A General Instructor

The right-thinking press overwhelms with sarcasm our friend General Verraux, who took part in the pacifist meeting in Herne and spoke out in favour of general disarmament in these terms: "First of all, we must put an end to hatred and replace the barracks with schools. The utopia of peace will then become a reality."

A speech that an evening newspaper followed with this comment:
"If interest were, as is claimed, at the basis of all human actions, we would have to think that in asking for the replacement of the barracks with schools, General Verraux, now retired, is seeking a position as a teacher."

If General Verraux has this ambition, he should be congratulated. Not that his promotion to the position of teacher can serve his particular interest: a teacher is much less well paid, much less well decorated, much less well dressed than a general, and there is a monstrous injustice there.

But, by becoming a teacher, General Verraux would brilliantly serve the general interest... First, it would make one less general and one more teacher. Now the teacher's job is to make men, and the general's job is to destroy them.

The pedagogue, patiently, obscurely, applies himself to awakening the intelligences and forming the consciences of the schoolchildren. But, when the little ones have become big, it is the general who takes charge of them, and it does not drag: he annihilates the minds under a discipline of respectful stupefaction and mechanical submission, he makes the hair fall under the egalitarian clippers, and soon the bodies, accustomed to vertical alignment, are no longer good for anything but being gloriously aligned horizontally in some improvised cemetery.

And then General Verraux, having become a teacher, would give the admirable example (what am I saying? he already gives it) of the converted warrior who becomes an apostle. Thus Saint Paul was in the cavalry when his fall on the road to Damascus enlightened him about his true vocation and enabled him to teach the nations.

All the friends of General Verraux know his deep sensitivity and his high intelligence. These two defects are incompatible with the military state. General Verraux played in the army the role of superior witness. He sought to understand. He understood... And, when we see such a man bear witness against war, we must bow as we bowed when we saw, during the Dreyfus affair, senior officers break their swords to bear witness in favor of justice, that is to say against the army.

General Verraux, General Percin and General Sauret showed courage in the manner of Polyeucte and Clovis, by burning what they had worshiped and by demolishing bloodthirsty idols. They showed personal courage, whereas ordinarily the courage of generals is the courage of others.

Obviously, they are not giving proof of good camaraderie when they talk about eliminating war. They act a bit like doctors who would talk about eliminating disease and replacing hospitals with dance halls... Generals, like doctors, live from death, but by considering death in a more glamorous, if not more advantageous, aspect.

I had the opportunity, a few months ago, to dine with an old colonel (but then, a classic colonel), whom an excellent cigar and a few glasses of liqueur incited, towards the end of the meal, to general ideas and humanitarian considerations.

War... obviously, war... Phew!... There are families... Peace?... Of course, peace... Peace is very nice. But, if there were no more war, there would be no more army... Follow me carefully... If there were no more army, what would become of all these officers, follow me carefully, all these officers who are in the directory and who worked to become officers? And what would the families say who deprived themselves so that the officers could study before becoming officers?

You are right, my colonel. And what would become of the military tailors who make uniforms, and the industrialists who make weapons and munitions, and the manufacturers of artificial arms and articulated legs?...

You see, you see... concluded the colonel, looking at me with a benevolent eye in which one could read all the same the surprise of finding in a civilian an intelligence that he had never suspected.

G. DE LA FOUCHARDIÈRE.