Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed

“How can you call us ‘good’? We were doing what had to be done. Who else could help them? And what has all this to do with goodness? Things had to be done, that’s all, and we happened to be there to do them. You must understand that it was the most natural thing in the world to help these people.”

Hallie’s quotation of the sentiments of the Le Chambon residents demonstrates the simplicity of their choices, even in the face of massive consequences. Furthermore, it thematically emphasizes the nature of Public Versus Private Action in that the citizens were concerned only with the act, not the accolade.

“Now and for the rest of his life he knew that there were some people—indeed, many people—who did not realize what suspicion and hatred were doing to their own minds and to their victims.”

Trocmé’s encounter with the bigoted police captain demonstrated to him and to Hallie how dangerous ignorance can be and how it can support evil. This also reveals how Trocmé viewed even the perpetrators of evil: as uneducated, not as inherently irredeemable.

“Trocmé’s first encounter with death was at the same time an encounter with his need to forgive lovingly the ‘killer.’”

Trocmé’s mother’s death was the first step in the spirit behind the nonviolent resistance of Le Chambon. The realization that both the perpetrator and the victim of violence deserve protection and forgiveness shaped Trocmé’s dedication to nonviolence.

“Dared you say no to a man who had restored the essential France in the very teeth of a military defeat […] How dare you turn your hand against these basically kind fellow Frenchmen?”

These questions justified the general inaction throughout much of unoccupied France in 1940. However, the moral charge in the questions failed to affect the Chambonnais because the only judgment that concerned them was that of their own conscience and perhaps Trocmé himself.

“He had performed an act of will, a choice; he had started something, as a battery may start a motor, but he had not known when he started it what would be the result of his impulse to resist evil, nor had he known exactly how to bring about that result.”

Trocmé’s choice to refuse to obey orders was a single choice, a personal choice, that had a public effect. Although the book generally treats the theme of Public Versus Private Action as a dichotomy, Trocmé himself exemplified how private action could impact public action.

“This conversation in the desert […] taught [Trocmé] that the ethical commandment against killing had to be obeyed as early as possible if it was to be obeyed effectively. It taught him that nonviolence could, in fact, increase violence if it was not chosen in the right way at the right time.”

A minor theme in the novel is the importance of timing in any resistance or action. Trocmé’s discovery of the threat of nonviolence acted as a fulcrum and supports Trocmé’s characterization as constantly driven.

“Amélie and the pastor shared a spirit of resistance that was more important than the wording of commands and larger than one man’s conscience.”

The connection between Amélie and Trocmé in their shared purity of faith regarding the value of human life thematically demonstrates an element of The Conflicted Nature of Faith. They came to faith from different denominations of religion but were connected in their moral faith.

“We do not know what a Jew is. We know only men.”

The simplicity and intensity of Trocmé’s statement to the enraged prefect highlights the power of Trocmé’s character. In addition, it represents the core nature of nonviolent resistance.

“Flesh-and-blood contacts with people who would not hate and who would not harm people communicated something of what Theis and Trocmé used to call the ‘mystery of love’ to some rather hard human beings.”

One of the primary means by which Trocmé led, which Hallie later places in contrast to dictators, was modeling his morality. Theis and Trocmé maintained their character so fully that they inspired those around them. This also exemplifies the theme of Public Versus Private Action: They privately maintained their morality and positively affected public action as a result.

“The spirit of Le Chambon in those years was a strange combination of candor and concealment, of a yearning for truth and of a commitment to secrecy. They were as open as love permits in a terrible time.”

An element of The Conflicted Nature of Faith as a theme is the challenge that Trocmé and the Chambonnais experienced in the necessity to deceive and hide their actions. Hallie shows that they even had to conceal truths from one another to protect each other. When lying is the only means to save lives, it challenges the belief in lying as inherently sinful.

“Her purpose was not to hurt or punish the evil ones as much as it was to save the underdogs from harm. Her main task was to affirm life, not to destroy evildoers.”

Trocmé’s stories to his children reveal the depth and complexity of his ethical beliefs. Informed by his childhood and youth, he taught his children what he taught his parishioners: to create good rather than try to destroy evil. That is the primary tenet of nonviolence.

“In the intimacy of a household, people come to understand each other in ways that their public lives can never reveal. Within a family, in a kitchen, in a dining room, the public masks are off.”

Akin to Hallie’s early remark that Le Chambon’s resistance took place in kitchens, this passage thematically highlights the nature of Public Versus Private Action. The privacy of the Trocmé home allowed the family to be genuinely themselves, so their ethical actions were more genuine and more reliable.

“Her husband acted out of a passionate, even a mystical love, strongly tinged with the supernatural; but not she. Her religion of love was summarized in an abrupt ungrudging, raucous command issued through a wide-open door: ‘Naturally, come in, and come in.’”

