Light by Henri Barbusse (good novels to read in english txt) 📕

I am a blot, like a bad prophet. I hear this declaration, which bows me like an infernal burden: It is only defeat which can open millions of eyes!

I hear some one say, with detestation, "German militarism----"

That is the final argument, that is the formula. Yes, German militarism is hateful, and must disappear; all the world is agreed about that--the jack-boots of the Junkers, of the Crown Princes, of the Kaiser, and their courts of intellectuals and business men, and the pan-Germanism which would dye Europe black and red, and the half-bestial servility of the German people. Germany is the fiercest fortress of militarism. Yes, everybody is agreed about that.

But they who govern Thought take unfair advantage of that agreement, for they know well that when the simple folk have said, "German militarism," they have said all. They stop there. They amalgamate the two words and confuse militarism with Germany--once Germany is thrown down there's no more to say. In that way, they attach lies to truth, and prevent us from seeing that militarism is in reality everywhere, more or less hypocritical and unconscious, but ready to seize everything if it can. They force opinion to add, "It is a crime to think of anything but beating the German enemy." But the right-minded man must answer that it is a crime to think only of that, for the enemy is militarism, and not Germany. I know; I will no longer let myself be caught by words which they hide one behind another.

The Liberal Member of the Upper House says, loud enough to be heard, that the people have behaved very well, for, after all, they have found the cost, and they must be given credit for their good conduct.

Another personage in the same group, an Army contractor, spoke of "the good chaps in the trenches," and he added, in a lower voice, "As long as they're protecting us, we're all right."

"We shall reward them when they come back," replied an old lady. "We shall give them glory, we shall make their leaders into Marshals, and they'll have celebrations, and Kings will be there."

"And there are some who won't come back."

We see several new recruits of the 1916 class who will soon be sent to the front.

"They're pretty boys," says the Member of the Upper House, good-naturedly; "but they're still a bit pale-faced. We must fatten 'em up, we must fatten 'em up!"

An official of the Ministry of War goes up to the Member of the Upper House, and says:

"The science of military preparedness is still in its beginnings. We're getting clear for it hastily, but it is an organization which requires a long time and which can only have full effect in time of peace. Later, we shall take them from childhood; we shall make good sound soldiers of them, and of good health, morally as well as physically."

Then the band plays; it is closing time, and there is the passion of a military march. A woman cries that it is like drinking champagne to hear it.

The visitors have gone away. I linger to look at the beflagged front of the War Museum, while night is falling. It is the Temple. It is joined to the Church, and resembles it. My thoughts go to those crosses which weigh down, from the pinnacles of churches, the heads of the living, join their two hands together, and close their eyes; those crosses which squat upon the graves in the cemeteries at the front. It is because of all these temples that in the future the sleep-walking nations will begin again to go through the immense and mournful tragedy of obedience. It is because of these temples that financial and industrial tyranny, Imperial and Royal tyranny--of which all they whom I meet on my way are the accomplices or the puppets--will to-morrow begin again to wax fat on the fanaticism of the civilian, on the weariness of those who have come back, on the silence of the dead. (When the armies file through the Arc de Triomphe, who is there will see--and yet they will be plainly visible--that six thousand miles of French coffins are also passing through!) And the flag will continue to float over its prey, that flag stuck into the shadowy front of the War Museum, that flag so twisted by the wind's breath that sometimes it takes the shape of a cross, and sometimes of a scythe!

Judgment is passed in that case. But the vision of the future agitates me with a sort of despair and with a holy thrill of anger.

Ah, there are cloudy moments when one asks himself if men do not deserve all the disasters into which they rush! No--I recover myself--they do not deserve them. But _we_, instead of saying "I wish" must say "I will." And what we will, we must will to build it, with order, with method, beginning at the beginning, when once we have been as far as that beginning. We must not only open our eyes, but our arms, our wings.

This isolated wooden building, with its back against a wood-pile, and nobody in it----

Burn it? Destroy it? I thought of doing it.

