The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn A Spokesman for Western Culture IN MY November 16 column, I wrote about France (University of Michigan, $8.75), Professor Albert Guerard's fine new history....
...We vote every two years on national issues, we glance at a few items of political news, we listen for a few minutes to a radio reporter and feel as if we have done our share...
...There was something especially personal about that article...
...Now, the life of our ancestors was made up, like our own, of sickness and health, of labor, repose and pleasure, of ambitions and frustrations, of love and quarrels, and, in a degree singularly difficult to measure, of wonder, awe and worship...
...I smiled now and then as I thought how he would react to this or that remark I made...
...Those two paragraphs may well have been among the last writings of our great historian-philosopher...
...Others are conspicuously romantic and idealistic in the extreme...
...But his death came to me as a great shock, for I had admired him for many years...
...And whatever was good in other nations he sought to encourage and develop...
...Man's chief concern never was to support or overthrow governments...
...He was called liberal and humanist, but neither word was quite good enough for him...
...It preserves, and often has to recapture, the life of former days...
...I had written it with the man himself in mind...
...Political events have their roots in civilisation and culture, the sum total of a people's activities...
...He was 79 years of age and had worked tirelessly up to the end...
...At the same time, he appreciated and did what he could to interpret the great German and Russian statesmen and men of letters in France and America...
...These are the essentials, under the changing pageant of customs...
...They will do more to give a picture of the mind of this man than anything I can say: "History is the conscious, methodical, critical memory of mankind...
...He did his best to out-think and out-argue the crude and brutal and backward-looking...
...and in all this, governments play a secondary part Even today, educated as we deem ourselves to our civic responsibilities, most of us give little time and less thought to public affairs...
...Detached from these realities, the annals of courts, armies and parliaments would be futile...
...The strivings and rivalries of individuals and groups would be of little significance if back of their speeches, votes, intrigues, revolutions and wars, we could not discern great issues...
...Even that small part, closely examined, is not sufficient unto itself...
...Two centuries ago, Voltaire saw with matchless clarity that if history is to be intelligent, it must be all-embracing...
...In his thought and action he combined the life-stream of France, Britain and the U.S...
...France is a strange and wonderful country...
...Some of those whom you naturally regard as its representatives are grossly narrow, crude and materialistic...
...He had passed away in his sleep...
...He loved France, but was devoted to making France more lovable...
...Perhaps he had better be described as an international intellectual...
...certainly not the highest and best...
...The currents ran in a deep union...
...Those issues become political...
...There was nothing either showy or shabby about the meeting of civilizations in this man's thought and feeling...
...Since then he participated loyally and enthusiastically in the life of this country...
...He hated Hitler and Mussolini, but he also despised all French dictators and would-be dictators...
...Professor Guerard never accepted the lightly-flung charge that Americans are a race of crude money-chasers and power-worshipers...
...When he called man a political animal, Aristotle meant gregarious or sociable...
...It is hard to find a word for such a man...
...Often in his writing the love and understanding of the three countries would reach natural and eloquent expression...
...Patriotism — nationalism — was never enough for him...
...In his mind, this country, along with England and France, is in the great liberal, law-abiding, justice-seeking tradition...
...More than anyone else I have known, he represented the whole of Western culture...
...Born in Paris in 1880, he studied in England and came to the United States in 1906...
...The books which he wrote are part of our precious democratic heritage...
...So political history, which for ages held undisputed sway, records but a small part of our collective experience...
...My reason tells me that he had lived a full and useful life, that he had come to a time when departure was to be expected...
...but they arise from the very life of the people...
...And then—on the very day when my little report saw the light—the New York Times carried the news that the great French writer and scholar was no more...
...I trust that the publishers of France will not object if I copy the first page of that fine volume...
...It is the presence of such issues that transmutes the crank, the busybody, the troublemaker, the bandit, into a historical character...
...It was our good fortune to have him living and working among us...
...they are problems of religion or economics, of human dignity, social status, collective security and welfare...
Vol. 42 • November 1959 • No. 44
