From the terrace of his home on the crest of a hill, an old professor peers through a spyglass at the scene unfolding below on the sand and waters of the Riviera. Calgues is his name—his ancestors built this house 300 years earlier—and he is studying the beginning of an extraordinary invasion: 100 ships and hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, refugees from Calcutta and other cities in India. Soldiers have lighted bonfires on the beaches to dispose of the dead cast overboard from the ships, but the French army stationed there to guard against the coming invasion is melting away.
Then a young French radical appears on the terrace—“Feet bare, hair long and dirty, flowered tunic, Hindu collar, Afghan vest.” In his ensuing conversation with the professor, he spews venom on Western civilization, France, the middle class, his family. The professor replies with a few counterarguments and questions, but his visitor remains undeterred in his bitter hatred of the culture that made him.
Finally, the professor says, “When they go smashing everything to bits, they won’t know any better. But why you?”
“Why? Because I’ve learned to hate all this. Because the conscience of the world makes me hate all this, that’s why.”
At that point, Professor Calgues politely excuses himself, disappears inside his house, and returns to the terrace with his shotgun.
“What’s that for?” the young man asks.
“Why, I’m going to kill you, of course!”
The Big Picture
This confrontation opens Jean Raspail’s apocalyptic novel “The Camp of the Saints,” first published 1973. Here we learn that political radicals, the Catholic Church, sympathetic officials, and those who blithely support them, whom Raspail calls “fellow travelers,” have hammered together and supported this flotilla of the poor and wretched. They spill onto the French beaches, sweeping the last vestiges of resistance before them as they make their way inland. European culture and government are soon eradicated, with little Switzerland being the last domino to fall before this tidal wave of immigrants.
The “incursion,” as the French president euphemistically terms this invasion, has consequences worldwide. Hordes of Chinese swarm into Siberia, resisted only by one drunken Russian soldier. America becomes a land of mob rule. South Africa, still apartheid in this novel, swiftly falls to a massive people’s army from the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Critics have either viciously assailed or vigorously applauded “The Camp of the Saints.” The former call it a racist tract, a handbook for white supremacists, a novel of xenophobic hatred and fear. Its defenders salute the author’s courage in speaking out against mass immigration into Europe, for turning the spotlight on the gulf between the world’s rich and poor, and for underscoring the ongoing destruction of the customs and beliefs of the West.
Take your pick. This dystopian novel provides ample evidence supporting both sides.
The Masters of Disaster
“The Camp of the Saints” is no casual read, and not just because of its take on race and immigration. The paragraphs are plump and thick with detail, in some cases extending to a page or more. Though the real action takes place in a relatively short time, Raspail references historical events, heroes, and old wars that may be unfamiliar to readers. Finally, even in its English translation the novel retains a Gallic flair for polemics, intellectual wit, irony, and satire. The dozen or more characters who play major roles in this drama are primarily distinguished one from the other by their politics and ideology.
On the side of the young man killed by the professor, for example, are fanatics like Ballan, the atheist who initiates the idea of the fleet and is trampled to death when the mob rushes to board the ships. Jean Orelle, official voice of the French government, uses “liberty, equality, fraternity” as a propaganda tool, welcoming immigrants and condemning those opposed until the full import of the impending disaster finally makes itself evident. Just before the president’s address to France, in which he leaves it to the conscience of each soldier whether to resist the invasion, and so assures the utter collapse of the military, the despairing Orelle commits suicide.
Perhaps worst of all is the pompous and repulsive Clément Dio, a journalist with a huge following who for personal reasons bitterly condemns racism while promoting hatred for the West. Both he and his wife perish in the violent chaos that his rhetoric has helped bring into existence.
Unforeseen Consequences
O’Connor and Percy knew that tenderness, the kindness and gentle love we show to others, can have unexpected and dire consequences—including death—when unaccompanied by such virtues as prudence and wisdom. To cite an example from today’s news, the mother of an opioid addict may shower her son with affection and sympathy, but unless she insists that he seek treatment or otherwise abandon his habit, her compassion is false and useless, and is in fact enabling his death.
This idea that goodwill and generosity unbuttressed by prudence can lead to evil and death is key to fully understanding “The Camp of the Saints.” Many of the fellow travelers who welcome their invaders with open arms, the soldiers who from pity throw away their weapons rather than defending their country, and the politicians and media who have spurred this mass migration act from motives of guilt and sympathy. Unfortunately, they are blind to the consequences. The migrants they welcome care nothing for “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” nor for the churches, libraries, monuments, universities, and courts given birth under that banner. They pack their own set of beliefs, and they are in search of a better material life and the goods they so appallingly lack.
Moreover, with the exception of men like Professor Calgues, most of the characters make only a vague connection between their customs and institutions, and the wealth these have created. They fail to understand that when this avalanche of humanity buries rights, laws, and customs, it will kill off the very sources that produce these commodities and goods they seek. Soon the lives of the invaders will be no better than when they first set sail from Calcutta.
And the Debate Rages On
Oddly, however, this same review begins by citing a clip from another analysis that reaches an entirely different conclusion.
“For the remainder of this century, we suspect, the debate will rage over what and how much should be done to improve the condition of humankind in the face of the mounting pressures described here and in other analyses. One thing seems to us fairly certain. However the debate unfolds, it is, alas, likely that a large part of it—on issues of population, migration, rich versus poor, race against race—will have advanced little beyond the considerations and themes that are at the heart of one of the most disturbing novels of the late twentieth century, Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints. It will take more than talk to prove the prophet wrong.”
Kennedy and Connelly published their essay in 1994.
Notes: “The Camp of the Saints” is no longer in print in English, but it may be found in secondhand online bookstores. Furthermore, were I to rate this book as we do films, it would receive an “R” for profanity, some scenes with sexual content, and violence. Given its explosive subject matter, I would also rate its general content as suitable for Mature Adults Only.
