Lay Down Your Arms 54

Lay Down Your Arms 54

“No, indeed, not to conjure it away, but to mitigate it. What cannot be

prevented, one must always seek to mitigate.”

 

“Experience teaches that no sufficient mitigation is possible. I should

therefore wish the maxim to be inverted, ‘What cannot be mitigated ought

to be prevented’.”

 

It began to be a fixed idea with me, that war must cease. And every

individual _must_ contribute, all that he is able, to bring mankind

nearer to this end, were it but by the thousandth part of a line. I

could not get away from the scenes which I had witnessed in Bohemia.

Especially at night, when I woke out of a sound sleep, I would feel that

sore pain at my heart, and felt at the same time in my conscience the

admonition, just as if some one was giving me the command, “Stop it,

prevent it, do not suffer it”. It was not till I was wide awake and

thought on what I was that the perception of my impotence came over me.

What then was I to stop or to prevent? A man might as well order me, in

face of the sea swelling with winds and waves, “Not to suffer it, dry it

up”. And my next thought was, especially as I listened to his breathing,

one of deep happiness, “I have Frederick again,” and I would plunge into

this idea as vividly as I could, and then I would put my arm round him

as he lay beside me, even at the risk of wakening him, and kiss his

lips.

 

My son Rudolf had really reason to be jealous of his stepfather, and

this feeling was actually aroused in the boy’s heart, especially since

recent days. That I had gone away from Grumitz without bidding him

good-bye, that after my return my first wish was not to embrace _him_,

that as a general rule I did not move from my husband’s side for almost

the whole day--all this put together caused the poor little fellow one

fine morning to throw himself weeping on my neck, and sob out: “Mamma,

mamma, you do not love me a bit”.

 

“What nonsense are you talking, child?”

 

“Yes--only--only papa. I--I will not grow up at all--if you no longer

like me.”

 

“No longer like you--you my treasure!” I kissed and caressed the weeping

child. “You, my only son, my pride, the joy of my future. I love you

so--so above--no, not above everything--but infinitely.”

 

After this little scene, my love for my boy came more vividly into my

feelings. In the days just past, I had in fact been so much engrossed by

my fears for Frederick, that poor Rudolf had got thrust a little into

the background.

 

The plans which Frederick and I had made up between ourselves for the

future were as follows: After the war was over, to quit the military

service, and retire to some small, cheap place, where Frederick’s

pension as colonel, and what I could contribute, would suffice to keep

up our little household. We rejoiced over this solitary independent life

together, as if we had been a pair of young lovers. By means of the

events of our recent experience, we had been taught thoroughly that we

each formed the whole world to the other. Little Rudolf, moreover, was

not excluded from this fellowship. His education was a main business in

filling up the existence we were planning. We were not to pass our days

therein in idleness and without any aim; amongst other things we had

marked out a whole list of studies, which we were to pursue in common.

In especial, there was among the sciences a branch of the science of

law, _international_, to which Frederick intended to devote himself

particularly. His aim was, quite apart from all Utopian and sentimental

theory, to investigate the practical side of national peace. By means of

the perusal of Buckle--to which I had given him the impulse--by means

of an acquaintance with the newest acquisitions in natural philosophy,

which had been revealed to him in the works of Darwin, Büchner, and

others, the conviction had come before him that the world was arriving

at a new phase of knowledge, and to make this knowledge his own, as far

as possible, appeared to him sufficient to fill up life, along with

domestic pleasures.

 

My father, who meanwhile knew nothing of our views, was making quite

other plans for the future on our behalf. “You will now, Tilling, be

colonel at an early age, and in ten years you will certainly be general.

A fresh war will no doubt break out again about that time, and you may

get the command of an entire _corps d’armée_, or who knows but that you

may reach the rank of commander-in-chief, and perhaps the great

happiness may come to you of restoring the arms of Austria to their full

glory, which is now for the moment obscured. When we have once adopted

the needle-gun, or perhaps some still more effectual system, we shall

soon have the best in a war with these gentlemen of Prussia.”

 

“Who knows,” I suggested, “perhaps our enmity with Prussia will cease.

Perhaps we shall some day conclude an alliance with them.”

 

My father shrugged his shoulders. “If women would only abstain from

talking politics!” he said disdainfully. “After what has taken place, we

have to chastise these insolent fellows, we have to get the annexed (as

they call them--I call them ‘plundered’) states back to their severed

allegiance; that is what our honour demands, and the interest of our

position amongst the Powers of Europe. Friendship--alliance with these

transgressors? Never! unless they came and begged humbly for it.”

 

“In that case,” remarked Frederick, “we should perhaps set our feet on

their necks. Alliances are sought and concluded only with those whom one

respects, or who can offer one protection against a common foe. In

state-craft the ruling principle is egotism.”

 

“Oh yes,” my father replied, “if the _ego_ means one’s country,

everything else is certainly to be subordinated to it, and everything is

certainly allowable and commanded which seems serviceable to its

interests.”

