e are many hidden tragedies, still
unrevealed. When they are made known, humanity will tremble in
contemplating its handiwork.

I reflected, as doubtless many of my French readers have also done, in
reading through these German writings inspired by the war--writings
through which from time to time there passes a mighty breath of revolt
and sorrow--that our young writers are not writing "literature." Instead
of books they give us deeds, and their letters. And in re-reading some
of their letters I thought that ours had chosen the better part. It is
not for me now to point out the position that this heroic correspondence
will occupy, not only in our history but also in our literature. Into it
the flower of our youth has put all its life, its faith and its genius:
and for some of those letters I would give many of the finest lines of
the noblest poems. Whatever be the result of this war, and the opinion
as to its value later, it will be recognized that France has written on
paper, mud-stained and often blotted with blood, some of its sublimest
pages. Assuredly this war touches us more nearly than it does our
adversaries, for who of us would have the heart to write a play or a
novel whilst his country is in danger and his brothers dying?

But I will make no comparisons between the two nations. For the present
the essential thing is to show that even in Germany there are certain
finer minds who are fighting against the spirit which we hate--the
spirit of grasping imperialism and inhuman pride, of military caste and
the megalomania of pedants. They are but a minority--we have no
illusions about that--and we ought to redouble our efforts on that
account to vanquish the common enemy. Why then should we trouble to make
these generous but feeble voices heard? Because their merit is the
greater for being so little heeded; because it is the duty of those who
are fighting for justice to render justice in their turn to all those
men, even when they dwell in a country in which the state represents the
violation of right by _Faustrecht_, who are defending with us the spirit
of liberty.

_Journal de Geneve_, April 19, 1915.

XV. THE MURDER OF THE ELITE

The phrase is not new-coined today;[37] but the fact is. Never in any
period, have we seen humanity throwing into the bloody arena all its
intellectual and moral reserves, its priests, its thinkers, its
scholars, its artists, the whole future of the spirit--wasting its
geniu