Page:Poet Lore, volume 27, 1916.djvu/387

Jean Christophe^[1] and the poet of the Sunken Bell, Haeckel, the noblest exponent of Darwinism, the great philosopher of Chantecler all join in the general chorus of hatred, curses and justification of the present war.

A fair illustration may be gathered from the introduction to a work of science published in America;

“At the present time it would be asking too much of my audience to accept as a scientific truth doctrines which have had their birth in Austria and Germany, where truth appears to be monopolized by professors and divines for academic purposes only of outrage and destruction of civilization and all that civilization means, were it not that I can give assurance that those doctrines have been tested and accepted, by earnest workers and profound thinkers in Switzerland, America and Great Britain. As a matter of fact Freud has no German blood in him, but is a pure Jew, and, after all Science knows no nationality, and the account I present to you is a compromise between and combination of the opinions of many great men.” W. H. B. Stoddart, The New Psychiatry.

But even the religious popular sentiment has undergone such total demoralization that to minds who still cling to vestiges of old morale, the startling phenomena of today offer but a little hope for a better tomorrow. The Jack Cade code of Rev. Billy Sunday the “Gott mit uns” motto of the German army, are ample proofs of it. A shell crashes into a church, tears up and demolishes the handiwork of ages, swerves from its course and falls into a group of soldiers. Twenty innocent men fall dead but a miracle is declared because it swerved from the stone image of a saint. Man who is Nature’s noblest and greatest creation is valued less than the clumsy handiwork of a crude village craftsman. The foundations on which rested the superstructures of our moral institutions have been rudely shaken. Were it not improvident to use the German word, the “Lebenslust” has gone out of the world, and the reminiscent mind finds no consolation anywhere. Reminiscent? Yes; of Robert Burns’ fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. The equality of Karl Marx and the

 

1. Not until May 1916 and long after this manuscript went to press, did we learn that the early reports of the war about M. Romaine Rolland were false. Not only did he not participate in the general chorus of songs of hate, on the contrary because of his clear vision and deep sympathy with all humanity, he found his stay in France impossible. He is now engaged in the International Bureau for the Assistance of War Prisoners of all Nations iu Switzerland.