which at the outset was in a high degree idealistic, tends more and more, as it is protracted, to become a business matter, to become, as Flaubert wrote, "a war for money."—Let me repeat, there is no suggestion that the war is undertaken for money. But as soon as the war is afoot, the milking begins; blood flows, money flows, and no one is in a hurry to stop the flow. A few thousands of privileged persons, belonging to all castes and all nations, a few thousands, men of family, parvenus, junkers, ironmasters, syndicated speculators, army contractors, untitled and irresponsible kings—hidden in the wings, surrounded by and nourishing a swarm of parasites—are able, for the sordid motive of gain, to turn to their own account the best and the worst instincts of mankind. They profit by human ambition and by human pride; by men's grudges and men's hates. They draw equal gains from the bloodthirsty imaginings and from the courage of their fellow-mortals; from the thirst for self-sacrifice, from the heroism which makes men eager to spill their own blood, from the inexhaustible wealth of faith!…
Unhappy peoples! Is it possible to imagine a more tragical destiny than theirs? Never consulted, always immolated, thrust into war, forced into crimes which they have never wished to commit. Any chance adventurer or braggart arrogantly claims the right to cloak with the name of the people the follies of his murderous rhetoric or the sordid interests he wishes to satisfy. The masses are everlastingly duped, everlastingly martyred; they pay for others' misdeeds. Above their heads are exchanged challenges for causes of which they know nothing and for stakes which are of no interest to them. Across their backs, bleeding and bowed, takes place the struggle of ideas and of millions, while they themselves have no more share in the former than in the latter. For their part, they do not hate. They are the sacrifice; and those only hate who have ordered the sacrifice. Peoples poisoned by lies, by the press, by alcohol, and by harlots. Toiling masses, who must now unlearn the lesson of labour. Generous-hearted masses, who must now unlearn the lesson of brotherly love. Masses deliberately demoralised, given over to corruption while still alive, slain. Beloved peoples of Europe, dying for the last two years on your dying land. Have you at length plumbed the depths of woe? Alas, the worst is yet to come. After so much anguish, I dread the fatal day when, no longer buoyed by false hopes, realising the fruitlessness of their sacrifices, the masses, worn out with misery, will blindly wreak their vengeance where they may. They, likewise, will then fall into injustice, and through a surfeit of misfortune they will forfeit even the sombre halo of self-sacrifice. Then, from one end of the chain to the other, all alike will be plunged in the same sea of pain and error. Poor crucified wretches, struggling on your crosses on either side of the Master's! Betrayed more cruelly than He, instead of floating, you will sink like a stone in the ocean of your agony. Will no one save you from your two foes, slavery and hatred? We wish to, we wish to! But you, too, must wish it. Do you wish it? For centuries your reason has been bridled in passive obedience. Are you still capable of achieving freedom?
Who is able to-day to stop the war in its progress? Who can recapture the wild beast and put it back into its cage? Perhaps not even those who first loosed it, the beast-tamers who know that soon will come their turn to be devoured. The cup has been filled with blood and must be drained to the last drop. Carouse, Civilisation!—But when thou art glutted, when peace has come again across ten million corpses and thou hast slept off thy drunken debauch, wilt thou be able to regain mastery of thyself? Wilt thou dare to contemplate thy own wretchedness stripped of the lies with which thou hast veiled it? Will that which can and must go on living, have the courage to free itself from the deadly embrace of rotten institutions?… Peoples, unite! Peoples of all races, more blameworthy or less, all bleeding and all suffering, brothers in misfortune, be brothers in forgiveness and in rebirth. Forget your rancours, which are leading you to a common doom. Join in your mourning, for the losses affect the whole great family of mankind. Through the pain, through the deaths, of millions of your brethren, you must have been made aware of your intimate oneness. See to it that after the war this unity breaks down the barriers which the shamelessness of a few selfish interests would fain rebuild more solidly than ever.
If you fail to take this course, if the war should not bring as its first fruit a social renascence in all the nations, then farewell Europe, queen of thought, guide of mankind. You have lost your way; you are marking time in a cemetery. The cemetery is the right place for you. Make your bed there. Let others lead the world!
All Souls' Day, 1916.
- ↑ Cf. Victor Bérard's brief account of the Manchurian campaign in La révolte de l'Asie. Cf. also Les derniers jours de Pékin, where Pierre Loti describes the destruction of Tung-Chow, "the City of Celestial Purity."
- ↑ Numerous issues of "Cahiers de la Quinzaine" have been devoted to castigating the crimes of civilisation. I may mention:
(a) Sur le Congo, by E. D. Morel, Pierre Mille, and Félicien Challaye ("Cahiers de la Quinzaine," vii, 6, 12, 16).
(b) Sur les Juifs en Russie et en Roumanie, by Bernard Lazare, Elie Eberlin, and Georges Delahache (iii, 8; vi, 6).
(c) Sur la Pologne, by Edmond Bernus (viii, 10, 12, 14).
(d) Sur l'Arménie, by Pierre Quillard (iii, 19).
(e) Sur la Finlande, by Jean Deck (iii, 21).
- ↑ Arnold Porret, Les causes profondes de la guerre, Lausanne, 1916.
- ↑ From a lecture entitled Nationalism in Japan, since republished in the volume Nationalism, Macmillan, London, 1917 (pp. 59 and 60). This address marks a turning-point in the history of the world.
- ↑ Consult a number of shrewd articles published during the last decade by Francis Delaisi. One in particular may be mentioned, that which appeared in "Pages libres" on January 1, 1907, dealing with foreign affairs in 1906 (the Algeciras year). He gives striking examples of what he terms "industrialised diplomacy." As a complement to Delaisi, read the financial articles of the "Revue" (issues for November and December, 1906) signed Lysis, and the commentary on these articles by P. G. La Chesnais in "Pages libres" (January 19, 1907). In these writings we find a plain demonstration of the power of the financial oligarchies over the governments of the European states, alike republics and monarchies—a power that is "collective, mysterious in its workings, and independent of control."
- ↑ Let me quote a few lines from Maurras, so lucid a writer when not under the spell of his fixed idea. "The Money State governs, gilds, and decorates Intelligence: but muzzles it and puts it to sleep. The Money State, at will, can prevent Intelligence from becoming aware of a political truth; and if Intelligence utters a political truth, the Money State can prevent that truth from being heard and understood. How can a country realise its own needs if those who know them can be condemned to silence, to falsehood, or to isolation?" (L'Avenir de l'Intelligence.)—A true picture of the present day.