Presented to the
LIBRARY of the
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
by
A. F. B. Clark
' I
YOUNG FRANCE
AND NEW AMERICA
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
LA YOUGOSLAVIE (The Southern Slavs)
Payot, Paris
GBAMMAIBE ELEMENTAIEE DE LA LANGUE SEBBE
Delagrave, Paris
(in collaboration with A. Ouyevitch)
IMAGINAIBES, poems Edition romane, Paris
TBANSLATIONS
PSYCHOLOGIE ET SOCIOLO-
GIE, by Professor J. M.
Baldwin
Giard et Briere, Paris
ELEMENTS DE PSYCHO-SO-
CIOLOGIE, by Professor
Ellwood
I/UNITE YOUGOSLAVE, manifeste de la jennesse
serbe, create et Slovene reunie Plon, Paris
JUDITH, trag&lie, by F. Hebbel
Nouvelle Revue Frangaise, Paris
(in collaboration with G. Gallimard)
YOUNG FRANCE
AND NEW AMERICA
BY
PIERRE DE LANUX
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1917
All rights reserved
COPYRIGHT. 1917,
BY THE MACMILLiAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published, November, 1917.
TO
PROFESSOR WILLIAM GARDNER HALE
AND TO
MARICE RUTLEDGE HALE
FOR MANY REASONS, THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED
FOREWORD
THESE are the reflections of a Frenchman who spent
the year 1917 in America. They deal with the
present events and those from the near past, but
their expression is first inspired by the thought of
the near future, that is to say, the period that will
begin when this war ends. My purpose was to
define and to sum up the possibilities which
Franco- American relations will offer tomorrow, as
well on intellectual as on concrete grounds.
This subject would be much too wide for one
man and for one book, but we shall concentrate on
the results of co-operation between elements of the
younger generation of both countries. The present
book is written for the young men and women of
America who are interested in the present life of
France.
Those who know well my country, having seen
her and helped her during the present trial, will
find here some facts which are already familiar to
them, and I fear that they will resent my pretension
vii
viii FOREWORD
to teach them what they know better than I do my-
self. Other readers will charge me with excessive
optimism or with "youthful" severity for the gen-
eration that preceded mine. It may be that they
are right; it may be also that they lack the faith and
vision that is in many of us.
I wish that, in order to face a state of things
which is quite new, one could bring a quite new
attitude of judgment. This is precisely what may
be expected from Americans, as it is one of their
best national qualities. We live in a time when the
fruits of thought are ripening with strange and
terrible rapidity, and many Utopias of yesterday
have already passed to the rank of the common-
place. Let us, therefore, deal with today's Utopia
with the respect that is owed to the commonplace of
tomorrow. . . .
Much has been said and written about Franco-
American relationships. Since one hundred and
thirty-nine years, many great and less great minds
have expressed concordant views on that subject.
Common interpretation of republican principles,
love for country and for freedom, joined to that
idealist and generalizing tendency that made our
two nations express their Declarations in terms that
are valuable, not for one country alone, but for the
whole world, from the very beginning of our con-
FOREWORD ix
temporary history how often did historians and
orators dwell on that theme, developing it with
more eloquence than I could bring here!
But a storm has shaken all the values of the earth.
Those which will be found intact, after the crisis is
over, one might well call them eternal. The friend-
ship of the two Republics is one of them. And the
values which will be born from the present over-
throwing, we have to make clear as soon as possible,
and confront them with our past, so as to know
what remains. Among these new values, and in the
first rank, there is the realization of common stan-
dards in life, the sense of common task and com-
mon responsibilities, and, above all, the value of
mutual knowledge between the youth of France and
America. For, after all our old reasons for mu-
tual understanding, there exist now new reasons,
and indeed, much more powerful ones, which I
shall try to set forth here.
Let me first extend my thanks to all those who
helped me in my task by their generous encourage-
ments, and especially mention the reviews which
published some parts of the present work: The
New Republic, The New France, The Dial, The
Nation, etc. And let me express my gratefulness
to the authors of remarkable translations from
French writers whom I quoted in this book: to Miss
x FOREWORD
Virginia Hale, to Miss Elizabeth Eyre, to Mr.
Joyce Kilmer, to Mr. Deems Taylor, and to Dr.
Ernest Hart, the last named having translated the
poems which occur in the body of the section on
Verhaeren.
P. L.
New York, October, 1917.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD vii
I
FORMATION OF THE PRESENT FRENCH GENERATION 1
Rapid history of ten years. Awakening to interna-
tional problems. Hard training to civic and national
life. Revival in physical life. Foreign influences. Also
revival of tradition. The spirit of 1914. Who gave the
best expression of it. The war. The younger elements
and what they bring.
II
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 35
The capital fact of the present evolution. Its prophets.
America's work during the first part of the war. Con-
ditions of international leadership. Perils of "Know-
nothingism." The value of common experience. The
value of common purpose. War and Democracy. The
pacifists from the trenches. Our "prussianization."
Common sense and our aims.
Ill
PROMISES OF CONCRETE CO-OPERATION .... 63
New conditions of work in Europe, nearer to the
American conditions, because of the scarcity of men and
the necessity of rapid reconstruction. American methods
to be brought. The new spirit of economic activity in
France. A writer on French labour. An instance of
common task: co-operation in the countries which are
economically backward, but jealous of national independ-
ence, and will welcome the Franco-American enterprises.
CONTENTS
IV PACE
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 91
Forms of influence. Is external influence to be wel-
come? American writers who are known in France.
About French criticism. Translations of literature.
Educational exchanges. The philosophers. The literary
treasury of contemporary France. Our masters and el-
ders. Recent tendencies. Emile Verhaeren's interna-
tional value. The new poets of France: More children
of Walt Whitman. Schools, groups and critics. The
Reviews. War poems. And then?
Music in France.
V
CONCLUSIONS 142
History of mutual knowledge. False ideas about each
other. Principle of our exchanges. France's experience
and America's methods. Common task in the organiza-
tion of peace. The two nations who did most work un-
selfishly for the world. Psychology of our understanding.
Individual comradeship as a basis for our relations. Re-
sponsibilities.
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES CITED .... . 151
YOUNG FRANCE
AND NEW AMERICA
YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW
AMERICA
i
FORMATION OF THE PRESENT FRENCH
GENERATION
Rapid history of ten years. Awakening to international
problems. Hard training to civic and national life. Revival
in physical life. Foreign influences. Also revival of tradition.
The spirit of 1914. Who gave the best expression of it. The
war. The younger elements and what they bring.
"L'angoisse est necessaire aux races qui sont fortes
Et pour grandir encore, il lew faut le danger."
EMILE VERHAEREK.
THIS stuay, or rather this rapid retrospective
glance, will not be given from the standpoint of the
historian. It will be just material for History to
come, and personal testimony rather than impartial
definitions. Many records like this will have to
be added in order to form even a sketch of the
recent past that will not be too incomplete. I shall
simply tell my national experience to my comrades
from the other side.
2 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
It was a wonderful advantage to me to live in
contact with the best among the younger men and
women. They were writers, teachers, engineers or
artists, belonging to many classes and opinions;
they were also the labourers and the country peo-
ple with whom I lived when serving as a soldier.
To all of them I am indebted for what I am going
to tell about this present generation. So, if there
is beauty in the spectacle which they give, and
which I shall here describe, they deserve all ad-
miration for it.
Our parents gave us, as usually happens, some
splendid examples to follow, and, also, some ven-
erable standards to discard. As usually happens,
we discovered the latter before we acknowledged
the good to be kept. Or rather, the good was laid
in us without our being aware of it, and is probably
greater than our pride yet knows.
They were the children of 1870. They had been
brought up in France's darkest days, when defeat,
mutilation and isolation followed the factitious
prosperity of our Second Empire. At that time
France was absolutely alone; so they took the habit,
for twenty years, of reasoning strictly on our forces,
our fate, practically ignoring the rest of the world.
Our generation, from our younger years on, was
THE PRESENT GENERATION 3
used to go back for its models to other times than
the period which extends from 1870 to 1890. We
differed in our models, but we agreed to dislike
that period. It meant to us bad taste, prejudices,
moral fears, limited ideas, ugly fashions, Victori-
anism without even prestige, people being hypno-
tized by their recent defeat and spending their
forces in internal disputes which did not offer the
slightest interest to us. We were surprised by the
obstinate, obtrusive, negative hostilities of some na-
tionalists against the foreigners, of free thinkers
against the priests, of all creeds against each other.
We resented severely that they had not under-
stood their great XlXth century (of course it was
easier to us), and that they could not digest it.
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity were written
everywhere, even on prison doors, but we were irri-
tated not to find them in the acts of living persons.
Big things were done by men of exception, against
the others and without their help. I believe that
this was a period of transition and hesitation not
of affirmation. A period when old and new stan-
dards were fighting each other unf ruitfully, because
men did not perceive the beauty and full meaning of
that conflict itself, and were not used to their own
mental emancipation. They spent their force for
small results when immense things were at stake,
4 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
and they followed small men in a time when great
geniuses were living. What they took seriously
seemed to us to be obsolete; what we worshipped
made them smile. We envied a little their virtues,
and not at all their vices. And we were totally
disgusted by the lack of moral independence of
their lives. They said "realism" when they meant
"ugliness," and that single feature would be
enough to separate them from us. They lied to
themselves in their tastes, in their passions, in their
words. They were deeply sunk in lie.
I seem to speak resentfully, but I cannot forget
the old generals who dressed our young men in red
trousers to send them to a modern war. The ruling
class of 187O-1900 was more or less like these
brave chiefs. We felt that such a world was wait-
ing for new men. Now, we know that we were
right. But, at the same time, we can explain why
our elders were such; and we realize, too, that the
new men are not us, but the younger ones who
know much that we ignore.
This is how things appeared when we were about
18. All national danger seemed remote and ab-
stract. There had been a bitter injustice com-
mitted against us in 1870, when Germany had torn
Alsace-Lorraine away from us, and we kept the hope
that this would be readjusted some time. But few
THE PRESENT GENERATION 5
expected that readjustment from a war, since war
had proved to mean injustice. So we believed that
other people expected nothing from war. And we
came to lose the belief in the possibility of war itself.
After the generation which had suffered from the
ordeal of '71, people had grown to be compara-
tively indifferent to the various foreign problems
and conflicts which did not concern France immedi-
ately, because they believed that France could not
be involved against her will in an armed conflict.
And around us were flourishing in full prosperity
the ideas of the future, great social schemes, new
artistic impulses, preceding the time when the uni-
verse would be ready to receive them, preceding
the actual conditions, and Utopian only because of
that. We were enthusiastic about them, still some-
thing was warning us that instead of solving the old
problems of race, nationality, domination, they
simply neglected them, or rather solved them ab-
stractly, for the satisfaction of a few intelligences.
In fact, the problems remained open. Endeavours
to prevent future wars met with scepticism, or sank
into Utopian schemes. We had a feeling that a
greater light, all possible light, indeed, ought to
have been brought on the direct cause and risks of
European conflicts, which were obscure to many. 1
1 "Thus the men in Europe who can really claim to have
6 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
France was preparing to show the way, once more,
and we were passionately learning our business of
world-pioneers. We were in great, passionate,
earnest hesitations. We admired, in that time, An-
atole France and we admired Barres. I name these
two personifications of reformist and nationalistic
spirit, although, of course, for other young men the
same tendencies took other names. Barres told us
of the Earth and of the Dead, with arguments which
appealed to our deepest, truest conservative in-
stincts. And Anatole France, smiling, said:
"What hath been written by the dead shall be can-
celled by the living; otherwise the will of those who
are no more would impose itself upon those who are
still, and the dead would be the living, and the living
would be the dead." And we knew that both were
true.
This antagonism could be felt in the long quarrel
about the programs of teaching. The question of
worked for peace are not those who wanted to disarm their
own country, to keep it neutral under all circumstances. . . .
The true peacemakers were those who grasped the real strug-
gle between the Entente and the Alliance, and proposed con-
crete improvements in the diplomacy about Africa, Asia Minor,
and the Far East. The men who had better solutions of the
Moroccan, Congo, and Balkan problems were the ones who
can claim now to have done their share of thinking for civiliza-
tion. . . . Those who saw the source of the friction and tried
to remedy it were the real internationalists." (Walter Lipp-
mann The Stakes of Diplomacy.)
THE PRESENT GENERATION 7
the programs in the Universities, which was more
of a political dispute for the men who fixed them,
was, for us, a question of choosing the knowledge
that would help us to the kind of life we wanted to
live. And what was that life?
This was being decided, little by little, as the
result of many influences. (Certainly more varied
influences than any other generation had received
before.) They came through new channels. We
practised more physical life than our fathers, and
that influenced our ways of living. (I shall dwell
again on this aspect of our formation.) We trav-
elled more. If I take my six best friends as exam-
ples, I find that one has been in Germany and
Tunisia, another in Russia and in Greece; the third
through Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil; the fourth
in California and Russia ; the fifth in England, Italy,
Russia and North America; the sixth in Algeria,
Spain and Asia Minor; and I had, myself, at 27,
visited thirteen nations in Europe. Three other
friends of mine, being about 25, have founded a
vast and prosperous French enterprise in British
Columbia, after having been first around the world.
This was together the consequence and cause of
our learning foreign languages much more than it
had been done before. The time we spent in that
8 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
work, however imperfect the knowledge that we
might reach, is a time we never regret. It opened
not only more possibilities for travelling, for easier
business, direct meeting of the people, but it gave us
the key to whole literatures, which, in their turn,
played a decisive part in our intellectual formation.
At least foreign language brought understanding of
the foreign spirit, a sense of what is relative and
what absolute in expression, and new reasons to love
our own language.
Some foreign works impressed us greatly. Dos-
toievsky after Tolstoi, Kipling after Dickens, Whit-
man after E. A. Poe, meant a great deal, not only to
writers, but to readers of any class or purpose.
(How many young men did I find in the French Am-
bulance Service, during this war, in Belgium or in
Macedonia, who were reading Walt Whitman's
"Wound Dresser," from the "Drum Taps"!)
All this was preparing the notion of universal con-
cern, which is so strong now in all of us. We got
trained to think beyond the frontiers. What I
called the disciples of Anatole France, looked there
mostly for foreign culture. The disciples of
Barre's looked there for danger. Elder people,
apart from few exceptions, spoke of danger and of
culture, but did not look there at all. They were
negative; they were just critical; they always knew
THE PRESENT GENERATION 9
the reasons against doing things; they were im-
mensely far from America, whom they ignored and
feared. They might have prevented this war,
which from any standpoint is a failure, for all poli-
cies which led to it. They called it, afterwards, in-
evitable. But it was not. And as our generation
is dying in it, it has a certain right to state how
things did happen.
It was in 1905 that our hard training to civic and
national life began, with our awakening to danger,
and to the great fact that, now, everybody is con-
cerned with everything that happens in the world.
I insist upon this, because this explains all: our atti-
tude before the war, our stand in the war, and our
will after the war.
In 1904-5, came the Russo-Japanese conflict.
Most of us did not feel that we were very strongly
affected by it. Still we were. As soon as our
Russian ally had proved to be weaker, Germany
started her aggressive policy in the Moroccan ques-
tion. That year Charles Peguy published his
"cahier," Notre Patrie, about that precise week, that
very day when we realized the presence of danger:
"As every one, I had come back to Paris at 9 in the
morning ; as every one, that is to say, as about eight
or nine hundred persons, I knew at half past eleven
10 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
that a new period had just begun in the history of my
own life, in the history of this country, and certainly
in the history of the world." . . . "Every one, at
the same time, knew that the menace of a German in-
vasion was present, that it was there, that it was
really imminent."
"It was not a news like ordinary news it went
from one man to another like a knowledge from
anterior life, a recognition of anterior certitude.
Indeed, each of us did find in himself the recog-
nition total, immediate, ready, immobile of this
menace which was present. . . . Each man recog-
nized in himself, as if it were familiar and well-
known, this deep voice, this voice from inside, this
voice of long-buried memory."
Later, Germany provoked brutal incidents in
Alsace, which gave opportunity to notice that the
Reichstag, representing the German people, had no
authority whatever to disapprove a government
which had the support of the Emperor. In 1908
came the annexation of Bosnia by Austria, against
the will of the Serbian population, and this was the
direct source of the Balkan trouble and of the
European war. Now is it not the very image of our
subject and a symbol of our times: that in order to
write, in America, about France, I am obliged to
mention the annexation of Bosnia and to insist upon
THE PRESENT GENERATION 11
it? I was a soldier at that time, and I had been in
Bosnia before. I remember my comrades asking
me to explain what was the connection between that
Turkish province and their possible going to battle
against the Prussians? Many of them did not be-
lieve that such a connection existed.
In 1911 Germany sent a warship to the Moroccan
coast. I remember the feeling we had, of air being
made irrespirable by that nation. We had to come,
little by little, in spite of ourselves, to adopt the feel-
ings and opinions of our fathers towards the Prus-
sians. We discovered our fathers to be right, by
ourselves. We did not inherit the idea of revenge,
as the Germans always pretended. We thought it,
for a time, to be the remotest possible illusion. (In
1899, at the time of the Boer war and after the
Fashoda incidents, England was a hundred times
more unpopular than Germany in France, among the
young.) Germany having chosen the "big stick"
policy, we rediscovered, one by one, the elements of
old hostilities. The man from the people who had
been anti-militaristic for a time and who loved
his work and peace, got more and more impatient,
and realized that in Europe a group of powers was
acting systematically against us when nothing was to
fear from us. For the people of France were still
ready to do many new foolish things, but could
12 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
never, never have been driven into an aggressive
war. We felt this drawback to the maintenance of
peace. But we were decided, and our friends and
allies with us, to maintain peace in spite of the
drawback.
In 1912 the Balkan war broke out. Four small
nations, in order to make their brothers free from
Turkish yoke, mobilized. The European govern-
ments refused to believe in a possible war, and when
it broke out they believed in the victory of the Turks.
When the Turks were defeated these governments
did not know how to prevent discord from arising
among the victors, and when this brought a second
war, in 1913, they could see that Austria and Ger-
many were responsible for it, and a splendid na-
tional insurrection ended pitifully in a slaughter
of allies because the Central Powers wanted the
weakening of Serbia and the rupture of the Balkan
league.
Even during these Balkan wars, many said in
France, "Let those people fight if they want to. We
have nothing to do with Balkanic aspirations.'"'
Still, Serbian aspirations to independence meant the
end of the German ambition in "Mittel-Europa."
Some of us had a notion of that. So, at the news of
mobilization, in October, 1912, I had gone to
THE PRESENT GENERATION 13
Serbia, and managed to see this crisis through. I
saw after a few weeks, as plainly as any man could
have done in my place, that the true enemy of Bal-
kanic freedom and peace was not only Turkey, but
Austria, and that the victories over the Turks were
already victories over the Germans; and that the
seed of terrible European troubles was in the op-
pression of the Southern Slavs by the Austrians.
One had but to be there and talk with the people, to
bring back invaluable observations. When I did
so, competent people did not refuse to believe me,
but they considered that the matter was not impor-
tant enough to pay much attention to it.
My deep conviction is that the peril could have
been checked in its beginning, in 1913, if we all had
had sufficient information and a strong feeling that
we were all threatened by it. That is why I believe
that the ignorance and indifference of the world is
the greatest, worst enemy of mankind and of peace.
And, above all, this war has to wipe out interna-
tional "know-nothingism."
On the 28th of June, 1914, the Austrian Grown
prince was killed by a Bosnian fanatic.
On the 3rd of August, 1914, as a consequence,
Germany declared war upon France.
But those ten years had prepared us for "1'Union
14 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
Sacree." It was a part of our equipment for mo-
bilization. And the Kaiser did not know it. ...
I come now to a most difficult part of my task,
which is to give the true portrait of the young man of
France at the eve of the war his actions in the war
have been but a consequence of those morals of his,
that were moulded before. We have seen what had
influenced him. What was the result of it all?
Which ethics were ours in 1914?
I have a very high idea of them of course, since
they were mine, but I begin to believe that there is
something even finer, and it is the ethics of the
young men who are now twenty and who had their
moral formation during the war.
We had, as has been said, to combine and recon-
cile the conservative impulses, the impulses for
reformation, in a peculiar national situation, and
to add to this the result of our own moral experi-
ences, which were rather rich and bold. (Some-
times innovation had led to an unexpected form of
tradition. Sport was a true returning to old
French sixteenth century habits.)
