Call For a Civilian Truce From Seventy Years Ago

“I shall speak this evening  not to divide but to unite … (I) have to admit that everything stands in the way of such a wish … almost deprived of the right to speak even before anyone knows what (I) intend to say. …

“But it seemed to me possible … to come and echo among you a purely humanitarian appeal … addressed to both camps in the hope they will accept a truce insofar as innocent civilians are concerned. …

“To contrast positions that have been defined over and over and even distorted would, for the

moment, merely add to the weight of insults and hatreds under which our country is stifling and struggling. But one thing at least unites all of us – and that is our love of our common soil, and our anguish. …

“Whatever the ancient and deep origins of the … tragedy, one fact remains: no cause justifies the death of the innocent. Throughout history, men, unable to suppress war, have made an effort to limit its effects. … Such a necessity seems even more urgent in a struggle that in many ways has the appearance of a fratricidal war that makes no distinction between men and women, between soldier and worker. …

“Solidarity is inevitable, in death as in life, in destruction as in hope. … whatever kills one side kills the other too, each blaming the other and justifying his violences by the opponent’s violence. The eternal question as to who was first responsible loses all meaning then. And because they could no longer manage to live together, two populations, similar and different at the same time but equally worthy of respect, are condemned to die together, with rage in their hearts. …

“Men must live together at the crossroads where history put them. They can do so if they will take a few steps toward each other in an open confrontation. Then our differences ought to help us instead of dividing us … I believe only in differences, not uniformity. First of all, differences are the roots without which the tree of liberty, the sap of creation and civilization, dries up.

“Nevertheless, we stand facing each other as if frozen, as if struck with a paralysis that can be cured only by brutal nad brief outbursts of violence. This is because the struggle has assumed an irrevocable aspect that rouses on both sides towering indignations and passions aspiring to outdo the other. …

“Locked up in rancor and hatred, neither can listen to the other. Any proposal, whichever side it comes from, is received with distrust, distorted at once and made unserviceable. We are gradually getting caught in  a tangle of old and new accusations, of fixed vendettas, of relentless rancors alternating with each other. …

“If our proposal has a chance of being accepted … we may hope someday to break altogether the block of hatred and crazy demands in which we are all caught. Then the various policies would have a hearing and each individual would again have the right to defend his own convictions and to explain his difference. …

“I would like to convince you that the spell can be broken, that there is only an illusion of impotence, that strength of heart, intelligence, and courage are enough to stop fate and sometimes reverse it.”

Albert Camus, addressing the French and Algerian conflict in a speech in Algiers, February, 1956.