Romain Rolland: Pacifism only allowed when it is not effective
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Romain Rolland: Selections on war
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Romain Rolland
From Mother and Son (1926)
Translated by Van Wyck Brooks
Since 1900 Roger Brissot had enjoyed a brilliant career. His resounding case, his success in the Palais de Justice and then in Parliament, had carried him to the first rank. In the Chamber, he kept within the limits of the radical and Socialist parties, watchful lest either spring a leak, always ready to pass from one boat to the other. Minister several times and of all portfolios, public instruction, labor, justice and even, once, the Navy. Like his colleagues, he was as comfortable in one seat as another, they fitted every one. After all, whatever the department may be, it is all the same machine under the same management. When one knows how to handle it, the rest – the personnel under one’s administration – is of little importance. The only thing that counts is the administration.
In treating so many subjects, he had enriched his store of ideas, or, more exactly, his repertory of words – without learning much that lay beneath them, for he was too busy talking to have the time to listen. But he talked very well. On one point, however, his knowledge was really profound, the breeding of the electoral cattle and their exploitation. On this subject several statesmen of the Third Republic were past masters; they had the keyboard of the masses at their fingers’ ends, they had the secret of touching its weaknesses, passions, and manias. But no one was a more accomplished virtuoso, no one could set vibrating with more sumptuous sonorities the sovereign chords of democracy, the brazen-tongued ideologies that overlaid, evoked and over-excited the virtues of the race and its hidden vices, than the honorable Brissot. He was the greatest parliamentary pianist. His party, his parties – for he permitted himself to claim more than one! – appealed to his talents on every occasion for resounding discourses, those chamber concerts, the music of which, spread out on the great white placards (voted by acclamation, at the expense of the electors), made the tour of France. He never refused; he was always ready. He was equally competent on all subjects – aided, of course, by active and well-informed secretaries. (He had a whole crew of them.) His devotion to his party – to his parties – and to his own glory was only paralleled by his lungs. The latter never tired.
This zeal and this voice, equally magnificent, were very useful to the Republic during the Great War. The war mobilized them. Roger Brissot was charged with convincing the world and the people of France of the high truths for which they were driving themselves to ruin. He was sent on missions to distant parts. He had taken the precaution to resume, at the beginning of the war, his stripes as a Major of Reserves in the cavalry; and in this quality he was even attached for some time to the General Headquarters…But they led him to understand that he would serve the country more efficaciously in the trenches of America; and he had lavished his breath there without ever exhausting it.
***
Brissot’s career had been unclouded – save for the clouds that envious rivals tried to throw over his oratorical past, which was marred by a few ardent flights, certainly a little imprudent, towards the empyrean of international pacifism. But it is fatal for a man who is always talking to talk about everything, and one cannot expect him to be bound by every one of his words: he would be drawn and quartered by more than four horses. And then pacifism is, as its name indicates, a harmless potion the use of which is lawful in times of peace – prohibited only when war has sounded: for only then would it be efficacious. That was what the great orator had no difficulty in demonstrating – except to his faithless enemies whom nothing could convince, not even the burning zeal that Brissot used in denouncing his former companions as infatuated pacifists, disguised Germans, who maintained their right to pursue their game in times of war at the risk of unnerving a fatigued people and taking away from them the costly fruit of victory.
Pentagon To Continue Supporting French War Effort In Mali
Stars and Stripes
May 22, 2013
US to continue supporting French air force ops in Mali
By Adam L. Mathis
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As soon as French President Francois Hollande announced his country’s military intervention, the Armee de l’Air (air force) started bombing rebels in strategic locations across the country. Since then, the 351st has flown more than 200 missions and provided more than 8.8 million pounds of fuel to the French.
In addition to fuel, the U.S. flew more than 1,000 people and 1,500 tons of equipment and supplies for French and Chadian forces from January 21 to March 7…
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French Rafale fighters over Mali after refueling with a KC-135 Stratotanker from the 351st Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron on April 23, 2013
RAF MILDENHALL, England: Although France is withdrawing its ground troops from Mali, there is no indication its air force will stop requesting U.S. aid in support of operations there.
The Department of Defense announced Friday that the U.S. will continue to provide mid-air refueling to French planes. The refueling operation has been going on since January, almost immediately after the French intervened in Mali…
To support French air power used in that operation, the 351st Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron was deployed to Morón Air Base, Spain, to fly KC-135 Stratotankers over Mali and refuel French planes.
“We’re here as long as they need us,” squadron commander Lt. Col. Tim Kuehne said. “So, I don’t have a projected end date.”
