Romain Rolland and Rabindranath Tagore

“When my mind was steeped in the gloom of the thought, that the lesson of the war had been lost, and that people were trying to perpetuate their hatred and anger into the same organised menace for the world which threatened themselves with disaster, your letter came and cheered me with its message of hope. The truths that save us have always been uttered by the few and rejected by the many and have triumphed through their failures. It is enough for me to know that the higher conscience of Europe has been able to assert itself in one of her choicest spirits through the ugly clamours of passionate politics; and I gladly hasten to accept your invitation to join the ranks of those freed souls, who in Europe have conceived the project of a Declaration of Independence of the Spirit.*”

Rabindranath Tagore to Romain Rolland, July 1919

 

*signed among others by: Jane Addams (USA), Henri Barbusse (France), Tolstoy's secretary Pavel Birukov (Russia), Benedetto Croce (Italy), Georges Duhamel (France),
Albert Einstein (Germany), August Forel (Switzerland), Alfred Hermann Fried (Austria),
Hermann Hesse (Germany), Selma Lagerloef (Sweden), Heinrich Mann (Germany),
Frans Masereel (Belgium), Georg Friedrich Nicolai (Germany), Edmond Picard (Belgium), Leonhard Ragaz (Switzerland), Bertrand Russell (England), Fritz von Unruh (Germany),
Henry van de Velde (Belgium) and Stefan Zweig (Austria)