Fear Read Free Page A

workers were the most eager: instead of their fortnight’s annual holiday, they were going to get several months, visiting new places, and all at the expense of the Germans.
    A great medley of clothes, customs and classes, a great clamour, a great cocktail of drinks, a new force given to individual initiatives, a need to smash things up, to leap over fences, to break laws – all this, at the start, made the war acceptable. It was confused with freedom, and discipline was then accepted in the belief that it was lacking.
    Everywhere had the atmosphere of a funfair, a riot, a disaster and a triumph; a vast, intoxicating upheaval. The daily round had come to a halt. Men stopped being factory workers or civil servants, clerks or common labourers, in order to become explorers and conquerors. Or so at least they believed. They dreamed of the North as if it were America, or the pampas, or a virgin forest, of Germany as if it were a banquet; they dreamed of laying waste to the countryside, breaking open wine barrels, burning towns, the white stomachs of the blonde women of Germania, of pillage and plunder, of all that life normally denied them. Each individual believed in his destiny, no one thought of death, except the death of others.
    In short, the war got off to a pretty good start, with the help of chaos.
    In Berlin those who wanted all this make an appearance on the palace balconies, in their finest uniforms, in postures suitable for the immortalising of famous conquerors.
    Those who are unleashing on us two million fanatics, armed with rapid-fire artillery, machine guns, repeater rifles, hand grenades, aeroplanes, chemicals and electricity, shine with pride. Those who gave the signal for the massacre are smiling at their coming glory.
    This is the moment when the first – and last – machine gun should have done its work, emptied its belt of bullets on to that emperor and his advisors, men who believe themselves to be strong, superhuman, arbiters of our destinies, and who are nothing but miserable imbeciles. Their cretinous vanity is destroying the world.
    Meanwhile in Paris those who did not know how to prevent all this, who are surprised and overwhelmed by it, run around consulting each other, advising each other, rushing out reassuring communiqués, and mobilising the police against the spectre of revolution. The police, zealous as ever, strike down anyone who is not displaying sufficient enthusiasm.
    In Brussels, in London, in Rome, those who feel threatened assess the balance of forces, weigh up their chances, and choose their camp.
    And millions of men, because they believed what they were taught by emperors, legislators and bishops in their legal codes, their manuals of instruction and their catechisms, by historians in their history books, by ministers on their platforms, teachers in their colleges, and decent, ordinary people in their living rooms, these millions of men form countless flocks that shepherds with officers’ braids lead to the slaughterhouses, to the sound of music.
    In a few short days, civilisation was wiped out. In a few short days, all our leaders became abject failures. For their role, their only role that mattered, was precisely to prevent all this.
    If we did not know where we were going, they, at the very least, should have known where they were leading their nations. A man has the right to be stupid on his own account, but not on behalf of others.
    On the afternoon of 3 August, I take a walk through the city with Fontan, a friend the same age as me.
    Outside a café in the centre, an orchestra is blasting out the Marseillaise . Everyone removes their hats and stands up to listen. Everyone, that is, except for one frail, humbly dressed little man with a sad face crowned by a straw hat, who sits alone in a corner. One of the bystanders spots him, rushes up and, with a flick of his hand, knocks his hat flying. The man goes pale, shrugs his shoulders and says ‘Bravo! Brave citizen!’ The other