The New York herald., 1921-12-04
REVIEWS OF NEW FICTION

fight against evil, TO conquer at any
cost, to save her own-France, Chris
tendon, damned by war.
Charles Peguy faces the old dilemma
lis it not pride which under color of
piety spurs us to action? On the other
hand, is it not cowardly to fall back.
is not despair the worst OF sins?
Work! That saves all the
sacred toll under the eyes of God.
1t is all that we can do, all
that we have to do: the rest is Gods;
we are in his hand" Undoubtedly that
expresses the feeling of Peguy, man
of the people and intellectual who did
not have to 'go to the people" for he
remained always one of them. For him
the highest dignity and the supreme
privilege was to do ones task.
Madame Gervaise evokes the life,
suffering and death of Jesus. After
all the centuries, Charles Peguy dares
to retrace the magnificent adven-
ture," to Mount Golgotha even after
the sculptors and image makers of the
thirteenth century, the giants of the
Renaissance the princes of the Church
and the princes of the word. 'The
greatest story of heaven, the greatest
story of earth"-never was ii more
living. miraculous and human, never
more antique and yet of our own day,
than in this poem OF Peguy's.
We walk where the Nazarene
walked, we touch the tools of the Car
penter. In the shop where he grew
Up we see, we feel the rich color,
the good smell of the wood when the
bark is peeled off, The people of the
drama are simple figures of all time.
But the most moving is that of the
Virgin. She asks not remuneration but
only love. She is poor mother, fol-
lowing near or far the funeral train
of her son. The dryest sceptic can
not trace her footsteps unmoved.
Jeanne dare rises above the apostles
who denied or abandoned Christ. If
l had been there" she says, Il would
not have left him." 1t is the obsti
macy of the Lorraine peasant who
knows not how to turn back, who
cannot conceive denial. She says of
the apostles. "They were not French.
they were not knights of the Lorraine
land The men of the crusades would
never have denied him" And she goes
on murmuring "Orleans, in the land
of the Loire"
That is the name of the city which
she delivered first, the name of her
duty and destiny, the name OF the
town where the centuries will see
France in the days of her defeat re-
new herself for another effort. And
there was born Charles Peguy. The
name of Orleans becomes a prayer in
which hope cries it's affirmative above
the conflict in the voice of heroine
and poet.
In his "Porche de la Deuxieme
Vertu" Peguy follows that hope to
heaven. Another poem. "Mystere du
propre de pEsperance." was to kave
completed the work. The ball which
struck Peguy in the first battle of the
| Marine prevented the final achieve.
ment.
Charles Peguy. the man, is an in
comparable figure of nobility and
force. In the void left by the death
of such beings one feels more deeply
the tragic horror of Jeanne dare as
she contemplated war: "It is fright
full that such a thing can exist, bear
! ing upon it the malediction of Jesus
and still walking a conqueror over all
the ways of the world"
over all the ways of the world.
Bearing upon il the malediction of
Jesus and the malediction of mothers
I and of all the noblest who have raised
/ their voices on earth since there were
! men to make war
| pANANfTF