Ten Thoughts from Pacifist Romain Rolland Inspired by the War

Romain Rolland

Romain Rolland (born 29 January 1866, Clamecy, France—died 30 December 1944, Vézelay) was a French novelist, dramatist, and essayist, an idealist who was deeply involved with pacifism, the search for world peace, and the analysis of artistic genius. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.

In 1912, after a brief career in teaching art and musicology, he resigned to devote all his time to writing. He collaborated with Charles Péguy in the journal Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, where he first published his best-known novel, Jean-Christophe, 10 vol. (1904–12). For this and for his pamphlet Au-dessus de la mêlée (1915; Above the Battle), a call for France and Germany to respect truth and humanity throughout their struggle in World War I, he was awarded the Nobel Prize. His thought was the centre of a violent controversy and was not fully understood until 1952 with the posthumous publication of his Journal des années de guerre, 1914–1919 (Journal of the War Years, 1914–1919). In 1914 he moved to Switzerland, where he lived until his return to France in 1937. In the 1930s, Rolland grew closer and closer to the Parti communiste français (PCF), the French Communist Party, and became part of the anti-fascist movement. 

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• I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so.

• Love of my country does not demand that I shall hate and slay those noble and faithful souls who also love theirs. . . What ideal have you held up to the devotion of these youths so eager to sacrifice themselves? Their mutual slaughter! 

• A great nation assailed by war has not only its frontiers to protect: it must also protect its good sense. It must protect itself from the hallucinations, injustices, and follies which the plague lets loose. 

• One day History will pass judgment on each of the nations at war; she will weigh their measure of errors, lies, and heinous follies. Let us try to make ours light before her!

• Europe is like a besieged town. Fever is raging. Whoever will not rave like the rest is suspected. And in these hurried times when justice cannot wait to study evidence, every suspect is a traitor.

• It must be admitted that on neither side have they brought honor to the cause of reason, which they have not been able to protect against the winds of violence and folly.

• We cannot stop the war, but we can make it less bitter. There are medicines for the body. We need medicines for the soul, to dress the wounds of hatred and vengeance by which the world is being poisoned. 

• Of what use are such as cannot serve! Yet these are the most innocent victims of this war. They have not taken part in it, and nothing had prepared them for such calamities. 

• O young men that shed your blood with so generous a joy for the starving earth! O heroism of the world! What a harvest for destruction to reap under this splendid summer sun! Young men of all nations, brought into conflict by a common ideal, making enemies of those who should be brothers; all of you, marching to your death, are dear to me. 

• The newspapers of both countries give publicity only to prejudiced stories unfavorable to the enemy. One would imagine that they devote themselves to collecting only the worst cases, in order to preserve the atmosphere of hatred. . .