Men And Forces Of Our Time

VALERlU- J A3 MEN and FORGES OF OUR. TIME TRANSLATED BY EDEN and CEDAR PAUL NEW YORK THE VIKING PRESS 1 93 1 MANNER UND MACHTE DER GEGENWART COPYRIGHT, 1930, BY GUSTAV KIEPENHEUER VERLAG, A.-G., BERLIN COPYRIGHT, 1931, BY THE VIKING PRESS, INC. PRINTED IN U. S. A. BY QUINN BODEN TO THE MEMORY OF MY FRIEND PAUL LEVI I DEDICATE THIS BOOK CONTENTS Biography and Biographers 3 Georges Clemenceau between. Action and Nirvana 21 Dogma and Dialectic in Lenin 51 Marshal Fochs Ideas and the Republic of Civilians 75 Kemal Pasha, or from National Farce to National Revolution 119 One Head Is More than Three Hun dred Voices, or Benedetto Croce in the Senate 145 The Moderns and Their Adversary, G. K. Chesterton 163 Panait Istrati, or Romance About Byzantium 177 Hans Delbriick, or the Historian Conquers the Specialist 193 Advertisement, or Farewell to Europe Mythology of Dictatorship Georges Sorel 229 Biography and Biographers BIOGRAPHY AND BIOGRAPHERS BtOGRAPHY is full of tender afiection. Angelique and Agnes, two young women pale, nervous, somewhat melan choly, tormented by ambitious dreams live, sur rounded by a few hermits, in the solitude of Port Royal des Champs. The Church regards them with disapproval and the all-powerful Cardinal Richelieu threatens them. The two sisters, full of the grace of God, want to be like the angels they mortify the flesh, sing the Jubilate, refresh themselves at that source of piety, the Lives of the Saints and they hope to counteract the sacrile gious wit of Rabelais, the scepticism of Mon taigne, the heresy of the sixteenth century. Angelique and Agnes build an edifice of faith that shall shed its rays over all seas and lands, 3 4 MEN AND FORCES shall exert aninfluence which lasts for centuries and they enter into an unparalleled union with Blaise Pascal, the imperishable teacher Bonaparte, an officer turned adrift, goes for a walk along the Seine. His only possessions are the pawn-ticket of his watch and the manuscript of a pamphlet he is writing-a high-flown and absurd communist pamphlet. Paris seems to him nothing but a desert of bricks and mortar, which does not offer him so much as a crust of bread. He is hopelessly despondent can hardly even think, as he stares moodily into the water and feels himself to have reached the end of all things a step or two aside, and his troubles will be over. At this same hour a somewhat befuddled lieu tenant, cheerful in his cups, making his way homeward, loses himself in the darkness, and suddenly, reeling a little in his perplexity, finds himself face to face with Bonaparte. They are old acquaintances. The lieutenant, with the insight not uncommon in the lesser degrees of drunken ness, notes the signs of discomposure in his friends countenance, What makes you so glum, old chap, love or money Money, because I have none Three louis-dor come to the rescue of despair. With this sum in his pocket