French warplanes must transit significant distances to reach Mali. Consequently, they’re operating at the edge of their range once they arrive in its airspace and don’t have enough fuel to patrol or conduct attack missions.
“Without our gas, they basically would have to turn around as soon as they got there,” said Capt. Tim Gerne, an aircraft commander with the 351st who flies over Mali. “They couldn’t even make it back all the way back to the place that they left.”
…France intervened in January, when…rebels appeared poised to advance on the capital.
Since the start of the conflict, France relied heavily on air power to defeat the militants and retake the occupied territory. As soon as French President Francois Hollande announced his country’s military intervention, the Armee de l’Air (air force) started bombing rebels in strategic locations across the country. Since then, the 351st has flown more than 200 missions and provided more than 8.8 million pounds of fuel to the French.
In addition to fuel, the U.S. flew more than 1,000 people and 1,500 tons of equipment and supplies for French and Chadian forces from January 21 to March 7, said an official with U.S. Army Africa command. Troops from Chad have also fought in Mali against the militants.
Despite an announcement that France will withdraw the majority of its troops from Mali by the end of the year, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has said his country was committed to staying in Mali for an “undetermined period” to prevent a “revival of terrorism.”
Azerbaijan, NATO and Caspian-Black Seas Energy Strategy
News.Az
May 22, 2013
Romania to further support Azerbaijan’s cooperation with NATO
NATO International School of Azerbaijan
Bucharest has a significant role in enhancing the relations between Azerbaijan and NATO, and it is aimed at further development of this trend.
“Romania will continue to support development of cooperation between Azerbaijan and NATO,” Romanian ambassador in Baku Cristian Ciobanu said.
Addressing the conference “Emerging Challenges: Improving Energy Security in XXI Century” in Baku, the ambassador emphasized Azerbaijan’s active participation in peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan.
Ciobanu also pointed to high level Azerbaijani-Romanian cooperation in the political and energy spheres.
Energy security issues are of great importance for Azerbaijan and partner countries around the Black and Caspian seas. The region will continue to play an even more important role in ensuring the energy security of Europe, Ciobanu believes.
Henri Barbusse: All battles spring from themselves and necessitate each other to infinity
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Henri Barbusse: Selections on war
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Henri Barbusse
From Light (1918)
Translated by Fitzwater Wray
They are motionless at last, they who forever marched, they to whom space was so great! I see their poor hands, their poor legs, their poor backs, resting on the earth. They are tranquil at last. The shells which bespattered them are ravaging another world. They are in the peace eternal.
All is accomplished, all has terminated there. It is there, in that circle narrow as a well that the descent into the raging heart of hell was halted, the descent into slow tortures, into unrelenting fatigue, into the flashing tempest. We came here because they told us to come here. We have done what they told us to do. I think of the simplicity of our reply on the Day of Judgment.
The gunfire continues. Always, always, the shells come, and all those bullets that are miles in length. Hidden behind the horizons, living men unite with machines and fall furiously on space. They do not see their shots. They do not know what they are doing. “You shall not know; you shall not know.”
But since the cannonade is returning, they will be fighting here again. All these battles spring from themselves and necessitate each other to infinity! One single battle is not enough, it is not complete, there is no satisfaction. Nothing is finished, nothing is ever finished. Ah, it is only men who die! No one understands the greatness of things, and I know well that I do not understand all the horror in which I am.
***
The clouds are crowning themselves with sheaves of stars. It is an aviary of fire, a hell of silver and gold. Planetary cataclysms send immense walls of light falling around me. Phantasmal palaces of shrieking lightning, with arches of star-shells, appear and vanish amid forests of ghastly gleams.
While the bombardment is patching the sky with continents of flame, it is drawing still nearer. Volleys of flashes are plunging in here and there and devouring the other lights. The supernatural army is arriving! All the highways of space are crowded. Nearer still, a shell bursts with all its might and glows; and among us all whom chance defends goes frightfully in quest of flesh. Shells are following each other into that cavity there. Again I see, among the things of earth, a resurrected man, and he is dragging himself towards that hole! He is wrapped in white, and the under-side of his body, which rubs the ground, is black. Hooking the ground with his stiffened arms he crawls, long and flat as a boat. He still hears the cry “Forward!” He is finding his way to the hole; he does not know, and he is trailing exactly toward its monstrous ambush. The shell will succeed! At any second now the frenzied fangs of space will strike his side and go in as into a fruit. I have not the strength to shout to him to fly elsewhere with all his slowness; I can only open my mouth and become a sort of prayer in face of the man’s divinity. And yet, he is the survivor; and along with the sleeper, to whom a dream was whispering just now, he is the only one left to me.