Hallie regularly places Magda and Trocmé in contrast to one another in part to show their complimentary natures. In addition to having different approaches to expressing their morality, their differences thematically indicate The Conflicted Nature of Faith: Though they helped equally, their approaches were rooted in their respective convictions.

“As one refugee put it, he gave Le Chambon his personality; at least as far as attracting refugees was concerned, this individual went on, he impressed his personality upon Le Chambon, so that the village, like him, drew people like Magda and Édouard Theis to organize the details of their living so that they could be housed and fed, sometimes for years, in the poor village and on the poor farms.”

This passage simultaneously defines Trocmé’s character, personality, and ability to lead and adds to Hallie’s characterization of Le Chambon. In several places, Hallie treats the village as an individual entity that took part of its personality from Trocmé but was composed of the individuals who believed in him.

“For Trocmé, every person—Jew and non-Jew, German and non-German—had a spiritual diamond at the center of his vitality, a hard, clear, pricelessly valuable source that God cherishes.”

Trocmé’s unwavering belief in the value of human life becomes a central tenet of his action and a central argument of Hallie’s book. Nonviolence as an action is effective in part because it honors life itself rather than linking the life to the value of the individual.

“What unified and divided the Chambonnais then was what we might grasp by way of the metaphor of ‘atmosphere.’ People shared a dangerous and helpful atmosphere the way people share physical air; it was all around them, and yet each drew it into his or her own life, the way we share and divide the air we breathe.”

The double meaning of atmosphere shows the double characterization of the town and its people. In sharing the emotional and physical atmosphere, the Chambonnais became one entity working toward a single goal.

“Scruples, like sharp stones in a shoe, can hinder a retreat from danger. Moral scruples tend to make one think of others, instead of thinking of one’s own safety. They are unlike the skills of a hardened soldier, whose combat hardening consists in learning how to stay alive while helping his unit to survive and prevail.”

Although this is a kind of critique or warning related to the tragedies of Daniel Trocmé and Roger Le Forestier, it also thematically connects Public Versus Private Action to The Morality of Nonviolence. The latter theme requires thinking only of others, an outward thought, yet that action is private, while the self-preserving act of the soldier is inherently public.

“When confronted by the conflicts between the methods and findings of modern science on the one hand and the stories in the Bible on the other, one must make a leap in one direction or the other—there is no neat theory to reconcile the two or to tell us which is ‘right.’ One must do almost an act of violence to one’s own rational tendencies—one must leap, bet, act before it is too late.”

The conflict and necessity of action described here thematically underscore The Conflicted Nature of Faith. Because choosing between right and wrong or between science and religion requires a leap, the necessity of conflict is inherent in the process.

“The words fool and madman suggest a certain impracticality, a certain amateurishness that they shared. Daniel Trocmé was no joyous child; he was duty working its heart out for the weakest of the weak, the children. But both of these young men celebrated and defended life, and their deaths cause us to celebrate life by making us hate murder.”

Hallie compares the fates of Daniel and Le Forestier to demonstrate the beauty in their respective dedication. Additionally, however, he shows that their value emphasizes the idea of sanctity of life that drives the rest of the book.

“And it was the same sort of peace that Le Chambon had had with Trocmé and Theis there—not the peace of retreat, but the peace the Chambonnais felt in living conscientiously, in taking, as Camus puts it in The Plague, ‘the victims’ side, so as to reduce the damage done.’”

The peace that the text describes here comes from the power of Trocmé’s approach to leadership. Because he worked cooperatively toward nonviolence with his community, they could find peace in their own private actions.

“His grief over the death of Jean-Pierre tore off from atop his mind the peace that had been laid upon him, and revealed himself to himself as a churning, molten mass always thrusting itself restlessly outward.”

Trocmé’s conflict of faith in the wake of Jean-Pierre’s death thematically exemplifies The Conflicted Nature of Faith. The incident challenged his faith in God and religion, and he lost his sense of peace related to faith but maintained his primary beliefs in life and nonviolence, thus preserving his core character.

“His nonviolence was not passive or saccharine, but an almost brutal force for awakening human beings. He earned the description that the national leadership of his church had made of him: ‘that dangerous, difficult Trocmé.’”

The text consistently characterizes Trocmé as a physical force pushing through ideological obstacles to further his moral imperatives. He was willing to endanger himself, and, if necessary, his community, to preserve as much human life as possible. He was also willing to damage his own reputation, thematically demonstrating the core of Public Versus Private Action.

“The law and ethics are not natural enemies, one pursuing public order and the other committed to destroying it. When nations have been healthy, usually it has been because the two were in harmony.”

Although the book consistently defines the thematic concern of Public Versus Private Action as a dichotomy, in the last section of the book, Hallie turns to philosophy to assert a potential in which they are not at odds. When both public and private action serve nonviolence and the sanctity of human life, they can create “healthy nations.”