Face of War: Guilt

AN END TO GLORY (154 pp.)--Pierre-Henri Simon--Harper ($3).

This is a novel only because French Author Pierre-Henri Simon chooses to call it one. Actually, it is an antiwar tract and one of the most eloquent in recent years. It is the author's bitter J'accuse, telling all Frenchmen and the world that France, first in Indo-China and now in Algeria, has given its soldiers ignoble roles in shameful wars. Says the hero's friend: "You can't say that war's our industry, for it nearly always costs us more than we get out of it; but it's our luxury and our passion."

These thoughts, with all their eloquence --and all their exaggeration--express the theme of the book, which is mostly a monologue in which one dedicated professional soldier slowly, agonizingly discovers that he can no longer fight his country's colonial wars. Jean de Larsan comes from a family of soldiers. Like many a French officer, he saw war as a duty, a form of chivalry, a mystique in which obedience was the key to honor. Now he finds that he can no longer obey. He had been a genuine hero, one of the few French officers who fought the Germans to the finish. Escaped from prison camp, he went on to fight until the end of World War II and believed his commander, who assured him: "Come on, Larsan, my boy, don't doubt France: there are ignoble forms of war in which she'll never indulge."

Anger & Pride. Then came Indo-China. There, once questioning an intelligent, Paris-educated national who was now fighting for the Communist Viet Minh, Larsan heard a criticism of France that was hard to deny: it was "too generous with us and too hard . . . too intelligent and too stupid." France was perfectly willing to pass on its culture, but Frenchmen were never really willing to accept natives as equals, and so, as in all colonial rule, "a moment comes when there's too much accumulated anger on one side and too hard a carapace of pride on the other; and then a trial of strength becomes inevitable."

Indo-China taught Larsan that it is better for a soldier "not to know too much of what goes on below the surface," but his own trouble as a soldier was that he had become a thinking and feeling man. His personal crisis came in Algeria, where he found war no longer an honorable profession but a vicious police action. He conceded that the rebels were murderous, but could not justify to himself committing murder in vengeance. When he sees his own men wiping out whole villages of unarmed civilians, he protests; by that time, it is perfectly plain to his superiors that, with all his bravery, Larsan is not the man for the job. With true French civility, his commanding officer accepts his resignation.

Honey & Sweetness. Author Simon knows well the dilemma that France and the West face--that the Communist intelligentsia "approve any crime, if the infallibility of the Red Pope is in question," while they eagerly denounce the West's slightest misdemeanor. In this situation, a counterstrategy is hard to find. In the end, the author, like his hero, decides that the highest morality is the individual's. But if all soldiers become Larsans, there would be no armies. His act of conscience is understandable and moving, but it offers no real answer to the problem buried in An End to Glory: How can evil be met without adopting the weapons of evil?

Larsan's answer, and an unconvincing one, is familiar in France; it is essentially the same as Voltaire's advice to his countrymen in Candide to cultivate their own garden. Says Larsan: "I think I shall even start keeping bees again; the Larsan hills are rich in wild flowers and used to be famous for their bees. I shall sell honey and sweetness to the world . . . You see, I'm a real deserter."

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