We gave to personal freedom and responsibility,
not to mention sincerity to oneself, an importance
which brought us nearer to American standards than
you believe. We felt immense, unlimited admira-
THE PRESENT GENERATION 15
tion and reverence for our masters, who were those
exceptions among our elders. They were the intel-
ligent and the strong, and the loving, wherever we
could find them.
I do not speak now of literary mastership; but of
a vital one. The thinkers whom we followed had
come to an ethical, often to a political and re-
ligious attitude, which was made of affirmation.
Even those who were free from political entangle-
ments, were deeply and constantly affected by the
national life. (How far from the misanthropic,
nonchalant artists of 1890!) None were indiffer-
ent to collective problems. The most skeptical,
apparently, were not the least passionate. All had
an interpretation of moral life, to propose. And
among them we chose, and about them we earnestly
discussed within ourselves and with each other.
One man we were reading with more and more
attention, among those elders of exception. Charles
Peguy had been for 16 years the editor of Les
Cahiers de la Quinzaine, a periodical which pub-
lished literary, political, documentary works, as
separate books. (There appeared for the first time
the works of Romain Rolland, including the famous
Beethoven, and the long serial of Jean Christophe. )
Peguy belonged to old French soil. His parents
were peasants. He had the strong culture from the
16 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
Ecole Normale, but his faithfulness to the earth of
his ancestors was like France's herself. He had
clear, penetrating views, was hard to his opponents,
and hard to his friends. He described once, with
implacable accurateness, the contradictory aspects
of Jaures, the great socialist leader, his power and
also his weakness. He was absolutely honest, to his
party, to his readers, to himself. When we read his
books we learnt what civic morals meant. They
are usually the most corrupt (because treason and
capitulation are there of little consequence) and
they ought to be the purest (because they are simple,
without obscure nuances, and honesty almost suf-
fices.) But Peguy brought something more than
honesty. He revealed to us a mystical side of pol-
itics.
"We turn then to the young people ... we can
only say to them: Take care. You look upon us
as back numbers. This is good, but be careful.
When you speak lightly, when you treat the Repub-
lic lightly, so lightly, you run the risk not only of
being unjust (which is, perhaps, nothing in your
system, at least, so you say, but which in our system
is serious, and, according to our ideas, a good deal) .
You risk more, in your system even, in your ideas;
you risk being stupid. . . . You forget, you ignore
that there has been a republican mysticism (that
THE PRESENT GENERATION 17
which we call republican mystics) ; and to forget it,
and to ignore it, does not necessarily mean that it has
not existed. Men have died for liberty as men have
died for faith. These elections of today appear to
you a grotesque formality, universally hypocritical,
corrupt through and through ; and you have the right
to say so. But men have lived, men without num-
ber, heroes, martyrs, and I will say saints, and when
I say "saints," I know, perhaps, what I am talking
about ... an entire people have lived so that the
lowest idiot of today should have the right to accom-
plish this corrupt formality. This was a terrible, a
laborious and formidable childbirth. Nor had this
always reached the limit of grotesqueness. The
peoples around us, nations, entire races, are in
travail with the same painful childbearing; are
working and struggling to obtain this ludicrous
formality . . .
"These elections are ludicrous. But the heroism
and the sanctity with which, by means of which, are
obtained these ludicrous results, temporarily ludi-
crous, contain all that is most fine and most sacred
in the world.
"Everything begins in mystics and ends in pol-
itics. . . . The essential is that in each order of
things, in each system, the mystic should not be de-
voured by the politic to which it has given birth."
18 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
I thought of Peguy when I read this simple
answer in Witter Bynner's New World: "Beauty in
politics? If you put it there." . . . Peguy reacted
against our tendency to desert politics. He ac-
cepted all the duties of the citizen.
Charles Peguy, who went as a lieutenant of re-
serve with his section of infantry, was killed at the
battle of the Marne, in September, 1914.
The following lines are to be found in his last
Cahier, which was entitled "Sur la Philosophic de
M. Bergson," and was among the best works he ever
gave. One may realize the loss we endured by his
death.
"A great philosophy is not an irreproachable
philosophy. It is a fearless philosophy.
"A great philosophy is not a dictation. The
greatest is not that which is faultless.
"A great philosophy is not the one against which
there is nothing to say. It is the one which has
said something.
"And, moreover, it is the one which had some-
thing to say, in spite of being unable to say it.
"It is not the one which has no errors. It is not
the one which has no gaps. It is the one which has
abundancies.
"It is not a question of confusing. It is in the
THE PRESENT GENERATION 19
schools that it is a question of confusing. It is not
even a question of convincing.
"To confuse the adversary in a matter of philoso-
phy . . . what bad breeding!
"The true philosopher knows that he is not stand-
ing opposing his adversary, but beside his adver-
sary and others, facing a reality always greater
and more mysterious.
"And this even the true physician knows. That
he is not standing opposing his rival physician, but
beside him, facing a nature always more profound
and more mysterious.
"To listen to a philosophical debate, or to partici-
pate therein, with the idea that one is going to con-
vince or subjugate his adversary, or that one is going
to see one of the two adversaries confound the other,
is to show that one does not know what one is talking
about, to acknowledge to great incapacity, vulgarity
and barbarism. It is evidence of a great lack of
culture. It is to show that one does not belong to
this country."
His conclusion to the discussions about Berg-
sonism was this:
"It is a prejudice, but it is an absolutely un-
eradicable prejudice that demands that an inflexible
reason should be more a reason than a flexible one.
20 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
... It is the same prejudice that demands that an
inflexible scientific method should be more a
method, and more scientific, than a flexible scien-
tific method.
"It is evident, on the contrary, that it is the elastic
and flexible methods, flexible logic, and flexible
morals that are the most severe, as they adhere the
most closely to their object.
"An inflexible logic may permit errors to escape
from its recesses. ... An inflexible moral may
permit crimes to escape from its recesses, while, on
the contrary, a flexible moral will hold, denounce
and pursue the sinuosities of those things which
seek to escape. Inflexibility is essentially false;
flexibility is true.
"It is flexible morals which exact a heart to keep
perpetually ready and pure, and which exercise the
most implacable and hard restraints. The only
ones which are never absent, which do not pardon.
It is elastic and flexible morals, flexible methods,
flexible logic, that exercise the most implacable ob-
ligations. It is for this reason that the most honest
man is not he who enters into apparent rules. It is
he who remains in his place, who works, who suffers
and who says nothing."
These are the last lines of his that were published.
But Peguy was still an elder to us. I shall quote
THE PRESENT GENERATION 21
now another writer, who really embodied, for the
few years of his life, our best feelings, beliefs,
enthusiasms. He was the living soul of us all.
Henri Franck died at 23, before the war, leaving
an unfinished poem: La Danse devant l'Arche 9 and
various essays on philosophy and literature.
Here are the verses where he speaks of his friends
and of our group: *
"French boys, fine of face, raised by your mothers,
Who from babyhood had slow and serious growth
In your large houses enclosed in leafy gardens.
Boys religious as I was, from childhood taught
To assist the priest and help in conducting the mass;
Older, you left intelligent mother and wise father
And came to complete in Paris the growth of your spirit.
You have sense and pleasing manners, politeness and
warmth;
Latin and geometry you knew, and combining
Things respected from childhood and those learned in
college,
Religious boys, much troubled by your studies,
At twenty years strangely you try to reconcile
Old beliefs with your new uncertainty."
And this expresses the understanding among the
young men who find themselves before the new task
of their lives :
"0 the joy of feeling ourselves in heart among our con-
temporaries,
And of building up our spirits through each other!
i Translation by Miss V. Hale.
22 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
"Because in the same year we were all conceived
There vibrates a secret understanding among us,
A thing that is strong to bind our youthful brows
As the yoke binds the oxen together to their teams.
Like them we press on with united effort,
Like them bear on the earth an equal weight.
"The air in which our laugh rings and our voices sound
Is of the same age. It was born with us;
Because we had our growth at the same time, together,
Each of us understands, and each expresses, all the
others;
Each of us easily may know from the beginning
What this clear-headed old man may not know.
"We have been watching the new life grow within us,
And now it is ripe, eager to spend itself.
It is we, now, who shall take the risk,
We, who shall hurl the discus,
And our violin shall lead the dance,
We are seeking a place where to build our work.
"The generation which we form together
Is winged and massive as a swarm of bees
What branch will hold its humming fruit,
And what will be the flavour of our honey?"
Henri Franck had a clear and intense belief in
the genius of France. He said of the French lan-
guage:
"It is like the mobile and expressive face,
The obedient army under its intelligent chief,
And the royal road where the spirit entire
THE PRESENT GENERATION 23
May inarch forward at ease.
Like the fiery sword the arch-angel wielded,
The sword of reason, it reveals and separates,
Defines and creates limits, points out and circumscribes.
"It has the ring of laughter, it is the voice of justice,
The sound of clearness and of certitude,
The pure expression of the inner self.
Over the orator it throws a decent dress,
And gives the hero's voice resounding speech."
And glorifying the country herself and then the
Republic:
"I greet you, sentinel on the bridge of Europe,
Live bird in your vines, lark in your field.
Cock singing at dawn of the centuries on your farm;
And as a peasant entering the hall
Out of respect for the masters of the house
And that he may not soil the finely waxed floor
Carefully removes his boots and holds them in his hand,
So in your honour, France, I put aside
The heavy perturbation of my spirit;
The gaze with which I look upon you shall be clear,
My eyes shall look with love, cherished country!
"0 ancient wisdom built up century after century ;
courage of the world, heart of the West,
Nation inventive, intelligent, O Living One
Republic, I hail you by your glorious name.
"As a young woman leaning on the balcony of the family
mansion
The house adorned with antique portraits and coats of
arms, and statues along the walks,
24 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
Will not look at the walls of the house
Nor its arms woven in beautiful tapestries,
Nor the ancient escutcheons painted upon its wood,
But with a long look courageous and eager
Follows the great ships cleaving the water toward new
lands
And the young emigrant with exalted look on his face:
Youth, with elbow braced upon the history of ages
You turn your eyes toward the free horizon.
"And you are the first to build and the first to destroy;
That in your generous heart you may feel life always
warm,
Each century you turn your age-cold knowledge to new
purpose,
You put to untried uses your ancient wealth."
If I quote such long passages it is because I never
could find a better and more accurate expression of
our spirit than this lyrical one. In a great epoch,
the poets are the best speakers of a nation.
Henri Franck was passionately devoted to philo-
sophical study and teaching. But his essential dis-
position to abstract thought did not prevent him
from hearing
"Along the open frontier the stirring
Of ponderous legions of Teutons hungry for prey."
And in one of his philosophical chronicles in the
review La' Phalange, he wrote these prophetical sen-
tences, as he returned from a trip to Alsace, where
he met the men, the Alsatians:
THE PRESENT GENERATION 25
"Ah, when, after a week, I went up again from
Barr and Obernai to Sainte-Odile, under my steps
questions arose with the leaves; as I walked with
care not to hurt the earth, I felt that I was treading
on a great and sorrowful problem. We must go,
all of us, every year, several times a year, armed
with letters of introduction, to visit Alsace and talk
with the Alsatians. You will not teach them much,
but you will learn a great deal from them Barres
is right.
"They will give you a conclusive lesson in energy
and manly pride. Though Charles Andler, in a
magnificent lecture, did indeed warn us that there is
no German culture, I had not grasped the whole
meaning of the statement. Now, thanks to the
Alsatians, I am in a position to confirm it and to ex-
plain it to you. . . .
"The question is a pressing one. Germany be-
comes each day more odious. Europe no longer
breathes freely. It was Germany that contrived
the vile plot which made Young Turkey its victim.
It is sad to think that today Lord Byron would go to
the rescue of the Turks, but where is Lord Byron?
And we what are we doing? We must really ap-
preciate that the time for delicate intellectual hesita-
tions has passed. In every corner of the world the
future meets one obstacle: Germany. . . . The
26 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
magnificent struggle between the middle class
which has not yet lost its moral strength, and those
of the workers who are seeking to find and to pre-
pare themselves, is dominated and warped by Ger-
man effort. Is this heavy backward force much
longer to bar our way? Will it be successful in
throwing itself across the path of the creative evo-
lution of French freedom?"
That was written in 1910.
It may easily be seen that the want of young men
was for an employment of their mystical faculties,
an answer to their mystical exigencies. It has been
called a "renaissance of idealism," which is not
quite true. The sign of youth in nations as well as
in individuals is the want to give themselves widely
to high and limitless aims. These young men did
not exactly go back to a former spiritual ideal.
But first they worshipped what they knew to be the
highest objects of love; and then they wanted to call
"Divine" what they loved. Mystics do not mean
orthodoxy, for there are mystics resulting from any
high form of belief, and they do not exclude each
other. A mistake that was made some time ago
was to expect from Science, mystics to be created
that would replace all others. This could no more
be conceived by a generation which had assimilated
pragmatism. Now Peguy proposed a form of
THE PRESENT GENERATION 27
mystics, and Paul Claudel another, and Whitman
another. We listened to them all. And it can be
said indeed that there was no new work of art
which was not consciously backed by mystics.
Yes, it was a rich epoch, a clean, strong, passion-
ate one. It was free from prejudice for or against
science. But everything was looked at for what it
was, and only those false witnesses were hated who
gave to France a visage which had never been hers,
and were responsible for the distorted image which
the world had of her. ( Some of them are still alive
or enthroned in the Academic. ) A sense of respon-
sibility developed which was not imposed as a heavy
burden, but accepted as a joyful dignity. Every
moment of personal, cultural or national life
obliged a choice, and it was indifference which was
losing ground. Professor James Mark Baldwin,
who followed closely that "renaissance" and prob-
ably interpreted an aspect of it in his theory of
"Pancalism," wrote in 1913 1 1
"Indeed, the signs multiply of a new departure
in France, a departure amounting to a renascence
of the spiritual life. It shows itself in a new
sobriety and firmness in foreign policy, a new de-
mand for personal temperance and restraint, a new
i French and American Ideals (Manchester).
28 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
enthusiasm for moral achievement.. In this the true
elan of the French character is again revealed. A
new stage of the French ideal is in process of
formation. . . . Americans join with all the world
in acclaiming this renewal of the national life of
France in a moral purpose so resolute, so informed
with knowledge, so sure of itself."
When the war broke out, the first spontaneous
manifestation which resulted from it was 1' Union
Sacree. It was an immediate response to a ques-
tion that had to be instantly solved. All solved it
in the same sense, because a clear feeling of rela-
tive importance of things was instantly imposed
upon us. First of all, France had to be saved.
And in this struggle, two principles were face to
face. On one side, the system, more immediately
prosperous, of stiff unification and mechanical co-
operation was imposed an order complete but
artificial. On the other side, unification coming
by itself, from within, by a natural, normal process
of life as a result of the free will of men freely
associated, an order which was more rich and flexi-
ble. The battle of the Marne decided between
those two orders, and was for the civilized world
of today what Salamis had been for the Greek
world.
THE PRESENT GENERATION 29
The French were morally prepared for the worst,
and the first retreat did not surprise them. If
Paris had had to be besieged or even abandoned,
the army's morale would have stood the shock. But
that extreme trial was spared us. And then began
a great experience of mutual knowledge for the
French. Social classes, political parties, were
mixed in the trench, and as each one was giving
an equal share of blood, none had a right to claim
more patriotic authority than the others. These
classes and parties learned to meet on the basis of
equality before death, which is a rather solid basis
on which to appreciate each other. They certainly
are decided to oppose each other after the war,
for every one finds in the great and complex events
reasons to confirm his faith and standards. But
they will fight each other more intelligently, hav-
ing more respect for what they oppose. No valu-
able evolution of thought could be obtained by
sanguinary process, except on the subject of war
itself and the realization of its horrors. But in
the interior of each party an evolution occurred
towards more consciousness and dignity.
As for a better knowledge of foreign minds, what
invaluable experience was the presence on our soil
of men from most allied countries: Belgians,
Serbians, Americans, Englishmen, Russians, Portu-
30 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
guese, Italians! What an opportunity given to our
young men to put into practice their abstract inter-
est and curiosity for other countries, and to prepare
countless forms of co-operation for the work after
the war!
Many of them, though, will work no more.
Thousands will play no more a part in the life of
the country they loved and no part in life at all.
My friends Alain-Fournier, Baguenier-Desormeaux,
Jean Reutlinger, Armand de Montousse and my
countless brothers whose names I do not know
you were the best among us and now you leave a
heavy task for us to perform. We shall miss you
not with the heart only ; we shall miss your energies
and advice. At least we must try to imagine what
you would require from us, and then do it.
Not death only did strike the martyred country,
but also sufferings of all kinds. The endless trains
of wounded, I have them well in mind. Thousands
of bleeding bodies I bent over:
"The crushed head . . .
The neck of the cavalryman with the bullet through and
through, I examine,
. . . The perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-
wound,
. . . The one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so
sickening, so offensive. . . ." *
* Whitman.
THE PRESENT GENERATION 31
And above all, this has been the infinite
martyrdom of women. Women of our time have
been through trials which made them the true vic-
tims of this war. Think of the little probability of
the infantryman coming back, after three years of
renewed, perpetual risk. Women faced this with
limitless heroism. They had shared the moral
preparation of the young men ; they, too, had known
those enlightening and exalting discoveries which
were ours, and often they approached more closely
than we, to our own young standards of life. In-
deed they contributed in fixing those standards, and
we knew that we were right when they approved of
what we did. In the war they played a part equal
to that of the men, as nurses, workers in ammuni-
tion factories, and in learning hundreds of new oc-
cupations. And they brought up alone, true to our
ideals magnified by the greatest of sacrifices, the
children of the fighting, and the children of the
dead.
Useless, criminal business was this war. I can't
compare it better than to a huge railway catastrophe,
due to mischief: an engineer had run mad and be-
lieved that all trains had to yield the track to him.
Now trains are burning. The more help, the sooner
it will be over. It is no more a question of idly
32 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
discussing if railway catastrophes are good or bad.
It is a business of stopping the mad engine, and two-
thirds of the world are now occupied with that
task.
This experience was worthless for those who had
found without it, or would have found, a noble
sense to life and to work. It was just enlighten-
ing to those who ignored themselves, and had their
own value revealed to themselves, through it. To
most it was but the opportunity to manifest what they
unconsciously were. For some, for very few, it
meant a magnificent display of their best qualities
and gave a full employment to their means. I
think, for instance, of the aviators, who are the
very definite product of a generation formed
through love of science, sport and self-sacrifice.
I felt, when I happened to visit them in the field,
that I met the very exceptional heroes for whom this
war meant (as it did for all fighters in other times)
intense individual expression of power, courage and
intelligence. For them at least war meant exalted
form of life.
But our largest hope is in another element, more
and more numerous, and which does much, thinks
more, and speaks little in this moment. Have you
seen a drawing by Bernard Naudin, picturing "Le
THE PRESENT GENERATION 33
Bleuet"? Le Bleuet is the young soldier from the
classes of 1914, '15, '16, '17, called during the
war. He is now from eighteen to twenty -two. The
young man who is now about to enter the fight, after
he had had three years of moral preparation through
the fight carried on by his elders, is a new kind of
man.
He grew up aware of the near presence of death.
He faced in their sternest reality the duties and
conflicts of personal life, family life, national life.
He and his comrades will be fit to lead us after
the war. They must be our leaders.
The salvation of France will be to let herself be
led by her men of twenty, when they come back.
They know evidently more than we do about the
present time. They have our experience plus their
own. They can see our schemes meeting realiza-
tion or failure; our dreams become their schemes,
and they have dreams in their turn which we can-
not guess, and which will come true as our night-
mares did. For it appears that these men have
deep and reasonable faith in themselves.
Last year, in Salonica, Gaston Cherau told me this
anecdote: The young recruits from the class of
1915 had seen their first battle, and had behaved
splendidly. After it, an old officer was congratulat-
ing them, and, briskly, although he had tears in his
34 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
eyes, told some of them: ' You are wonderful
boys, all of you." A young fellow replied:
" Oh, Captain, that's nothing. But wait a minute
till you see those from the class of '16 then you'll
see something! "
II
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917
The capital fact of the present evolution. Its prophets.
America's work during the first part of the war. Conditions
of international leadership. Perils of "know-nothingism."
