Vraiment vrai
Cahiers Nivernais
My dear Péguy,
I have the pleasure of announcing to you the birth of the Cahiers Nivernais.
Politics is a fine thing. It is noble and good to be a radical socialist, to organize electoral meetings, to draft programs, to found committees to support a candidacy. Fine personal polemics also have their charm, and when adversaries have reciprocally covered each other in mud, it is a fine spectacle. The only trouble is that all of this may not actually advance things.
A certain number of young men had been making these reflections to themselves. They would have preferred to the electoral din a persevering and disinterested propaganda that would have presented only ideas and facts, that would have aimed more at moral education than at electoral victories.
They could have gone on making all these reflections to themselves for a long time. Common action was impossible for them: they did not know one another.
It so happened that a man brought them together, who said to himself: “These young men are unaware of one another; they must be introduced.”
So he sent us all invitation cards, called, I believe, summonses, and brought us together.
This man was the recruitment commandant of Nevers, who summoned his reservists for their twenty-eight days of service.
It was therefore at the barracks, at the table of the canteen keeper, Madame Garnier, that eight or ten men of the Nièvre, men of study and good will, made one another’s acquaintance. They realized they had ideas in common, similar inclinations. They regretted not having known each other sooner, but at least agreed not to lose sight of one another, and to try to act together.
During a training march in which I was fulfilling with honor and fidelity the important functions of communications man, the idea came to me of founding here something analogous to the cahiers.
Two friends who at section school happened to be in the base file reflected on the idea, approved it, and it was while posted on grand guard duty that, the idea definitively adopted, we moved to execution.
A collection furnished the initial funds — and here is what was decided:
We will found a small review, monthly at least at the outset, written by men of the Nièvre, treating general questions from a local perspective, and addressed to our compatriots.
Outside the Nièvre, we will address ourselves to Nivernais socialists, libertarians, or simply independents, whom their occupations have led to leave the region.
In this review, we will study labor conditions in the Nivernais, and will begin with monographs on the various unions. We will try to bring some understanding among the good-willed people involved in popular education here. Finally, all of us deeply attached to our region, we will try, if possible, to restore some intellectual life to the area. — It will be forbidden to discuss local politics.
As concerns you, I ask you, in the name of my comrades, whether you authorize us to borrow the name of the cahiers, and to publish Cahiers Nivernais. The name is perfect, but, of course, we will choose another if this borrowing would trouble you.
To help us find the Nivernais of Paris who can assist us — were it only with their sympathy — we ask you to direct them to M. Dunois-Catonné, 33, rue de Paris, in Nevers, editorial secretary.
M. Emmanuel Defert, 45, boulevard des Batignolles, will establish relations with the Group of Nivernais of Paris.
André Lucien Dalluy
We hope that the cahiers nivernais will be born and live just, true, useful, prosperous, free, that they will work in solidarity with us, but that they will be free of us as well.
The Manager: CHARLES PÉGUY