[PACIFISME] Demain N°3 de la Première année - 15 Mars 1916

First edition of this issue of the pacifist journal founded by the socialist and anarchist activist Henri Guilbeaux.

Contributions by Henri Guilbeaux "A quelques pharisiens" and "La diplomatie secrète", Jean Debrit "Une réforme de la presse ?", L. de Wiskovatoff "Lettre à M. d'Annunzio" and "Lettres aux journalistes", Gustave Thiesson "Le peintre Gustave Courbet en 1870-71"...

Journalist for politically engaged and activist periodicals, editor-in-chief of L’Assiette au Beurre under the pseudonym James Burkley, socialist and anarchist militant, Henri Guilbeaux became friends with Stefan Zweig in 1911 and moved among German intellectuals who supported dialogue with France. Rejecting the idea of the “Union sacrée” in July 1914 and the anti-German fervour, he met Romain Rolland and launched the review Demain in 1916, which became the literary organ of French intellectuals exiled in Switzerland. This rare pacifist periodical, published while the Great War was raging, was banned from circulation in France.

“While others kept silence, while we ourselves hesitated and looked twice at what we should or should not do, he charged ahead with resolve — and Guilbeaux’s enduring merit will remain that he founded and led Demain, the only truly demanding anti-war review of the First World War — a document every reader should revisit if they really wish to understand the intellectual currents of that era.

He gave us what we needed: a central organ for national and international discussion in the very midst of war. The fact that Rolland joined him determined the review’s significance, for thanks to his moral authority and his network of contacts, he could bring him the most precious contributors from Europe, America, and India; moreover, the Russian revolutionaries still exiled — Lenin, Trotsky and Lunacharsky — placed their trust in Guilbeaux’s extremism and wrote regularly for Demain. Thus for twelve to twenty months there was no journal in the world more interesting or more independent. Had it survived the war, it might perhaps have exercised a decisive influence on public opinion.” (S. Zweig, The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European)