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The
Wrack of the Storm

BY

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

_Translated by_

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1916

COPYRIGHT, 1916
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

The reader taking up this volume will, for the first time in the work
of one who hitherto had cursed no man, find words of hatred and
malediction. I would gladly have avoided them, for I hold that he who
takes upon himself to write pledges himself to say nothing that can
derogate from the respect and love which we owe to all men. I have had
to utter these words; and I am as much surprised as saddened at what I
have been constrained to say by the force of events and of truth. I
loved Germany and numbered friends there, who now, dead or living, are
alike dead to me. I thought her great and upright and generous; and to
me she was ever kindly and hospitable. But there are crimes that
obliterate the past and close the future. In rejecting hatred I
should have shown myself a traitor to love.

I tried to lift myself above the fray; but, the higher I rose, the
more I saw of the madness and the horror of it, of the justice of one
cause and the infamy of the other. It is possible that one day, when
time has wearied remembrance and restored the ruins, wise men will
tell us that we were mistaken and that our standpoint was not lofty
enough; but they will say it because they will no longer know what we
know, nor will they have seen what we have seen.

MAURICE MAETERLINCK.

NICE, 1916.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

The present volume contains, in the chronological order in which they
were produced, all the essays published and all the speeches delivered
by M. Maeterlinck since the beginning of the war, upon which, as will
be perceived, each one of them has a direct bearing. They are printed
as written; and they throw an interesting light upon the successive
phases of the author's psychology during the Titanic and hideous
struggle that has affected the mental attitude of us all.

_In Italy_ forms the preface to M. Jules Destree's book, _En Italie
avant la guerre