To cast that light in the face of that moving night, which was crawling and trampling there in the torchlight, which had gone to plunge into the town and grow darker among the dungeon-cells of the bedchambers, there to hatch more forgetfulness in the gloom, more evil and misery, or to breed unavailing generations who will be abortive at the age of twenty!

The desire to do it gripped my body for a moment. I fell back, and I went away, like the others.

It seems to me that, in not doing it, I did an evil deed.

For if the men who are to come free themselves instead of sinking in the quicksands, if they consider, with lucidity and with the epic pity it deserves, this age through which I go drowning, they would perhaps have thanked me, even me! From those who will not see or know me, but in whom for this sudden moment I want to hope, I beg pardon for not doing it.

* * * * * *


In a corner where the neglected land is turning into a desert, and which lies across my way home, some children are throwing stones at a mirror which they have placed a few steps away as a target. They jostle each other, shouting noisily; each of them wants the glory of being the first to break it. I see the mirror again that I broke with a brick at Buzancy, because it seemed to stand upright like a living being! Next, when the fragment of solid light is shattered into crumbs, they pursue with stones an old dog, whose wounded foot trails like his tail. No one wants it any more; it is ready to be finished off, and the urchins are improving the occasion. Limping, his pot-hanger spine all arched, the animal hurries slowly, and tries vainly to go faster than the pebbles.

The child is only a confused handful of confused and superficial propensities. _Our_ deep instincts--there they are.

I scatter the children, and they withdraw into the shadows unwillingly, and look at me with malice. I am distressed by this maliciousness, which is born full-grown. I am distressed also by this old dog's lot. They would not understand me if I acknowledged that distress; they would say, "And you who've seen so many wounded and dead!" All the same, there is a supreme respect for life. I am not slighting intellect; but life is common to us along with poorer living things than ourselves. He who kills an animal, however lowly it may be, unless there is necessity, is an assassin.

At the crossing I meet Louise Verte, wandering about. She has gone crazy. She continues to accost men, but they do not even know what she begs for. She rambles, in the streets, and in her hovel, and on the pallet where she is crucified by drunkards. She is surrounded by general loathing. "That a woman?" says a virtuous man who is going by, "that dirty old strumpet? A woman? A sewer, yes." She is harmless. In a feeble, peaceful voice, which seems to live in some supernatural region, very far from us, she says to me:

"I am the queen."

Immediately and strangely she adds, as though troubled by some foreboding:

"Don't take my illusion away from me."

I was on the point of answering her, but I check myself, and just say, "Yes," as one throws a copper, and she goes away happy.

* * * * * *


My respect for life is so strong that I feel pity for a fly which I have killed. Observing the tiny corpse at the gigantic height of my eyes, I cannot help thinking how well made that organized speck of dust is, whose wings are little more than two drops of space, whose eye has four thousand facets; and that fly occupies my thought for a moment, which is a long time for it.

* * * * * *


CHAPTER XXII


LIGHT

I am leaning this evening out of the open window. As in bygone nights, I am watching the dark pictures, invisible at first, taking shape--the steeple towering out of the hollow, and broadly lighted against the hill; the castle, that rich crown of masonry; and then the massive sloping black of the chimney-peopled roofs, which are sharply outlined against the paler black of space, and some milky, watching windows. The eye is lost in all directions among the desolation where the multitude of men and women are hiding, as always and as everywhere.

That is what is. Who will say, "That is what must be!"

I have searched, I have indistinctly seen, I have doubted. Now, I hope.

I do not regret my youth and its beliefs. Up to now, I have wasted my time to live. Youth is the true force, but it is too rarely lucid. Sometimes it has a triumphant liking for what is now, and the pugnacious broadside of paradox may please it. But there is a degree in innovation which they who have not lived very much cannot attain. And yet who knows if the stern greatness of present events will not have educated and aged the generation which to-day forms humanity's effective frontier? Whatever our hope may be, if we did not place it in youth, where should we place it?

Who will speak--see, and then speak? To speak is the same thing