ABSTRACT
Romain Rolland was disengaged during the Dreyfus Affair and partially engaged during the campaign for a people's theater. Romain Rolland increasingly disassociated himself from Peguy's brand of nationalism and Catholic revival. On the eve of World War I, Romain Rolland seriously entertained the idea of inaugurating an international review. For Romain Rolland, European war meant civil war, the unnecessary but deadly duel between misguided brothers, exacerbated by the deployment of new scientific and technological weaponry. Above the Battle was Romain Rolland's refusal to bend to the considerable pressures of the historical moment, including the mass uncritical support for the "Sacred Union." Romain Rolland's ideal intellectual served as a moral guide especially to untutored youth and to misguided intellectuals. Romain Rolland's relationship with Henri Guilbeaux illustrated the tenuousness of his connection to the revolutionary-left Zimmer-waldians and underscored the political limits of his antiwar dissent.
