The Project Gutenberg EBook of Above the Battle, by Romain Rolland

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Title: Above the Battle

Author: Romain Rolland

Release Date: June 12, 2010 [EBook #32779]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ABOVE THE BATTLE ***

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ABOVE THE BATTLE

"The fire smouldering in the forest of Europe was beginning to burst
into flames. In vain did they try to put it out in one place; it only
broke out in another. With gusts of smoke and a shower of sparks it
swept from one point to another, burning the dry brushwood. Already in
the East there were skirmishes as the prelude to the great war of the
nations. All Europe, Europe that only yesterday was sceptical and
apathetic, like a dead wood, was swept by the flames. All men were
possessed by the desire for battle. War was ever on the point of
breaking out. It was stamped out, but it sprang to life again. The world
felt that it was at the mercy of an accident that might let loose the
dogs of war. The world lay in wait. The feeling of inevitability weighed
heavily even upon the most pacifically minded. And ideologues, sheltered
beneath the massive shadows of the cyclops, Proudhon, hymned in war
man's fairest title of nobility...."

_"This, then, was to be the end of the physical and moral resurrection
of the races of the West! To such butchery they were to be borne along
by the currents of action and passionate faith! Only a Napoleonic genius
could have marked out a chosen, deliberate aim for this blind, onward
rush. But nowhere in Europe was there any genius for action. It was as
though the world had chosen the most mediocre to be its governors. The
force of the human mind was in other things--so there was nothing to be
done but to trust to the declivity down which they were moving. This
both the governing and the governed classes were doing. Europe looked
like a vast armed camp."_

_Jean-Christophe_, vol. x (1912).

[English translation by Gilbert Cannan, vol. iv, p. 5