After the wounded man had gone away, somewhat comforted, Clerambault felt slightly dazed, and sat drinking in the strange happiness that the heart feels when, however unfortunate itself, it has been able to help another now or in the future. How profound is the instinct for happiness, the plenitude of being! All aspire to it, but it is not the same for all. There are some that wish only to possess; to others, sight is possession, and to others yet, faith is sight. We are links of a chain and this instinct unites us; from those who only seek their own good, or that of their family, or their country, up to the being which embraces millions of beings and desires the good of all. There are those who, having no joy of their own, can almost unconsciously bestow it on others, as Clerambault had done; for they can see the light on his face while his own eyes are in shadow.
The look of his young friend had revealed an unknown treasure to poor Clerambault, and the knowledge of the divine message with which he was entrusted reestablished his lost union with other men. He had only contended with them because he was their hardy pioneer, their Christopher Columbus forcing his way across the desert ocean, that he might open the road to the New World. They deride, but follow him; for every true idea, whether understood or not, is a ship underway, and the souls of the past are drawn after in its wake.
From this day onward he averted his eyes from the irreparable present of the war and its dead, and looked towards the living, and the future which is in our hands. We are hypnotised, obsessed by the thought of those that we have lost, and the morbid temptation to bury our hearts in their graves, but we must tear ourselves away from the baleful vapours that rise, as in Rome, from The Way of the Tombs. March on! This is no time to halt. We have not yet earned the right to rest with them, for there are others who need us. There, like the wrecks of the Grand Army, you can see in the distance those who drag themselves along, searching on the dreary plain for the half-effaced path.
The thought of the sombre pessimism which threatened to overwhelm these young men after the war was a grave anxiety to Clerambault. The moral danger was a serious one, of which the Governments took no notice at all. They were like bad coachmen who flog their horses up a steep hill at a gallop; it is true that the horse reaches the top, but as the road goes on he stumbles and falls, foundered for life. With what a gallant spirit our young men rushed to the assault in the beginning of the war! And then their ardour gradually diminished. But the horse was still in harness, and the shafts held him up. A factitious excitement was kept up all around him, his daily ration was seasoned with glittering hopes; and though the strength went out of it little by little, the poor creature could not fall down, could not even complain, he had not the strength to think. The countersign all about these victims was to hear nothing, to stop the ears and to lie.
Day after day the battle-tide ebbed, and left wrecks on the sand, men wounded and maimed; and through them the depths of this human ocean were brought to the light. These poor wretches, ruthlessly torn from life, moved helplessly in the void, too feeble to cling to the passions of yesterday or dreams of tomorrow. Some asked themselves blindly, and others with a cruelly clear insight, why they had been born, what life meant. …
“Since he who is destroyed, suffers, and he who destroys has no pleasure, and is shortly destroyed himself, tell me what no philosopher can explain; whom does it please, and to whose profit is this unfortunate life of the universe, which is only preserved by the injury or death of all the creatures which compose it?” …
It is necessary to answer these men, to give them a reason for living, but there is no such need for a man of Clerambault’s age; his life is over, and all he requires is to free his conscience as a sort of public bequest.
To young people who have all their life before them, it is not enough to contemplate truth across a heap of corpses; whatever the past may have been, the future alone counts for them. Let us clear away the ruins!
What causes them the most pain? Their own suffering?
No, it is their lack of faith in the altar on which this suffering was laid—(does a man regret if he sacrifices himself for the woman he loves, or for his child?)—This doubt poisons them, takes away the courage to pursue their way, because they fear to find only despair at the end. This is why people say to you: “Never shake the ideal of Country, it ought rather to be built up.” What a derision! As if it were possible to restore a lost faith by force of will! We deceive ourselves; we know it in the bottom of our hearts, and this consciousness kills courage and joy.
Let us be brave enough to reject that in which we no longer believe. The trees drop their leaves in the autumn in order that they may put forth new leaves in the spring. Out of your past illusions, make fires as the peasants do with the fallen leaves; the fresh grass, the new faith, will grow all the more thickly, for it is there waiting. Nature does not die, it changes shape continually; like her, let us cast off the garment of the past.
Look carefully, and reckon up these hard years. You have fought and suffered for your country, and what have you gained by it? You have discovered the brotherhood of the men who fight and suffer. Is the price too high? No, if you will listen to your heart, if you will dare to open it to the new faith which has come to you when you least expected it.
The thing that disappoints and drives us to despair is that we cling to what we had at the beginning; and when we no longer trust that, we feel that all is lost. A great nation has never reached the object sought; and so much the better, for almost always what is reached is superior to what was sought, though different. It is not wise to start out with our wisdom ready made, but to gather it sincerely as we go along.
You are not the same men that you were in 1914. If you dare admit it, then dare to act it also! That will be the chief gain—perhaps the only one—of the war. But do you really care? So many things conspire to intimidate you; the weariness of these years, old habits, dread of the effort needed to examine yourself, to throw away what is dead, and stand for what is living. We have, we do not know what respect for the old, a lazy preference for what we are accustomed to, even if it is bad, fatal. Then there is the indolent need for what is easy which makes us take a trodden path rather than hew out a new one for ourselves. Is it not the ideal of most Frenchmen to accept their plan of life ready-made in childhood and never change it? If only this war, which has destroyed so many of your hearths, could force you to come out from your ashes, to found other healths, to seek other truths!