The value of common experience. The value of common
purpose. War and Democracy. The pacifists from the
trenches. Our "prussianization." Common sense and our
aims.
The boy enlisted. Then he told his father, who
asked him what his motives were:
"Well, this treatment of the Belgians got on
my nerves at last"
THESE United States. This young country this
old country in the experience of democracy. A
great, successful experience, easy but for one dread-
ful crisis, when the land was divided and bleeding
for five years. And now, meeting for the first time
an actual world task.
I have tried to set aside the thousands of small
episodes and observations which I have gathered
during my presence in this country, and to isolate
the main striking significance of the last event. I
see it as follows:
The nation is of two broad categories, having
35
36 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
practically nothing in common but the name of
American, and ideals which have never had an op-
portunity to appear to be common. First, the fam-
ilies who lived in America in the time of the Civil
War, then those who have arrived since. The first,
mostly of English, Irish, Dutch and French descent.
The latter German, Slav, Jewish, Italian, Syrian,
etc. The first had colonized and organized the New
World, and lived through the crisis which put its
very existence in question. The latter came to a
New World that was ready and achieved, and played
an obscure part in its prosperity. Until now they
have had no place in the ruling class, except the
Jews who first reached the higher positions. All
the life of the recent immigrants has been devoted
to personal fortune and safety; they have kept a
rather sentimental attachment to the motherland and
the traditions of the race. Still, by their very pres-
ence on this soil, they shared the latent ideal, which
was that of public liberty and personal dignity.
They had emigrated to find it and to find a larger
chance of prosperity under a sky that was less heavy
than the sky of the old empires.
Now the New Country is agitated by the irresist-
ible call of the world. She cannot remain isolated
nor indifferent. The world makes too great a noise,
and that noise comes nearer and nearer. Things
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 37
have gone far since the torpedo which struck the
Lusitania was heard exploding, on this shore. The
New Country decides her ways according to the
old principles laid by the first immigrants, but ap-
plied to the circumstances of the present day.
President Wilson says March 5, 1917: "We are
provincials no longer. The tragical events of the
thirty months of vital turmoil through which we
have just passed have made us citizens of the
world. There can be no turning back. Our own
fortunes as a nation are involved, whether we would
have it so or not.
"And yet we are not the less Americans on that
account. We shall be the more American if we but
remain true to the principles in which we have been
bred. They are not the principles of a province or
of a single continent. We have known and boasted
all along that they were the principles of a liberated
mankind. . . .
". . . All nations are equally interested in the
peace of the world and in the political stability of
free peoples, and equally responsible for their
maintenance"
Those historical words meant new duties for all
America the first and the second category. How
did the second behave? How far did it endorse the
attitude of the adopted country?
38 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
I shall give an instance of it which struck me very
strongly:
In the heart of the great metallurgic district of
Pennsylvania, thousands of Slavs live and work,
men who emigrated to escape Austrian and Hun-
garian oppression. In June, 1917, after the visit
to this country of a Serbian colonel, Milan Pribit-
chevich, who talked to them of the duty to help in
the war of liberation, two thousand enlisted and
went at once. Now they are fighting in Salonica.
I went to Johnstown to see them depart, and it
was a spectacle which I shall never forget. They
were not even American citizens yet. They had
lived here in peace, some in prosperity. They
could never have been forced to take arms against
the Empire from which they came. But they chose
to revolt against it because the spirit of liberty was
in them. I saw them receiving two flags from the
hands of their priests, an American flag and a
Serbian one. They took the oath to conquer or
to die, and the two flags were solemnly blessed.
Then those simple men, who belong to a strong,
pure, peasant race, kissed both flags as a sign of
equal allegiance. This was a real scene from the
drama of the great international upheaval.
It had a great significance. Those emigrated
people, who are free from any oppression and can
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 39
hear every opinion, have the right to claim that they
represent the free creeds of their countrymen from
oppressed lands. Now they speak little, but they
volunteer and go, showing that this country is not
only a refuge against tyranny, but a place where
the energies of liberty are sufficiently abundant to
be spread throughout over the world.
No representative of America was there. (The
city of Johnstown has a strong German population;
the authorities, who were invited, did not appear.)
The daily papers hardly mentioned this departure
of two battalions, and probably did not notice the
meaning of it. I am convinced that many of you
Americans do not know the resource which is in
those simple people, who make no advertisement
of their feelings, but go and die for "your" prin-
ciples. And, with differing souls, their love for
the country rests on the same basis as that of the
builders of America themselves.
And when they will have given their blood, the
last difference between you, which rested in an un-
equal experience, will be swept out, because they
will have shared the greatest experience of your
civic life.
I think this is the capital fact of the present evolu-
tion, and all the episodes which hold the headlines
40 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
of the daily papers are but details in it. This
active "melting" process is the triumphant meaning
of America, which was announced by its prophets
in the past, and which also vibrates in the words
of its younger poets. Whitman exclaimed:
Brain of the New World! what a task is thine!
To formulate the Modern . . .
. . . Land tolerating all accepting all. . . .
And Witter Bynner, who wrote on the copy of his
"New World," which he gave to me: . . ."the new
world being both France and America," says:
Here as I come with heaven at my side
None of the weary words they say
Remain with me,
I am borne like a wave of the sea
Towards world to be ...
And, young and bold,
I am happier than they
The timid unbelievers who grow old!"
What happened for us in relation with the world,
happens for the various elements of your country
in relation with each other. The mutual acquaint-
ance of the various races in the ranks of the national
army will work for an even more rapid union.
In the future, the violation of Belgium and the
victory of the Marne will be regarded as events
of American as well as European history, since the
first determined the conscience of the world against
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 41
Germany, and the second made it possible for
America to interfere in time. Your moral prep-
aration was, in my opinion, as rapid as it could be.
But many elements among the best educated and in-
formed had not waited for an official and general
intervention. From the early days of the war
American boys were to be found in the ambulance
and aviation corps, American women among the
nurses and engaged in Relief work. All this pro-
ceeded from two virtues which I think are char-
acteristic of America chivalry and right intui-
tion. I saw those qualities applied in many war
works; I saw them give unbelievable results of
efficiency in some instances, like the "Appui Beige,"
a French work ruled by American methods, or the
Vacation War Relief Committee with whom I had
the pleasure to co-operate, and who supplies our
troops with surgical field material.
I remember M. Jusserand telling me of the ex-
treme delicacy and modesty of many American do-
nators, who never wanted their name to appear, and
often gave for our wounded more than regard for
their own comfort would have allowed them to do.
Indeed, America seems to be designated for a
certain form of world-leadership, which does not
mean a world-domination, far from it; but a stand
42 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
that involves an example to be followed by others.
Some countries wanted to rule the world when the
world did not care for their rule. But the fact is
that the world of today is eagerly expecting Amer-
ica to play a leading part in its destinies. You do
not realize how much an enlightened Russian,
Frenchman, Syrian, Chinese, expects from your
presence in the family of nations.
But there are heavy conditions to be fulfilled by
a moral leadership like the one which is wanted
from both our countries. First of all, "Know-noth-
ingism" has to be banished. America will reap the
fruits of her clean, unaggressive, honest policy:
her prestige everywhere is growing, which means
immediate and concrete advantages. But America
has to be revealed to herself with all that she con-
tains. 1 In that respect, there is an amazing con-
trast between the abundance and facility of in-
formation, and the actual lack of knowledge.
1 "America is like a vast Sargasso Sea a prodigious welter
of unconscious life, swept by ground-swells of half conscious
emotions. All manner of living things are drifting in it,
phosphorescent, gaily coloured, gathered into knots and clotted
masses, gelatinous, unformed, flimsy, tangled, rising and fall-
ing, floating and merging, here an immense distended belly,
there a tiny rudimentary brain (the gross devouring the fine)
everywhere an unchecked, uncharted, unorganized vitality like
that of the first chaos." (Van Wyck Brooks in America's
Coming of Age.)
Since these lines were written, America has entered into her
new process of crystallization.
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 43
A strange phenomenon of the present time de-
serves more attention than it seems to have roused.
It is a consequence of the opposition between inter-
ventionists and pacifists. The first, who belonged
to the nationalist and more conservative part of the
country, were pushing America forward and urging
her to take part in the world conflict, and so
hastened her evolution. The other extreme party,
which included the most advanced elements, was
striving in order to hold the country back, stopping
her on her way to intervention, and practically act-
ing as reactionary power. The final results will
probably bring surprises to both parties.
We regard America as being nearly ready for
political leadership, because the international at-
titude of mind of the Americans is the right one.
They are not embarrassed by old prejudices and
methods, and have a tendency to settle things ac-
cording to elementary human right, which they
never lose sight of. That is why we welcome
America in the conference of peace.
But my hope and faith in America is not con-
fined to that. I expect from her, very soon, some
great artistic revelations. Her avidity to absorb
will soon be followed by a faculty to choose and to
reject, and then she will be ready for creation,
44 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
which will not be an isolated exception. Already
some splendid isolated works are showing the way.
I find one more likeness with the French, in the
fact that many American men and women are worth
more than the purpose they seem to have in life.
Are not some disputable forms of success still pur-
sued, at the cost of happiness, health and life itself,
by men and women of rich resource who kill in
themselves all possibility for deep, personal, orig-
inal life? It is because we love America so much
that such slight disappointments do not leave us
indifferent.
The present crisis is bringing to the people of
America a moral experience which can be com-
pared with that which came to the people of France,
in August, 1914. Of course, the experience of
American citizens will never be the same as that of
the Europeans. But similarly the English experi-
ence in the war is not the French one, which in
turn is neither the Belgian, nor the Serbian, nor
the Polish. King Albert's situation is not Presi-
dent Wilson's; still as a matter of fact, both took
the same attitude towards the same challenge.
The United States took its actual stand by a long
considered act which consciously involves large re-
sponsibilities. And the whole country, understand-
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 45
ing the gravity of possible consequences, is making
rapid acquaintance with that "Union Sacree" which
in France was our first great positive experience in
the present war.
There was until now, in spite of our common
principles, one tremendous difference between us.
The people of France had first to lose their feeling
of security and be thrown on the battlefield. Amer-
ica had not even been made anxious for her safety.
Now her every citizen is anxious, and thinks, and
tries to find his way. And that anxiety is in itself
an immense experience.
Now if something great is to be realized after
the war, if we are to know, as Mr. Wilson and our
successive Premiers have said explicitly, a peace
maintained by an organized international will, then
the future maintainers of that peace have first to
understand each other, and this implies that the
terms we use have a similar sense. What under-
standing was possible between a European soldier
with his three years of fighting in the trenches, with
his experiences of danger, of anger, and of medi-
tation in the constant face of death and an Ameri-
can citizen from the West? Today, the citizen
from the West has made up his mind, has reflected
on the government's reasons, and has endorsed the
President's action. There was no alliance, there
46 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
was no concerted action between us. But the facts
are these: France which was peaceful had to
mobilize against certain destructive forces. Amer-
ica which is peaceful had to mobilize against the
same forces. Thus our effort and your effort to-
ward peaceful life had something in common, were
it only the common drawback to its success. And
so in the struggle to establish a lasting peace, we
were already co-operating indirectly. Thus some
international terms had passed from Utopia to
reality. This may seem to be of little importance.
Still it is capital.
Because peace will come. We must remember
that today throughout the world a formidable and
resolute will exists, almost unanimous, to guar-
antee that peace, in the future, against the intrigues
of adventurous politics. That will exists even
more firmly in the minds of those who do not ex-
press it in speeches, but are fighting for it.
In 1792 France wanted to bring liberty to the
world. The world was not ready to receive it.
Only the Americans, the Swiss, and the English,
as nations, knew what the word itself meant. Most
of the others, as the French sometime earlier, did
not see anything more glorious than to belong to a
prince. The world really awoke in 1848. In the
same way the world of three years ago was not ripe
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 47
for the general enforcement of peace. But now it
is awake, dreadfully indeed, and waits for some-
thing that has to come. Will you say it is Utopian,
the international understanding which practically
all inhabitants of the civilized world call for with
all their hearts, and for which so many are dying?
Well, to obtain this result of understanding, we
have to deal with terms of common significance.
Until February 3rd the end of the war seemed to
announce itself as the way into an obscure, uncer-
tain period, full of debates and disagreements,
where three groups of Powers would be involved,
directly or otherwise: the Allies, the Central Pow-
ers, the neutrals. And what was there of common
significance for those three groups of similar
strength, and entirely dissimilar mentalities, ex-
periences, and aspirations?
Now let us look at the consequence of the Ameri-
can intervention. America has broken with a na-
tion that refused to respect treaties. It is not a
special point of maritime right that matters here;
it is a fundamental opposition of doctrine. Amer-
ica refuses to admit that a nation, more than an
individual, might suppress a law, when that law in-
terferes with its desires. An Austrian diplomat
said: "A nation has a right to wage a preventive
war." He meant the attack on Serbia. Chan-
48 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
cellor Bethmann-Hollweg said: "Necessity knows no
law." He meant the attack on Belgium. Amer-
ica stands firmly against these doctrines, or rather,
this destruction of all doctrines.
The French soldiers are standing against the
same. For our men, with their long civic training,
are not so stupid and so blind and so tame as to fight
during three years of terrible and patient struggle,
without knowing why they do it. It is not for a
detail, but for the most decisive principles. And if
Americans went to war, it was for similar prin-
ciples, and not only to avenge a submarine com-
mander's bloody fantasy.
And now do you see the consequence, young
American, my comrade? For the future we shall
have the experience, in common with the whole
civilized world, of having resisted the German at-
tempt, just as we should have resisted any other: the
ideas which we are fighting exist elsewhere, al-
though they have been disappearing little by little.
In Germany and Austria alone have they remained
permanent ideas of government.
When peace comes, we shall find ourselves to be
one vast group of nations (your President said a
family) instead of various groups confronting each
other in mistrust and misunderstanding. There
will be, as there is already potentially (and this is
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 49
not a dream), a single ensemble wherein at least
one common fundamental idea will have been ex-
pressed, and even two. First the will to preserve
a lasting peace, and, therefore, to put into practice
the necessary means, which had never been seri-
ously considered, because of the lack of manifest
faith and will on the part of the great number.
Second the common experience of what threatens
peace; that is, the so-called right of the mightier,
used as a state doctrine, such as is represented by
imperial Germany.
What has been lacking until now is a definite,
clear idea to put forth in common. Here we have
two. These are enough to begin with.
There seems to me no doubt that Germany's eyes
will be opened, and that she will follow, because
there will be no choice for her. Perhaps she will
even publish the biggest books about universal peace
and the ways of preserving it. We shall see her
coming slowly to understand the principles enun-
ciated by both President Wilson and the Allies.
Indeed, on February 3rd Mr. Wilson spoke not
only as the leader of these states, but as a leader of
civilization itself. We shall see Germany falling
in line, however unwillingly, with the world. And
that shall be our revenge for all the evil she has
done us.
50 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
So the hideous war which began as a last at-
tempt for domination, will end as the first operation
of international order and police, thanks to the
common understanding wrought in the minds of
even the most remote. Those whom long dis-
tance separates from the actual conflict are now
brought to an experience comparable with that of
the mobilized peoples of western Europe, because
they have acknowledged similar moral standards,
and because information travels fast. And it will
be the first time that practically the whole civilized
world will have done something in common, with
its soul and its best forces. This involves an ad-
mirable consequence: that this world will be in
active process of understanding before peace comes.
Thus peace will find divergent minds already pre-
pared to work together. Christianity itself never
knew such a wide and mighty gathering under a
common purpose. Now the combined forces for
peace can work with the prospect of being stronger
than any warlike minority that may arise; even
those minorities allied together could not impose
their will upon us, if us means the rest of the world.
I believe that it will remain the great dignity of
America that she took her stand in spite of her re-
moteness from the major conflict, in spite of her
immediate comfort perhaps; a stand worthy of na-
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 51
tions who will tomorrow build the future, and who
fight today in order to render the future possible.
Among the many confused, contradictory im-
pulses and interests which cross each other or com-
bine or come into clash in the present time, one
essential idea, or at least one word seems to be found
everywhere, in every program and as if written in
golden letters on every banner. The word Democ-
racy seems to sum up the principal purposes which
men are now fighting for. "The world has to be
made safe for Democracy." This formula has met
an almost unanimous assent. Of course the sense
given to the word differs, according to parties, to
national and, above all, to personal standpoint as
it happened in the French revolution with the word
"Liberty." But, notwithstanding those variations,
are we entitled to call the victory of Democracy
a common purpose for the people involved in the
struggle on one side?
In dealing with such matters as these, I want to
say that if my temerity is great, at least my am-
bitions are very limited. On those two subjects
of war and of Democracy millions of words have
been printed, miles of paper covered with tons of
ink and even many valuable ideas have been ex-
52 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
pressed. My intention is not to introduce any new
proposition or solution of my own to the world
crisis, but to sum up the very essential elements
which constitute the point of view of the average
Frenchman of our times.
It is extremely difficult to find the average man
in France. Because we are so different from each
other, and rather satisfied to be different. So that
if you succeeded in discovering the average man,
he would probably protest with the utmost energy
and profess to be in no way an average repre-
sentative, but simply an exceptional, independent,
original sort of man, and this without any special
pride or conceit, just as the next fellow would
claim to be. One must not forget that point, for
it will help to realize what our conception of
Democracy is.
But I shall try to give, at least, the view of the
young men who have had the experience of the war,
for they will be the most active and influential fac-
tor in the future.
They went to war it is very simple because
their country was invaded, in spite of all efforts to
prevent it. They went to defend France. But
what does France mean? I am not quite sure that
France means only a country among many others,
a flag, a language and a surface of land; al-
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 53
though these things seem to many, worth fighting
for. Will the reader agree if I say that France
means perhaps, among other things, the land of free
invention, discussion and experiment for social
progress? a living laboratory, where every new
principle was tried (at our own expense) before
being spread over the world?
Perhaps they did not go to war because of that?
But still they fought because we loved France, and
they loved France because she meant that.
I have explained how France, as a nation, had
no aggressive plan at all. How we did not ex-
pect readjustment of the injustice committed in '71
through a war, but through some other way. 1 That
war came upon us as a consequence of the world's
indifference about some essential problems. Now,
what is the present feeling of the Frenchman who
has "seen it through"? I dare say that there is
one idea that dominates all others. And it domi-
nates them from such a height that one could say
1 "Remember that for over forty years, we kept in our hearts
that open wound: Alsace-Lorraine; and we did not make war
we suffered in silence. Our brothers were victims of the
most hideous system of police oppression that was ever in-
flicted upon a free people. We knew it, and stood it because
we wanted peace. It was not enough; since the beginning of
the Twentieth Century we had to suffer German provocations
in Morocco and other places. We suffered them because we
wanted peace." (Speech of High Commissioner Andre Tardien
before the Alliance Francaise of New York, Oct. 11, 1917.)
54 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
it is not the principal idea of our men, but the only
one : This war has to be the last one.
Everybody is awake to that. And if you ask
not even the cultivated man, but any of our "bon-
hommes," in any trench in any region of the front,
he will tell you sternly, simply: "We do this, and
we remain here, and we shall remain to the end, so
that our children wont have to do it again."
No, indeed, you do not know how much we do
hate war. . . .
We have been living for years in all the generous
opinions which many discover today. And we do
not abjure our faith in a better world since we
fight for it. To all our theoretical and reasonable
hatred against war, we now add the hatred which
comes through the experience of it. Why should
a catastrophe, for which we are not responsible
which came by the crimes of this German ruling
military class which thinks little change ideas that
we know to be true, after we had given them so
much thought? Only there was too generous illu-
sion in believing that other people had then reached
our level.
For us Napoleon's failure was a sufficient dem-
onstration. All our liberal thought, through the
19th century, is founded upon the conviction of
that failure. You can find it in the writings of
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 55
all those who embody the popular French spirit,
of course mixed with a great sentimental recollec-
tion of our glories and splendors. But the Ger-
mans derived from Napoleon's adventure only
limitless admiration for might and conquest. They
kept anachronistic ideals which were in vogue at
the time of Louis XIV. Historically they belonged
to 250 years back.
Our men know that victory will come if they
wait long enough, and kill and are killed until
the enemy understands. Germany started with
victories; but she has to meet her failure. Mili-
tarism has to meet its failure, a failure which will
prove the vanity of domination. Our men who
are near to the facts and have nothing to intoxicate
them, grimly do their grim duty, and are united
in their fighting pacifism. For the trenches are
peopled with pacifists, and they would resent bit-
terly any one's saying that they like war, since
they make it; or that they make it through blind-
ness and credulity.
