"The fire smouldering in the forest of Europe was beginning to burstinto flames. In vain did they try to put it out in one place; it onlybroke out in another. With gusts of smoke and a shower of sparks itswept from one point to another, burning the dry brushwood. Already inthe East there were skirmishes as the prelude to the great war of thenations. All Europe, Europe that only yesterday was sceptical andapathetic, like a dead wood, was swept by the flames. All men werepossessed by the desire for battle. War was ever on the point ofbreaking out. It was stamped out, but it sprang to life again. The worldfelt that it was at the mercy of an accident that might let loose thedogs of war. The world lay in wait. The feeling of inevitability weighedheavily even upon the most pacifically minded. And ideologues, shelteredbeneath the massive shadows of the cyclops, Proudhon, hymned in warman's fairest title of nobility...."
"This, then, was to be the end of the physical and moral resurrectionof the races of the West! To such butchery they were to be borne alongby the currents of action and passionate faith! Only a Napoleonic geniuscould have marked out a chosen, deliberate aim for this blind, onwardrush. But nowhere in Europe was there any genius for action. It was asthough the world had chosen the most mediocre to be its governors. Theforce of the human mind was in other things—so there was nothing to bedone but to trust to the declivity down which they were moving. Thisboth the governing and the governed classes were doing. Europe lookedlike a vast armed camp."
Jean-Christophe, vol. x (1912).
[English translation by Gilbert Cannan, vol. iv, p. 504.]
TRANSLATED BY
C. K. OGDEN, M. A.
(Editor of The Cambridge Magazine)
CHICAGO
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
1916
Copyright 1916
The Open Court Pub. Co., Chicago.
First published in 1916.
(All rights reserved.)
Introduction
Contents
Preface
Notes
Footnotes
| "Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice, |
| Be not dishearten'd, affection shall solve the problem of freedom yet. |
| . . . . . . . . . |
| (Were you looking to be held together by lawyers? |
| Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms? |
| Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere.)" |
These lines of Walt Whitman will be recalled by many who read thefollowing pages: for not only does Rolland himself refer to Whitman inhis brief Introduction, but, were it not for a certain bizarrerieapart from their context, the words "Over the Carnage" might perhaps