The Springtime of Peace

Maoriland Worker, Volume 12, Issue 303, 20 December 1922, Page 6

The Springtime of Peace

By JEAN LEON^AURES.

(Editor of ami leader of the French Socialist aiiov-ement. 1859----1914; probably- the most eminent, of Socialist parliamentarians; assassinated by a fanatic at the outbreak of the war with German*.- The following is the peroration of a speech delivered at an Anglo-French parliamentary dinner, 1903.) The Majesty of suffering labour is no longer dumb: it speaks now with a million temgues, and it asks the nations not to increase tlie ills which crush down the workers by an added burden of mistrust and hate, by wars and the expectation of wars. Gentlemen, you may ask how and when and in what form this longing for international concord will express itself to some purpose. ... I can only answer you by a parable which I gleaned by fragments from the legends of Merlin, tlie magician, from the Arabian Nights, and from a book that is still unr.ead. •' Once upon.a time there was an enchanted' Xorest. "it had .been stripped of all verdure, it was wild and forbidding. The trees, tossed by the bitter winter wind that never ceased, struck one another with a sound as of breaking swords. When at last, after a long series of freezing nights and sunless days that seemed like nights, all living things trembled, with the first call of spring , ,., the, trees became afraid of the sap that, began.to move within them. And the solitary and bitter spirit that had its dwelling within the hard baric-of each of them said very low, with "a shudder that came up from the deepest roots: "Have a'care! If thou art the first, to risk yielding to tlio wooing of the new season;, if thou art the .first to turn thy lanceltke buds into blossoms and leaves, their delicate raiment will be torn by the rough blows of.the trees that have boon slower to put forth leaves and flowers." And the proud and melancholy spirit that was shut up within the great Druidical oak spoke to its. tree, with peculiar insistence f "And wilt thou, too., .seek to join the universal lovefeast, tliOi'. whose noble, branches have been broken by the storm?" TliiJSj in t-iie enchanted forest, mutual distrust drove back the sap, and prolonged the death-like winter even ••after, t^e call of spring". ■-••■-.;• What happened at last? By. what mysterious influence-was the-.--.grim charm broken? Did some tree find the courage to ■ act alone,'like those April poplars that break into- a,, sliower of •vei'drn-e, and give the, signal 'for a renewal' of all;,life? Or did a warmer and more life-giving. beam start the sap moving in all the trees at once? For lo! Jn a,.single, day the whole forest burst farth-. into: amag- :- nificent flowering and peace.