Thus the brave-man-in-spite-of-himself set off like Oedipus for the fight with the Sphinx, Country, who awaited him at the crossroads.
Bertin’s attack drew the attention of several politicians to Clerambault; they belonged to the extreme Left, and found it difficult to conciliate the opposition to the Government—their reason for existence—with the Sacred Union formed against the enemies’ invasion.
They republished the first two articles in a socialist paper which was then balancing itself between contradictions; opposing the war, and at the same time voting for credits. You could see in its pages eloquent statements of internationalism side by side with the appeals of ministers who were preaching a nationalist policy. In this seesaw Clerambault’s lightly lyrical pages, where the attack on the idea of Country was made with caution, and the criticism covered up by devotion, would have been taken as a harmless platonic protestation. Unfortunately, the teeth of censure had fastened themselves upon some phrases, with the tenacity of ants; they might have escaped notice in the general distraction of thought, if it had not been for this.
In the article addressed “To Her whom We have Loved,” the word country appears the first time coupled with an invocation to love. The critics kept this, but cut it out when it occurred further on dissociated from such flattering expressions. The word, awkwardly concealed under this extinguisher, shone all the more brightly in the mind of the reader—but this they were too dull to perceive, and great importance was thus given to writings which had not much in themselves. It must be added that all minds were then in a passive state, in which the slightest word of liberal humanitarianism took on an extraordinary importance, particularly if signed by a well-known name.
The “Pardon Asked of the Dead,” was more effective than the other ever could be; its sadness touched the mass of simple hearts, to whom the war was agony. The authorities had been indifferent up to now, but at the first hint of this they tried to put a stop to it. They had sense enough to know that rigorous measures against Clerambault would be a mistake, but they could put pressure on the paper through influence behind the scenes. An opposition to the writer showed itself on the staff of the paper. Naturally they did not blame the internationalism of his views; they merely stigmatised it as bourgeois sentimentality.
Clerambault furnished them with fresh arguments by a new article, where his aversion to war seemed incidentally to condemn revolution as well. Poets are proverbially bad politicians.
It was a reply to “The Appeal to the Dead,” that Barrès, like an owl perched on a cypress in a graveyard, had wailed forth.
To the Living
Death rules the world. You that are living, rise and shake off the yoke! It is not enough that the nations are destroyed. They are bidden to glorify Death, to march towards it with songs; they are expected to admire their own sacrifice … to call it the “most glorious, the most enviable fate” … but how untrue this is! Life is the great, the holy thing, and love of life is the first of virtues. The men of today have it no longer; this war has shown that, and even worse. It has proved that during the last fifteen years, many have hoped for these horrible upheavals—you cannot deny it! No man loves life who has no better use for it than to throw it into the jaws of Death. Life is a burden to many—to you rich of the middle-class, reactionary conservatives, whose moral dyspepsia takes away your appetite, everything tastes flat and bitter. Everything bores you. It is a heavy burden also to you proletarians, poor, unhappy, discouraged by your hard lot. In the dull obscurity of your lives, hopeless of any change for the better—Oh, Ye of little faith!—your only chance of escape seems to be through an act of violence which lifts you out of the mire for one moment at least, even if it be the last. Anarchists and revolutionists who have preserved something of the primitive animal energy rely on these qualities to liberate themselves in this way; they are the strong. But the mass of the people are too weary to take the initiative, and that is why they eagerly welcome the sharp blade of war which pierces through to the core of the nations. They give themselves up to it, darkly, voluptuously. It is the only moment of their dim lives when they can feel the breath of the infinite within them—and this moment is their annihilation. …
Is this a way to make the best of life? … Which we can only maintain, it would seem, by renouncing it; and for the sake of what carnivorous gods? … Country, Revolution … who grind millions of men in their bloody jaws.
What glory can be found in death and destruction? It is Life that we need, and you do not know it, for you are not worthy. You have never felt the blessing of the living hour, the joy that circulates in the light. Half-dead souls, you would have us all die with you, and when we stretch out our hands to save you, our sick brothers, you seek to drag us down with you into the pit.
I do not lay the blame on you, poor unfortunates, but on your masters, our leaders of the hour, our intellectual and political heads, masters of gold, iron, blood, and thought! … You who rule the nations, who move armies; you
