The Remaking of a Mind: A Soldier's Thoughts on War and Reconstruction
By , First Lieutenant, Belgian Army. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1919. xv +289 pp. $1.75.
THE external aspects of the Great War have been richly recorded in narratives ranging from epic dignity to vivid gossip. Intimate personal stories have not been lacking, and humanity is the better for the possession of beautiful books like Croire, A Crusader of France, and the Journals of Giosué Borsi. Now come reflections of broader experience: books showing social and political philosophies transformed in the crucible of a flaming world. Among these, warm welcome should be accorded to Henry de Man’s The Remaking of a Mind. The ‘mind’ of M. de Man is one formed in the school of international Socialism, and active before the war in its councils. Hermann Müller, Liebknecht, Camille Huysmans, Vandervelde, pass familiarly across the pages, and no American bourgeois can read the book without gaining new respect for the calibre of these men.
Such is the background; the experience starts on August 3, 1914, when M. de Man, internationalist and pacifist, found himself a volunteer in the Belgian army, fighting against Germany,— in whose army he had more friends than in any other, and of whose methods he had been a recognized champion,— in defense of a native land whose faults he can still discuss with cool impartiality. The hardships of the first months brought him curious happiness. Then came a growing distress and reaction, as 'the war developed primarily into a contest of power between the British and the German empires,’ and the alliance with Tsarist Russia quickened doubts about making democracy safe for the world. Nor was he helped in his crisis by kindly romanticism concerning war. Ruthlessly he pricks our illusions as to the good effects of its discipline and sacrifice; terrible, true pages are inspired by his conviction that its moral results are all but unrelieved evil, and his apprehension lest Europe expiate in bitterness the late awakening of the lust of the brute which to his thought is a necessary military virtue. Anguish of mind, however, never weakened M. de Man in performing his duties as a soldier; his narrative abounds in heroism, incidentally implied.
How out of stern thinking he won renewed faith in the righteousness of the war, the book itself must tell. The turning-point is found in his escape from dogmatism, Marxian or other, in his recognition that struggle must be judged and action determined, not by the causes of events, but by their progressive revelation. lie has emerged a Socialist still; but his Socialism, flexible and humane, is not the faith in proletarian dictatorship. Moreover, the war has carried him, as it has carried most radicals, beyond belief in state ownership as a panacea. More significant still, he no longer sees Capitalism as an enemy to be fought, but as a heritage to be used; and while he watches with satisfaction the balance of power passing to Labor, lie stresses Labor’s need for gradual training in administrative problems, and seeks to discover some synthesis by which the initiative and efficiency furnished by competition may be fused with industrial democracy. It is in America that he thinks the problem most likely to be solved. Americans may sigh when they read Ins glowing praise, his identification of our country with the conscience of the world; but they must rejoice too, as they realize the relief arid clarification brought to the liberal mind of Europe by Wilson’s addresses in 1917, and the enthusiasm with which our civilization inspires this internationally minded idealist, who now purposes to throw in his lot with us.
M. de Man has written a noble book: full of large charity born of much pondering; temperate and keen; marked by insight, and by stark sincerity.
by V. D. S.