Three days before the war broke out some of us
had doubts about the decisions of socialists and syn-
dicalists. These men would never, never have
fallen in line with conquering armies. But when
they saw that France did all that was possible to
prevent war, that our soldiers had been withdrawn
56 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
six miles from the border in order to avoid any
possible incident, and that it was really a war of
right against might, then they threw all their might
as did America on the right side. It is ex-
tremely instructive to read the articles written by
Herve, the anti-militarist leader, who led a daily
patriotic fight in his paper, Le Guerre Sociale, later
La Victoire, and who was among the first to wel-
come I 9 Union Sacree. He saw clearly that, in or-
der to save peace, the unchaining of war had not to
be left successful and unchastened. He did not
the less maintain his democratic standards, attack-
ing the wrong use of censorship, defending free dis-
cussion. But he joined the unanimous fight for the
end of wars and the defeat of dangerous ambitions.
How is this result to happen? We cannot yet
outline the exact details, but we all believe it will
happen through a certain common interpretation of
democracy; and that is why we believe in democracy
not as a dream, but as a mighty reality, whose first
effect will be to prevent the return of world calami-
ties like this.
I say: a common interpretation of democracy.
And indeed if something like a league of nations,
a common work for common purpose, has to be
brought about, it can be only by a common inter-
pretation of the term which we are now using as a
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 57
watchword. That term, with all the various mo-
tives that it involves, has to be carefully defined,
again and again, in all the allied countries. The
more we can express in common now the easier the
task will be at the end of the war, the further we
will be able to carry our first common results.
Now let me tell, under my own responsibility,
what I mean by democracy, I being a man at least
independent from political parties, and having ob-
served a little, in various countries of our Western
World and of the Near East during this crisis.
Democracy is a name for a common basis; it is
the ground on which every personal, independent,
original life can be erected. It is not an end by
itself, as the German conception of the State or
the Roman conception of the Empire. It is a be-
ginning. It is not a ceiling. It is a floor; the
main floor, for all human undertaking, to be built
upon. It is not a limitation to individuality, it is a
protection for it.
And if I may express my full thought: I, as a
Frenchman and as a writer, if I stand for Democ-
racy it is because it offers the safest and most ac-
ceptable and loyal basis for individualism. By
individualism I don't mean egoism and selfish aims.
The highest aim for individual life is self-sacrifice.
But it has to be free sacrifice. Sacrifice to what
58 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
you choose and love and want to serve. Not to a
mechanical, artificial State which has been im-
posed upon you, and where everything is provided
for, except your own possibility of a choice, or
right to a choice.
It has been objected that in order to fight we had
to prussianize ourselves. Yes, of course the bellig-
erents get prussianized. . . . And what I welcome
there is that they will have one more reason to hate
war. But please, do not believe that after centu-
ries of ardent struggle for more liberty a sudden
external cause might destroy that aspiration in us.
The spirit of liberty has deeper roots, or it would
not be worth speaking of! France gives testimony
that she loves liberty more than she ever did, for
any useless restriction to her liberties provokes
violent and ever-ready resistance.
Our hearts have not so easily lost their robust
love for freedom. And we had rather get ap-
parently prussianized for a time, and disgusted
with it, than get prussianized forever, and the world
with us, by permitting the Prussian victory.
That would mean intense, deep, definitive ger-
manization of everything, and of yourselves, by the
irresistible prestige of success. Through educa-
tion, imitation, and through sheer necessity, German
methods of competition would rule the world, each
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 59
German would become a missionary of the com-
pulsory Doctrine. Individual freedom would be
put 100 years back. If only France had proved
weaker, or America more indifferent, that fate
would have been ours, and yours. That is why our
soldiers are really dying for Democracy when they
resist German world-domination.
I hope that I am as far as possible from being
paradoxical. Democracy is a matter of common
sense, as much as art and private life are matters
of personal sense. Things have to be made clear,
and I suppose they are, in the mind of a great
number, and of most of the fighting men, and they
only need to be formulated, as they scarcely begin
to be.
On the origin of this war, that it is a war of
conquest and oppression, I suppose we agree. A
principle was violated when Austria, already de-
taining Serbian provinces, attacked the little king-
dom. And that principle is not a recent invention,
although it appears to be still too new for the rulers
of the Central Powers. It has been enunciated very
clearly by Turgot when he said about America's
right to independence: "It is a strange thing that
it be not yet a commonplace truth to say that no
nation can ever have the right to govern another
nation; that such a government has no other forma-
60 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
tion than force, which is also the foundation of
brigandage and tyranny. . . ."
This is today a commonplace for us. It is not
yet so for the Germans. The impulse which led
you into this war is the same which made us go to
your rescue, and made Franklin say of us: "This
nation is fond of glory, particularly that of protect-
ing the oppressed."
Our common purpose has been splendidly de-
fined by the President of these States. His address
to the Senate on January 22, 1917, extending the
Monroe doctrine to the world, already said:
"There is no entangling alliance in a concert of
power. When all unite to act in the same sense
and with the same purpose, all act in the common
interest and are free to live their own lives under a
common protection." On March 6th, he empha-
sized the new situation of America. In his ad-
dress of April 3, he pronounced the famous words :
"We are at the beginning of an age in which it
will be insisted that the same standards of conduct
and of responsibility for wrong done shall be ob-
served among nations and their governments that
are observed among the individual citizens of civ-
ilized states. . . .
. . . "The world must be made safe for democ-
racy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested
ABOUT AMERICA IN 1917 61
foundations of political liberty. We have no
selfish ends to serve. . . .We are but one of the
champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be
satisfied when those rights have been made as se-
cure as the faith and the freedom of nations can
make them. . . .
. . . "We shall fight for the things which we
have always carried nearest our hearts for democ-
racy, for the right of those who submit to authority
to have a voice in their own governments, for the
rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal
dominion of rights by such a concert of free peoples
as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and
make the world itself at last free."
And the sense of our actual, of our Second Alli-
ance, has been well defined by M. Jusserand in his
short speech on May 3d in the House of Representa-
tives of the United States, when he said :
"What you do now is to come to Europe to take
part in the fight for liberty, a fight in which you
expect no recompense, no advantage, except that
very great advantage, that in the same way that we
helped to secure liberty human liberty, individual
liberty, national liberty on this continent, you will
fight to see that liberty be preserved in the broad
family of nations.
"Thanks to you, we shall see the calamities of
62 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
this struggle shortened, and a new spirit of liberty
grow greater and stronger, pervade all countries
and indeed fill the world."
Since then I read in the papers that when General
Pershing landed at Boulogne, General Dumas, who
is not a diplomat nor a theorician, but the com-
mander of our Northern region, said to him:
"Your coming opens a new era in the history of
the world. The United States of America is now
taking its part with the United States of Europe.
Together they are about to found the United States
of the World, which will definitely and finally end
the war and give a peace which will be enduring and
fruitful for humanity."
This expresses, I think, the belief of our average
Frenchman. And why should that hope prove to
be vain? It is reasonable, on the contrary, since
it expresses the will of the overwhelming majority,
in a matter where the majority will have to decide.
And if the result is attained once for all, then
the huge, untold sacrifice will not have been made
in vain.
Ill
PROMISES OF CONCRETE CO-OPERATION
New conditions of work in Europe, nearer to the American
conditions, because of the scarcity of men and the necessity of
rapid reconstruction. American methods to be brought. The
new spirit of economic activity in France. A writer on French
labor. An instance of common task: co-operation in the coun-
tries which are economically backward, but jealous of national
independence, and will welcome the Franco-American enter-
prises.
FIRST of all we must squarely face the facts. At
the finish of the war France is going to find herself
placed in a new and complex economic situation,
as will also be the case with those nations bound to
her by definite ties. Practicable suggestions for
meeting this coming situation can be supplied only
by men able to see and point out with equal frank-
ness both its most encouraging and its most alarm-
ing aspects. Nothing will be accomplished by
those who are too easily satisfied by cut-and-dried
formulae, who allow themselves to be hypnotized by
fixed optimistic or pessimistic theories. The fu-
ture is neither easy nor desperate. Only, more
63
64 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
than at any previous period, the future will depend
upon ourselves.
The situation as it exists today contains the germ
of a brilliant tomorrow; it holds also the seeds of
ruin. It contains possibilities that make one's heart
leap as before the dawn of certain victory. But
before us, too, may lie the abyss. Still, there is a
bridge by which we may cross it.
How shall we set to work now, we and our
friends? For from the day that peace is declared,
all those energies that are now diverted to the work
of death and destruction will be clamouring to take
up life's work in full measure, without losing a
moment. We shall merit small thanks from those
who are fighting if we have made ready nothing
against their return save shouts of joy. It is
their right to expect more than that of our fore-
sight.
Never before has man been faced with a future
so pregnant with possibilities. Now, possibilities
entail responsibilities. And what is first and fore-
most plain and inescapable before our eyes is the
great responsibility that will rest upon France and
her true friends. It is no new responsibility. We
recognized and assumed it long ago, at whatever
cost to us. It will continue. Who wants to share
it with us?
PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 65
Our prestige has been restored. Frenchmen of
today will have a far easier task than those of
before the war, whose mission was to carry on
France's work somehow or other, throughout a
world rendered indifferent and sceptical by our
defeats of 1870. They succeeded, at that; but
they were few. Those of tomorrow will be legion.
Like the sturdy workers that they are, resourceful
lads, keen for their jobs, they will go forth to the
four corners of the earth, after playing their part
and what a part! in freeing the world through
force of arms, to sow the good seed of their labours.
And reaping the harvest to follow, France will arise,
rich.
For this too we must say, frankly and simply:
"France must be rich." Therein lies the remedy
for all her dangers and her ills infant mortality,
tuberculosis, and kindred scourges. Our valiant
little family groups, endowed with all the virtues
though they be, are frequently crushed beneath ma-
terial difficulties, which, being excessive and over-
whelming, go not at all to develop character.
Similarly, it is for lack of money to buy better
milk, for lack of money to instal bathrooms, to
live more out of doors, to buy sports, technical edu-
cation, recreation for all these things are to be
had for money it is for lack of this money that too
66 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
many of our children die, too many of our gifted
young people have to stop midway in their educa-
tion, too many of our families go downhill, too
many of our intellectual and moral resources wither
away before they have bloomed. We must tell
things as they are. Pierre Hamp writes: "We
are face to face with this moral necessity: France
must be rich."
Now the world has everything to gain by seeing
to it that the fruit in France's garden does not dry
up, and the world is well aware of it. France is no
greedy power, undertaking to dominate through
numbers, through intrusion and invasion, and
against whom the world must ever be on its guard.
France is a well-spring of creative power, a land
of spiritual, scientific, and social experiments and
experiences. All mankind suffers a little by her
distress, and profits by her prosperity. Let her
emerge rich from the great effort she is about to put
forth, and those who go to her will find her happier.
Those who have been wont to look to her for in-
spiration will find an .even more abundant treasure
within her gates. Those who trade with her will
have a chance both to give and receive more.
t
What are the obstacles in the way of this pros-
perity? Our small population? Certainly not.
PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 67
Inferior numbers are a menace in case of war we
know that only too well! But on the other hand
the nation overdensely populated is the one that
finds itself handicapped in the attempt to assign
congenial work to all its citizens.
No, the obstacles can be reduced to two funda-
mental ones : First, the world's imperfect informa-
tion about us and our ways, partly through our own
fault; second, some mistaken and prejudiced indi-
vidual viewpoints that especially characterized our
fellow-countrymen of the past half -century. It is
to overcome the first of these handicaps that The
New France magazine has undertaken its task, a
task long awaited and long called-f or. 1 I wish here
to say a few additional words as to the other
obstacle to our expansion.
Mistaken viewpoints on the part of individuals,
I said. Indeed, henceforth it is vitally important
that every one of us assume his responsibilities to
the full, and rely as little as possible upon the State
and public organizations. We are, as is also the
i These lines were written for the magazine, New France,
and published in its first issue, August, 1917. The purpose of
the magazine is to prepare for the future by giving expression
to Franco-American ideas upon commercial developments and
to promote the spirit of practical co-operation between the
two countries. The editors are Denys Amiel, Swinburne Hale
and Deems Taylor, and its address is 165 Broadway, New
York.
68 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
United States, an individualist nation. Let us be
so, frankly and utterly. Above all, let us pro-
mote personal intercourse, the relations of man
to man particularly among the younger men,
who will be especially unfettered in their future
activities.
Let me repeat: what will save us is an intensive
development of a personal sense of responsibility.
Man must consent to being judged, not according to
what he is or what he can do, but by what he has
actually done, what values he is actually creating.
This method is unjust, possibly; but the world has
no time to learn others. Now the French have
always kept their good qualities below the surface,
in the form, rather, of potentialities. Travelling
through Germany in 1913, I saw clearly that the
prosperity of that empire was due, not so much to
its organization and still less to any exceptional
qualities of the German as to a patient and pains-
taking development of every resource.
We French have chosen rather to keep our re-
sources locked up, to hold them in reserve, like the
hidden treasure that economists call "unproductive
wealth." Among prosperous peoples, the secret of
success lies not in such and such a particular qual-
ity, to be found nowhere else; it lies in mobilizing
all their capabilities. And so reforms must be
PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 69
accomplished, not through the State, nor by means
of treaties, but through the medium of every indi-
vidual intelligence, every will.
Understand me clearly: I do not set up material
success as the only goal of French activities; but, if
one be an intelligent Frenchman, engaged in busi-
ness, a wide ambition is his first duty.
Now, unless we entirely misunderstand the ten-
dencies of our younger men, that is on the whole
just the direction in which the rising generation is
tending. Ignorance of other countries, which so
held back our predecessors, had already begun to
disappear during the past ten years, thanks to nu-
merous outside influences, to an exchange of views
that was continuously developing an intellectual
exchange with England, America, and Russia.
This intermingling has been hastened during the
course of the war by the presence of so many for-
eign armies upon our soil, and by the countless
personal relations that necessarily resulted. Of
course, you will always find youths who are deter-
mined not to learn anything, but there will be fewer
and fewer of them in the future, and they will be
less and less proud of their ignorance. On the
whole, it would seem that, as far as ignorance of
the outside world is concerned, France is by no
70 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
means the least informed. But we must not forget
that the best is expected from us.
There is one essential element of the French char-
acter, much more inherent in us than ignorance of
other peoples, which, it seems to me, explains the
cause of certain of our failings and at the same time
offers us our best hope for co-operation between the
young men of America and France. That is, our
tendency to criticise a certain intellectual, critical,
negative tendency, which too easily turns into mock-
ery. It is the faculty to which the best of us owe
their sense of proportion and the clear thinking for
which they are noted. Now, the American is gifted
with precisely the opposite faculty a positive, en-
terprising tendency to go after immediate results.
He is embarrassed by very few hesitations, since up
to the present the obstacles before him in his own
country, which is always a fruitful field for new
enterprises, have been much less serious than in
ours.
Today, however, conditions in the two countries
are growing more and more alike. America is no
longer a limitless field open to virgin energy, while
old Europe is becoming committed to a policy of
hasty reconstruction and wide enterprise. Thus
our differences are being levelled; and thus may
PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 71
each of us profit more and more by the experience
and methods of the other.
And so a double obligation rests upon us: for
America, that of reconciling its methods with new
conditions; for France, that of adopting new ways
of putting to work the vast treasure of past experi-
ence, knowledge, and resourcefulness that the ages
have bequeathed to our race. If both of us will
resolve to combine this inherited craft skill and
science of life with your audacity, your passion for
visible and immediate results, little success will re-
main beyond our reach.
After all, our activities rest upon a common base,
upon a feeling which tends to bring us together and
through which we seem, to me, to be blood-brothers
among the peoples of the world. That feeling is
the love of work for its own sake, love of the task
that we have freely chosen. Our devotion to this
work is limitless, provided always that our right to
a free choice be respected. Now it is just this right
of free choice that characterizes the "kind of world"
in which we want to live, as opposed to the super-
disciplined "State" world in which our enemies
want to make us live a kind of world that suits
them, maybe, but that inspires us with little but
horror.
72 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
We believe, Americans and French alike (and
here I speak above all in the name of the younger
generation), in the free choice of a lifework. We
believe that into this chosen calling one can put the
best of himself, serving whole-heartedly because he
knows that there exists no better or more fruitful
field for the forces at his disposal. We believe that
once our efficiency is brought to its highest through
this faith in our work, we have nothing to fear from
the competition of any one. We believe that a
calling freely chosen is like a wife chosen from
among all women: that, like her, it will bear us fine
children.
What an ugly, vulgar, stupid idea it is, to con-
ceive of the whole of human activity as a pitched
battle where the victory of one necessarily entails
the ruin of others. It is a worn-out and thick-witted
theory, worthy only of jealous and greedy peoples.
France and America have never admitted its truth,
knowing full well that the world profited by every
step they made forward. They have always felt
that, in reality, nations should be set, not one
against the other, but side by side, so as to face
together the increasingly complex problems of life.
(Thus did Peguy describe the philosophers, and
point out the true significance of their competitions
PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 73
and quarrels.) It is thus that we conceive the
energies of the world drawn up to weather the fear-
ful crisis that has arrayed them together against a
common danger. If the world, co-operating to
assure the necessary defeat of Germany's lust for
conquest, has been able to unite upon this negative
program, what is to prevent it from organizing
tomorrow upon a positive, lasting basis? Why can
it not unite and found itself upon the rock of the
most enduring sentiment that is rooted in the heart
of man: the love of ones own handiwork?
It is the young men of America and France who
shall offer us not one, but millions of examples of
the goal that may be attained, the results that may
be realized through a voluntary alliance like ours,
when sprung into full life.
Love for work Do you realize how deeply
that love is rooted in the Frenchman's heart?
A writer, Pierre Hamp, has given strong, vivid,
accurate descriptions of the labourious life of
France. He makes us discover the molecular proc-
ess of the trades and industries, a process which is
not much known. He himself, like Jack London,
has had a long direct experience of the things he de-
scribes, before he became an Inspector of Labour.
His former work includes several books: Le Rail
74 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
(he was then a railway man), Maree Fraiche (he
had been a sailor too) , Vin de Champagne (he knew
the details of its whole fabrication) . But I want to
present only his three little, dense booklets, pub-
lished during the war. Perhaps they are the most
valuable contribution to knowledge of the actual
conditions among the civil working class during
the crisis. You will find there much which will
surprise you. . . .
The first of these books, Le Travail Invincible., is
a picture of the conditions of work in Northern
France.
"Flanders had seen the passing of the great Bel-
gian migration, pushed on by the German army
flax-pickers of the Courtrai region, still carrying
their blue wallets, straggling crowds of women
dragging along tired children. In their wake, the
Flemings of France were leaving also, fleeing their
villages wrecked by German shells. The fugitives
filled the railroad trains to overflowing, crammed,
standing, into coal cars. Across Flanders, from
La Bassee to the Yser, was one great battle. The
Germans fell back, freeing Hazebrouck, Bailleul,
and Armentieres. But their trenches stretched be-
fore this treasure house: Lille, Roubaix, and Tour-
coing.
"In all this upheaval and destruction what be-
PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 75
came of industry? Factories all over the region
had been damaged by artillery fire. Thousands of
skilled workmen had been driven into exile an
exile often deadlier, through overcrowding, starva-
tion, and cold, than the bombardment suffered by
those who stayed behind. But no sooner were the
Germans gone than the people began to come back
and resume work. The industrial 'front' kept
pace with the firing line. This movement will be
a magnificent one to follow in some future system-
atized history of labour during the war. In the
valley of the Lys, the weaving mills stopped work
on the 6th of October, halted by the bombardment.
On October 15th the Germans were repulsed; by
the 25th, the cloth-looms were whirring and clash-
ing again in the mills. Whenever their noise
stopped, at lunch-hour and at night, one could hear
the musketry fire in the trenches.
"When the German army bombards an open
town, a town whose streets end in the furrows of the
fields, it claims to be accomplishing the legitimate
military objects of striking demoralization and ter-
ror into the civilian population. This is so, at the
first bombardment. Those who are terrified flee.
By the time the second bombardment takes place
the town has taken its precautions and has com-
fortably fitted up its cellars. By the tenth bom-
76 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
bardment it is a town inured to war. The persist-
ence of the German artilleryman has created a new
virtue; under habitual fire the civilian population
displays the firmness of veteran troops.
