October 25, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
17 
France, One and Diverse 
By F. T. Eccles 
A 
I.ITTI.E more than two years ago, I recommended 
in these cohunns the first volume of a series in 
which the most accomplished of living French 
authors had undertaken to interpret the spirit of 
his country at this great crisis of its history. It was called 
(after a formula which had all its freshness then) I.Tnion 
Sacret', and consisted of articles contributed at the rate of 
two or tliree a week to a I'aris newspaper. In this long 
interval. Matnice Barres has published six other volumes, of 
which the least that can be said is that, while their permanent 
value is as certain as that of any writings which the war has 
inspired upon our side, they have the immediate virtue of a 
cordial. With an unfailing justness of accent, he h,as 
praised the fraternity of the trenches and the devotion of 
I'rench women, recorded his impressions of the country- 
sides recovered from the grip of tlie invader, and pleaded the 
cause of disabled soldiers. But the latest instalment of ' 
this moral chronicle is concerned with a matter more delicate 
and indeed more vital.* 
Its e.xceptional interest will I think appear from a bare 
statement of its leading thought. In the years of peace, 
opposite ciniceptions of life were the cause or the pretext of 
the most dangerous hostility between French citizens. Far 
from losing their power, they have been fortified by th6 war, 
lor its most obvioius conditions have throw-n back the indrvidual 
I'ombatant upon his moral reserves : but every belief, every 
ideal, that is capable of raising the mind to a height from 
which it contemplates danger, suffering' and-death without dis- 
may, has confirmed or sanctified the same willing sacrifice 
in the .same national cause. The soul of the conflict (thinks 
Barres) is in the letters and diaries of soldiers. Many of 
course are colourless, empty of thought ; but the confidences 
of the finest natures among those who have died for their 
•■ountrv, reveal the various spiritual sources of an equal 
heroism, and anticipate that harmom* of differences which 
is the promise of to-morrow. 
The " Spiritual Families " to which Maurice Barres has 
confined his record are five- — the Catholics, the Huguenots, 
the -Jews, the Socialists, the Traditionalists ; the list is 
evidently incomplete. His very title pledged him not only 
to do equal justice to the large ■ minorities whose existence 
has long since broken the spiritual unity of the older France, 
but almost to forget that they are minorities still. No one 
will grudge the space he has assigned them. The immensely 
j,'reater number of his readers needed no telling how a Catholic 
r-oldier is sustained by his faith. It is mainly of the priests 
in the French army, of their admirable example and incalcu- 
lable influence, that he tells in the chapter devoted to tlie 
Catholics. They number some five and twenty thousand, 
and most of them are in the ranks, l-'ifty-six fell in battle 
during a single month ; twb hundred and six were killed before 
Verdun last year. 
There is abundant testimf)n.y to the devoticm of the Huguenot 
soldiers. The extracts from the letters of Pierre de Maupeou, 
of I"rancis Monod, of Maurice Diaterlin, and especially 
the opening words of a sermon preached at Nimes by an aged 
minister after the death of his son, are very precious docu- 
ments. It would- seem that the l-"rench Protestant is pre- 
occupied, in a peculiar degree, with the justice of the national 
cause. Of the Jewish soldiers of France Barres writes, 
naturally, with some hesitation. The Jew does not always 
belong to the Jewish spiritual family in any sense which would 
imply a definite system of dogmatic belief ; he always 
belongs to a separate race. It is imjiossible to read what 
Karrts tells here of Amedee Rotlistein without sympathy. 
This was a young Zionist of foreign birth, who enlisted en- 
thusiastically in the French army, won a commissiim and was 
killed last year. He was a Jewish patriot above all else, and 
!hs hope was that his service to France might som.ehow help 
the cau.se of Israel. Hardly less touching is the case of 
Kobert Hertz, a Jew of (ierman origin, who wrote to his wife : 
I consider thi.s war as a welroiiic opportunity to " regulari.se 
\_ thi- situatii>n " for us and for our children. Later on, they 
[ may work if ihey like forstiptr-nationalismor internationalism ; 
j but first^ it was essential to show by our acts that we were 
not below the national ideal. 
