Note 77 — III The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal

Barrès wrote in 1898: ‘The professors are still arguing about justice and truth, when every self-respecting man knows that he must limit himself to inquiring if there is justice in the relations between two given men, at a given time, under specified circumstances.’ That is exactly what the Germany of 1914 said in answer to those who brought accusations against her. Not a single moralist in France before Barrès—not even de Maistre or Bonald—would have asserted that ‘every self-respecting man’ can conceive of no justice but one specially arranged for the circumstances.