"The cellars are used for sleeping, the best fitted
having a fame of their own. Some of them are
comfortably furnished, with cloth hangings on the
walls. The cellar windows are blocked with sand
bags or bulwarks, each of the latter consisting of
two timbers with the crack between them stuffed
with rubbish. These cave fortifications encroach
upon the sidewalks all along the streets.
"The night bombardment is the less dangerous.
By day, blood is more quickly shed when the town is
caught unawares. Summer is the season of street
games for the little ones, and the first shell of the
morning may fall near three children who are
quietly playing together before their house. Their
mothers had said 'Don't go far!' and they have
been very obedient; but they will never return to
their mothers' knees.
"The town that no longer knows fear feels indig-
nation. The tiny corpse of a child instils a horror
of Germany within the breasts of those who follow
it to the grave. No more may her citizens come
here to trade or to supply machinery."
PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 77
And in the fields the peasant shows the same
faithfulness to the task:
"English and German shells pass over the tilled
fields, and the husbandman can hear the rifle fire
in the trenches. Ever since November it has been
coming from exactly the same places. Now, how-
ever, it seems as though the subterranean battle had
moved further off; the noise is muffled. As the
ears of grain grow, the sound of rifle shots is corre-
spondingly absorbed by the thickness of the ver-
dure.
"This labourer is unconquerable. The tilling of
the earth imposes an obligation which nothing can
remove, not even the risk of death. For the man of
the fields, war is only a passing storm. He bows
before it, and continues his task, big with eternity."
Pierre Hamp adds: "There is a humble great-
ness about these civilians who hold so doggedly to
their everyday jobs, these factory women who brave
shells to go to work. Next to the soldier who de-
fends the soil, the factory girl who sticks to her
work is the one who makes France immortal. . . .
The moral value of work increases in war-time,
when the idleness of non-combatants might easily
injure the morale of the whole race, and might
lower the earning capacity of the labouring classes
78 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
through loss of skill. These working girls who, as
they put it, don't want to get out of practice, and go
on at their task, are saving the basic power of the
country a thing that must never perish. War is
transitory. Labour is eternal."
And he concludes: "Man's purest grandeur
resides in plying well his trade. It is not enthusi-
asm that he needs for this, but professional con-
science."
I gave long quotations, because I find this one
of the most valuable war accounts that I know.
The second booklet is perhaps the richest in docu-
mentation on the new conditions of work, much
nearer to American conditions because of the
scarcity of men. (That is why, after the war, we
shall have so much to learn from your methods.)
Already Hamp is able to foresee the reach of pos-
sible application of these methods.
"The American method is above all applicable
to industries turning out large quantities of the
same pattern of objects automobiles, typewriters,
or shells and where the total amount of work in-
volved in making a product that is always unvary-
ing can be subdivided into separate operations.
"It would be fantastic to attempt to apply the
American method unaltered to the French nation.
It must be gallicized and made over to suit our
PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 79
labouring-class mental processes. Experiment
alone will show where it can be welded to our sys-
tem and where there are gaps to bridge. It would
break down everything to apply a concept based
and calculated solely upon new forces and ideas
to a society permeated with old forces and tra-
ditions."
So there will be an adjustment, and it will require
much attention and mutual understanding. Hamp
then treats the difficult matter of emigration,
which, too, demands unprejudiced minds in order
to be solved according to the actual require-
ments of a country. Then he reveals what the
work of the women has been, during the war,
and what tremendous step has been made in that
respect. "Woman has not suddenly become
courageous with the war. She merely continues to
be so. Having been already engaged in a great
variety of occupations, she had some preliminary
training when she turned to metallurgy for war pur-
poses." In the shell factories hundreds of thou-
sands of them are now working. Hamp notices that
even there they remain women, and this is together
charming and melancholic.
"They bind their heads with a piece of linen to
protect their hair from the dust of glowing iron,
incidentally leaving a curl or two to wander for
80 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
in all her tasks, hard as they may be, nothing will
take away from woman her desire to be attractive.
The instinct for beauty is unconquerable in her.
Even here, where woman is identified with man in
her work, and where the social necessities have
tended to deprive her of her sex, she preserves the
remnants of her charm, and keeps on smiling to
save a world that is destroying itself.
"No workshop, however dusty, hot or smelly, has
ever conquered the desire of woman to remain a
woman. Exhausted, overheated, and pale, she still
smiles. She accomplishes this double and terrible
task to work as much as a man and at the same
time preserve the softness of the world and per-
petuate the race.
"It was formerly thought that woman's care could
not be trusted when very exact measurements had
to be made, but the eyes of an embroiderer are
sharper than those of a man, and machines for mak-
ing light artillery presented few difficulties to her.
The adjustment and testing of a shell fuse require
careful attention; no defects are tolerated. The
adjuster has to discover errors that the workmen
have overlooked. This delicate work is just the
reverse of the heavy forging, as the working woman
uses only her eyes and the tips of her fingers.
Long tables are covered with copper pieces ar-
PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 81
ranged in perfect order. The women must make
sure that every piece is in perfect condition and
exact in calibre, by means of delicate steel gauges,
for the slightest defect may prevent the shell from
exploding or make it explode in the guns. No mag-
nifying glass is used for this operation, lest the con-
sequent exaggeration of mere scratches should make
them appear as serious defects and cause all shells
to be rejected. The naked eye must suffice, and a
sharp look-out is needed to discover all the tool
marks. Since this means a great strain on the
eyes all such work is done by daylight for fear of
errors resulting from fatigue.
"In a shop where 844 women are employed, only
three defective adjustments out of 80,000 fuses
were noted by the inspectors and, after examina-
tion, only one fuse was discarded. Thus in such
an amount of delicate work requiring so much at-
tention, only one mistake was discovered one in
80,000 in a day chosen at random by the inspec-
tors. Sometimes there is not a single mistake."
Her salary has grown, and if it seems low com-
pared with American prices, still it is much higher
than the former wages of a dressmaker. It is now
about one dollar a day for the easier work. Better
skilled workers may reach 9 francs for ten hours.
"Women from all classes of society have applied
82 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
for jobs in metal working for war purposes. The
offices of workshops know of women who walked
by ten times before they decided to step in, and
finally did so with tears in their eyes, on account of
their prejudice against working with their hands.
One of them was a Belgian lady of leisure whose
fortune was left in Brussels; another, the wife of a
South American bank director. In a few days, un-
accustomed as these women were to such work,
they had learned how to handle machine tools. In
a month they had become skilful. The adaptation
to work of women's delicate hands does not require
a long time. Embroidery, sewing and household
occupations have all accustomed them to the hand-
ling of materials. The power to work is in them.
"The hands of so many men never touch anything
but cigarettes and penholders. This war has re-
vealed the great adaptability of woman to manual
labour. She succeeds in all trades, both in the
hardest and in the most delicate.
"Out of 4,473 women workers brought together
in a shell factory in Lyons, there are registered:
1,326 housewives and servants;
1,320 dressmakers;
690 shop workers;
360 office girls;
23 stenographers;
349 lacemakers, weavers and box-makers;
PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 83
143 of various trades;
236 without any profession;
16 mechanics.
"These women, among whom five per cent, only
had any previous experience with some minor form
of metal working, have in a few months, thanks to
cleverly devised machinery, developed a strong and
efficient working body. They have replaced 44.9
per cent, of the men in a total of 9,985 employes."
Of course, immense social consequences are to
result from such possibilities which woman dis-
covered in herself. "A woman whose living is in-
sured by employment will feel independent in her
home. How will fairly well-paid labour react upon
the woman's heart?" There is a conflict between
motherhood and work. Pierre Hamp's conclusion
brings a very enlightening interpretation of the
present situation:
"Our national interest of the moment is directly
opposed to our permanent national interest, to what
really constitutes the perpetuation of France: a
sufficient number of Frenchmen. A proper con-
cern for our prosperity demands that we turn our-
selves deliberately into a country of immigration,
attracting healthy stock and reducing our neces-
sary working forces as far as possible by the in-
genuity of mechanical inventions^
84 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
Here again, we find the necessity of carefully
adopting American example. For this we are con-
fident in the infinite resources of improvisation
which are in the race:
"This labouring force of France, which must al-
ways be organized in times of need, has had its
total strength calculated by the war, has shown its
full vitality and flexibility. Victorious, it will
have learned through perils its possibilities for
triumph in time of peace. All that it was called
upon to do, it has done. It will go on doing so.
Experienced by an effort that aroused it to activ-
ity from the first rifle to the last hammer, the na-
tion learned that it could devour the maddened
enemy with its cannon and reap a triumphant for-
tune from its labour. From France's war strength
will spring her peace strength. She has been
through an experience that has revealed her to her-
self. She will know how to make her strength a
lasting one by maintaining for her industry the
power called forth by battle. Her organization for
military victory will also help to create her in-
dustrial rank. And may she make peace with
the same spirit with which she has made war.
Every victory is within her. From France the
warrior country will arise France the labouring
country."
PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 85
Hamp's third pamplet, "La Victoire de la
France sur les Frangais," is more of a program and
an affirmation of general ideas about the future of
France. He points out the dangers, and outlines
the remedies. The victory over alcohol is won, if
the measures taken against it in time of war are
maintained. But France wants a reform in her
habits of mind and methods of action. A victory
of the Frenchman over himself, or rather of the
immortal spirit of France over temporary hesita-
tions. This reform was rapidly preparing before
the war. " May the young men who have helped
to write Victory upon the banners of their regi-
ments strive with equal might to place the names of
foreign branches upon the letterheads of our com-
mercial houses."
And there is an expression of unlimited hope to
be found in his last conclusions :
"The power latent within us is unknown even to
ourselves. We bear within our breasts triumphs
as yet unawakened. Our strength in this war has
surprised ourselves. Under the shock of reality
we have discovered anew our ancient valour and
the strength of our limbs. France is far above the
conception that the world had formed of her and
that she had formed of herself. Let us venerate
this mysterious power of our race, whence spring
86 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
victories for men to wonder at. . . . Let us not
doubt ourselves. We are perfectly capable of tre-
mendous and prolonged effort. We can conquer
all within ourselves that threatens France."
Of course, I realize that much that I have said
about the possibilities of our concrete co-operation
is abstract and vague, and that the young American
who reads me has no taste for indulging in uncer-
tain schemes, but wants immediate instances, or at
least instances likely to be valuable immediately
after the war. He may argue that everybody
should then make good, and ask if French co-opera-
tion will offer a chance to him rather than to his
grandchildren.
Let me show that I had some immediate instance
in mind. It is a local and definite one, and I give
it because I happen to know the subject well. I
suppose that other Frenchmen, if questioned, can
give many instances like this one, which has to be
generalized.
I have travelled on five occasions in the Balkans,
especially through Serbia and the Southern Slav
countries. These people are the only strong ob-
stacle to Pan-Germanism on its way to the East.
They are sturdy and fine. They are warriors and
PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 87
artists. They love their nation and have decided
that she shall not die. They have suffered from
the war more than any other people, except, per-
haps, the Armenians and the Poles. But there are
still about 12 millions of them, resolved to struggle
ceaselessly until they obtain freedom for their
Jugoslav (Southern Slav) nation. That is a sim-
ple and irresistible aspiration, and, like America,
Italy and Switzerland in older times, they will suc-
ceed because their will is steadfast and their oppo-
nents are changing their artificial policies according
to circumstances. Their situation is like Bohe-
mia's, and Poland's. When these people are free,
then Europe will have a chance of peace, not be-
fore. That much even the diplomats admit today.
So there is an increasing probability of an early
and righteous settlement of this national question. 1
Now look at this Jugoslavia made free. It in-
cludes Serbia restored, and the Austro-Hungarian
provinces which are almost entirely peopled by
Serbians and their brothers, the Croats and
Slovenes. It extends from the vicinity of Italian
Trieste to the province of Temesvar, from the Adri-
atic coast to the Bulgarian frontier, where the
Orient racially begins. Even if national aspira-
i See the books of H. Wickham Steed, R. W. Seton-Watson,
etc.
88 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
tions are not fully realized at first, it will have
outlets on the Adriatic Sea, which means direct and
free communication with all Western nations. The
area of the land is equal to about one-half of
France. It contains many mines (the copper mines
at Bor were the most prosperous in the world, and
were exploited by a French concern), large for-
ests, great wealth in fruit, fish, and cattle, and large
industries of cloth, embroideries, silverwork, etc.
Jugoslavia has been maintained for ages in a
state economically backward because all the forces
of the country were employed in a military strug-
gle against invasion and resistance to oppression.
Conditions were made as hard as possible by
mighty Austria, for fear that the national spirit
would spread from free Serbia to oppressed
Bosnia, Croatia and Dalmatia.
In the near future, a tremendous economic ex-
pansion will take place there. The race is very
laborious. But the people are poor, and lack the
technicians and the machines. Who will bring
them? Assuredly not the Germans. Even before
this war the Serbians preferred to sacrifice large
advantages to permitting themselves to be invaded
through economic participation on the part of am-
bitious and hostile countries.
For a similar reason they will hardly welcome
PROMISES OF CO-OPERATION 89
the rush of business men, speculators and exploiters
from some countries, although friendly, for they
are too jealous of their national integrity to allow
important positions to be occupied by foreigners
who may at some time become exigent and, if
backed by their governments, jeopardize the safety
of the country. Small nations have to be cautious
about such things.
But from France and from America nothing of
that kind is to be feared we could not even dream
of territorial ambitions in those regions. And it
happens that America and France are the only two
nations who have accomplished a great deal for the
Southern Slavs France, by a long tradition of
friendship, by helping to rebuild the Serbian army
at Corfu and maintaining the occupation of Salon-
ica, also by welcoming the Serbian refugees on her
territory, and taking up the education of Serbian
children; America by steady and generous relief
and the sending of surgical and medical missions
who have done most effective work.
After the war, if my previsions are right, Franco-
American activity will find a most favourable
ground in Jugoslavia, America bringing her meth-
ods and material, France bringing the experience of
her men, long used to travel there and to business
negotiations with the Serbians, being entirely sym-
90 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
pathetic to them and having fought side by side
with them.
But what special interest will young America
have in bringing resources of energy to that part
of the world? First, the opportunities for rapid
success are numerous: reconstruction of cities on
modern plans, undertaking of large harbours, the
lumber industry, agricultural improvements, means
of transportation. The country is healthful and the
peasants are intensely democratic. Many young
men want broad enterprises and wish also to live
within reasonable proximity to civilized centres.
They and their wives will appreciate the fact that
Southern Slav territory is a few hours from Italy,
and one day and a half from Paris.
I shall not dwell on this suggestion. It is but
one instance among many, of the wide activities
open to American initiative. Russia is another
much wider, but more distant from the great cities
of Western Europe. There again, the true form
of successful association would be Franco-Ameri-
can. More exactly, young men from France and
young men from America, knowing each other well.
And the same is applicable to our colonies.
IV
LITERARY INTERCHANGE
Forms of influence. Is external influence to be welcome?
American writers who are known in France. About French
criticism. Translations of literature. Educational exchanges.
The philosophers. The literary treasury of contemporary
France. Our masters and elders. Recent tendencies. Emile
Verhaeren's international value. The new poets of France:
More children of Walt Whitman. Schools, groups and critics.
The Reviews. War poems. And then? Music in France.
WE have dealt with the concrete foundations and
structure of our alliance. Our material exchanges
and co-operation will give results little by little.
As early as today we may see the effects of mu-
tual intellectual influence.
Here again, the field is too wide to be covered in
its entirety. Even to show the parallel evolution
and the mutual indebtedness of American and
French literary standards in the past 25 years,
would be the task of a lifetime and, when achieved,
it would have to be started again.
So as to grasp the present condition of our liter-
ary relation, we may specially concern ourselves
with the poets. The best of the young poets sup-
91
92 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
ply the essential expression of a generation, they
are usually in advance of it, and they inspire the
period which follows. Moreover, they supply the
most conscious form of art and that which is most
closely connected with ethics. Poets are essen-
tially initiators, and the literary production of
the following epoch largely depends upon them.
The work of American orators and novelists might
have been regarded mainly as a branch of Eng-
lish literature until American poets came and gave
the start to new forms of expression and discov-
ered fresh sources of inspiration. After them
there was an original American literature. A
good part of political and social ideals is influ-
enced by poets. This may not be true of the sad
epoch that preceded us, but it was true of most
great epochs whose grandeur was often formulated
or even foretold by poets. The Italian and French
Renaissance, the Italian Risorgimento in the 19th
century, the liberal agitation in Germany about
1848, l the national movements in India and in
Ireland had their poets who were their leaders at
the same time. In America, I see the germ of an
approaching poetical expansion which may be
i See the recent book about Georg Herwegh, the great revo-
lutionary poet who fought Prussianism all his life. (Recueil
Sirey, publisher, Paris.)
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 93
splendid. In France what has already been ac-
complished I shall try to sum up here. The ques-
tion is, What is and what will be the reciprocal ac-
tion of our writers?
Let us go back for a while. The mere nomen-
clature of your great writers who had a part in the
intellectual and esthetical formation of our own
would not be so soon achieved as your modesty
might suppose. I was 10 years old when I read
Fenimore Cooper. I was 12 when I was presented
with Uncle Toms Cabin, 15 when I knew Long-
fellow. At 19 I read Poe, with the utmost ad-
miration at the very time that I knew the works of
the French Symbolist school. I could see what im-
mense importance Edgar Allan Poe had had for
those pure artists against whom we reacted, but
from whom we descend all the same. . . . Poe had
strongly impressed Baudelaire, who translated his
tales, and Mallarme did the same for the poems.
I was 23 when I plunged myself into the Leaves
of Grass. This succession is that of decreasing
popularity. I hear that S. Butler and Thoreau are
being translated into French, and that a new French
edition of Whitman will soon appear, our best
writers having co-operated in the work of transla-
tion. Some of your other writers are nearly un-
known in France. Hawthorne, Whittier, Bret
94 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
Harte have practically never reached there. As for
the influence of French writers on your own pro-
ductions, I leave it to American scholars to define.
The literature of a country may be influenced,
from abroad, in two principal ways. First, by
foreign writers who are admired, absorbed, imi-
tated. Second, by the readers which are abroad,
of works from one's own country, readers who
accept or reject those works. As the majority of
foreign readers are informed and cultivated, the
more this last becomes important.
In the instance of our two countries, this is how
I understand our literary relations: The greatest
need for France will be to feel the abundant, vigor-
ous, generous production of your young writers
whose inspiration is related to her own. If we
happen to hesitate they will reassure us, owing to
their solid virtue of genuine and direct inspiration.
And your writers themselves declare that they will
welcome the critical sanction of our older literary
sense.
Then there is also that reciprocal influence which
will develop from the French reader to the Ameri-
can writer. If our relations hold their promise,
works written here will be eagerly read, either in
English or in translation, by our people, who will
see more and more what resources of vitality and
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 95
sincerity are in you. And the French reader, when
his sympathy is once aroused, and his negative sense
withdrawn a little, is not too bad a critic. We are
all of us everywhere too prone to pass sentence on
things before we have made acquaintance with them.
But when France's admiration is fixed her choice is
usually the right one. Perhaps this is because we
have still some traces of classical sense left, and
classical is to time what universal is to space.
Thus it is not surprising that a good training in
classical should prepare for a sound appreciation
of universal literature.
Criticism, applied to your work, I propose, of
course, in a quite modest form. If the French do
not appreciate a book of yours, it does not prove
that the book is bad. But if they elect it, admire
it, love it, adopt and imitate it, and get impregnated
with it, as they have in instances already, then you
may be sure that you have a right to be proud of
its author.
Having said this, is it necessary to raise once
more the eternal question: Are influences good in
themselves? Is foreign influence to be desired or
to be feared? My opinion is that of many of our
contemporaries. It is that inasmuch as you are
strong and have faith and confidence in yourself,
you can welcome most unreservedly the influences
96 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
from abroad, fearless that they will carry you out
of yourself. Convinced traditionalists ought to be
the first to welcome new influences, first because our
very traditions (yours and mine) are largely made
of foreign influences which were assimilated; an
additional reason for such welcome is that the
shock and criticism of the foreign thing give pre-
cisely the opportunity needed for testing one's own
solidity. And a certain, solid, faithful, valuable
tradition need not be afraid of the test. We real-
ize that our stomach is good enough to dare try
more than one kind of food. If we happen to
refuse some foreign dish, it may not mean that it is
exactly perilous, but that it is of bad taste or is
prepared with hands which are not clean (I am
thinking of German culture during the past quarter
of a century).
