Press Review

Against Violence

From an article by Mr. Henry Béranger in Actualités, on the S.D.N.

The abuse of force can, for a time, create an illusion. An order of command can reign under a regime of terror. The silence of constraint can temporarily borrow the figure of a freedom that is meditating. These are only masks without duration.

But, one will object, the Revolutions of France and England were not made without violence or without terror - Certainly, but it is not what they did best or most lasting. The example of the hangings of Cromwell or the guillotinades of Robespierre is in no way to be recommended. Both led to a military Caesarism that collapsed after having done much harm and shed much innocent blood. What was true and immortal in the revolutionary spirit of the English seventeenth century and the French eighteenth century was, on the contrary, the invincible spirit of tolerance, and it is precisely this that has endured.

Add that violence is always an excessively costly means of governing. For violence means destruction, and everyone knows that all destruction must be paid for. Man destroys more easily than he builds, but his destructions cost even more than his reconstructions.

Perhaps the means of freedom are slower and appear less effective. But this is only an appearance that only the mediocre are fooled by. Only free examination and tolerance can ensure lasting progress. Any return to violence is a regression of humanity. Any practice of tolerance is a social advancement

It is a new honor for our Nation that the Head of his State solemnly repeated it at a time when the genius of Anatole France was about to join in immortality those of Montaigne, Voltaire and Victor Hugo.