WRACK OF THE STORM

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2912, 26 October 1916, Page 7

WRACK OF THE STORM

MAETERLINCK ON THE WAR

(By "Liber."

From time to timo has como news of the part which the famous Belgian poet, _ dramatist, and philosopher, Maurice Maeterlinck, has boon playing in tho aid of his country's causa and that of the Allies. He Las addressed great meetings in Milan, Rome, and London, and has contributed to French, linglish, and Italian newspapers eloquently worded protests against - the barbaric cruelty of which his - unhappy country has been made the victim, and accompanied those protests by tho most vigorous appeals to the Allies that the enemy be mado to suffer the most severe punishment for his crimes. Under tho title "Tho "Wrack of tho Storm" Messrs. Methuen and Co. now publish an English translation, by Alexander Toixera de Mattos, of practically everything that Maeterlinck has written since the outbroak of war; sixteen essays, long and shorty in addition, to reports of speeches delivered at Milan, Rome, ■ and London. The various articles, all bearing directly or indirectly upon the war, "and after," are printed. in chronological order. In a brief proface, M. Maeterlinck Bays that "for the first time in tho work of ono who hitherto had cursed no man" tho reader will now find "words of hatred and malediction." He continuoß: 1

1 have loved Germany, and I remembered friends there, who now, dead or living, aro alike dead to me. I thought her groat and upright and generous: and to mo she was over kind and limpitablo. But there are crimes whioh obliterate the past and close tho future. In rejecting hatred I should havo shown .myself a traitor to love. I tried to lift myself above the fray; but, the higher I rose, the more I saw of the madness and horror of it, of the justice of one causo and tho infamy of tho other. It is possible that one day. when t_mo has wearied remembrances and restored the ruins, wise men will tell ua that wo wero mistaken, and that our standpoint was not lofty enough; hut they will say it because they no longer know what wo know, nor will they havo seen what we bare seen.

Those who are acquainted with Maeterlinck's essays, which in English translations have attained of lato years almost as great a popularity in England and America as they have enjoyed in Belgium and France, need not be reminded that the great Belgian authorhas a genius, for graceful expression of the beautiful thoughts which he sets forth. Here in these- articles and lectures we find, displayed a now and striking quality of splendid vigour. It is still the philosopher who is speaking, hut it i 6 a philosopher whose soul flows over. with sorrow for the woes of his country and his countrymen, and whose heart is filled with flaming indignation and righteous wrath against those who. havo done such infamous things. It is difficult to conceive a more pathetic and y«t forceful appeal to a neutral State for sympathy and practical assistance than that contained in Maeterlinck's great speech at Milan. Later on, when Italy took the great plunge, Maeterlinck writes:— .

But now at the spectacle, unforescM, and daily more abominable and disconcerting, of the barbarian invason, words half-effaced and secret treaties written by unknown hands on the 60uls and consciences of all men revealed' themselves ana slowly, gathered life and radiance. . . . We must pity those who are able to consider hone but the meaner sides of the matter, for these ase the only sides which never count, and which, are always deceptive. To find the real and lasting truth we must learn to view tho great masses and the great feelings of mankind from above. . . Here, as in the case of the sacrifice which Belgium and England offered to the ideal of lioiionr, a new 1 and unprecedented fact in history."

To King Albert of Belgium, that gallant monarch who is now a temporary exile from his own land, but destined, we all believe, -as we all most fervently hope, to re-enter his capital an triupiph before many months arc past and gone, Maeterlinck writes in terms of elofluent praise. ."With sudden, beauty he embodied the mighty voice of his peoplo. He had tho wonderful good fortune' to' realise and bestow a conscience in fl'no of those, dread hours of tragedy and perplexity when the best of consciences wavor." I must quote, too, Maeterlinck's tribute to his much-be}(SVed country:

"In the one scale were fire and sword, ruin, massacre, and the iuhnito disaster that'we see; iu tho other was that little word honour, which also represents infinite things, but things which we do not see, or wh t ch wo must be very pure and very great to see quite clearly. It has happened now and again in history that a man standing higher than his fellows perceives what this word represents, and sacrifices his life and tho Lfe of those whom he loves to what he perceives; and we have not without reason devoted to such men a sort of cult that places them almost on a level.with the gods. ,But what had never yet happened . . . waa that a whole people, great and small, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, deliberately immolated itself thus, tor an unseen thing."

There is not a page in this book wliich does not contain some beautifully worded, wholesome philosophy, soma example of truq and convincing pathos, some outburst of fiery and, alas, how justifiable an indignation. I have space to spare but for one more quotation. I take it from the poignantly pathetio avid soul-stirring tribute which the Belgian author pays to the foully murdered and heroic Edith Oarell:

"Sho passed Lice a flash" of light which far one moment illumined" that vast and innumerable multitude (all tho good worn mi in the -world), confirming our confidence and our admiration. She Jias added a final Beauty to the greaf revelations of this war; for tho war, tfhich has taught us many things that mil coyer fade from our moffiory, lins'iiboyo all reTealed us to ourselves. In the first days of the terrible ordeal we did not know for certain how men and women would comport themselves. In vain did wq interrogate the past, hoping thereby to learn something of tho fnturo . .. .

woman was Teady with tho same gift of 6elf, the same patienco, tho saroo sacrifices, tho same greatness of soul, and was about—less perhaps, in blood flian in tears, for it is olwayß on that sorrow ends by falling—to prove herself the rival and the peer of man."

No collection, hoiyovor humble, of books on the war will bo complete without a copy of this truly memorable volume, in whioli Maeterlinck has poured forth his soul's agony, and embalmed and rendered immortal tho lioroic stand taken up by that muoli-suffcrinp; country, which, so long as history bo written, must go down to tho ages as the hcroic champion of tho world's liberties against _ tho foullosfc despotism which tho civilised world lias ever known. (Now Zealand price, Gs.).