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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 Mother and Son (1927)
Translated by Van Wyck Brooks
They did not understand things. They were the victims of words. As long as the words made a fine noise, they paid no attention to the meaning. Annette had asked them to write down their ideal of life. Bran wanted to be an officer, as one of his great uncles had been. He wrote proudly: “Does not the river always rise again to its source?”
They swaggered about the war. The older ones, those who, if it lasted one or two years more, might be called, repeated the blusterings they had heard proclaimed by a few old veterans: “The bullets go through you, but they don’t hurt! Up, you dead!…”
Annette tried an experiment. She dropped a sounding-lead. She let them read a chapter of War and Peace – the death of little Petia – those beautiful pages, drenched with October mist and the dreams of the young tree that was never to awaken. “It was an autumn day, mild and rainy; the heavens and the horizon melted into a single tint of dull grey. A few big drops were falling…”
At first they scarcely listened. They laughed at the Russian names. That of the small hero had the gift of throwing them into convulsions of merriment. Then, little by little, the swarm of flies settled on the edge of the bowl; they became silent, and made the chatterers keep still. One single boy, who blew out his cheeks every time the name recurred, persisted in this same course pleasantry to the end. The others were held. When it was ended, a few yawned. A few roused themselves from their trance with a noisy commotion. A few, awkwardly dissatisfied, tittering, played the connoisseur: “Those Russians are half-wits!” A few, without being able to explain, said, “Its stunning…” Some said nothing. Those were the ones who had been touched. But how far, and why? It was very hard to tell. One couldn’t get them to say a single word out of their hearts. It was their own affair. They weren’t going to hand it over!
Annette looked eagerly at one listener, a thin, fair little fellow, with a long nose, fine, well-cut features and a narrow chest, who coughed and looked the other way. He was intelligent, timid and not very frank, like children who know they are weak and are afraid of exposing themselves. She suspected that his soul had been stirred. During the reading, when she lifted her eyes from the book, she had met the saddened eyes of the child who hastened to thrust his nose back among his papers. This little fellow had often thought of suffering because he himself was sickly and nervous, and egotism is often a key to pity. He who suffers himself has a chance of awakening to the suffering of others.
Annette detained him after the class. She asked him if he liked Petia, that younger brother. He blushed, he was disturbed. She recalled the dream of the sensitive child’s last night. How beautiful life was, vigorous, fragile life! The life that would have been, the life that was not going to be…Had he understood? He shook his head and turned away his eyes. But she had caught sight of them, the light had burned in them.
“Did you think, suppose you were in Petia’s place?”
He protested: “Oh, I shan’t have to go. I’m not well. They’ve told me that I am to stay in the rear.”
He was comforted and proud of his poor health.
“How about the others, your comrades?”
He was quite indifferent to them! He hastened to find in his memory the phrases that he ought to think. To die for one’s country. The others could go and get themselves killed. He had found his balance again. The light had gone out…
Who knew?
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