About the benefits of this intellectual exchange
between us, I can already testify in what concerns
me, and tell what encouragement, what intense stim-
ulation I have met in your country, and not only for
my present task. What enthusiastic confirmation I
found here, of the value of the works I admired,
when I compared my standards with those of your
best young writers. Indeed I cannot yet measure
all that I owe to those meetings and conversations in
New York, in Chicago, in Boston, in Princeton, not
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 97
only for the knowledge gained of your literature,
but for a better appreciation of my own country's
art. 1
A last answer to a question which is often asked:
What is the good of translations? A translation
never gives the content of the original and is liable
to pervert and falsify the impression which the
reader would get if he knew its original language.
If he cannot obtain the direct influence of the work,
for lack of knowing the language in which it is
written, then he had better abstain from any in-
complete and delusive science.
I am quite willing to agree that definitively a
translation cannot be equal to an original (although
it has sometimes proved to be superior). But I
am obliged to confess that I have received through
translations stimuli which were exceedingly in-
tense. The influence of the Russian novelists on
the whole modern world has exerted itself almost
exclusively through translations, often through very
bad ones. The same in the case of Ibsen. The
translations from the English into French usually
i A step in the work of mutual interchange is the organiza-
tion of systematic sending of the best reviews and books
published on each side. Another is my translation into French
of Miss A. Lowell's work on the Tendencies in Modern Ameri-
can Poetry (American edition published by The Macmillan
Co.). I also intend to give in France a number of studies on
contemporary American writers.
98 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
were good, and the translations of Kipling by L.
Fabulet and R. d'Humieres, were excellent. The
French version of the Just So Stories is a little
masterpiece.
I wish all young writers indulged in the regular
practice of translation. It is a wonderful training
in the use of their own language. I cannot suffi-
ciently advise my American friends that they take
the French books which they like and feel to be
nearest to their own spirit, and try to give them
a form in English. An unexpected communion
is attained by this exercise, one which is deeper
than any attained through mere reading. It is
akin to the pleasure of creation in the company of
an author you admire. Now what authors shall
I propose for this task? I shall suggest some in the
two following chapters.
Before ending this, I want to say a few words
about a special and very important form of intellec-
tual exchange, and that is the educational form.
A book was recently published which develops
that matter much better and more completely than
I could ever do.
It was issued by the Society of American Fellow-
ships in French Universities, and is called Science
and Learning in France. 1 It is the work of numer-
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 99
ous committees of specialists in every branch of
knowledge, and hundreds of scholars have given
their name as sponsors, expressing "a cordial de-
sire to join with the authors in making this book
a national homage, offered from the universities
of America to the universities of France." At the
head of the editorial committee are Professor H.
Wigmore and Professor Charles H. Grandgent, and
the preface is written by Professor Charles W.
Eliot, Emeritus President of Harvard University.
This book is of great moral significance and
notable practical value to the students. There is a
remarkable*study on French philosophers, acknowl-
edging the part of initiator that France played in
modern times. Twenty-one other matters are sur-
veyed. About the general qualities of the French
in matter of science and learning, Professor Eliot
says: "These characteristics have proved to be
extraordinarily permanent, abiding generation after
generation, and surviving immense political and
social changes. The French scholar is apt to be
an open-minded man, receptive toward new ideas,
and an ardent lover of truth, fluent, and progres-
sive. The French scientists have rarely been ex-
treme specialists, narrow in their interests and their
chosen objects. They have recognized that no sci-
i R. R. Donnelly & Sons, The Lakeside Press, Chicago.
100 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
ence can be pursued successfully in isolation. . . .
They have not been subdued by the elaborate sorting
and compiling machinery of modern scholarship."
We may infer from this splendid collective work
that reciprocal influence in education is welcome
and will know a brilliant future.
One of the questions I had to abandon, to my
great regret, is that of the mutual influence of
French and American philosophies. Indeed such
matters cannot be dealt with in twenty lines.
When I translated the works of Professor J. M.
Baldwin and of Professor Ellwood of Missouri
University, for the editions of the Societe de Sod-
ologie, I had a good chance to appreciate the mul-
tiple points of resemblance in the American and
French methods of thought, especially in the atti-
tude of mind in grasping new questions. A con-
versation I had with Mr. Henri Bergson on that
subject makes me hope that he will some time de-
velop this point and that, thanks to him, we shall
more fully know the deep motives, rooted in the
very process of thought, which make our alliance
what it is.
I shall now rapidly review the recent past of
French literature, insisting on the poetical mani-
festations, as I am impatient to come to the con-
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 101
temporary poets who give expression to the soul of
the young men who are my comrades. But it is
indispensable to say from who we descend, who are
our living masters. Another reason for calling
attention to some important figures of the last
period is that their value has not yet been fully
recognized, and American readers will find an
immense benefit in gleaning by themselves in this
partly untrodden garden.
It is difficult to realize how little success is de-
pendent upon merit, in France less than anywhere
else. There is a non-modest explanation of it in
the fact that talent being abundant, success could
only reward it when it was joined with some social
or commercial cleverness. But a better reason
than over-abundance of genius is the extreme divi-
sion of the public in little classes who do not easily
adopt one another's admirations. So that a man
known and silently admired by the very best, might
remain all his life unrecognized except by a few
hundred people.
The result and extreme consequence is that for a
time, the true artists refused to compete for popular-
ity, and made a system, a doctrine indeed, of theit
isolation. Thus, instead of being recognized after
their death, like most of the great artists, they be-
come known only after the passage of one genera-
102 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
tion of disciples. Now we can perceive rather
clearly what were the characteristics of the best
schools of 1890, which are today a part of France's
classical past. First, they displayed extreme care
for a perfect, original, rare form. They had con-
tempt for easy sources of inspiration. They looked
for an art that not only was entirely sufficient to it-
self, but that also despised life as ugly and poor.
Art was a reaction against life and an evasion of
life a revenge against it. This is almost exactly
the principle of Poe, for whom reality was poison,
and this resulted in the perfectly pure and detached
work of Mallarme, among others. The result of
that period was to leave us some admirable poems,
like "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune," or Rimbaud's
"Bateau Ivre." They are still the privilege of very
few admirers.
Another result was the conquest of new forms in
poetry. These poets did not accept the former laws
of versification; but discovered and adopted new
ones. And the new exigencies of modern verse are
perhaps even more strict than the old uniform rules
of metre and rhyme. Free verse (this name is
very improper) introduced in poetry many possi-
bilities and nuances that the regular alexandrine
verse did not afford. Moreover, irregular verse is
nothing new, since it is claimed to descend from
LITERARY INTERCHANGF 103
La Fontaine and from the verses of the Bible.
Now poetry is being appreciated according to its
qualities of lyrism rather than the degree of obe-
dience to fixed material rules which it mani-
fests.
These discussions are much too special for our
subject. Let us rapidly recall to mind the names of
Albert Samain, Henri de Regnier, Francis Viele-
Griffin (who is of American birth), as being the
initiators of these reforms. Jean Moreas re-
mained faithful to strict metrical tradition.
Viele-Griffin 1 is mostly inspired by Greek an-
tiquity, but renders it with a power of actual pres-
ence, of simple and delicate grandeur, which gives
to his poems the serenity of ever-beautiful work.
Henri de Regnier 2 is now a member of the
French Academic, and thus incarnates the recon-
ciliation of the noblest French tradition and of the
latest conquests of "modern" poetry.
Let us then travel to the southern extremity of
France. At the foot of the Pyrenees, is a sunny
little town, Orthez. There we find the poet Francis
Jammes, 3 who loves the poor, the animals, the
1 La Clarte de Vie (Mercure de France), etc.
2 La Sandale AiUe, Les Medailles d'Argile, Les Jeux
Rustiques et Divins, etc., and several novels.
3 De I'angelus de I'aube a I'angelus du soir, L'Egllse habilUe
de feuilles, Clairieres dans le ciel, Le Deuil des Primeveres,
104 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
gardens, the seasons, the young girls and the other
things of God. He writes about them simple
poems where the blood of Virgil runs and sings, 1
Francis Jammes has to be mentioned in the first
rank of the poets who had influence and were
continued by disciples. Comtesse Mathieu de
Le Triomphe de la Vie, Le Roman du Lievre (a book of most
adorable prose), etc., and recently Le Rosaire au Soleil.
i Here is the Prayer to enter Paradise with the Donkeys,
which I quote from Miss A. Lowell's book, Six French Poets:
"When the time for going to you will have come, O my God,
let it be on a day when the countryside is dusty with a festi-
val. I wish, just as I do here, to choose the road and go
as I please to Paradise, where there are stars in broad day-
light. I will take my stick and I will go along the high-road,
and I will say to the donkeys, my friends: 'I am Francis
Jammes and I am going to Paradise,' for there is no hell in
the country of the good God. I will say to them: 'Come, gen-
tle friends of the blue sky, poor, dear animals, who, with a
sudden movement of the ears, drive away silver flies, blows,
and bees. . . .'
"Grant that I appear before you in the midst of these ani-
mals that I love so much, because they hang their heads gently,
and when they stop put their little feet together in a very
sweet and pitiful way. I shall arrive followed by their mil-
lions of ears, followed by those who carry baskets on their
flanks, by those who draw the acrobats' carts, or carts of
feather-dusters and tinware, by those who have dented cans
on their backs, she-asses full like gourds, with halting steps,
and those on whom they put little pantaloons because of the
blue and running sores which the obstinate flies make, stick-
ing in circles. My God, grant that I come to you with these
asses. Grant that angels conduct us in peace to tufted
streams, where glossy cherries quiver, which are like the
laughing flesh of young girls, and grant that, leaning over
your divine waters in this place of souls, I become like the
donkeys who mirror their humble and gentle poverty in the
clearness of eternal love."
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 105
Noailles * is another poet, with more pride and
also more anxiety, but she is near to Jammes, whom
she deeply admires, in many aspects of her work.
She is a great, noble, restless soul, with an ex-
traordinary power of projecting magnificence
around her. She has ennobled and exalted the
humble plants from the gardens as well as wor-
shipped the heroes. She has been criticized for
this; but I suppose that in order to give grandeur
to everything one has first to possess an unusual
amount of grandeur in oneself. She always wrote
in regular verse, enclosing therein the mystical and
tragic conflicts which constantly arise in this gen-
erous and tormented heart.
A decidedly powerful influence on the present
French literature is Paul Claudel's. His genius is
so strong and so new, that a long preparation would
be necessary to approach and define him. Six
years ago he was all but unknown. Today he is
famous. His work is mostly poems and dramas, 2
wherein a pure catholic orthodoxy is to be found
together with the most daring audacities in the use
of the resources of French prosody.
1 Le Coeur Innombrablc, Les Eblouissements, Les Vivants et
Us Moris, le Visage EmerveilU, etc.
2 Cinq Orandes Odes, L'Arbre (dramas), Connaissance de
I'Est (a book of prose on the spectacles of the East, written
when Claudel was a consul in China), L'Otage (a drama),
etc. and his Poemes de Guerre.
106 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
Other important figures in today's poetry are
Paul Fort, author of the many "Ballades Fran-
gaises," Andre Suares, who also wrote books of es-
says and criticism of high value, Andre Spire,
Henri Gheon, Paul Fargue, Jean Schlumberger,
each of whom deserves a long appreciation, which
cannot find place here. But a mere nomenclature
of the influences acting upon us could not omit their
names.
Charles Peguy * has a place among the poets,
owing to his "Mysteres," the first one being a deeply
beautiful restitution of Joan of Arc's childhood and
vocation.
The two masters whose action I regard as most
decisive on the inspiration and work of the young
are Andre Gide and Emile Verhaeren. Of the first
I shall say nothing in this article, because I can-
not resign myself to limit his definition to a few
sentences, and because his tremendous influence on
the artists whom I know has been so multiform, so
subtle, that it would be a vain and poor attempt
to try to detect it in a rapid analysis. All that I
can say is that I owe everything to him. 2
i See Part I.
%Les Nourritures Terrestres, La Porte Etroite, Prttextes,
Nouveaux Pr6textes, etc. Readers who wish to know him
better have to open, first, his works, second, Jacques Riviere's
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 107
At the Rouen railway station, in November, 1916,
Emile Verhaeren was killed beneath the wheels of
a passing train. The greatest of Belgian poets, and
one of the most noble workers in the French lan-
guage was taken from us. But if there is a man
who should dwell permanently among us, living
more and more in his work and example, it is Emile
Verhaeren.
Alive, who was his superior? Hot blood circu-
lated in his veins, his thought was a glowing cru-
cible, in which matters were submitted to a fiery
test. His voice rapped out words that, with a
gesture, he seemed to fling into space. He tramped
forward, shoulders rounded, like the abutment of
an arch, as one ready to push forward something
heavy. His physical appearance inspired more
than one artist, and the best portraits of him that re-
main are without doubt those drawn by his friend
and compatriot, Theo Van Rysselberghe. The face
seamed, wrinkled, and grief worn, but the eyes
clear and bright; the moustache long and drooping;
the hand hot and nervous, seeming always ready to
seize an object and to remodel it. His speech was
simple and cordial, and even enthusiastic, and his
heart was infinitely youthful. If one speaks of the
Etudes, which contain the best survey of his genius and pro-
duction.
108 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
presence of mind of certain men, it is necessary in
the case of Verhaeren to speak of the presence of
heart.
His supreme title to fame will rest in his having
welded at the heat of that red forge, his heart, the
lyricism of great poetic inspiration and the reality
of modern life. He carried with him a love of
reality, and he turned aside from nothing. The
real commenced with his own body, with the physi-
cal joy of recognizing the world through his
senses.
I love my eyes, my arms,
My hands, my flesh, my frame,
And my hair thick and fair,
And with my lungs,
I wish to drink in all space,
In order to swell my strength.
This he writes in the fulness of life, and later
I thank you, my body,
For being still firm and quick
To the touch of the swift winds,
Or of the low breezes.
And you, my straight frame,
And my strong lungs,
Breathing by the seashore,
Or on the mountain,
The keen and radiant air
Which enwraps the world.
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 109
Impelled by such elements of fervour, the poet
could scarcely go astray, whatever might be the
parabola described by his spirit. He possessed
the true light which was never lacking, and which
did not deceive.
"Instinct rivets to my brow a sufficient cer-
tainty."
Verhaeren took up the task of the artist as the
result of a supreme election. It was to this higher
form of life that he devoted himself. He listened
to the temptation irresistible to a high spirit.
"Mark the deep rhythms of the Universe!
Oh ! to define progress in a passing image,
In a sudden language;
To note it in the rough seas,
Upon the mountain height,
In the rage of the wind,
In the clash of thunder
In the softness of a woman's footfall,
In the light of the eyes,
In the pity of the hands,
In the manifest uprising
Of a super -human being.
In the tempest of sex,
In the hours of folly,
In all that deceives,
In all that hears,
In all that disrupts,
In all that unites
To captivate the infinite intelligence."
110 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
And when he translates the powerful joy of
workmanship, how full are these words to the
artist!
The bones, the blood, the nerves
Make alliance
With one knows not what trembling
In the air and in the wind.
One feels light and bright as space,
One rejoices to give thanks.
Facts, principles, laws
One comprehends all.
The heart trembles with love,
And the spirit seems mad
With the intoxication of ideas!
That which Verhaeren manifests before all is
a simple and yet fervent virility. Nobody can be
gentler or at times rougher, more brutal or more
tender in turn. He is the great wind which both
ravages and caresses. He is the pure voice of na-
ture, complex and alarming. Above all, his work
weighs. His most largely winged verses are al-
ways cut from hard metal, and those most charged
with divine spirit are in solid blocks, four-sided,
like the masonry of a cathedral which cannot be
destroyed by cannon.
The general effect of his work is ample and gen-
erous. The heart of the poet traverses and ex-
presses the most tragic crises. Strenuous conflicts,
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 111
and stormy images torment the soul and suspend it
in space. All problems of universal or of indi-
vidual ethics are found agitating in the poems of
Verhaeren. No one is more deeply enrooted in the
life of his time, and I do not believe that a person
exists who has more completely expressed the mean-
ing of life, its labours, its despairs, its pride, and its
"multiple splendour."
His works are far from unknown in America,
where various translations are in circulation,
thanks to Arthur Symons, Jethro Bithell, Alma
Strettel, Joyce Kilmer and others.
The glory of Verhaeren was essentially interna-
tional. His popularity was perhaps greatest in
Russia. Thousands of readers, and especially
young men, have vibrated to his thrilling strophes,
to the unbridled work of his youth. ("Les
Flamandes," "Les Moines," "Les Flambeaux
Noirs.")
"Les Villes Tentaculaires" tell of the devouring
intensity of the industrial forges and factories, and
the drama of the deserted countryside.
"Les Visages de la Vie" (1899), "La Multiple
Splendeur" (1902), "Les Forces Tumulteuses,"
(1906), "Les Rythmes Souverains" (1910) mark
his most characteristic epochs, if not the apogee of
his power, and in his late years this power was not
diminished but softened.
112 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
He gives another expression of himself in poems
of tenderness and serenity, as in "Les Heures de
Soir," "Bles Mouvants," in poems dedicated to
heroic memories, as in the description of his
Fatherland "Toute la Flandre." Between these
appear the dramas "Philippe II," "Le Cloitre,"
"Les Aubes," and "Helen of Sparta," which was
produced magnificently in Paris in 1912.
The basis of his ethic is admiration. Little by
little in the course of his work other forces dissolve
or mingle as streams which join a river. His re-
volts are gradually absorbed by the love which dom-
inates, simply because with Verhaeren, in whom
so many forces operated, love was the strongest.
"He who may read me in the days to come,
May he know my transports and my joy
Amid cries, revolts and tears,
See me rush into combat, proud and manly,
Free from sorrow and attracting love,
As one conquers one's prey.
He foresaw clearly, the times and the passions to
come, and presented them with all his genius, fore-
telling their approach in a strophe which is perhaps
of all the most beautiful.
A vast hope springs from the unknown,
Displacing the ancient balance
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 113
Of which our souls are weary
Nature makes ready to engrave
A new visage for eternity.
Everything stirs and it seems
That the horizon moves forward.
Of his life work the synthesis was complete, the
harmony without reproach, and this great and gen-
erous power for years satisfied himself merely
with kindness and goodness. As he had led "a
life having nothing in common with death,"
neither present bitterness nor the ashes of a past
sorrow could extinguish his pure flame.
His life was divided between the little house at
St. Cloud, near Paris, and his retreat at Caillou-qui-
Bique, in Belgium, where he passed the summer.
And then the inexpiable thing happened.
August, 1914, raining blood and disaster, burst
on his loyal and pacific little country. The incen-
diary, the assassin, the violator struck it down.
The unbridled brutality of an invader who already
believed himself victorious was let loose upon his
beloved country. Verhaeren was advancing in
years, and the blow was terrible. He suffered pro-
foundly in spirit and body, and was almost suc-
cumbing to the sorrow which filled his soul at the
sight of the devastation of all that he cherished.
i Vildrac.
114 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
Nevertheless, the energy which burned in his be-
ing kept him erect, and the peaceable man of letters
became a combatant. All that was his of fervour,
of indignation, and also of simple devotion he
placed at the service of his murdered yet always
living country. He saw the burned cities, he saw
the army pent in the last field of its natal soil. He
saw the King amid his soldiers, and he wrote pas-
sionately of these sombre things.
"La Belgique Sanglante!" Emile Verhaeren,
after all his works of love, emitted this great cry of
anger. This book is from the outset a loyal and
irrefutable document. When many other pam-
phlets are forgotten, it will remain as a redoubtable
instrument and a powerful manifestation of resist-
ance and of faith.
In the midst of many statements of facts he does
not fail to make allusion and render homage to the
generosity of America. Between him and that
country a pronounced comprehension existed, which
had not to wait for the splendid enthusiasm and
generosity of the United States towards his mar-
tyred nation. Like his compatriot Emile Vander-
velde, and also Dr. Depage, Emile Verhaeren was
a firm believer in democracy. At the same time
he was a personal friend of King Albert, and in
this friendship between king and poet, between
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 115
public man and man of science, one may ask who
was the more ennobled? I think it was Belgium
herself.