A hiss — the final blow reaches him; and in a flash I see the piebald maggot crushing under the weight of the sibilance and turning wild eyes towards me.
No! It is not he! A blow of light — of all light—fills my eyes. I am lifted up, I am brandished by an unknown blade in the middle of a globe of extraordinary light. The shell – I! And I am falling, I fall continually, fantastically. I fall out of this world; and in that fractured flash I saw myself again — I thought of my bowels and my heart hurled to the winds — and I heard voices saying again and again—far, far away — “Simon Paulin died at the age of thirty-six.”
DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI
I am dead. I fall, I roll like a broken bird into bewilderments of light, into canyons of darkness. Vertigo presses on my entrails, strangles me, plunges into me. I drop sheer into the void, and my gaze falls faster than I.
Through the wanton breath of the depths that assail me I see, far below, the seashore dawning. The ghostly strand that I glimpse while I cling to my own body is bare, endless, rain-drowned, and supernaturally mournful. Through the long, heavy and concentric mists that the clouds make, my eyes go searching. On the shore I see a being who wanders alone, veiled to the feet. It is a woman. Ah, I am one with that woman! She is weeping. Her tears are dropping on the sand where the waves are breaking! While I am reeling to infinity, I hold out my two heavy arms to her. She fades away as I look.
For a long time there is nothing, nothing but invisible time, and the immense futility of rain on the sea.
NATO’s Top Governing Body To Visit Georgia
Rustavi 2
May 21, 2013
Two senior officials to take part in Georgia-NATO commission
The Prime Minister`s Special Representative in Relations with Russia Zurab Abashidze and the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Georgia Davit Zalkaniani have left for Brussels, where they will participate in the session of the NATO-Georgia Commission.
The main issue of the meeting will be preparation of the visit of the [North] Atlantic Council to Georgia. The sides will also discuss the Geneva negotiations on Georgia-Russia conflict and the process of restoration of relations between the two countries.
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The Messenger
May 17, 2013
Georgia mourns its soldiers
By Salome Modebadze
May 16 is a day of mourning for Georgia. The bodies of Junior Sergeant Zviad Davitadze, Corporal Alexandre Kvitsinadze and Corporal Vladimer Shanava, who were killed earlier this week in Afghanistan, arrived in Georgia for burial on Thursday.
Georgian Minister of Defence Irakli Alasania visited the 4th Infantry Brigade in Vaziani where the late soldiers had served in the 42nd Battalion. After a moment of silence in respect of the memory of those slain, the Minister addressed their brothers-in arm stressing that this is the heaviest day for the Georgian Armed Forces and the country as a whole.
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US charge d’affaires Bridget Brink expressed condolences towards the families of the fallen soldiers on behalf of the U.S. Embassy. Head of the NATO Liaison Office in Georgia William Lahue also expressed his respect towards the Georgian heroes who he said have sacrificed their lives not only for the security of Georgia, but for the entire world.
National flags were lowered at every state building in Georgia to honor the three Georgian soldiers as well as at all Georgian embassies abroad.
With its 1,560 servicemen Georgia is the largest non-NATO troop contributor in the ISAF mission in Afghanistan. 22 Georgian soldiers have been killed as part of the ISAF mission.
Henri Troyat: Thoughts stop with a shock: War!
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
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Henri Troyat
From Sowing and Harvest (1953)
Translated by Lily Duplaix
Amelie wouldn’t listen to the idea of war. Amid the uproar around her, she held the child she bore as a pledge of security. A world prepared for birth, she thought, could not welcome death.
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“France doesn’t want war,” said the painter. “It’s Russia. They have too many strikes there. They don’t know what to do with the workmen so they send them to the slaughterhouse.”
***
Amelie looked at a newspaper stand lighted by a lamp. Big headlines jumped from the page: “ARMED VIGIL IN EUROPE!” “CIVILIZATION AT EDGE OF A CRATER!” She walked heavily, clutching Pierre’s arm. Around them the multitude breathed regularly and patiently trod the ground. Where were all these people going? No one seemed to know. They were hurrying along, not strolling. They were in the street because they could no longer stay home. They were all talking of the same thing.
