It had not the strength to make
a choice between widely differing courses of action. One might be a
patriot as well as an internationalist or build in imagination peace
palaces or super-dreadnoughts, for one longed to know, to embrace, and
to love everything. This languid Whitmanism might have its aesthetic
value, but its practical incoherence offered no guide to young people
when they found themselves at the parting of the ways. They pawed
the ground trembling with impatience at all this uncertainty and the
uselessness of their time as it went by.
They welcomed the war, for it put an end to all this indecision,
it chose for them, and they made haste to follow it. "We go to our
death,--so be it; but to go is life." The battalions went off singing,
thrilling with impatience, dahlias in their hats, the muskets adorned
with flowers. Discharged soldiers re-enlisted; boys put their names
down, their mothers urging them to it; you would have thought they
were setting out for the Olympian games.
It was the same with the young men on the other side of the Rhine, and
there as here, they were escorted by their gods: Country, Justice,
Right, Liberty, Progress of the World, Eden-like dreams of re-born
humanity, a whole phantasmagoria of mystic ideas in which young men
shrouded their passions.
Pages:
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41