The old satirist of the "Iambes," Auguste Barbier, wrote, immediately
after the declaration of peace, a poem in which he rehearsed the
incidents of the war, and commented on the absence from the list of
its victims of a single distinguished writer. He said--
_"La Muse n'a pas vu tomber un seul poete_,"
and it was out of any one's power to refute the sinister and prosaic
verse. The contrast with 1914 is painful and striking. In the existing
war the holocaust of victims, poets and historians, painters and
sculptors, musicians and architects, has been heartrending, and it can
never in future years be pretended that the Muses have this time
spared us their most poignant sacrifices. A year ago the _Revue
Critique_, one of the most serious and original of the learned
journals of Paris, announced the losses it had endured. It was
conducted by a staff of forty scholars; by the summer of 1916 this
number was reduced by twenty-seven; thirteen had been killed, eleven
severely wounded, three had disappeared.
Many writers have asked, and M. Maurice Barres prominently among them,
what is the reason of the fact that intelligence has taken a front
place in this war? What has been the source of the spirit of
self-immolation which has driven the intellectual and imaginative section
of French youth to hold out both hands to catch the full downpour of
the rain of death? There is no precedent for it in French history, and
we may observe for ourselves how new a thing it was, and how
unexpected, by comparing with the ardent and radiant letters and poems
of the youngest generation the most patriotic expressions of their
elders.
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