Romain Rolland - Pierre and Luce French Nobel Laureate Romain
Rolland was one of the great pacifists of the early twentieth
century. He spoke out against World War I, then known as the
Great War, and he wrote texts in support of pacifist movements,
and he created novelistic treatments of pacifists struggling
with their beliefs in the midst of nations ravenous for war. He
did all this at great personal expense to himself, both in his
career and as a person. Pierre and Luce, written in 1920
alongside the brilliant anti-war manifesto, Clerambault, is a
firm indictment of war and the unbearable loss of potential it
causes. Pierre comes from a well-to-do family and his brother,
whom he adores, is off fighting against the Germans. He cannot
understand this – he hears the propaganda of the war effort, but
it washes over him as insincere. Pierre thinks that, It is
nothing to undergo pain, it is nothing to die, if only one can
see a reason for it. Sacrifice is a good thing when one
understands why it is made. But what