Page:Rolland - Clerambault, tr. Miller, 1921.djvu/208

 at have you gained by it? You have discovered the brotherhood of the men who fight and suffer. Is the price too high? No, if you will listen to your heart, if you will dare to open it to the new faith which has come to you when you least expected it.

The thing that disappoints and drives us to despair is that we cling to what we had at the beginning; and when we no longer trust that, we feel that all is lost. A great nation has never reached the object sought; and so much the better, for almost always what is reached is superior to what was sought, though different. It is not wise to start out with our wisdom ready made, but to gather it sincerely as we go along.

You are not the same men that you were in 1914. If you dare admit it, then dare to act it also! That will be the chief gain--perhaps the only one--of the war. But do you really care? So many things conspire to intimidate you; the weariness of these years, old habits, dread of the effort needed to examine yourself, to throw away what is dead, and stand for what is living. We have, we do not know what respect for the old, a lazy preference for what we are accustomed to, even if it is bad, fatal. Then there is the indolent need for what is easy which makes us take a trodden path rather than hew out a new one for ourselves. Is it not the ideal of most Frenchmen to accept their plan of life ready-made in childhood and never change it? If only this war, which has destroyed so many of your hearths, could force you to come out from your ashes, to found other healths, to seek other truths!