***
The ringing sound of hammers on iron broke through her profound sleep. For a moment she thought she was a little girl again. The lavender lozenges on the faded yellow paper, the ray of sunshine through the disjointed shutters, the small table covered with ink and school notebooks – all confirmed the illusion. She rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed. The noise of the hammers sounded louder. Jerome and Denis were at work in the forge. She felt happy. Then her thoughts stopped with a shock: War! she hung on that terrible word.
***
Wasn’t it strange that they had taken Abbé Pradinas and that he, Jerome, was left? The priest they had sent as a substitute was old and half deaf…He felt stronger at fifty than a lot of young puppies they were sending to the front. He had been too young for the war of seventy and he was too old for the war of fourteen. But what did age mean? He detested the Army, but he felt uncomfortable in his privileged position – almost as if he had stolen Pierre’s place beside Amelie. He was being foolish and he knew it. Amelie herself would never have such a thought. But, all the same, he felt guilty in her presence. He thought of her alone in that room, waiting for her child to be born, while the father might already be dead. He clenched his fists. His uselessness, his impotence were hateful to him. He wished he could complain to Abbé Pradinas. He would have liked to ask a few questions about this slaughter which so dishonoured the Christian world. If there were a God, why did He allow this?
***
“My poor Antonin! They’ve taken you away and you will never be among us again. And I can not even see you in death. We must have the wake without you. We will weep your absent body. Nothing is left for your poor mother.
“Calm down, Matilde,” mumbled M. Ferriere. “It doesn’t do any good upsetting yourself like that.”
“You must remember it’s for France!” whispered Calamisse.
She raised her head and sniffled loudly. “Yes, of course.”
“You have given your son to France,” said M. Calimisse more loudly.
“I gave nothing. They took him.”
Pentagon Advances Global Interceptor Missile System
Missile Defense Agency
May 16, 2013
Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System Completes Successful Intercept Flight Test
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This test exercised the latest version of the second-generation Aegis BMD Weapon System and Standard Missile, providing capability for engagement of longer-range and more sophisticated ballistic missiles.
Other Aegis BMD intercepts have employed the ABMD 3.6 and 4.0 with the SM-3 Block IA missile, which is currently operational on U.S. Navy ships deployed across the globe.
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Standard Missile-3 Block IB launch
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and U.S. Navy sailors aboard the USS LAKE ERIE (CG-70) successfully conducted a flight test today of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system, resulting in the intercept of a separating ballistic missile target over the Pacific Ocean by the Aegis BMD 4.0 Weapon System and a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IB missile.
At 5:25 p.m. (Hawaii Time, 11:25 p.m. EDT), May 15, a separating short-range ballistic missile target was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, on Kauai, Hawaii. The target flew northwest towards a broad ocean area of the Pacific Ocean. Following target launch, the USS LAKE ERIE (CG-70) detected and tracked the missile with its onboard AN/SPY-1 radar. The ship, equipped with the second-generation Aegis BMD weapon system, developed a fire control solution and launched the SM-3 Block IB missile. The SM-3 maneuvered to a point in space based on guidance from Aegis BMD Weapons Systems and released its kinetic warhead. The kinetic warhead acquired the target reentry vehicle, diverted into its path, and, using only the force of a direct impact, engaged and destroyed the target.
Initial indications are that all components performed as designed. Program officials will assess and evaluate system performance based upon telemetry and other data obtained during the test.
This test exercised the latest version of the second-generation Aegis BMD Weapon System and Standard Missile, providing capability for engagement of longer-range and more sophisticated ballistic missiles.
Last night’s event, designated Flight Test Standard Missile-19 (FTM-19), was the third consecutive successful intercept test of the Aegis BMD 4.0 Weapon System and the SM-3 Block IB guided missile. Previous successful ABMD 4.0 SM-3 Block IB intercepts occurred on May 9, 2012 and June 26, 2012. Other Aegis BMD intercepts have employed the ABMD 3.6 and 4.0 with the SM-3 Block IA missile, which is currently operational on U.S. Navy ships deployed across the globe.
FTM-19 is the 25th successful intercept in 31 flight test attempts for the Aegis BMD program since flight testing began in 2002. Across all Ballistic Missile Defense System programs, this is the 59th successful hit-to-kill intercept in 74 flight tests since 2001.
Aegis BMD is the naval component of the MDA’s Ballistic Missile Defense System. The Aegis BMD engagement capability defeats short- to intermediate-range, unitary and separating, midcourse-phase ballistic missile threats with the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), as well as short-range ballistic missiles in the terminal phase with the SM-2 Block IV missile. The MDA and the U.S. Navy cooperatively manage the Aegis BMD program.
