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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Roger Martin du Gard: Selections on war
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Roger Martin du Gard
From Summer 1914 (1936)
Translated by Stuart Gilbert
“I’m afraid I don’t agree; my view is that the private citizen has the right to dissociate himself entirely from the nationalistic ambitions in the name of which countries go to war. I deny that the state is justified in forcing a man, for any reason whatsoever, to go against his conscience. High-sounding phrases – I hate to be always using them! But there it is! Somehow my conscience makes itself heard above the time-serving arguments like those you’ve just been using. Above the laws of the land as well. The only way to prevent violence from being the deciding factor in world affairs is to refuse point-blank to take a hand in violence. In my opinion, the refusal to take part in killing one’s fellowmen is a sign of nobility of mind and entitled to respect. If your codes and judges don’t respect it, so much the worse for them. Sooner or later the reckoning will come.”
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Obviously the jingoists were gaining ground at such a rate that it now seemed impossible to keep up the struggle. Journalists, school-teachers, writers, scientists, the intelligentzia – all vied with one another in adjuring their critical independence, in preaching the new crusade, inciting all to hatred of the hereditary foe, urging blind obedience, and preparing men’s minds for the futile holocaust. Even in the papers of the left, the élite of the popular leaders – who only the day before were loudly proclaiming with the full weight of their authority that this monstrous struggle between the states of Europe would only be an amplification of the class struggle on the international plane, another triumph of the fuglemen of profiteering, competition, and private ownership – all now seemed willing to put their influence at the service of the government. One or two did have the grace to make some halting reservations. “Our dream was too ambitious to come true,” and so forth. But they had capitulated, one and all; they now declared that national defence was the bounden duty of all citizens and were already urging their working-class readers to co-operate with a clear conscience in the deadly work. Their collective default opened the flood-gates to a spate of patriotic propaganda and bade fair to uproot from the minds of the masses, already wavering in their allegiance, that instinct of revolt which Jacques had counted on till now as the one and only hope of preserving peace.
Yes, he reflected with a bitter sense of helplessness, they’ve made their preparations with diabolical skill. War is possible only with a nation wrought up to fever-pitch. First men’s minds are mobilized, then it’s child’s-play to mobilize the men themselves.
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“Really, the whole thing passes my understanding. Who’d have believed that such a thing as this war was possible today? Yet all that was needed, it seems, was for the press to persist in fogging the issues in people’s minds, with the result that no one now has any clear idea who is and isn’t the aggressor, and every nation fancies its ‘honour’ is at stake. A week of imbecile scare-mongering, bluster, and exaggeration has been enough to set all the nations of Europe at each other’s throats, like a band of lunatics, yelling blue murder! Yes, the whole thing passes my understanding. It’s like the tragedy of Oedipus. He, too, was forewarned. But when, on the day fixed by destiny, the alarming events which had been predicted took place, he failed to recognize them. It’s the same with us. Our prophets had foretold everything; we knew exactly where the danger lay – in the Balkans, in Austria, in Tsarism and Pan-Germanism. We were forewarned. We were on the watch. Many sensible people did everything they could to stave off disaster. And yet – it’s come! We couldn’t escape it. Why? I keep on turning the question over in my mind: Why? Perhaps the answer is that among the events we had dreaded and expected, some small unforeseen factor crept in, the merest trifle, just enough to modify their aspect and of a sudden make them unrecognizable. Just enough to enable fate to spring its trap, despite men’s vigilance. And now we’re caught in it!”
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