La délation aux Droits de l'Homme
Denunciation at the League of the Rights of Man
Charles Péguy
TEXTS FORMING A DOSSIER
We published in our previous editions and in our first five series, 1900-1904, so great a number of documents, of texts forming dossiers, of information and commentaries, in particular, among civil servants, for the liberties of the teaching staff: and these documents, texts, information, dossiers and commentaries were so considerable that we cannot think of giving here even the most succinct statement of them; to know what has appeared in the first five series of the cahiers, it suffices to send a money order for five francs to M. Andre Bourgeois, administrator of the cahiers, 8, rue de la Sorbonne, ground floor, Paris, fifth arrondissement; one will receive in return the brief analytical catalogue, 1900-1904, of our first five series.
This catalogue was precisely established to give, as much as was possible, an image in brief, an abridgment, an idea, abbreviated but complete, of our previous editions and of our first five series; everything is classified there in order; it suffices to read it to find, in their place, the references requested.
Our longtime subscribers know, our new subscribers will soon recognize that our cahiers are first of all cahiers of information and dossiers, of texts and documents.
I take the liberty of addressing our new subscribers very often since the beginning of this sixth series because the number of our subscribers is growing very regularly; we receive new subscriptions very regularly; and on the other hand I am perfectly aware that to enter today directly into the work we have been continuing for more than five years, it takes from subscribers who come to us a certain personal effort and much good will.
Our cahiers are first of all cahiers of information and dossiers, of texts and documents; but it is singularly difficult to constitute, if not from day to day, at least from fortnight to fortnight, a corpus of the texts and documents that are truly worth preserving; in the perpetual overflow of bad or false documents, and, what is much more serious, half-true, half-false, partly true, partly false documents, in the flood of insignificant texts, in the deluge and the diluvion of insanities, vanities, truths all mixed together, nothing is as difficult, when one proposes to constitute a corpus that may become a serious monument, as to distinguish from passing documents the lasting documents, and to measure, so to speak, the value of duration, the reach forward and in depth, the value of depth, and the depth of insertion of the texts brought by the daily flood.
We have said several times that our cahiers wished to bring a perpetual contribution to contemporary history, to record events as they occurred; it is therefore not surprising that perpetually we encounter the difficulty proper to contemporary history; it is in effect the capital difficulty, and perhaps the capital contrariety of modern and contemporary history, this accumulation of texts, this perpetual bogging down of the historian, this flood, this perpetual drowning, and this perfectly organized submersion.