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Authors: Peter Englund
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society or of the heart.)
Michel Corday was originally a nom de plume, x and this retiring man with a moustache is in some ways a fairly typical turn-of-the-century intellectual with a double life: he cannot live by his pen alone and thus also needs his job at the ministry. The distance between his two lives is not, however, really that great: he has changed his name so that even hiscivil-service self is now called Corday. Everyone knows he is a writer and he is a close friend of Anatole France.
During the first days of September, when it really looked as if it was impossible to stop the Germans, the government had left Paris and the staff of the ministries had gone with them. They had left the city by car in a state of panic—“the refugees at the station had been trampling one another as if they were in a burning theatre”—and found a safe haven in Bordeaux. Corday’s ministry was accommodated in an institution for the deaf and dumb in Rue Saint-Sernin. Now, however, since the Germans have been held on the Marne for over a month, more and more people are saying it is time for the government and the ministries to move back. Corday’s own family was evacuated to Saint-Amand Longpré and this evening he is returning to Bordeaux after visiting them.
To Corday the outbreak of war was a disgrace and a defeat and he has still not reconciled himself to it. He had been ill at a seaside resort and consequently all the news reached him through newspapers and telephone calls. The picture had been slow to take shape. He had tried for a while to distract himself by reading but it did not work.
Every thought and event caused by the outbreak of war came as a bitter and mortal blow struck against the great conviction that was in my heart: the concept of permanent progress, of movement towards ever greater happiness. I had never believed that something like this could happen. It meant that my faith simply crumbled. The outbreak of war marked my awakening from a dream I had nourished ever since I started thinking.
The children on the beach were playing war games: the girls were being nurses and the boys wounded soldiers. From his window he watched an artillery troop marching away singing and it made him burst into tears.
Out of the jubilation and chaos of those hot August days a new and alien world really has emerged.
It is partly a matter of externals: all these women who have stopped using cosmetics for “patriotic reasons”; all these uniforms everywhere—uniforms have become high fashion; all these growing queues at Mass and at confession; all the floods of refugees, laden with bundles; all the blacked-out streets; all the roadblocks manned by overzealous,domineering militiamen; all these troop transports carrying healthy men to the front and bringing the wounded back from it.
But also of internals: the permanent barrage of patriotic verbal formulae, as highly strung as they are obligatory; the new and uncompromising attitude—“kindness, humanity—all that has been swept away”; the hysterical tone that is manifested both in propaganda and in people’s conversations about the war (one woman told him that we should not weep for those who are marching off to the front—it is the men who cannot take part in the struggle who are to be pitied); the confusing mixture of generosity and selfishness; the sudden inability to perceive nuances of any kind—“One dare not say anything bad about the war. The war has become a God.” But Corday is doing his duty as a good civil servant.
On the way to Saint-Amand the train had been stormed by women pressing fruit, milk, coffee, sandwiches, chocolate and cigarettes on everyone in uniform. In one town he had seen boys wearing police helmets and acting as stretcher-bearers. It is impossible now to find a waiting room at any of the stations: all of them have been turned into temporary hospitals for the wounded or stores for military equipment. On his return journey, somewhere
Michel Corday was originally a nom de plume, x and this retiring man with a moustache is in some ways a fairly typical turn-of-the-century intellectual with a double life: he cannot live by his pen alone and thus also needs his job at the ministry. The distance between his two lives is not, however, really that great: he has changed his name so that even hiscivil-service self is now called Corday. Everyone knows he is a writer and he is a close friend of Anatole France.
During the first days of September, when it really looked as if it was impossible to stop the Germans, the government had left Paris and the staff of the ministries had gone with them. They had left the city by car in a state of panic—“the refugees at the station had been trampling one another as if they were in a burning theatre”—and found a safe haven in Bordeaux. Corday’s ministry was accommodated in an institution for the deaf and dumb in Rue Saint-Sernin. Now, however, since the Germans have been held on the Marne for over a month, more and more people are saying it is time for the government and the ministries to move back. Corday’s own family was evacuated to Saint-Amand Longpré and this evening he is returning to Bordeaux after visiting them.
To Corday the outbreak of war was a disgrace and a defeat and he has still not reconciled himself to it. He had been ill at a seaside resort and consequently all the news reached him through newspapers and telephone calls. The picture had been slow to take shape. He had tried for a while to distract himself by reading but it did not work.
Every thought and event caused by the outbreak of war came as a bitter and mortal blow struck against the great conviction that was in my heart: the concept of permanent progress, of movement towards ever greater happiness. I had never believed that something like this could happen. It meant that my faith simply crumbled. The outbreak of war marked my awakening from a dream I had nourished ever since I started thinking.
The children on the beach were playing war games: the girls were being nurses and the boys wounded soldiers. From his window he watched an artillery troop marching away singing and it made him burst into tears.
Out of the jubilation and chaos of those hot August days a new and alien world really has emerged.
It is partly a matter of externals: all these women who have stopped using cosmetics for “patriotic reasons”; all these uniforms everywhere—uniforms have become high fashion; all these growing queues at Mass and at confession; all the floods of refugees, laden with bundles; all the blacked-out streets; all the roadblocks manned by overzealous,domineering militiamen; all these troop transports carrying healthy men to the front and bringing the wounded back from it.
But also of internals: the permanent barrage of patriotic verbal formulae, as highly strung as they are obligatory; the new and uncompromising attitude—“kindness, humanity—all that has been swept away”; the hysterical tone that is manifested both in propaganda and in people’s conversations about the war (one woman told him that we should not weep for those who are marching off to the front—it is the men who cannot take part in the struggle who are to be pitied); the confusing mixture of generosity and selfishness; the sudden inability to perceive nuances of any kind—“One dare not say anything bad about the war. The war has become a God.” But Corday is doing his duty as a good civil servant.
On the way to Saint-Amand the train had been stormed by women pressing fruit, milk, coffee, sandwiches, chocolate and cigarettes on everyone in uniform. In one town he had seen boys wearing police helmets and acting as stretcher-bearers. It is impossible now to find a waiting room at any of the stations: all of them have been turned into temporary hospitals for the wounded or stores for military equipment. On his return journey, somewhere
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