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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Romain Rolland: Selections on war
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Romain Rolland
From A World In Birth (L’enfantement) (1933)
Translated by Amalia de Alberti
Throughout the war, while the nations were tearing at each other, had not the Money of the Franco-German Forges, which fattened on the carnage, imposed on both States, and the Chief Headquarters of both armies, the obligation of religiously respecting their hen that laid the golden eggs, the Briey basin? And the contract had been loyally respected on both sides, when all other treaties of sovereigns, ministers and States, and the laws of Man and God were no more than scraps of paper.
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It was clear that Europe and the world were delivered over to the hidden might of monstrous industrial and financial powers. They manipulated the states, democracies and Fascisms; made everything serve their purpose: kings of the Balkans, princes bribed to sell their people, helped; so did the heroes of dagger, bludgeon and castor oil, condottieri and duci with eyes blazing, and great jaws breathing war and pogroms; and also the noble fathers of the Immortal principles of ’89, those overripe pears with their pettifoggery about Parliaments; Hitler, Horthy, Mussolini and Pilsudski; – and why not? the loud-speakers of Paris, Prague, London, Geneva and Washington. Everything can be used, brigandage and idealism, noble candor and infamy; it is only a matter of paying the price: glory, money or crime. Something for every taste! The simplest and the most artful were caught: once a finger was snarled in the machinery, the whole animal was drawn in. Fear completed the capture of which flattery and little friendly presents had been the bait. The big fish were caught on the hook.
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When the war came, and the intellectuals (led by the members of the University) enrolled of their own accord in the service of their country, the Maréchal of the University, automatically appointed to power in spite of his age, naturally entrusted his favorite with a leading part on the staff of the new Arm he was organizing: Intelligence, militarized for the first time, and requisitioned for service in the factories of intellectual munitions and cannon.
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