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*Ernst Jünger: German writer who is best known for his account of the First World War, In Stahlgewittern (Storm of Steel).

†Henry de Montherlant: French essayist, novelist, and playwright.

‡Alija Izetbegović: first president of Bosnia and Herzegovina (elected in 1990), in office during the war between the Bosnians and the Serbs, and author of the books Islam Between East and West and The Islamic Declaration.

*The French army mutinies of 1917 took place after the disastrous failure of the Nivelle Offensive in April of that year and involved primarily infantry soldiers who had had enough of trench warfare. The mutinies led to mass arrests, mass trials, and a number of executions. For a long time this was something of a taboo subject in France (so much so that Stanley Kubrick’s film Paths of Glory, released in 1957, was not shown in France until 1975). In a controversial move, those court-martialed were pardoned by French premier Lionel Jospin in 1998.

†Francesco Rosi’s pacifist film Uomini contro (released in 1970), which portrays the follies of war, also set during the First World War (in Italy).

*A collection of short stories by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle (published 1934). The title refers to the Battle of Charleroi, which took place on August 21, 1914.

†Jean Giono: French author whose fiction is infused with pacifism and the themes and values of the Provence countryside.

*Maurice Barrès, French writer, nationalist, and, alongside Charles Maurras, leader of the anti-Dreyfusards during the Dreyfus affair.

*A Norman peasant who killed his mother, sister, and brother and wrote a memoir (1835) while in jail that became the subject of a book by Michel Foucault, Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma sœur et mon frère … Un cas de parricide au XIXe siècle (I, Pierre Rivière, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister and My Brother … A Case of Parricide in the Nineteenth Century).

*René Bousquet and Maurice Papon, high-ranking officials in the Vichy regime, both charged with crimes against humanity in the 1990s.

*Annales: the journal Annales d’histoire économique et sociale.

March 24, 2008

I’m afraid no, dear Bernard-Henri, the problem is that it is not a piece of provocation and I believe I understand Goethe’s maxim exactly as he intended it.

Injustice can, in effect, mean sparing a French (or German) soldier who may be (or may not be; let’s say who probably is) a major criminal.

There is disorder in any case that involves killing someone at random. Because that, may I remind you, was precisely the aim of acts of the Resistance: to spread terror through the occupying army; to ensure that not a single German soldier felt safe in the metro.

Greater disorder in a case where that same soldier (whether German or French) is lynched by a mob—greater disorder, I must point out, simply because in the second case, the death will be that much more disgusting. Although perhaps that is to exaggerate a little; there are always a few clumsy oafs in a crowd, the death blow must come pretty quickly. Well, I say that mostly to reassure myself; the moments preceding the death blow must nevertheless be utterly appalling.

Disorder, too, in the planting of a bomb in a crowded place. Anarchists, Al Qaeda … there are few people, to be honest, in history, few people to justify the act (but many, almost as many as you could want, to carry it out).

No, obviously I don’t like disorder: I am one of those who believe that disorder results in the greatest injustices.

Goethe’s maxim, deep down, is that of all those who believe that the authorities in charge of a situation should make a decision, any decision, be it vague or unjust, rather than leave the last word to the “crowd,” or to the “street”—to the big nasty impulsive animal always ready to pillage and massacre. That of all those haunted by the idea that we are never far from primal savagery, that civilization is merely a veneer. To believe that, one doesn’t even need to be caught up in a civil