Page:Above the battle.djvu/15

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he appeals not only in the name of humanity but in the name of that France which he loves so dearly—"la vraie France" of which Jaurès wrote (in the untranslatable words which Rolland has quoted), "qui n’est pas résumée dans une époque et dans un jour, ni dans le jour d’il y a des siècles, ni dans le jour d’hier, mais la France tout entière, dans la succession de ses jours, de ses nuits, de ses aurores, de ses crépuscules, de ses montées, de ses chutes, et qui, à travers toutes ces ombres mêlées, toutes ces lumières incomplètes et toutes ces vicissitudes, s’en va vers une pleine clarté qu'elle n'a pas encore atteinte, mais dont le pressentiment est dans sa pensée!"

But though his love of France inspires every word that Rolland has written, the significance of the present volume is not less apparent to English readers. Some of the articles and letters now collected have already appeared in English, for the most part in the pages of The Cambridge Magazine, from which they have been widely quoted in the press. For help in rendering the translations as adequate as possible I may also take this opportunity of acknowledging my special indebtedness to Mr. Roger Fry,[1] who

  1. For translating "The Murder of the Élite."