Page:René Marchand - Why I Side with the Social Revolution (1920).pdf/86

 suspended over an abyss by a force superior to our own will, which still emanates from the Old World.

No doubt Time calls us to a combat not less impacable,implacable, [sic] not less cruel, to sufferings and privations perhaps, still heavier than the former, but we are also called to a Future. We are given tho possibility, through pain and tears, no doubt, to destroy for ever what still remains of the odious past, which still tries to break in upon us and bury us alive amidst the mountains of corpses accumulated during these years of nightmare,—and, afterwards, giving free course to all our energies, to all our creative forces and ideal aspirations,—to set to work ourselves upon the construction of a new world, a new world which we shall have the force, courage and will to mould to our idea by our own hand.

There is no mean between the two dictatorships. It is necessary to chose between them. To refrain from doing so is to give the cooperation of one's neutrality towards the restoration of the ruins of the old world, that is to say to resign oneself to continue to live, without hope of ever issuing enlightened from the black night in which we are plunged.

Whatever may happen, whatever we may have still to suffer before our new life constructs itself, it is faith in her which, alone, can and must support us from now onwards, for behind us and around us there is nothing but ruins, death, and mourning. We are suffering, we shall suffer perhaps still more, but we shall get out of the vicious circle of the old world which is crumbling amidst the noise of fire and blood. To all those who have really a need for an ideal,