er
invited persecution, their activities were confined to words. What
else was there for them to do but talk? They were separated from the
mass of their fellow thinkers, who had been drawn into the army or
the war-machine, which would only give them up when they were past
service. What of the youth of Europe remained behind the lines?
There were the slackers, who often descended to the lowest depths of
meanness to make others fight, so that it should be forgotten
that they did not fight themselves. Setting these aside, the
representatives--_rari nantes_--of the younger generation in civil
life were those discharged from the army for physical incapacity, and
a few broken-down wrecks of the war, like Moreau. In these mutilated
or diseased bodies the spirit was like a candle lighted behind broken
windows. Twisted and smoky, it seemed as if a breath would extinguish
it. But it was all the more ardent for knowing what to expect from
life.

Sudden changes from extreme pessimism to an equally extreme optimism
would occur, and these violent oscillations of the barometer did not
always correspond with the course of events. Pessimism was easily
explained, but its contrary was more remarkable, and it would have
been difficult to account for it. They were just a handful of people
without means of action, and every day seemed to give the lie to their
ideas, but they appeared more contented as things grew worse. Their
hope was in the worst, that mad belief proper to fanatical and
oppressed minorities; Anti-Christ was to bring back Christ; the new
order would rise when the crimes of the old had brought it to ruin;
and it did not disturb them that they and their dreams might be swept
away also. These young irreconcilables wished above all to prevent the
partial realisation of their dreams in the old order of things. All
or nothing! How foolish to try to make the world better; let it be
perfect, or go to pieces. It was a mysticism of the Great Overturning,
of the Revolution, and it affected the minds of those least religious;
they even went farther than the churches. Foolish race of man! Always
this faith in the absolute, which leads ever to the same intoxication,
but the same disasters. Always mad for the war between nations, for
the war of classes, for universal peace. It seems as if when humanity
stuck its nose out of the boiling mud of the Creation, it had a
sun-stroke from which it has never recovered, and which, at intervals,
su