Page:Rolland - Clerambault, tr. Miller, 1921.djvu/296



"I am going to pretend," said he, "that I am hovering over the town--like the devil on two sticks--the first night after the armistice. I see innumerable sorrowing hearts behind shutters closed against the shouts in the streets. Hearts straining all through these years towards a victory that would lend meaning to their grief; and now they can let go--or break down, sleep, die, perhaps. The politicians will reflect on the quickest and most lucrative way to exploit the success, or turn a somersault if they have guessed wrong. The professional soldiers will keep the war going as long as they can, and when that is stopped, they will plan for another in the shortest possible time. Before-the-war pacifists will all come out of their holes, and be found at their posts, with touching demonstrations of joy, while their old leaders who have been beating the drum in the rear for over five years will reappear with olive branches in their hands, smiling and talking of brotherly love. The men who swore never to forget when they were in the trenches will accept all the explanations and congratulations that are offered them. It is such a bore not to forget! Five years of exhausting fatigue make you accept anything through sheer weariness or boredom, or the wish to finish it all, so the flourishes of triumph will drown the cries of the vanquished. The one thought of most people will be to go back to their sleepy before-the-war habits; first they will dance on the graves, and then lie down and go to sleep on them, till after a while the war will be only something to boast about in the evening. Perhaps they will succeed in forgetting it so entirely, that the Dance of Death can be resumed;--not all at once, of course, but later when we have had a good rest. So there will be peace everywhere, till the time when it will be war everywhere again. In the meaning that is now given to the words, my friends, peace and war are just different labels for the same bottle. It reminds me of what