Page:Rolland - Clerambault, tr. Miller, 1921.djvu/40

 son.

With an unconscious and feverish bad faith kept up by his affection, he sought in everything that he saw, heard, or read, for arguments to prop up his will to believe in the holiness of the cause, for everything which went to prove that the enemy alone had wanted war, was the sole enemy of peace, and that to make war on the enemy was really to wish for peace.

There was proof enough and to spare; there always is; all that is needed is to know when to open and shut your eyes ...But nevertheless Clerambault was not entirely satisfied. These half-truths, or truths with false tails to them, produced a secret uneasiness in the conscience of this honest man, showing itself in a passionate irritation against the enemy, which grew more and more. On the same lines--like two buckets in a well, one going up as the other goes down--his patriotic enthusiasm grew and drowned the last torments of his mind in a salutary intoxication.

From now on he was on the watch for the smallest newspaper items in support of his theory; and though he knew what to think of the veracity of these sheets, he did not doubt them for an instant when their assertions fed his eager restless passion. Where the enemy was concerned he adopted the principle, that the worst is sure to be true--and he was almost grateful to Germany when, by acts of cruelty and repeated violations of justice, she furnished him the solid confirmation of the sentence which, for greater security, he had pronounced in advance.

Germany gave him full measure. Never did a country at war seem more anxious to raise the universal conscience against her. This apoplectic nation bursting with strength, threw itself upon its adversary in a delirium of pride, anger and fear. The human beast let loose, traced a ring of systematic horror around him from the first. All his instinctive and acquired brutalities were cleverly excited by those who held him in leash, by his official chiefs, his great