The most recent issue of "Les Humbles" contains excellent work. Wullens
begins with a tribute to the rare French writers who have shown
themselves during the last three years to be free-spirited humanists: to
Henri Guilbeaux and his periodical "demain";[39] to P. J. Jouve, author
of _Vous êtes des hommes_ and of _Poème contre le grand crime_, whose
sympathetic spirit vibrates and trembles like a tree to the wind of all
the pains and all the angers of mankind; to Marcel Martinet, one of the
greatest lyricists whom the war (the horror of the war) has brought
forth, the writer of _Temps maudits_, a poem which will for ever bear
witness to the suffering and the revolt of a free spirit; to Delemer,
that moving writer; and to a few recently founded magazines. The editor
of "Les Humbles" goes on to clear the ground of what he terms "the false
literary vanguard," telling the chauvinist writers what he thinks of
them. This lettered poilu, a blunt fellow, does not mince matters:
"I have come from this war whose praises you are singing--I who
write.... I have my honourable mention, my war cross: I never wear it. I
spent seven months as a war prisoner, before being sent home
incapacitated by my wound. I could flood you with war anecdotes. I have
no desire to do anything of the kind. Nevertheless I am writing a book
on the war. I compress into it all that my heart has felt, all that one
man has suffered during these months of unspeakable horror, and likewise
all the joy he experienced when he came to perceive, by rare flashes of
light, that humanity still lives, that kindliness still exists, on both
sides of the Rhine, the world over. You, M. B., sing 'The war in which
it is beautiful and sweet to die for our country!' All those who have
faced this death will tell you that while it may have been necessary, it
was neither beautiful nor sweet.--You glorify the sublime and tattered
tricolour: blue is the blouse of our workmen; white is the cornette of
our splendid sisters of charity.... You will excuse me for cutting you
short before coming to the red, for my unaided memory here suffices me:
the red blood of my wounds flowing and clotting on the frozen mud of
Argonne that terrible morning in December, 1914; the red mud of
pestilential slaughter-houses; the shattered heads of dead comrades;
mangled stumps irrigated with peroxide solution so that the living
corruption was half hidden by bloodstained foam; red visions glimpsed
everywhere in these ghastly and tragical days, you chase one another
through the mind tumultuous and hateful. Like the poet, I would fain
say, 'A very little more and my heart would break!'"
To bring his philippic to a close he quotes another soldier-author, G.
Thuriot-Franchi, who, in the same fighting style, with no pretty phrases
and with no concealments, compels these Hectors of the study to swallow
their boasts:[40]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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