FOR AND AGAINST

Peace... We have spoken a lot about peace in recent days, in noble parliamentary speeches....
Peace... It is a very fine word... It is a very grand word... And it is a word that should be sovereign, if men were not insane, if the destiny of men were less cruel... Peace!...

We, at least, are at peace... But, every week, when the illustrated newspapers of Europe and America appear, our eyes immediately fall on images of war, on bloody or savage photographs... So we are still fighting?...
If we are fighting!... And we are fighting over expanses ten times the size of France, and we are fighting in the south, in the north, in all languages, in all worlds. Images of war, images of death, in Spanish Morocco... Images of war, images of death, in China... Images of war, images of death, in Mexico, Georgia, Albania...

This week, it is the Illustration that gives us the image of war... And, this time, the photograph is not tragic, at first sight. It represents the march on the capital of Albania, Tirana, of one of the young leaders of the recent insurrection....
There are no dead, no wounded, in the image... The image is nevertheless striking, desperate... In the middle of a desert of stones and brushwood, a handful of men go at a walking pace... And one feels weighing on these few men all the horrible cursed destiny, all the destiny of war and wars. Vague uniforms, rifles, rough faces, dark eyes, misery already; and it is war that lingers in the middle of the desolate and dried-up plain... It is she that we see, if we look closely at the image... It is she, the prowler, the sneaky, the cruel, the secret, it is she, the viper! They are no longer a few poor anonymous soldiers...

Peace, certainly, is one of the most beautiful words, and the sweetest, and the clearest, and the greatest, that can be pronounced... And we must love peace, and we must want peace, and we must want only peace.... But we must not walk with our eyes to the sky... There is the viper... And we never know where it hides...

Maurice PRAX.