commonplace." To-day, for the moment at any rate, we may have entered into a period, when many of Rolland's utterances are accounted commonplace because, since he wrote, they have become the small change of thousands of other writers. Yet there was a day when each of these words seemed to cut like a whip-lash. The excitement they aroused gives us the historic measure of the need that they should be spoken. The wrath of Rolland's opponents, of which the only remaining record is a pile of pamphlets, bears witness to the heroism of him who was the first to take his stand "above the battle." Let us not forget that it was then the crime of crimes, "de dire ce qui est juste et humain." Men were still so drunken with the fumes of the first bloodshed that they would have been fain, as Rolland himself has phrased it, "to crucify Christ once again should he have risen; to crucify him for saying, Love one another." CHAPTER X ABOVE THE BATTLE On September 22, 1914, the essay _Au-dessus de la mêlée_ was published in "_Le Journal de Genève_." After the preliminary skirmish with Gerhart Hauptmann, came this declaration of war against hatred, this foundation stone of the invisible European church. The title, "Above the Battle," has become at once a watchword and a term of abuse; but amid the discordant quarrels of the factions, the essay was the first utterance to sound a clear note of imperturbable justice, bringing solace to thousands. It is animated by a strange and tragical emotion, resonant of the hour when countless myriads were bleeding and dying, and among them many of Rolland's intimate friends. It is the outpouring of a riven heart, the heart of one who would fain move others, breathing as it does the heroic determination to try conclusions with a world that has fallen a prey to madness. It opens with an ode to the youthful fighters. "O young men that shed your blood for the thirsty earth with so generous a joy! O heroism of the world! What a harvest for destruction to reap under this splendid summer sun! Young men of all nations, brought into conflict by a common ideal, ... all of you, marching to your deaths, are dear to me.... Those years of skepticism and gay frivolity in which we in France grew up are avenged in you.... Conquerors or conquered, quick or dead, rejoice!" But after this ode to the faithful, to those who believe themselves to be discharging their highest duty, Rolland turns to consider the intellectual leaders of the nations, and apostrophises them thus: "For what are you squandering them, these living riches, these treasures of heroism entrusted to your hands? What ideal have you held up to the devotion of these youths so eager to sacrifice themselves? Mutual slaughter! A European war!" He accuses the leaders of taking cowardly refuge behind an idol they term fate. Those who understood their responsibilities so ill that they failed to prevent the war, inflame and poison it now that it has begun. A terrible picture. In all