V. I. Lenin

To the Clarté Group [1]

November 15, 1922

Dear Friends, I take this opportunity to send you best greetings. I have been seriously
ill, and for over a year I have not been able to see a single one of the
productions of your group. I hope that your organisation “des anciens combattants ” [Verterans —Transcriber ] still exists and
is growing stronger not only numerically, but also spiritually, in the sense
of intensifying and spreading the struggle against imperialist war. It is
worth devoting one's whole life to the struggle against this kind of war; it
is a struggle in which one must be ruthless and chase to the furthermost
corners of the earth all the sophistry that is uttered in its defence.

Best greetings.

Yours,

Lenin

Endnotes

[1] The
Clarté group of progressive writers and cultural workers was
organized by Henri Barbusse in 1919 on the basis of l'Association Républicaine des Anciens Combattants. Similar groups were set up
in other countries, and together they formed the War Veterans International,
whose main motto was: War on war. The Clarté group included
supporters of the Third International—Henri Barbusse, Anatole France,
Paul Vaillant-Couturier—and pacifist writers—Romain Rolland,
Stefan Zweig, H. G. Wells, Thomas Hardy, Upton Sinclair, Jules Romain, and
others. The group published a monthly magazine of the same name (in Paris
from October 1919 to January 1928), which in its first years was quite
popular in France and abroad. However, the ideological disagreements within
the group and its organisational weakness did not permit it to become a
large and influential organization. Soon after Barbusse resigned as editor
(in April 1924), the magazine lost its progressive significance. It ceased
publication in 1928 and the group disintegrated.