Presently appeared The Red Wings of War, that
book of poems written during the sanguinary tor-
ment of Belgium. It is not equal to the Ver-
haeren of the years of happiness, fervour and for-
tune, but such pieces as "The Country to its Dead
Soldiers" and "A Strip of Country" are supreme
in their alliance of anger with tenderness. Never-
theless, one fact makes us inconsolable. Great
patriot that he was, he will not assist in the deliver-
ance of his people and will not see in Brussels re-
stored the King re-enter on horse-back, amid the
fervent greetings of a resuscitated nation the King
sans peur, of whom Verhaeren's last book sang.
Comes that day of glory when the soldiers of
Albert I, laughing yet terrible, shall re-enter Dix-
mude, Bruges, Liege and also the little village of
Caillou-qui-Bique,
Verhaeren is dead . . .
What will be, in the time to come, the influence
of Verhaeren and his work? I believe that it will
increase and be immense. This fine and yet prim-
itive soul will exercise a powerful influence upon
the spirits of the approaching epoch. The war-
116 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
riors on their return will require nourishment,
healthful and sustaining, and the influence of Ver-
haeren is that above all, apart from his na'ive lu-
cidity. He warns us that "one must love, in order
to understand with genius."
One has often compared the inspiration of Ver-
haeren with that of Walt Whitman, and in many re-
spects their characters resemble each other. It is
to Hugo also that he belongs, in certain excesses
even, that is to say, his indulgence in flamboyant
imagery, his striking contrasts and grandiloquent
epithets are the natural excesses of an almost too
generous soul. His faults even are an aspect of his
grandeur.
In truth, I believe that the time will come when
the works of Verhaeren will be regarded with the
highest enthusiasm, and indeed that time is already
at hand.
French literature of today shows the marks of
one American influence which may well be called
decisive. Walt Whitman's blood runs in the veins
of the young writers of France, and was infused
there through more than one channel. We first
knew "Leaves of Grass," thanks to the translation
by Leon Bazalgette, which was published by the
Mercure de France, then we read it in English.
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 117
Shall I call our young poets disciples of his?
Whitman would smile at this. The old master
whom they never saw but can imagine, never cared
for disciples in the narrow sense of that word.
Maybe they know little of him, and understand him
wrong still not wrong enough to call themselves
his disciples! Some writers of ours used a verse
very similar to his. But his influence on a few
poets is small, compared to his action on the men-
tality of the young in general. It is more vital
than the discovery of a new resource in rhythm or
in melody. It is an immensely renewed inspira-
tion which is proposed by this American, and which
is one of the treasures of our times.
He and Verhaeren, our masters, are, indeed, like
some proud and gigantic stems, whence we, their
branches, may borrow a stimulating sap. I remem-
ber the word of Alphonse Daudet's little son when
he saw Ivan Turgeniev coming into his father's
house, arm in arm with Gustave Flaubert: "But
all your friends are giants, then?"
These giants who dictate the rhythm of our liter-
ary life have opened to the world's poetry a new
field, and what a field ! that of modern life. They
sang of the cities, of industrial work, and physical
effort. Their teaching is the one which will be de-
manded by the men returned from the war: a teach-
118 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
ing of strength, fervor and simplicity*. But we did
not wait for the war to read and admire them.
The universe seems to be wider since their
voices praised its various parts, countries, crea-
tures, emotions, constructions, details. . . . We
are no more the men we were before we read "Song
of Myself."
Let me quote, almost in full, one of the best
poems of Charles Vildrac's Livre d' Amour. 1 Do
I mistake in regarding this as affiliated to your con-
temporary inspiration, either still latent or coming
to expression?
THE CONQUERORS
Behold the cavalier without a horse, but whoever
sees him pass will know him for a Knight.
Behold the pilgrim with neither staff nor breviary,
but whoever sees him pass will know that he is more
than a crusader.
Behold the chief who does not command, but whoever
listens to him will know him for a captain.
Behold the conqueror without an army, but the only
conqueror he who knows how to talk with everybody,
both men and women; and can make good tears shine
in their eyes again, and can give back to them the clear
laughter of children.
i Nouvelle Revue Frangaise, publisher. Translation by Miss
E. Eyre.
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 119
His best weapons are his friendly eyes, his thought-
ful and surprising kindnesses, it is the way his voice
gives help to his words, it is the way his spirit dances
like a torch.
He is prodigal and bare as a tree in the spring, his
heart is warm as a greenhouse in winter; and one aban-
dons oneself to whatever he says, again it is he who,
when he takes, gives.
He will come wherever you are. He will not sit
down beside you as do those to whom the half of your
face and but one of your shoulders suffice.
But he will sit down opposite you, his knees touch-
ing your knees, your hands within reach of his hands,
and his eyes bearing upon your eyes, forcing them to
uncover.
And you will say: Where have I seen him before?
As in singing under a vault one discovers the single
note which makes the whole vibrate and become its
warm voice.
So his words agitate in your lifted throat the beautiful
voice that it imprisons, of which you had not suspicion,
your best voice, your only voice.
He will love you in your own way, with the presents
you would have chosen, with his bluntness, with his
laughter, his humility or his pity; he will love you as
much as it is necessary to soften you and win you.
You will wonder: What does he expect from me?
What will he ask of me tomorrow? And you will be
troubled, never suspecting that really, without know-
ing it himself, he expects from you the reason for his
existence; that you are necessary to him as the words
one speaks, the ears that receive them, as beautiful
things to the eyes that surround them.
120 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
For conquest is his great desire; like heroes and like
women, he loves to feel himself fondled by the scat-
tered thoughts of men, which, from a great distance,
lean towards him as benumbed fingers stretch towards a
fire.
On certain nights, his hands, pressing together, are
warm the while he gently inclines his head, for he is
aware, confusedly, that his name has just been spoken
in many dwellings where he has been.
Houses close to him, and houses remote from him,
resembling each other in nothing but in his love as a bap-
tism. So you will be one of his victories, followed by
another and still others.
The strength of his heart will bend towards him the
proud and contemptuous people, as it will enfold those
that are weak.
It is not the custom among men to consecrate oneself
and give, expecting nothing in return ; and to balance his
great love it is the love of many that he demands. . . .
Into a land of little hope, under an aged sun that
long had looked serene on men both gay and sad, there
came, one day, this conqueror, in fire for keen and vivid
conquering. Indefatigable he makes his way, tracing
his path before his steps as one would plough.
And the vagrants that he passed, loved him dumbly
like dogs.
And with an awkward and simple tenderness the sim-
ple villages loved him.
And in their crowded waves, their voices thick with
tears and their clamours rising in vast clouds, and their
enormous and childish joy, the feverish and pallid cities
loved him.
Until one day, delicious miracle! another is born,
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 121
endowed as he, another arises, jealous of his renown,
and marches like him through the country prodigal of
the best in him, and reaping, reaping victories.
And then will other conquerors unexpectedly arise,
and as there have been a hundred conquerors, so now
must one become a hundred times a lover, a hundred
times beloved.
. . . And those that have been conquered a hundred
times will also wish to conquer.
And the time will come in the country, the time of the
great conquest, when people with this longing will leave
the thresholds of their doors, to go the one to meet the
other.
And the time will come in this country, when history
will be made of nothing but choruses of songs, but
dances hand in hand, but one combat and one victory!
Vildrac belongs to the group of the Unaniniists,
whose chief was Jules Romains. In Remains' La
Vie Unanime, 1 we find the verses which perhaps
formulate most absolutely this new creed. They
looked for inspiration not so much in individual
feelings or passions, as in the life and movements
of collectivities. Whether this school will con-
tinue to exist as a group I do not know. But I have
a great faith in the works that will come from some
of its members.
The very movement and sound of Whitman are
to be found in some of Valery Larbaud's poems,
preceding his "Barnabooth's Diary." And may I
i Mercure de France, publisher.
122 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
quote this fragment of an unpublished chant "To
America," which was written in 1917 by a very
young poet, Mireille Havet?
"Glorious cities of America,
Tumultuous cities, and well populated,
Cities rich with the future which will cover us all,
I salute you, today, from my little corner in France,
From my corner of a city in France,
From the corner of my table.
"Ah, never was it graver to be young,
Graver to be impatient,
With that conquering desire, which comes from the pride
to be the last ones
. . . The last of all, when the others were living,
. . . The first, now that we are alone!
And the words shall come from us
Or eternally remain silent,
And judgment shall come from us, and action,
Or our cities will remain in ashes, and our dead non-
buried !
"We find ourselves at the edge of the fresh ridge;
The seed that we hold is very different.
"America, let our generation be the piers of a bridge
Stretching itself between the various nations.
Let our hands grasp each other,
Let us stand firm
And be worthy of this Earth, which men, until now,
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 123
Did but divide between themselves in a bloody fashion.
"I salute you, well-populated cities of America,
And my heart goes to you
Leaping with hope."
There are many names, which I would give:
Rene Arcos, Georges Duhamel, Frangois Porche
and many others. But let me once more turn back
to Henri Franck, who would lead our troop today
were he still among us. 1 The first part of his Danse
devant FArche ended with this affirmation of en-
thusiasm for the Universe:
"Adolescent runner, with unwearied heart,
I shall reach the clearing where one comes upon God.
One day I shall know the thing I so strongly desire,
And my spirit will be multiplied and stretched with the
waiting;
For nothing exists in earth or heaven
That the determination of my seeking wisdom may not
know.
One day I shall find the divine current,
And with the feel of its powerful flow against my back,
A joyous bather abandoning myself to the sweep of the
stream,
On this glorious bed, between the superb banks of the
Universe laden with houses and fruits,
Supple of body, light of heart, swift of spirit,
In the turbulent water of life I shall swim with power
and pleasure."
iSee Part I.
124 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
And in the last part, reaching a higher point of
knowledge and wisdom, without losing his power
of fervour, but having transformed its object:
"Truth is enthusiasm^ without hope,
Ardour unquenchable,
Joy that mounts straight up into the black sky,
The perfect happiness of fervour without recompense,
The high happiness of feeling keenly one's existence,
Of being alive!"
The fragments I have chosen to quote are not
the most perfect that I could have found, but the
ones which seemed to me to give the sense of our
next tendencies in poetry; its characteristics being
the universal, the direct, and, as so, essentially able
to be exchanged from country to country. And I
find much of the same characteristics in the living
American poets whom I happened to read. There
is no reason why France should not give a cordial
recognition to poets like Edgar Lee Masters, E. A.
Robinson, Amy Lowell, Vachel Lindsay, Witter
Bynner, Ridgely Torrence, James Oppenheim,
Louis Ledoux, and others. The more genuinely
American will be the more welcome, since American
attitude of mind now means that broad and
understanding sympathy that we are looking for
in our own best leaders. I am strangely impa-
tient to see the day when I shall try to give to a few
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 125
in Paris an idea of the movement and rhythm of
"The Congo" or "General Booth" by Vachel Lind-
say. Lindsay's muse essentially belongs to Spring-
field, Illinois, and knows no other shores, but that
is precisely why we shall be glad to welcome her,
with her bright cheeks and well-knit muscles, and
her surprise to find herself among us. This is no
mere curiosity or dilettantism. What we really
love will become a part of ourselves, as Poe and
Whitman did in the past.
In the literary life of France, during the past few
years, there was not to be found the strict division
and classification in schools and "chapelles" which
the former period had known. The writers might
be classified according to the reviews in which
they used to have their works published, but the
tendency of each review was much less definite than
before, and many writers contributed to several
of them. It often happens that a group which is
politically conservative, proves to be over-advanced
in its literary form of expression; like, for in-
stance, the Occident magazine, which holds to
catholic tradition and which publishes works whose
form a defender of classical rules would call rev-
olutionary.
Most of the best books published in the past fif-
126 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
teen years appeared in the Mercure de France edi-
tions, and the collection of the Mercure magazine
itself can be regarded as forming the best history of
recent French literature. Other periodicals which
played a large part in its evolution were La Revue
Blanche, L'Ermitage, La Phalange, Vers et Prose
(edited by Paul Fort). Charles Peguy's Cahiers
de la Quinzaine also contain much of our best
production.
In 1909, La Nouvelle Revue Frangaise was
started and soon gathered most of what was living
and valuable in the various tendencies of contem-
porary writing. Two years later it opened a pub-
lishing branch, now very successful, and in 1913
its spirit was brought into the Theatre du Vieux-
Colombier, founded by Jacques Copeau. The war
stopped all these activities, except as to the publish-
ing of books. But in 1917-1918 the Theatre du
Vieux-Colombier will be transported to New York,
and this will bring one more opportunity of under-
standing and penetration between the advanced
literary elements of both countries.
There are many other active groups, which I
could enumerate, did this book pretend to give a
complete account of our intellectual life. But my
purpose was only to suggest and awaken interest.
The Americans who desire to know more about us
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 127
will have no difficulty in discovering that I have
treated a very small part of my subject. But I can
introduce them to other guides and to better ones.
They are the essayists and critics who gave intel-
ligent and passionate commentaries on that life
of ours. On your way to France, read the books
of Andre Suares, 1 Remy de Gourmont's Prome-
nades Litteraires, Andre Gide's Pretextes and
Nouveaux Pretextes, and Jacques Riviere's Etudes,
which are on the border where criticism meets
poetry herself.
For those who are interested in the questions of
poetical technique, I think that with Nos Directions,
by H. Gheon, the little book by Vildrac and Du-
hamel 2 would be of great profit. It shows what
the young men of that group regard as important in
the form, according to their present standards.
War has not proven, of course, to be creative of
beautiful works of art. The four poets whom I
shall name as having written the most remarkable
songs during that dark period did but apply to a
new subject a lyrism and a form which they al-
i Sur la Vie, Essais, Portraits) Trois Hommes (Pascal,
Ibsen, Dostoievsky), etc.
2 Notes sur la Technique poetique (Figuiere, Paris).
128 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
ready possessed. About the war itself, I expect
the only valuable and great works will appear much
later on. The Iliad was not composed under the
walls of Troy besieged.
Shortly before Emile Verhaeren's death, in the
autumn of 1916, the Mercure de France published
his book of poems: Les Ailes Rouges de la Guerre.
Mr. Joyce Kilmer translated "Cathedral," * which
is among the strongest things in the volume. I
quote from it:
He who walks through the meadows of Champagne
At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear,
Sees it draw near
Like some great mountain set upon the plain,
From radiant dawn until the close of day,
Nearer it grows
To him who goes
Across the country. When tall towers lay
Their shadowy pall
Upon his way,
He enters, where
The solid stone is hollowed deep by all
Its centuries of beauty and of prayer.
At once, they set their cannon in its way.
There is no gable now, nor wall
That does not suffer, night and day,
As shot and shell in crushing torrents fall.
i It appeared in Mr. Kilmer's recent book, Main Street and
Other Poems (Doran, New York). We quote it with the kind
permission of the author and publisher.
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 129
The stricken tocsin quivers through the tower;
The triple nave, the aspe, the lonely choir
Are circled, hour by hour,
With thundering bands of fire
And Death is scattered broadcast among men.
And then
That which was splendid with baptismal grace;
The stately arches soaring into space,
The transepts, columns, windows grey and gold,
The organ, in whose tones the ocean rolled,
The crypts, of mighty shades the dwelling places,
The Virgin's gentle hands, the Saints' pure faces,
All, even the pardoning hands of Christ the Lord,
Were struck and broken by the wanton sword
Of sacrilegious lust.
O beauty slain, glory in the dust!
Strong walls of faith, most basely overthrown!
The crawling flames, like adders glistening,
Ate the white fabric of this lovely thing.
Now from its soul arose a piteous moan,
The soul that always loved the just and fair.
Granite and marble loud their woe confessed,
The silver monstrances that Popes had blessed,
The chalices and lamps and crosiers rare
Were seared and twisted by a flaming breath;
The horror everywhere did range and swell,
The guardian Saints into this furnace fell,
Their bitter tears and screams were stilled in death.
Around the flames armed hosts are skirmishing,
The burning sun reflects the lurid scene;
The German army, fighting for its life,
Rallies its torn and terrified left wing;
130 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
And, as they near this place ,
The imperial eagles see
Before them in their flight,
Here, in the solemn night,
The old cathedral, to the years to be
Showing, with wounded arms, their own disgrace.
Paul Claudel first published Trois Poemes de
guerre, and later Autres Poemes durant la guerre.
The former have become well known, especially the
first of them: "Tant que vous voudrez, mon
general," which seems to embody the fighting spirit
and the desire for sacrifice of the man in the
trench.
Frangois Porche also published two small books:
UArret sur la Marne and Le Poeme de la Tranchee.
The former relates to the breaking out of the war,
the German attack, and the retreat until the critical
moment when the French armies were ordered to
stop the victorious invader which they did. Here
is that moment, told as a marvellous story for chil-
dren to come:
"There was once a grandfather
With white hair and blue eyes
A big sly companion
Who well concealed his play,
Who, clinching hard his jaw
As would an old wild boar,
Chose his observatory
At the foot of a poplar.
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 131
"Had fifteen hundred thousand
Grandchildren in his sleeve
All good and living hammers
And he being the handle.
He gathered in his hands
All the rivers and ways
Which cross and cut each other
From the Meuse to the Oise.
"The front was flowing back
As an enormous tide
France is falling to pieces!
The world stood terrified.
Suddenly he beckons:
In a sublime effort
The immense heavy line
Stops, and faces the North.
"It is dawn, Genevieve 1
Is leading the white herd
Of the mists which arise.
Joan is near the flag
Swinging her oriflam
Marked with fleur de lis.
The East is red with flames.
JofTre says: Go, my sons!"
The book of poems called Foi en la France
was written by Henri Gheon, during his service at
the front as a physician of the artillery. Some
poems are hot with action. Others, which he calls
"discours lyriques," contain the following passages:
i Sainte Genevi&ve, guardian saint of Paris.
132 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
ALL FRANCE
(For the men who belong to a party)
"The whole of you, with your faults; for you are not
a word, a myth, a dream; and you are no longer a God,
in spite of our devotion.
"Yes, the fragility of the creature and its force. A
human being, with a body, a face, and eyes: it is thus
that I wish to see you and easily recognizable by every
one.
"With a long life behind you and there is every-
thing in a life! But in yours, France, already so many
beautiful sleeping centuries . . .
"With a long life yet before you for you have kept
your youth . . .
. . . "And of what you have been, nothing to deny!
And nothing of what you will be, generous one!
"Salute, face misted with tears, pure forehead marked
with agonies, look of faults, look of faith, mouth of
grief, mouth of joy. O human face!
"Salute, fallible heart, splendid heart, woman with the
large cloak where our discords used to warm each other,
and where our discords will unite.
"Salute, earth of errors, earth of glory! Prudent
economist who weighs the bread and the salt, improvi-
dent hand which opens the closet to the beggar!
"Salute, gentle one! Salute, rebel! Salute, saint!
Salute, warrior! Salute, enigma of destiny, phantom
friend! . . .
"Now, reassembled in your sons, behold you in front
of them, like a mother! And all read in your suffering
what all before had not understood."
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 133
This is "On the Great Russian Retreat".
"What do I know of you, profound Russia, perpetual
retreat of immense and level horizons of wheat, of
swamps and of snow; silver laughter of sounding birch-
trees in the heart of white nights, stammering of the mou-
jicks in the golden chapels?
"What do I know of you, profound Russia? Never
have I approached you but in spirit only followed my
heart, dreaming of attaining to the poet in the echo of
the translated words . . . but even the echo was splen-
did! The human metal resounded there, and one could
not be mistaken.
"What do I know of you, profound Russia, and yet I
press on in your suite as a poet in Ukraine with his little
instrument two strings upon a sounding board as far
as destiny wishes to lead you, upon the road of your
calvary. . . .
"A few notes, always the same; hardly a song, but
everything is said: Your distress of ancient times and
which will surpass our times, your tireless plaint, nour-
ished by itself, and to which God will surrender."
Can we now gaze into the future?
There is no possible comparison with other
epochs. All currents are combining and crossing
each other, all tendencies have a chance to find their
way. Owing to the wide possibilities of interna-
tional communication and translation, and to the
world-influences which are resulting from it, think-
134 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
ers and artists will dedicate their work, more and
more, to the remote and unknown admirers who are
waiting for them all over the earth, rather than to a
limited surrounding due to mere circumstances.
