Poems | Page 9

of his heart, which he himself explained in a letter written from the Aisne trenches to `The New Republic' (New York, May 22, 1915):
== I have talked with so many of the young volunteers here. Their case is little known, even by the French, yet altogether interesting and appealing. They are foreigners on whom the outbreak of war laid no formal compulsion. But they had stood on the butte in springtime perhaps, as Julian and Louise stood, and looked out over the myriad twinkling lights of the beautiful city. Paris -- mystic, maternal, personified, to whom they owed the happiest moments of their lives -- Paris was in peril. Were they not under a moral obligation, no less binding than [that by which] their comrades were bound legally, to put their breasts between her and destruction? Without renouncing their nationality, they had yet chosen to make their homes here beyond any other city in the world. Did not the benefits and blessings they had received point them a duty that heart and conscience could not deny?
"Why did you enlist?" In every case the answer was the same. That memorable day in August came. Suddenly the old haunts were desolate, the boon companions had gone. It was unthinkable to leave the danger to them and accept only the pleasures oneself, to go on enjoying the sweet things of life in defence of which they were perhaps even then shedding their blood in the north. Some day they would return, and with honor -- not all, but some. The old order of things would have irrevocably vanished. There would be a new companionship whose bond would be the common danger run, the common sufferings borne, the common glory shared. "And where have you been all the time, and what have you been doing?" The very question would be a reproach, though none were intended. How could they endure it?
Face to face with a situation like that, a man becomes reconciled, justifies easily the part he is playing, and comes to understand, in a universe where logic counts for so little and sentiment and the impulse of the heart for so much, the inevitableness and naturalness of war. Suddenly the world is up in arms. All mankind takes sides. The same faith that made him surrender himself to the impulses of normal living and of love, forces him now to make himself the instrument through which a greater force works out its inscrutable ends through the impulses of terror and repulsion. And with no less a sense of moving in harmony with a universe where masses are in continual conflict and new combinations are engendered out of eternal collisions, he shoulders arms and marches forth with haste. ==
Already in this passage we can discern the fatalistic acceptance of war which runs through many of his utterances on the subject, and may be read especially in the noble conclusion of his poem, "The Hosts": There was a stately drama writ By the hand that peopled the earth & air And set the stars in the infinite And made night gorgeous & morning fair; And all that had sense to reason knew That bloody drama must be gone through. Some sat & watched how the action veered -- Waited, profited, trembled, cheered -- We saw not clearly nor understood, But, yielding ourselves to the master hand, Each in his part, as best he could, We played it through as the author planned.
It was not, in his own conception, a "war against war" that he was waging; it was simply a fight for freedom and for France. Some of us may hope and believe that, in after years, when he was at leisure to view history in perspective and carry his psychology a little deeper, he would have allowed, if not more potency, at any rate more adaptability, to the human will. In order to do so, it would not have been necessary to abandon his fatalistic creed. He would have seen, perhaps, that even if we only will what we have to will, the factors which shape the will -- of the individual, the nation, or the race -- are always changing, and that it is not only possible but probable that the factors which make for peace may one day gain the upper hand of those which (for perfectly definite and tangible reasons) have hitherto made for war. The fact remains, however, that he shouldered his knapsack without any theoretic distaste for the soldier's calling. In so far he was more happily situated than thousands who have made all the better soldiers for their intense detestation of the stupidity of war. But this in no way detracts from his loyalty to his personal ideal, or from the high chivalry of his devotion to France.
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