Defending his reason

In 1914, war surprises Romain Rolland, French writer, as he stays in Switzerland. He will remain on the soil of this country without being a deserter: having reached the age limit, it is not mobilized. What to do when one is horrified by the war and seen in every country, at least initially, the spirits "enlightened" government express their unconditional and blind support, which takes its expression in the most outrageous forms? Romain Rolland is like a man who would drink water in his corner while everyone is intoxicated with the smell of blood. By temperament, he is excluded from the great celebration of the European carnage. What to do then? Hardly, he will find his way. He worked in Geneva for an organization, the Agency for Prisoners of War, which depends on the Red Cross. Mailbox that receives messages from all over Europe, it will gather information on the conflict, made difficult to gather by propaganda and censorship. And he wrote articles that will form "Above the fray," articles that earned him lot of hostility, and gradually, when they find players like Stefan Zweig, supports and incentives in different countries.

Several surprises await those who discover these texts, so many years after they are made and while one hardly reads the work of Nobel Prize-winning writer in 1915, which was world famous. First "Above the fray" does not refer belligerents back to back by making them the same lesson to all. He points wrongs and research responsibilities. Germanophile its culture, nourished Goethe and Beethoven, Romain Rolland deny nothing of that legacy, but Germany denounces the "scrap of paper", that of Thomas Mann at the time, which believes that the "necessity" comes before any written law (that is to say, they can rip all treaties, such as that in principle guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium and breaking his word, when it comes to defending its interests vital, or what we consider to be vital interests). This miserable apology for rape, that of `I can do it well, because it is good for me ', Romain Rolland denounces with force (p. 135 ff.).

This is the German militarism that Romain Rolland takes most violently, and then the tsarist government. What is meant in the text by "imperialism", not as in Lenin's desire to conquer new markets across the globe, it is the spirit of the old elites who prefer war European and conquest of power-sharing and social change which must marginalize them. Basically Romain Rolland prophesies 17 revolutions (Russia) and 18 (in Germany) as necessities. In time, "crush the infamous," he wrote after Voltaire (p. 75): curious speech for a pacifist. His analysis of the causes of the war, the crucial role of the German High Command and politics "tortuous" Austria is not far from that of David Fromkin in the remarkable and recent The Last Summer of EuropeThe Last summer Europe: Who caused the First World War?.

Nowhere in this admirer of Gandhi, we read that the use of weapons is bad in itself, always, everywhere, necessarily. Romain Rolland intends to encourage people to put the butt in the air; litterateur, he saves ridiculous to bring the warring parties to better feelings by reading to them. But it is one thing to pay tribute to the qualities of fighters, another wonder why they fight, basically. And on this point, Romain Rolland tracks the pseudo-justifications. A war of civilization against barbarism? The writer, who admired Tolstoy and Kant, sees that it's absurd: Russian barbarians are for German, German barbarians for French (like Bergson, who does not lack recover) that in a world where the examination of facts and respect the cultures in their diversity have lost all their rights.

It is clear that designate the enemy as absolute evil, it is also apologize in advance anything you can do to him then there is more crime, there is a means for ends above criticism. Romain Rolland is not against an abstraction, "war", it is against this war as we lead against his inflamed lawyers, who did not make much of the lives of others, it is against wars in which on behalf of the absolute, all limits are exceeded.

It is this which explains his attention, for example, the fate of imprisoned civilians (p. 107), because from the moment we lock people because they have a passport of a particular nationality, people whose the real danger is zero, the war has changed in nature.

Stylistically dated, uneven interest in an article to another, this collection remains a key document: it shows what the ordinary exercise of the intellect, and moral sense not too atrophied, can have a wonderful context of indoctrination and cretinization.