New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-11-10
"Above the Battle"

That is the title Of NJ. Roman
Rolland's apologize, his collected ar
ticles on the war which have set all
France against him and driven him
TO Geneva, a self-constituted exile.
From our detached viewpoint his
utterances seem moderate enough.
He pleaded with his countrymen TO
retain some feeling of charity tow
ard their enemies; and TO remember
at all times to distinguish between
the rulers of Germany and the mass
of her people. He was as bitter as
any one in his condemnation of Ger
man crimes and cruelties. He ex-
pressly repudiated any pacifst the
DRY which would countenance non
resistance toward an invader. A
vague, intellectual internationalism,
aiming to minimize the scars which
war must necessarily infict upon
Western civilization, constituted his
creed.
There is an admirable spirit in NJ.
ROLAND. He shows no trace of Bit
terness toward his countrymen who
have given his pleadings such
harsh reception. His greatest dis
appointment flows from the failure
of the intellectuals of Germany 10
respond to his advances-Haupt-
mann, for example, to whom he ad-
dressed his first appeal, on August
20, 1914, when news Of the burn
ing of Louvain first reached Paris.
Yet there is no mistaking the fact
that he has failed utterly TO affect
the mind of his country-that, from
being the leader of thought which
his rich and vivid mind had justly
made him, he has become an outcast
and alien. He will doubtless return
TO France with the end of the war
and witness the gradual restoration
of normal mental processes which
will then take place. That he will
count greatly in that restoration
seems most unlikely. The point, and
the important point, is the conclusion
that with the noblest will and cour-
age to help his nation NJ. ROLAND
has pursued the one course which
has made help impossible.
No one will wish TO criticise the
motives which sent M. ROLAND upon
the path he has followed. Moral
courage could not be greater. The
interesting lesson lies in the prac-
teal failure Of so much moral force.
AS it happens. NJ. ROLAND himself
unconsciously Eliminates the subject
in this very book. He is discussing
Idols" especially the idolatry of
the worshippers of Kultur. His at
titude toward the intellectuals Of
Paris whom he held up to such vivid
scorn in "Jean-Christophe" has been
questioned, and he seeks TO explain
just what abuses of intellectualism
he meant TO attack. He writes:
II is true that intellectualism has
too often seemed 10 me q earicature
Of thought, mutilsted, deformed, pet
rifed thought, impotent not only to
master the spectacle of life, but even
TO understand it. The events OF to-
day give me more support in this
view than wish. The intellectual
lives too much In the realm Of
shadows, in the realm of ideas. Ideas
have no existence In themselves. They
live only when experience or hope
can I'LL them. They are only sum-
msries or hypothesis, outlines Of
what has been or Of what will be; con.
venient formulas, necessary formulas;
70 live or act we can forget them.
But the danger 10 that we may make
Of them expressing realities; and no
one contributes as much TO this dan
ger as the intellectual, for whom
thinking is trade and who, through
oecupational detormity, is always
tempted to subordinate realities TO
ideas.
What Roman ROLAND here wrote
in criticism Of the German intellect
usls who rushed to the support OF
Ksiserism seems oddly applicable