Time will fix the exact status of this epic novel and its lasting influence upon international thought. It may be classified as allegory, romance, psychological study, or idealistic vision; it has sincerity, inspiration, and imaginative intensity. The author’s statement that he always thought of the life of his hero as analogous to a river, is significant; he sustains the imagery from the first Dawn, Morning, Youth, and Revolt in Germany to the very end of the journey “across the border,” to the final act where “Saint Christopher” hears the roar of the torrent but also, the “tranquil voice of the Child” as the Angelus sounds forth The New Day. Gilbert Cannan has compared the phases of life, explored by _Jean-Christophe_, to the tortuous channel of an uncharted river. His judgment that this novel is “the first great book of the twentieth century,” is more stable than the prophecy of other critics that would leave out the word “first.” It has many passages of artistic perfection, like “Antoinette,” “The House,” and “The New Dawn.” With emotional fervor the author, in the closing volume, speaks his message to the future, apostrophizing the young men; “You men of today, march over us, trample us under your feet, and press onward. Be ye greater and happier than we.... Life is a succession of deaths and resurrections. We must die, Christophe, to be born again.”[106] And since the award, what has Romain Rolland written? _Colas Breugnon_, the tale of a Burgundian artist, translated in 1919 by Katherine Miller, is less intense, much more free and diverting than his long novel. It was a work of relaxation for the author during the summer months in Switzerland, 1913. He had recently visited his birth town and modeled the hero, in part, from a resident, a wood carver there, “an artist of the vanished type.” He has his struggles and defeats but he never loses his optimism. The next year the war began, with its devastating, soul-searing effects upon Romain Rolland. He had seen its black shadow and had forewarned the people in _Jean-Christophe_ but the actual conflict overwhelmed his spirit. Like Olivier, in his story (whom he resembles in many ways), he had feared such a war from boyhood; it had been “a nightmare to him; it had poisoned his childhood days.” He was at Vevey, on Lake Geneva, when the war broke out and he decided to stay there; he longed for France but he could not fight without blighting his soul. He would suffer as a pacifist, loving his country, rather than yield to hate. He did secretarial work for the Red Cross and assisted in welfare measures of many kinds. When the Nobel prize money came, he gave it “to the mitigation of the miseries of Europe.”[107] He wrote some of the papers that were collected in _Above the Battle_; his friendly letter to Hauptmann, appealing for amity, and the German’s reply, are given here. In spite of the aggressive tone of the German’s note, Rolland