:

_"Are they," he asks, "going to bury Ulenspiegel the soul, Nele the
heart of mother Flanders? Sleep, perhaps, but die, no! Come,
Nele."_

_And he departed, singing his sixth song. But no one knows where he
sang his last._

VII. LETTER TO MY CRITICS[21]

_November 17, 1914._

There has reached me, after much delay, at Geneva, where I am engaged on
the International work of Prisoners of War, the echo of attacks against
me in certain newspapers, roused by the articles that I have published
in the _Journal de Geneve_, or rather by two or three passages
arbitrarily chosen from those articles (for they themselves are scarcely
known to anybody in France). My best reply will be to collect what I
have written and publish it in Paris. I would not add a word of
explanation, for there is not a line that I did not think it my right
and my duty to set down. Moreover, I think that there is better work to
do at this moment than to defend oneself; there are others to defend,
the thousands of victims who are fighting in France. Time devoted to
polemics is like a theft from these unfortunates, from these prisoners
and families, whose hands seeking each other across space we are trying
to unite at Geneva.

But not content with attacking me personally, they have attacked ideas
and a cause which I believe to be that of the true France; and since my
friends expect me to defend these thoughts which are also theirs, I
profit by the hospitality which is offered me to reply distinctly and
frankly in good French.

I have published four articles: a letter to Gerhart Hauptmann, written
the day after the devastation of Louvain, "Above the Battle," "The
Lesser of Two Evils," and "Inter Arma Caritas." In these four articles I
have stated that of all the imperialisms which are the scourge of the
world, Prussian Military Imperialism is the worst. I have declared that
it is the enemy of European liberty, the enemy of Western civilization,
the enemy of Germany herself, and that it must be destroyed. On this
point I imagine we are agreed.

To what do my critics take exception? Without entering into the
discussion of certain points of detail, such as the appeal made by the
Allies to the forces of Asia and Africa of which I disapprove, and
still disapprove because I see in it a near and grave danger for Europe
and for the Allies themselves, and because this danger is already
materializing in threats of disturbanc