wrote: "For fatherland to engage in a bloody struggle with fatherland is the most preposterous, barbarism." Goethe, Byron, Voltaire, and Rousseau, were at one in their contempt for the purposeless butcheries of war. To-day, in Rolland's view, the leading intellectuals, the great scientific investigators whose minds would perforce remain unclouded, the most humane among the imaginative writers, could join in a fellowship whose members would renounce the errors of their respective nations. He did not, indeed, venture to hope that there would be a very large number of persons whose souls would remain free from the passions of the time. But spiritual force is not based upon numbers; its laws are not those of armies. In this field, Goethe's saying is applicable: "Everything great, and everything most worth having comes from a minority. It cannot be supposed that reason will ever become popular. Passion and sentiment may be popularized, the reason will always remain a privilege of the few." This minority, however, may acquire authority through spiritual force. Above all, it may constitute a bulwark against falsehood. If men of light and leading, free men of all nationalities, were to meet somewhere, in Switzerland perhaps, to make common cause against every injustice, by whomever committed, a sanctuary would at length be established, an asylum for truth which was now everywhere bound and gagged. Europe would have a span of soil for home; mankind would have a spark of hope. Holding mutual converse, these best of men could enlighten one another; and the reciprocal illumination on the part of such unprejudiced persons could not fail to diffuse its light over the world. Such was the mood in which Rolland took up his pen for the first time after the outbreak of war. He wrote an open letter to Hauptmann, to the author whom among Germans he chiefly honored for goodness and humaneness. Within the same hour he wrote to Verhaeren, Germany's bitterest foe. Rolland thus stretched forth both his hands, rightward and leftward, in the hope that he could bring his two correspondents together, so that at least within the domain of pure spirit there might be a first essay towards spiritual reconciliation, what time upon the battlefields the machine-guns with their infernal clatter were mowing down the sons of France, Germany, Belgium, Britain, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. CHAPTER VI THE CONTROVERSY WITH GERHART HAUPTMANN Romain Rolland had never been personally acquainted with Gerhart Hauptmann. He was familiar with the German's writings, and admired their passionate participation in all that is human, loved them for the goodness with which the individual figures are intentionally characterized. On a visit to Berlin, he had called at Hauptmann's house, but the playwright was away. The two had never before exchanged letters.