When they told us that it was Germany who attacked first, they were right. But when they added that we ourselves were some sort of plaster saints who had honoured and practiced peace and that at no time – oh, dear Lord, no! – had we harboured the slightest thought of revenge or of military victory, that at no time had we shown the slightest sign of hostility and affront towards Germany, they were really stretching it a bit far, as they say. The present crisis is the logical and fatal outcome of national vanities and each side must take its share of responsibility.[1]
Henri Barbusse (14
April 1916)
[1] Quoted
in Jean-Jacques Becker, The Great War and the French People (New York:
Berg, 1990), p. 169. Barbusse was a
pacifist and already a writer when he experienced the trenches. His realist novel Le Feu was published
in 1916 to great acclaim (first translated into English as Under Fire in
1917, and again in 2003). He earned the
title “Zola of the trenches.”
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