Scientists

If August 1914 is correctly viewed as the start of Europe’s 20th-century “fundamental catastrophe,” then this expression is essentially linked to the collapse of the Artists’ and Scholars’ Internationale, which happened almost from one day to the next. It was clear to all its members, as soon as war broke out, that this opened up a gulf that would be slow to close. No one expressed this so clearly as the French philosopher Henri Bergson, who before the war had had good relations with G…