Letters and International Politics, 1911–1914: The French Writer in a World Crisis

LEITERS AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, 1911-1914: THE FRENCH WRITER IN A WORLD CRISIS* JOHN C. CAIRNS FEW things change faster and more regularly than fashions in history . Among historians the study of international events leading up to 1914 has long since passed out of vogue. A second war and the shadow of a third have shifted attention to what seem to be the more urgent problems of democracy and dictatorship, capitalism and communism , America and the Soviet Union. The glittering lost world of European emperors, cultivated ambassadors, and diplomatic intrigue has receded almost from memory. The superheated scholarly debates of the twenties and thirties on the never-never issue of war guilt find now only the tiniest echo in the corridors of the great universities and historical association meetings. Of the guilt for the second war discussion may seem unnecessary or superfluous; for the possible third, still somewhat premature; for the first, virtually academically absurd. Yet in the study of the coming of that great and dreadful First World War and of the national societies which brought it about lie interesting and important truths about the nature of Western civilization. And not least of them are those concerning national groups and their relationships to the process of making international policies. This paper attempts to show by reference to a single nation what was the relationship of the man of letters to the overriding issue of war and peace in the years when nineteenth-century Europe approached its end in the beginning of those world-wide struggles which were to mark the terrible course of the twentieth. It is concerned with a small group of significant literary figures on the French scene, such as Romain Rolland, Anatole France, Charles Peguy, and Maurice Barres. The years under discussion, 1911-14, were a last period of hope and crisis before the storm broke. Then republican France, which had ben created out of defeat at the hands of Bismarck's Prussia in 1870-1, aroused herself to the growing threat from Wilhelm II's clanking, expansionist, ill-directed empire, and lesser nations chose sides with the Triple Alliance or the Triple Entente, or looked the other way and held their breath. Amidst the noisy preparations for war in every quarter of the continent, the voices of the intellectuals could be heard. In France their debate was as acute as anywhere else, and if among the literary "mai:trcs de l'heure" only a minority spoke up, what they thought and had to say was neither unrevealing nor *The author is indebted to the Social Science Research Council (Washington, D.C.) for making possible part of the research on which this paper is based. 122 Vol. XXIII, no. 2, Jan., 1954 THE FRENCH WRITER IN A WORLD CRISIS 123 unimportant. "The essential function of the intellectual elite," wrote the French theoretician Paul de Rousiers on the eve of the war, "is to see things as they are.'" How far these great men of letters, as a part of that elite, measured up to the injunction will be seen. I In modem France the paths between journalism and politics have been well travelled and worn. Bureaucracy and literature have many times drawn on the Same sources. More especially is this true of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and literature. This union, however, never meant that questions of external policy found their way easily into poetry, the novel, or the theatre. Naturally the man of letters, even if closely connected with practical affairs and dependent upon them for his livelihood, scarcely made of them the end of his art. He had indeed, as Leon Daudet once remarked, "a much more developed sense of his place in society and of its independence than, for example, the doctor."2 Certainly in the critical years from 1911 to 1914 the literary intellectuals demonstrated this sense of their position and independence . But it was also true that increasingly with the descent to war they demonstrated a real interest in the fateful trend of international politics-however varied and detached this might be. "Leaving aside pure aesthetics," wrote Regis Michaud, "and art for art's sake, French literature in that period [1870...