tion
is hardly to be regretted if the victorious nations prove thus incapable
of guiding their destinies.

It is my hope that, amid the intoxicating but deceptive triumphs of the
present, they may regain the consciousness of their crushing
responsibilities towards the future! It is my hope that they will
remember that every one of their mistakes or their sins of omission
will have to be paid for by their children and their children's
children!

Excuse these lines, scribbled by a convalescent, and believe me, my dear
Longuet,

Yours as always,

ROMAIN ROLLAND.

"Le Populaire," Paris, December 21, 1918.

XXVI

DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE MIND

Brain workers, comrades, scattered throughout the world, kept apart for
five years by the armies, the censorship and the mutual hatred of the
warring nations, now that barriers are falling and frontiers are being
reopened, we issue to you a call to reconstitute our brotherly union,
but to make of it a new union more firmly founded and more strongly
built than that which previously existed.

The war has disordered our ranks. Most of the intellectuals placed their
science, their art, their reason, at the service of the governments. We
do not wish to formulate any accusations, to launch any reproaches. We
know the weakness of the individual mind and the elemental strength of
great collective currents. The latter, in a moment, swept the former
away, for nothing had been prepared to help in the work of resistance.
Let this experience, at least, be a lesson to us for the future!

First of all, let us point out the disasters that have resulted from the
almost complete abdication of intelligence throughout the world, and
from its voluntary enslavement to the unchained forces. Thinkers,
artists, have added an incalculable quantity of envenomed hate to the
plague which devours the flesh and the spirit of Europe. In the arsenal
of their knowledge, their memory, their imagination, they have sought
reasons for hatred, reasons old and new, reasons historical, scientific,
logical, and poetical. They have worked to destroy mutual understanding
and mutual love among men. So doing, they have disfigured, defiled,
debased, degraded Thought, of which they were the representatives. They
have made it an instrument of the passions; and (unwittingly, perchance)
they have made it a tool of the selfish interests of a political or
social clique, of a state, a country, or a clas