Re: Resistance, Rebellion and Death |
Posted by
Marcello
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georgiomalik@yahoo.com
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(continued) We had much to overcome -- and, first of all, the con- stant temptation to emulate you. For there is always something is us that yields to instinct, to contempt for intelligence, to the cult of efficiency. Our great virtues eventually become tiresome to us. We become ashamed of our intelligence, and sometimes we imagine some barbarous state where truth would be effortless. But the cure for this is easy; you are there to show us what such imagining would lead to, and we mend our ways. If I be- lieved in some fatalism in history, I should suppose that you are placed beside us, helots of the intelligence, as our living reproof. Then we reawaken to the mind and we are more at ease. But we also had to overcome the suspicion we had of heroism. I know, you think that heroism is alien to us. You are wrong. It's just that we profess herosim and we distrust it at the same time. We profess it because ten centuries of history have given us knowledge of all that in noble. We distrust it because tne centuries of intelli- gence have taught us the art and blessings of being natural. In order to face up to you, we had first to be at death's door. And this is why we fell behind all of Europe, which wallowed in falsehood the moment it was necessary, while we were concerned with seeking truth. This is why we were defeated in the begining: because we were concerned, while you were falling upon us, to determine in our hearts whether right was on our side. We had to overcome our weakness for mankind, the image we had formed of a peaceful destiny, that deep- rooted conviction of ours that no victory ever pays, wheras any mutilation of mankind is irrevocable. We had to give up all at once our knowledge and our hope, the reasons we had for loving and the loathing we had for all war. To put it in a word that I suppose you will understand when it comes from me whom you counted as a friend, we had to stifle our passion for friendship. Now we have done that. We had to make a long de- tour, and we are far behind. It is a detour that reagard for truth imposes on intellingence, that regard for friend- ship imposes on the heart. It is a detour that safeguarded justice and put truth on the side of those who ques- tioned themselves. And, without a doubt, we paid very dearly for it. We paid for it with humiliations and silences, with bitter experiences at dawn, with desertions and spara- tions, with daily pangs of hunger, with emaciated chil- dren, and, above all, with humiliation of our human dignity. But that was natural. It took us all that time to find out if we had the right to kill men, if we were al- lowed to add to the frightful misery of this world. And because of that time lost and recaptured, our defeat ac- cepted and surmounted, those scruples paid for with blood, we French have the right to think today that we entered this war with hands clean -- clean as victims and the condemened are -- and that wer are going to come out of it with hands clean -- but clean this time with a great victory won against injustice and against ourselves. (contiued) --------------------- |
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