Barres remarks very justly that for these new-comers, 
" who cannot feel the irrational and almost animal side of 
our love for'our country," patriotism is an act of the will, a 
matter of intelligent choice, of voluntary partnership. But 
there are Jews who descend from generations of French 
citizens. The appendix includes an illuminating letter from 
*(l/.\me fr;incaiB(" et la Cuerre)- vii. Les diverses Families 
SpiriUielU'S de la l-'rance. — Pari-s. Emile-Paul frOres, 1917, 3J 50. 
a Jewish Alsatian. A characteristic (though a rare) figure 
was Roger Cahn, a Normalien and a free-thinker, detached 
froni the religious tradition of his race, whose letters from 
Argonne (where- he was killed) express a curious indifi'erence, 
impossible to a Frenchman of l-'rench stock, to the great 
drama in which he played his modest but entirely honourable 
part. Happy in his insulation, lie was intent only upon 
enriching his consciousness with poetical sensations. " I 
shall bring back." he wrote, " a splendid collection of pictures 
and impressions." 
The chapter on the French Socialists is introduced by a 
short account of the vicissitudes through which the official 
party has passed during the war. But the Socialists at the 
frxint are another affair. As was only to be expected, the 
author of L'Ennemi des Lois can enter into the scruples of 
sintere idealists and that candid faith which identifies the 
victory of this country with the renovation of the world. 
He insists upon the I^'rench artisan's respect for good work 
(which goes far to explain why so many "conscious proletarians" 
make excellent soldiers) and ffjr a freely accepted discipline. 
An officer, himself a Socialist by conviction, who had in per- 
fection " the delicate art of commanding in the French way," 
put the matter veiy clearly when he said : " The Socialist 
in the army does not put his confidence in gold lace. He 
waits to see his superiors show what they are made of." One 
of the most attractive figures in this book is that of a Syndi- 
calist schoolmaster killed in the war. Albert Thierry left 
behind him a kind of testament, which resumes his vision of a 
juster and more united France. He was the son of a Paris 
stonemason, and the strongest of his convictions was an 
abhorrence (his master Proudhon felt it long ago) for that 
want of stability which the worship of success in life encourages. 
The duty of sticking to one's class was one he was never tired 
of impressing upon the children of w^orking-men who were his 
pupils. Here is. a notable passage quoted by Barres : 
The Frenchman, worthy of the name, proud of his historv, 
of his thought, or of his faith, desire.s to be "just or not to 
live. He comes into the world as best he can, born in a 
C()untry not easily defended nor easily pacififd, burdened 
with tlie inequality of mind and body which belongs to nature, 
and the economic and historical inequalities that belong to 
.society. He receives, whatever his birth, an edncation 
grounded aljoce all on labour, science and histon,- ; and 
by it, his mind and heart open to the conceptions of equality, 
justice and truth. .\ moral system clearlv based upon the 
ne,w principle of the " refusal' to rise in the world," makes 
of each of these Frenchmen a citizen who disdains mere 
enjoyment, desires to do .service, is in love with his work, 
free from self-seeking, worthy to be loved. 
Reverence for the past, no less than Utopian dreams, may 
supply an incentive to heroic sacrifice. But do the lYadi- 
tionalists — and under that denomination Barres includes 
Catholics and followers of Comte. Camclots dit Roi along with 
■N'ationalists of his own tj-pe and temper — ^form a true spiritual 
family ? It is, at any rate, certain that among young French 
soldiers of the intellectual classes the emulation of the dead, 
a love of the soil enlarged and purified by the historical 
imagination, a conscious fidelity to the genius of the race 
arc active and vivacious forces distinguishable from the 
positive creeds which they accompany. 
A very beautiful and moving chapter (which must not be 
mutilated by quotation) describes that fair Christmas Eve' 
f)n the French front which has passed already into le.gend — • 
" a night of hope and reccjnciliation, ' wlien all the divergent 
motives for self-sacrifice and endurance took contact and 
" France recognised the unity of her heart." Will the 
promise of that comrades' feast be kept ? " No doubt we 
shall not remain on those heights." But this book ends on a 
note of confidence : 
This time of stress will remain as a kind of ideal for those 
who lived through it in their youth. . . . They will 
always remember what the Hcily Concord really meant 
during the war. ... It did 'not consist in recanting 
our beliefs or hiding them away in a cupboard like something 
u.seless which we could attend to later. It implied no forget- 
fuhiass of that whicli^ vivifies our consciences, but on the 
ccjutrary was born of those beliefs, which meet far below 
the surface in their more excellent parts. Ivach of our 
Spiritual Families has maintained its rights, but in their purest 
form, and has thus found itself nearer to others which it had 
sui)posed more hostile. 
VV'e J''renchnien are united, becau.se from the scholar down 
to the humblest peasant, we have a clear vision of .something 
superior to our little personal concerns and a kind of instinct 
which prompts us to .sacrifice ourseh-es cheerfullv to the 
triumph of that ideal. A Crusader thinks it u(ilhing to 
redeem the Tomb of the Saviour at the price ot his own 
life; old.Corneille enraptures all his public with his declama- 
