Message aux Jeunes Américains

Liège, Ed. Dynamo, (July 31) 1967.
1 vol. (180 x 260 mm) of 15 p. In wrappers.

First edition. Portrait of the author on the frontispiece.
One of the first 10 copies on parchment, justified and numbered by the publisher (no. 10), after a single copy on Japanese paper.

We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.

It was following the events that pushed the United States into the war that the author, at the request of Dorothy Thomson, wrote this speech. Delivered before the student body of the Progressive Education Association, it allowed Saint-Exupéry to expound humanist principles that indeed went far beyond and were in a way independent of the concerns of the moment. “You are at war. You are young. If you were only soldiers… but you are young and your responsibility is even greater than that of the soldiers”. What is freedom? What is a community? What is sacrifice? The author aims to give meaning to these questions and, above all, to give them a fundamental place in the efforts that will be asked of these young people. “When you bring in the harvest, without pay, indeed for the war effort of the United States, then you will be helping to build the community of the United States. It is only at this price, that of free giving, that brotherhood is earned.” It was found, belatedly, by the writer’s widow and published in the magazine Icare in the spring of 1978. “For the first time,” says the note in La Pléiade (O.C., II, p. 1243). This is incorrect: the first publication is indeed this one, given by Pierre Aelberts in this confidential edition.

Among his Ecrits de guerre, this text is indeed significant of the author’s anti-Gallic position: “one of the things that separated him from the Free French, explains Michel Pobers, was to consider the war from a purely strategic point of view” (in Ecrits de guerre, Folio collection).

From the Pierre Puech Library (Paris, Alde, II, 2010, no. 370).