die at least for a just cause,
and who, full of sap and loaded with faith, fall like ripe fruit, how
sweet is your lot beside this torture! But we shall so act that these
sufferings shall not be vain.

Let the conscience of humanity hear and accept their complaint! It will
resound in the future above the glory of battles; and whether she wills
or no, History will place it on her register. History will do justice
between the hangmen and their peoples. And the peoples will learn how to
deliver themselves from their hangmen.

_Journal de Geneve_, June 14, 1915.

XVI. JAURES

Battles are being fought under our eyes in which thousands of men are
dying, yet the sacrifice of their lives does not always influence the
issue of the combat. In other cases the death of a single man may be a
great battle lost for the whole of humanity. The murder of Jaures was
such a disaster.

Whole centuries were needed to produce such a life; rich civilizations
of North and South, of past and present, spread out on the good soil of
France, matured beneath our Western skies. The mysterious chance which
combines elements and forces will not easily produce a noble spirit like
his a second time.

Jaures is a type, almost unique in modern times, of the great political
orator who is also a great thinker, and who combines vast culture with
penetrating observation, and moral grandeur with energetic activity. We
must go back to antiquity to find one who, like him, could stir the
crowd and give pleasure to the few; pour out his overflowing genius not
only in his speeches and social treatises, but also in his philosophical
and historical works;[40] and leave on all things the impress of his
personality, the furrow of his robust labor, the seeds of his
progressive mind. I have listened to him often in the Chamber, at
socialist congresses, at meetings held on behalf of oppressed nations;
he even did me the honor of presenting my _Danton_ to the people of
Paris. Again I see his full face, calm and happy like that of a kindly,
bearded ogre; his small eyes, bright and smiling; eyes as quick to
follow the flight of ideas as to observe human nature. I see him pacing
up and down the platform, walking with heavy steps like a bear, his arms
crossed behind his back, and turning sharply to hurl at the crowd, in
his monotonous, metallic voice, words like the call of a trumpet, which
reached the farthest seats in the vast amphitheatre, and went straight