This promises a freer expansion of sincerity, a
lesser submission to local limitations. It is a pow-
erful source of strength and stimulation to create,
to feel that spontaneous, invisible communion which
circulates now between young men of all countries.
It is as if the world, at the issue of this war, would
start from a common point and live on with common
terms.
Are we to see a long period of barren incertitude,
during the time of reconstruction, and will all ener-
gies be devoted to material work? What I am in-
clined to believe is that material enterprise itself
will be transformed in its spirit, and might prove
as inspiring as any other thing involving energy
and passion. I see an infinite broadening of the
artist's domain; the way has already been shown by
those whom I called our prophets. And I see a
growing and more spontaneous interpenetration of
science, ethics and art, working combined in the
mind of new men. I suppose that literary work
will resume its normal, logical development, start-
ing at the point where it had stopped in July, 1914.
But the men having grown different, a deep revolu-
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 135
tion will be felt to have taken place within every
particular work.
For these past three years, art and literature were
paralyzed. But there will be some triumphant
awakening. After the strain of disciplined solidar-
ity, a tremendous reaction of free expression will
break out, just as a reaction of liberalism will suc-
ceed the temporary prussianization" which the
young men voluntarily support. This does not
mean anarchy, on the contrary. 1 I think that after
man's destructive power, man's power of creation
will reach to an extent in which but few believe
today.
Never was interest in music more developed in
France than during the few years which preceded
the war. This came after a long period of stag-
nation in public taste, when no other alternative
existed but academic poverty or hysterico-fashion-
able enthusiasms for "virtuosi" who usurped the
place of the work they were supposed to serve. No
art had been more abandoned. None has been
more ardently reviving. Minds of all sorts, turned
toward interests of all kinds, now unite in their love
for music. Men of science, of letters, of tradition
i See Peguy's last lines in Part I.
136 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
and of revolution, join in that common worship.
Moreover, the great musicians of today are men of
wide culture who live with the elite of their time.
Thus, writing and criticism about music has been
able to give us the books of Romain Rolland, of
Riviere, of Suares and this book of G. Jean-Aubry, 1
which is to be recommended to any one who wants
a complete and intelligent commentary on the pres-
ent musical treasure of France. Together with the
new musical activity there was a new comprehen-
sion of the past, namely, of French music from the
16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
For a long time, it had been believed that French
composers were only capable of small, graceful,
light constructions. "Are we going at last to under-
stand," says Jean-Aubry, "the true grandeur and
universal value of a period which saw Vincent
d'Indy's symphonic work, Debussy's orchestral
compositions, Roussel's 'Evocations,' Florent
Schmitt's Psalm and Quintette, Ravel's 'Daphnis et
Chloe,' Roger Ducasse's 'Suite Frangaise,' and
which has given to the theatre Telleas et Meli-
sande,' 'Ariane et Barbe-Bleue,' and 'Penelope'?"
There also foreign influences had brought stimu-
lating and encouraging example. One country
i"La Musique fransaise d'aujourd'hui." (Perrin, pub-
lisher, Paris.)
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 137
was, above all, showing the way: it was Russia.
Spain was giving, parallel to ours, a splendid gener-
ation of young composers ; one of them was Grana-
dos, killed in the torpedoing of the Sussex. From
Germany we had had the gigantic influence of
Wagner, which had known its climax some twenty
years ago.
Some of our masters G. Faure, V. d'Indy, after
great Cesar Franck, and Saint-Saens, are widely
known already. The works of other elders, Cha-
brier, Chausson, Duparc, Magnard (who was killed
in 1914 in defending his own house against the
invaders), have not yet known all the recognition
which time will accord to their names.
The greatest living figure in French music,
Claude Debussy, is also most representative of
French genius. He is sensuous, delicate, intelli-
gent, refined above all, and he conceals his actual
greatness and might under his qualities of grace and
reserve, instead of making a tumultuous and
colossal display of them. In age and sources of in-
spiration Debussy belongs to the "Symbolist"
period and, as a fact, he chose his friends, when a
young man, among that group which included
Maeterlinck, Louys, Regnier, Mallarme, Gide.
But by his production he decidedly is a precursor
and a master of our present tendencies. He
138 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
worked with the terminating XlXth century, but
his work was addressed to the 20th century. His
career is a noble example of dignity and aloof-
ness from easy and clamorous success. But now
his importance is as widely acknowledged as at
first it had been denied. Not only is "Pelleas" an
original and pure masterpiece, not only is the
"Prelude a 1'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" a rarity,
but Debussy's influence covers all the present epoch
and is to be felt in the work of most contemporary
composers. 1
Other masters are Paul Dukas, the author of
"Ariane et Barbe-Bleue" and of "UApprenti
Sorrier" and his work is solid, serene, healthy.
Maurice Ravel, whose clear, ironical,- ingenious in-
spiration gives him a place which is apart. His
"Sonatine," his "Pavane pour une infante defuhte"
and the suite of "Ma mere FOye" (Mother Goose)
are now famous. Florent Schmitt, who composed
a tragedy of "Salome," a Quintette, a Psalm, and
many other works of serious, sensible and skilful
character. Deodat de Severac, who comes from
Southern France and whose work is devoted to the
aspects of nature, of which they give a large, al-
1 Other principal works of Debussy are: La Mer, the Noc-
turnes, the pieces written on Verlaine's, Baudelaire's and
Pierre Louys' poems, and his famous pieces for the piano.
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 139
most vegetally powerful interpretation. Erik
Satie, a humourist and also a clever technician, who
had an intuition of the new tendencies in music
perhaps before Debussy himself.
According to the high standards of musical art in
America, it may be expected that the works of these
composers will be executed more and more in this
country; French music was usually represented by
the less significant light operas when Italian and
German music was known through masterpieces.
Which is unfair, but of course it was our own fault,
since we ourselves ignored for a long time what
riches were ours. Since last year, a great step has
been made by the sending of some remarkable in-
terpreters from Paris to this country, like Gasadesus
and his "ancient instruments," Joseph Bonnet, the
organist, Pierre Monteux, who directed the orches-
tra in the Metropolitan Opera-house, Mrs. Gills, and
others. Carlos Salzedo for the last two years has
been fighting for the cause of French modern music
with his excellent "Trio de Lutece." E. Varese
directed a performance of Berlioz' Requiem.
The parallel revival and development of musical
interest and of interest in physical culture has log-
ically brought us to a revival of dancing as a high
form of art. We had this renewal through
140 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
three principal sources of influence. The first
was Isadora Duncan. Another was the Rus-
sian Ballet, a tremendous inspiration to all young
artists in the four years before the war. The
third was Jaques-Dalcroze's Eurythmics, which had
a deep influence on those who were practising them,
and which stood, as it were, at the very converging
point of music, dance and physical culture.
So many admirable treatises have been written
on the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture in
France and their more modern developments that
they need not be dwelt on here. There has long
been an interchange between France and America
with respect to painting especially, and Monet,
Manet, Cezanne, Gauguin, Degas, Puvis de Chav-
annes to mention but a few are as highly appre-
ciated here as say Sargent, Whistler and Mary
Cassatt are there. 1 This interchange of art and
artists may well be expected to increase after the
war, and parenthetically it may be said that the
counsels of Whitney Warren and other American
architects will be profoundly appreciated when the
work of rebuilding ravaged France is taken in hand.
Our wealth of today is little compared to that of
iThe presence and success of H. Caro-Delvaille in Amer-
ica is another link of that chain.
LITERARY INTERCHANGE 141
tomorrow. I wonder whether some people are not
hiding their heads, as the ostrich does, when they
say that life is today without spiritual inspiration,
that art is dying, that art is dead. And they are
kind enough to shed tears about it. Indeed they
have eyes and they see not, they have ears and they
hear not. Of our artistic vitality only ignorants or
pan-Germanists can be in doubt.
I have tried in this part of the present book to
lead a troop of friendly visitors through some new
alleys of the garden of France. Alleys newly
planted with trees multifarious, robust or delicate.
Maybe the readers expected more or something else.
Then I ask from them only one thing: let them
reserve their conclusions until they find a better
guide, and for their disappointment let them accuse
me only.
V
CONCLUSIONS
History of mutual knowledge. False ideas about each
other. Principle of our exchanges. France's experience and
America's methods. Common task in the organization of
peace. The two nations who did most work unselfishly for the
world. Psychology of our understanding. Individual com-
radeship as a basis for our relations. Responsibilities.
"Make great persons. The ret will follow"
WHITMAN.
THE Franco-American alliance is not a mere tem-
porary co-operation for one limited purpose this
war. I believe that it is involved in the very struc-
ture and existence of the two countries. If an old,
long-tried understanding has ever existed between
two nations, assuredly we are those two. And if
the word "alliance" has a human sense, besides its
diplomatic one, assuredly it is so in the case of
our relations. When friendship takes the form of
such identity of ideals, and results in such a com-
mon sacrifice to a common cause, we may say that
our alliance, if limited to circumspect interpreta-
tion by Foreign Offices, vividly exists in the mind,
not to say the heart, of every American and every
142
CONCLUSIONS 143
Frenchman. There is no treaty which binds us.
No parchment with red seal obliges us to love each
other. But when compared with certain political
constructions which looked so proud and solemn,
but which have gone to pieces (the Triple Alliance
for instance), this vitality of our old union, unwrit-
ten though it be, is one of the greatest victories ever
won by the Spirit over the Letter.
We all know when it started. Our treaty in
1778 was a peculiar and strange kind of treaty.
France gave recognition and help to the young Re-
public, and asked for nothing in return. If you
read Ambassador Jusserand's book on that first
alliance of ours, you will see that the leading im-
pulses of the French who went to America, young
LaFayette to begin with, were passionate love for
liberty, and an irresistible moral urge to help those
who were fighting for it. In fact, the Americans
were realizing in advance what we only dreamt of
at that time. In the same spirit the French fought
for Greek freedom in 1820 and for Italy later.
The French expedition was the most important sent
by France beyond the seas since the time of the
Crusades. And was it not a Crusade in a new
form?
For a long time, in spite of parallel experiences
in republican life, France and America were too
144 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
distant from each other, and the material conditions
too absolutely different for our mutual understand-
ing to be other than abstract and sentimental. All
definite ideas which we had about each other were
more or less inaccurate, if not comically fantastic.
"It is difficult," said Abbe Robin, quoted by Mr.
Jusserand, "to imagine the idea Americans enter-
tained about the French before the war (of Inde-
pendence) . They considered them as groaning un-
der the yoke of despotism, a prey to superstition and
prejudices, almost idolatrous in their religion, and
as a kind of light, brittle, queer-shapen mechanism,
only busy frizzling their hair and painting their
faces, without faith or morals." On the other hand,
for years the popular mind of France could not
imagine the American otherwise than in Colonel
Cody's costume, drawing revolvers from his
breeches in order to shoot flies against the wall or
uncork bottles of whiskey.
For many people, until 1914, the French had
been personified by the fussy, nervous gentleman
who wore a red ribbon in his buttonhole, talked with
excessive gestures, knew nothing about foreign
countries, and was afraid of a draught. French-
men knew little more about Americans, when we
expected the modern American to be a milliardaire
pork-dealer, despising literature, and presenting his
CONCLUSIONS 145
wife with gilded grand pianos, but personally en-
joying the talking-machine better.
Those images are rapidly vanishing. But if
present impressions of each other are more true to
life, I wonder if they are quite so? Only the col-
lective, national action of America has yet become
known by us, not the silent, personal side of this
recent evolution of yours. Only the apparently
miraculous virtues of France have recently been
revealed and talked about, and she now appears
like a sort of Joan of Arc above the clouds a
mystic image which perhaps is not false, but which
is incomplete, for there is a living, toiling, thinking
country behind that cloud.
From jiow on, the young men and women of
both sides have to look each other straight in the
eyes. The boy of whom I tried to give a sketch in
the first part of this book, and the boy who has
crossed the sea to fight side by side with him, are
about to give to the alliance its definite meaning.
Then will Whitman's generous prophecy of 1871
come true:
"Star crucified! . . .
Star panting o'er a land of death heroic land!
Strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land.
. . . O Star! ship of France, beat back and baffled
long!
Bear up, smitten orb! ship, continue on!
146 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
"Sure, as the ship of all, the Earth itself,
Product of deathly fire and turbulent chaos,
Forth from its spasms of fury and its poisons,
Issuing at last in perfect power and beauty,
Onward, beneath the sun, following its course,
So thee, ship of France!
"Finish'd the days, the clouds dispell'd,
The travail o'er, the long-sought extrication,
When lo! reborn, high o'er the European world,
(In gladness, answering thence, as face afar to face,
reflecting ours, Columbia,)
Again thy star, France fair, lustrous star,
In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever,
Shall beam immortal."
It seems to me that, starting from very remote
points, and living very different lives, we arrive
now at a moment when our directions rapidly con-
verge. In the space of one generation we shall see
American and French conditions of life nearer to
each other than at any period of history, especially
with respect to moral, cultural and political condi-
tions.
Problems which are now before the conscience of
America's young men are very much like those
which made our own younger years so fraught with
anxiety. There are matters in which mankind's
fate is implicated and our thinkers, on both sides,
are facing them. Ours is a common task in the
organization of peace. Ours are the two nations
CONCLUSIONS 147
who have worked most unselfishly for the world;
and this is a matter not only of pride for us, but
above all of responsibility.
I had an intuition of all this when I decided to
come to America, on a mission of which this book
is the condensed expression. When I had lived
among the Americans for a time they made me
realize that my intuition was right. But the results
of my observations have gone far beyond what I
expected, though in the expected sense. Never
shall I be able to acknowledge what encouragement
and strengthening of my beliefs has been given to
me by all those who have received me in this coun-
try. Their desire to know more about France was
not less than my own desire to have her better
known. Now it is becoming every one's task in
both nations to stimulate the exchange of informa-
tion, to choose among it, and thus to develop the
relations which will result from it. We have to
welcome any form of co-operation and exchange,
moral or material, official or private. But there is
one form of exchange in which I believe most: it
is that of individuals. The personal meeting of
elements from both countries having corresponding
interests, and especially the individual comrade-
ship that can be developed between young men and
women from France and from America must be
148 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
encouraged by every means. Only those relations
are active and flexible enough for the complexity of
the new conditions. We admire the work accom-
plished by societies and collective organizations, 1
because its best result is the extension of oppor-
tunities for individuals to come in touch with each
other. The best and most effective part of our
knowledge we owe not to papers or public meet-
ings, but to long and direct conversations with those
few specially qualified to inform us about what we
are eager to learn.
Not the least important influence in the mutual
relation and formation of Young France and
New America is that development of sport, which
had its revival in France about twenty years ago,
and was in full process of expansion just before this
crisis. The last great sporting manifestation was
when the Marquis de Polignac organized his "Col-
lege d' Athletes" in Rheims, for the practice of
Lieutenant Hebert's famous "natural method."
France was rapidly working toward a physical
iln the first rank of these organizations comes the
"Federation de 1'Alliance fran?aise aux Etats-Unis et aii
Canada," which is known by all the friends of France. Thanks
to the remarkable activity of some of its members, and first
of all Mr. Delamarre, general secretary of the Federation, it
has, in a few years, more than doubled the number of its
groups in this country.
CONCLUSIONS 149
transformation of the race. All of us had train-
ing in some sport or another. America need not be
told that sport brings a morality of its own, a sense
of honour and of physical and moral cleanness, of
actual and not illusory value in the development of
men. The relations of men with women, and the
education of women have been transformed in
France since what I may call the generalization of
sport. But one has to come in personal touch with
the younger elements of the country to perceive this
change, whose consequences I regard as of first-rate
importance;
More and more we are going to see morals be-
coming "a branch of aesthetics." 1 This formula,
which would have scared the moralists of the Vic-
torian epoch, does not even surprise to-day, and I
know that thousands of young men and women are
applying it, consciously or not. Combined with an
increased consciousness in his destiny, man has de-
veloped a more powerful sense of the part he can
play in it.
We live in a feverish and burning period, when
the world has become a furnace, and all human
values are fused like melting metal. And we feel
i Andr Gide.
150 YOUNG FRANCE AND NEW AMERICA
that now is the right time to forge and to hammer
to forge and to coin here and now the figure and
form of our alliance.
So, when the crisis is past and when the world
grows cold again, we shall find this union of ours
fastened and riveted in such a manner that it may
never be destroyed.
EASTHAMPTON, August 31, 1917.
INDEX
Albert I, 44, 114
Amiel (D.), 6f
Andler, 29
Arcos, 123
Baldwin (J. M.), 2f, 100
Barres, 6, 8, 25
Baudelaire, 93
Bazalgette, 116
Bergson, 18, 100
Berlioz, 139
Bithell, 111
Bonnet, 139
Brooks (Van Wyck), 42
Butler (S.), 93
Bynner (Witter), 18, 40, 124
Caro-DelvaiUe, 140
Casadesus, 139
Cassatt (M.), 140
Cezanne, 140
Chabrier, 13 f
Chausson, 13 f
Cheran, 33
Claudel, 2 f , 105, 130
Cody, 144
Cooper (F.), 93
Copeau (J.), 126
Daudet, 11 f
Debussy, 136, 13 f, 138, 139
Degas, 140
Delamarre, 148
Dickens, 8
Dostoievsky, 8
Ducasse (R.), 136
Duhamel, 123, 12 f
Dukas (P.), 138
Dumas (Gel.), 62
Duncan (I.), 140
Duparc, 13 f
Eliot (Prof.), 9 f
Ellwood (Prof.), 100
Fabulet, 98
Fargue, 106
Farre, 13 f
Flambert, 11 f
France (A.), 6, 8, 123
Franck (C.), 13 f
Franck (H.), 21-26
Franklin, 60
Fort (P.), 106, 126
Gauguin, 140
Gide (A.), 106, 12 f, 13 f, 149
GiRs, 139
Gh<on, 106, 12 f, 131
Gourmont, 12 f
Granados, 13 f
Grandgent (Prof.), 9f
Hale (S.), 6f
Hamp, 66, 73-86
Harte (Bret), 93
Havet (M.), 122
Hawthorne, 93
Hebert, 148
Herve, 56
Herwegh, 92
Humieres (d'), 98
151
152
INDEX
Indy (d'), 136, 13 f
Jammes, 103, 104
Jaques-Dalcroze, 140
Jean-Aubry, 136
Jusserand, 41, 61, 143, 144
Kilmer, 111, 128
Kipling, 8
La Fontaine, 103
Larbaud, 121
Ledoux (L.), 124
Lindsay, 124, 129
Lippmann, 6
Longfellow, 93
Louijs, 13 f
Lowell (A.), 9 f, 104, 124,
Maeterlinck, 13 f
Magnard, 13 f
Mallarme, 93, 102, 13 f
Manet, 140
Masters (E. L.), 124
Monet, 140
Monteux, 139
Morels, 103
Naudin (B.), 32
Noailles (Comtesse M. de),
105
Oppenheim (J.), 124
Peguy, 9, 15-20, 26, 106, 126
Pershing, 62
Poe, 8, 93, 102, 125
Polignac, 148
Porche, 123, 130
Pribitchevitch, 38
Puvis de Chavannes, 140
Ravel, 136, 138
Regnier (H. de), 103, 13 f
Rimbaud, 102
Riviere (J.), 106, 12 f, 136
Robin, 144
Robinson (E. A.), 124
Rolland (R.), 15, 136
Romains, 121
Roussel (A.), 136
Saint-Saens, 13 f
Salzedo, 139
Samain (A.), 103
Sargent, 140
Satie, 139
Schlumberger (J.), 106
Schmitt (F.), 136, 138
Seton-Watson, 8f
SeVerac (D. de), 138
Spire (A.), 106
Steed (H. W.), 8 f
Strettel (A.), Ill
Suares (A.), 106, 12 f, 136
Symons (A.), Ill
Tardien, 53
Taylor (D.), 6f
Thoreau, 93
Tolstoi, 8
Torrence (R.), 124
Turgot, 59
Turgueniev, 11 f
Van Rysselbergh, 10 f
Varese (E.), 139
Verhaeren, 1, 106-116, 128
Viete-Griffin, 103
Vildrac, 113, 118-121, 12 f
Wagner, 13 f
Warren (W.), 140
Wigmore (Prof.), 9f
INDEX 153
Wilson (W.), 3f, 44, 4T, 49, Whitman, I**'' W > 93 '
oO ol *
Whistler, 140 Whittier, 93
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