Wounded Souls

Albert Camus on Moral Compromise 

Neptune, N.J., 2023.

I suppose this post is mainly for evangelical pastors and Catholic priests, especially the bishops. But it is really for us all. A key aspiration of any fascist regime is to create a state where every individual is morally compromised.

Albert Camus, who wrote the story containing the brief passage transcribed below, started his newspaper career in his native Algeria before moving to Paris shortly before the outbreak of World War II. After the German conquest of France, Camus joined the Resistance and served as editor of the underground newspaper Combat. After the war was over, his career flourished, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. 

I read a lot of Camus when I was in my twenties. I checked, and I still have my copy of Le mythe de Sisyphe on a bookshelf, not far from Marc Bloch's Apologie pour l'histoire ou metier d'historien, which begins with the immortal sentence, "Papa, explique-moi donc a quoi sert l'histoire?" (Roughly translated, "Daddy, what is the point of history?")  Professor Bloch wrote this little book during World War II. He also joined the French Resistance; he was arrested on March 8, 1944, and on the night of June 16, shortly after D-Day, the Gestapo murdered him. 

Returning from the digression: Until recently, I had not been aware of the piece that contains the following story. It's in a little Modern Library collection of some of his shorter pieces. Camus made the selections himself shortly before his death in a car crash in 1960. The story is dated December 1943; in a brief introductory note Camus says that it was published in issue number three of Les cahiers de Liberation at the beginning of 1944 (p. ix); in this note (p. x) he also writes, "I loathe none but executioners." (To see the original article, click here. The Bibliotheque nationale gives issue three the date of February 1, 1944. Camus signs the article "Louis Neuville.")  

One day I noticed this little book on my wife's bureau. I asked her where it came from, and she said she'd found it on one of our bookshelves. Neither one of us has any idea how it got on that shelf. A few days later I noticed the book was still sitting on her bureau and asked her if she was reading it. Her answer, roughly translated, was "Why don't you read it?" And so I did.

The following little snippet, on pages 11-13 of the book, gave me an insight into the reality of a fascist regime that I simply had not had before: 

"Let me tell you this story. Before dawn, from a prison I know, somewhere in France, a truck driven by armed soldiers is taking eleven Frenchmen to the cemetery where you are to shoot them. Out of the eleven, five or six have really done something: a tract, a few meetings, something that showed their refusal to submit. The five or six, sitting motionless inside the truck, are filled with fear, but, if I may say so, it is an ordinary fear, the kind that grips every man facing the unknown, a fear that is not incompatible with courage. The others have done nothing. This hour is harder for them because they are dying by mistake or as victims of a kind of indifference. Among them is a child of sixteen. You know the faces of our adolescents; I don't want to talk about them. The boy is dominated by fear; he gives in to it shamelessly. Don't smile scornfully; his teeth are chattering. But you have placed beside him a chaplain, whose task is to alleviate somewhat the agonizing hour of waiting. I believe I can say that for men who are about to be killed a conversation about a future life is of no avail. It is too hard to believe that the lime-pit is not the end of all. The prisoners in the truck are silent. The chaplain turns toward the child huddled in his corner. He will understand better. The child answers, clings to the chaplain's voice, and hope returns. In the mutest of horrors sometimes it is enough for a man to speak; perhaps he is going to fix everything. 'I haven't done anything,' says the child. 'Yes,' says the chaplain, 'but that's not the question now. You must get ready to die properly.' 'It can't be possible that no one understands me.' 'I am your friend and perhaps I understand you. But it is late. I shall be with you and the Good Lord will be too. You'll see how easy it is.' The child turns his head away. The chaplain speaks of God. Does the child believe in him? Yes, he believes. Hence he knows that nothing is as important as the peace awaiting him. But that very peace is what frightens the child. 'I am your friend,' the chaplain repeats. 

"The others are silent. He must think of them. The chaplain leans toward the silent group, turning his back on the child for a moment. The truck is advancing slowly with a sucking sound over the road, which is damp with dew. Imagine the gray hour, the early-morning smell of men, the invisible countryside suggested by sounds of teams being harnessed or the cry of a bird. The child leans against the canvas covering, which gives a little. He notices a narrow space between it and the truck body. He could jump if he wanted. The chaplain has his back turned and, up front, the soldiers are intent on finding their way in the dark. The boy doesn't stop to think; he tears the canvas loose, slips into the opening, and jumps. His fall is hardly heard, the sound of running on the road, then nothing more. He is in the fields, where his steps can't be heard. But the flapping of the canvas, the sharp, damp morning air penetrating the truck make the chaplain and the prisoners turn around. For a second the priest stares at those men looking at him in silence. A second in which the man of God must decide whether he is on the side of the executioners or on the side of the martyrs in keeping with his vocation. But he has already knocked on the partition separating him from his comrades. 'Achtung!' The alarm is given. Two soldiers leap into the truck and point their guns at the prisoners. Two others leap to the ground and start running across the fields. The chaplain, a few paces from the truck, standing on the asphalt, tries to see them through the fog. In the truck the men can only listen to the sounds of the chase, the muffled exclamations, a shot, silence, then the sound of voices again coming nearer, finally a hollow stamping of feet. The child is brought back. He wasn't hit, but he stopped surrounded in the enemy fog, suddenly without courage, forsaken by himself. He is carried rather than led by his guards. He has been beaten somewhat, but not much. The most important lies ahead. He doesn't look at the chaplain or anyone else. The priest has climbed up beside the driver. An armed soldier has taken his place in the truck. Thrown into one of the corners, the child doesn't cry. Between the canvas and the floor he watches the road slip away again and sees in its surface a reflection of the dawn. 

"I am sure you can very well imagine the rest." 

See also A Teacher's Dilemma, A Lesson From the Berlin Wall.