If the War Goes On . . .. Герман Гессе

awakened pleasant memories or recalled welcome images. On the contrary, every single article reminded me painfully of times of suffering, struggle, and loneliness, times in which I was beset by enmity and incomprehension and bitterly cut off from pleasurable ideals and pleasant habits. In order to alleviate these ugly shadows, which have only deepened in recent years, with a note of beauty and light, I have recalled the one beautiful and enduring thing that came to me through those struggles and torments, by dedicating this book to a noble and beloved friend. I have forgotten much of what happened in those depressing days in 1914 when the first of these articles was written, but not the day on which a note from Romain Rolland brought me, along with an announcement of his forthcoming book, a sympathetic reaction – the only one I received at the time – to my article. I now had a like-minded companion, one who like myself was alert to the bloody absurdity of the war and the war psychosis and rebelled against it, and this companion was not an unknown quantity but the man I esteemed as the author of the first volumes of Jean Christophe (no more of his work was known to me at the time), a man far superior to me in political schooling and awareness. We remained friends until his death. The geographical distance between us as well as the divergent cultures and habits of thought in which we had grown to manhood made it impossible for me to become his disciple or to learn much from him in political matters. But that was not the essential. I had come to politics very late, when I was almost forty, jolted awake by the gruesome reality of the war and profoundly horrified at the ease with which my colleagues and friends had enlisted in the service of Moloch. Already a few friends had turned away from me and I had incurred the first of those attacks, threats, and insults which in so-called heroic times conformists never fail to heap upon a man who walks alone. It was by no means certain whether I would come through or be destroyed by the conflict that transformed my hitherto rather happy and undeservedly successful life into a hell. In that situation it was a great thing, a joy and a salvation, to learn that in France, in the ‘enemy’ camp, there was a man whose conscience would not let him keep silent or participate in the prevailing orgies of hatred and morbid nationalism. Neither during the war years nor afterward did I actually discuss politics with Rolland; yet I doubt that I could have lived through those years without the warmth of his friendship. How then could I fail to think of him now?

      A few words about the genesis of the present book: most of the articles connected with the war of 1914–1918 appeared in the Neue Zürcher Nachrichten. At that time (and until 1923) I was still a German citizen. Since then I have never been fully forgiven in Germany for having once taken a critical attitude toward patriotism and militarism. Though immediately after the lost war, as again today, a certain section of the German population felt very much drawn to pacifism and internationalism and occasionally echoed my ideas, I remained an object of distrust. Long before the first victories of National Socialism, I was regarded by official Germany as a suspicious and essentially undesirable character, worthy at best to be tolerated. In the period of its omnipotence, Hitler’s party gleefully avenged itself on my books, my name, and my unfortunate Berlin publisher.

      A glance at the table of contents will show that I wrote ‘political’ or timely articles only in certain years. But from this it should not be inferred that I relapsed into sleep in between, and turned my back on current affairs. To my own great regret, this has been impossible for me since my first cruel awakening in the First World War. Anyone who looks into my life work as a whole will soon notice that even in the years when I wrote nothing on current affairs the thought of the hell smouldering beneath our feet, the sense of impending catastrophe and war, never left me. From Steppenwolf, which was in part a cry of anguished warning against the approaching war and which was attacked and ridiculed as such, down to The Glass Bead Game with its world of images seemingly so far removed from current realities, the reader will encounter this feeling time and time again, and the same tone may be heard repeatedly in the poems.

      When I call my articles ‘political’, it is always in quotes, for there is nothing political about them but the atmosphere in which they came into being. In all other respects they are the opposite of political, because in each one of these essays I strive to guide the reader not into the world theatre with its political problems but into his innermost being, before the judgement seat of his very personal conscience. In this I am at odds with the political thinkers of all trends, and I shall always, incorrigibly, recognise in man, in the individual man and his soul, the existence of realms to which political impulses and forms do not extend. I am an individualist and I regard the Christian veneration for every human soul as what is best and most holy in Christianity. It may be that in this I partake of a world that is already half extinct, that we are witnessing the emergence of a collective man without individual soul, who will do away with the entire religious and individualistic tradition of mankind. To desire or fear such an eventuality is not my concern. I have always been impelled to serve the gods whom I felt to be living and helpful, and I have tried to do so even when I was certain to be answered with hostility or laughter. The path I was obliged to take between the demands of the world and those of my own soul was not pleasant or easy, I hope I shall not have to travel it again, for it ends in grief and bitter disappointments. But I can say without regret that since my first awakening I have not, like most of my colleagues and critics, been capable of learning a new lesson and rallying to a different flag every few years.

      Since my first awakening thirty years ago my moral reaction to every great political event has always arisen instinctively and without effort on my part. My judgements have never wavered. Since I am an utterly unpolitical man, I myself have been astonished at the reliability of my reactions, and I have often pondered about the sources of this moral instinct, about the teachers and guides who, despite my lack of systematic concern with politics, so moulded me that I have always been sure of my judgement and offered a more than average resistance to mass psychoses and psychological infections of every kind. A man ought to stand by what has educated, imprinted, and moulded him, and so, after much consideration of the question, I must say: three strong influences, at work throughout my life, have made me what I am. These are the Christian and almost totally unnationalistic spirit of the home in which I grew up, the reading of the great Chinese thinkers, and last not least, the work of the one historian to whom I have ever been devoted in confidence, veneration, and grateful emulation: Jakob Burckhardt.

       Montagnola, June 1946

      O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!

      September 1914*

      The nations are at each other’s throats; every day countless men are suffering and dying in terrible battles. In the midst of the sensational news from the front, I have recalled, as sometimes happens, a long-forgotten moment from my boyhood years. I was fourteen. One hot summer day I was sitting in a schoolroom in Stuttgart, taking the famous Swabian state examination. The subject of the essay we were to write was dictated to us: ‘What good and what bad aspects of human nature are aroused and developed by war?’ What I wrote on the subject was based on no experience of any kind and accordingly the result was dismal; what I then as a boy understood about war, its virtues and burdens, had nothing in common with what I should call by these names today. But in connection with the daily events and that little reminiscence, I have lately thought a good deal about war, and since it has now become customary for men of the study and workshop to vent their opinions on the subject, I no longer hesitate to express mine. I am a German, my sympathies and aspirations belong to Germany; nevertheless, what I wish to say relates not to war and politics but to the position and tasks of neutrals. By this I mean not the politically neutral nations but all those who as scientists, teachers, artists, and men of letters are engaged in the labours of peace and of humanity.

      We have been struck lately by signs of a ruinous confusion among such neutrals. German patents have been suspended in Russia, German music is boycotted in France, the cultural productions of enemy nations are boycotted in Germany. Many German papers propose to carry no further translation, criticism, or even mention of works by Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, and Japanese. This is not a rumour but an actual decision that has already been put into practice.

      A lovely Japanese fairy tale, a good French novel, faithfully and lovingly translated by a German before the war started, must now be passed over in silence. A magnificent gift, lovingly offered to our people, is rejected because a few Japanese ships are