Well, let us consider everything. Is not this love in a great measure
the fear of examining all things, as a child hides his head under the
sheet, so as not to see the shadow on the wall?

Country? A Hindoo temple: men, monsters, and gods. What is she? The
earth we tread on? The whole earth is the mother of us all. The
family? It is here and there, with the enemy as with ourselves, and it
asks nothing but peace. The poor, the workers, the people, they are
on both sides, equally miserable, equally exploited. Thinkers have a
common field, and as for their rivalries and their vanities, they are
as ridiculous in the East as in the West; the world does not go to war
over the quarrels of a Vadius or a Trissotin. The State? But the State
and the Country are not the same thing. The confusion is made by those
who find profit in it; the State is our strength, used and abused by
men like ourselves, no better than ourselves, often worse. We are not
duped by them, and in times of peace we judge them fairly enough, but
let a war come on, they are given _carte blanche_, they can appeal to
the lowest instincts, stifle all control, suppress liberty and truth,
destroy all humanity; they are masters, we must stand shoulder to
shoulder to defend the honour and the mistakes of these Masacarilles
arrayed in borrowed plumes. We are all answerable, do you say?
Terrible net-work of words! Responsible no doubt we are for the best
and the worst of our people, it is a fact as we well know, but that it
is a duty that binds us to their injustices and their insanities.... I
deny it!...

There can be no question as to community of interest. No one, thought
Clerambault, has had more joy in it, or said more in praise of its
greatness. It is good and healthy, it makes for rest and strength, to