Above the Battle

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About this book

Above the Battle assigns armies the protection of their native soil and thinkers the defense of their country's thought. The argument warns that thinkers who subordinate thought to their people's passions risk betraying the spirit, even if they become useful instruments of passion. The account of education describes art as encouraging love for a people's genius and science as encouraging belief in the unity of reason.

The discussion names Walt Whitman and Tolstoi among those who chant universal brotherhood in joy and suffering. The speaker says that the arrival of war did not create a duty to deny the thoughts on which he had been brought up. The discussion quotes Maximilian Harden's assertion that might creates right and condemns the effect of pride and struggle on German intelligence.

About the author

Romain Rolland

Romain Rolland (1866-1944) was a French novelist, dramatist, and essayist awarded the 1915 Nobel Prize in Literature. A committed pacifist and humanist, he is remembered for the epic novel cycle Jean-Christophe and for his outspoken opposition to the nationalism of the First World War.