 

“It is, however, to be wished,” answered Frederick, “that in the

behaviour of communities the same elevated civilisation should be

reached, as has banished from the behaviour of individuals the rough

self-worship, resting on fist-law, and that the view should prevail more

and more that one’s own interests are really most effectually furthered

by avoiding damage to those of foreigners, or rather in union with the

latter.”

 

“Eh?” asked my father, with his hand to his ear.

 

But Frederick could not, of course, repeat this long sentence and

illustrate it, and so the discussion ended.

 

* * * * *

 

“I shall be at Grumitz to-morrow at one o’clock.--Conrad.”

 

Everybody can imagine the delight which this telegram caused Lilly. No

other arrival is hailed with such joy and rapture as that of one

returning from the wars. It is true that in this case there was not also

what is the favourite subject of the common ballads and engravings,

_viz._, “The conqueror’s return”; but the human feelings of the loving

sweetheart would not be interfered with by patriotic considerations, and

if Conrad had “taken” the city of Berlin, I believe this would not have

availed to heighten the warmth of Lilly’s reception of him.

 

To him, of course, it would have been better if he had come home along

with troops who had been victorious, if he had contributed to conquer

the province of Silesia for his emperor. Meantime, the very fact of

having fought is in itself an honour for a soldier, even if he is one of

the beaten, nay, one of the fallen: the latter is even more especially

glorious. Thus Otto told us that in the academy at Wiener-Neustadt the

names of all the students were inscribed on a table of honour, to whom

the advantage had befallen of having been left dead on the battlefield,

_Tué à l’ennemi_, they say in France; and in that country, as everywhere

else, it is a much-prized ancestral distinction. The more progenitors

one can point out in one’s family who have lost their lives in battles,

whether won or lost, the prouder is the descendant of it, the more value

may he set on his name, the less value on his life. In order to show

oneself worthy of one’s slain ancestors, one must have a lively joy of

one’s own in slaying, active and passive. Well, so much the better is

it, that, as long as war exists, there should also be found people who

see therein elevation and inspiration, nay, even pleasure. The number,

however, of these people is daily becoming less, while the number of the

soldiers becomes daily greater. Whither must this finally lead? To its

becoming _intolerable_. And whither will this lead?

 

Conrad did not think so deeply. His way of looking at it was excellently

expressed by the well-known song of the lieutenant in the “Dame

Blanche”: “Oh, what delight is a soldier’s life, what delight!” To hear

him speak, one might have actually envied him the expedition of which he

had just formed part. My brother Otto was really filled with this envy.

This warrior returned from his baptism of blood and fire, who even

before looked so knightly in his hussar uniform, and who was now also

adorned with an honourable scar over his chin, received in the shower of

bullets, who had perhaps given their quietus to so many of the foe, he

seemed to him now surrounded by a nimbus of glory.

 

“It was not a successful campaign, that I must admit,” said Conrad, “but

I have brought back from it one or two grand reminiscences.”

 

“Tell us, tell us,” Lilly and Otto besought him.

 

“Well, I cannot give you many details; the whole thing lies behind me

like a dream, the powder gets into one’s head in such a strange way. The

intoxication, in fact, or the fever, the martial fire, in a word, begins

from the moment of marching. The parting from one’s love indeed comes

hard on one; it was the one hour in which my breast was full of tender

pain, but when one is once off with one’s comrades; when the thought is,

now I am going on the highest duty which life can lay on a man, viz., to

defend my beloved country; when, then, the musicians struck up

_Radetzky’s March_, and the silken folds of the flags rustled in the

wind, I must confess, Lilly, that at that moment I would not have turned

back--no, not into the arms of my love. Then I felt that I should never

be worthy of that love except by doing my duty out there by the side of

my brethren. That we were marching to victory we did not doubt. What did

we know about the horrible needle bullets? It was they alone that were

the cause of our defeat. I tell you they fell on our ranks like hail.

And we had also bad leaders. Benedek, you will see, will yet be brought

before a court-martial. We should have attacked. If I should ever become

a general my tactics would be to advance, always advance, play a forward

game, invade the enemy’s country. That surely is only another kind, and

the most weighty one too, of defence:--

 

If it must be so, go forward--forward go.

The way is found by never looking back,

 

as the poet says. However, that is nothing to the point; the emperor has

not put me in command, and so I am not responsible for the tactical

blunders: the generals must see how they are to settle with their

military superiors and with their own consciences; we, officers and

soldiers, did our duty--we had to fight, and fight we did. And that is a

grand sensation in itself. The very expectation, the very excitement one

feels when one rushes on to the foe and when the word goes round ‘Now it

is afoot,’ this consciousness that in that moment a portion of the

world’s history is being enacted, and then the pride, the joy in one’s

own courage, Death right and left, great and mysterious, and yet one

bids him a manly defiance----”

 

“Just like poor Godfrey Tessow,” murmured Frederick to himself. “Well,

of course, it is the same school.”

 

Conrad went on eagerly.

 

“One’s heart beats higher, one’s pulse flutters, there awakes--and that

is the peculiar rapture of it--there wakes the joy of battle. The rage,

the hate of the foe blazes up, and at the same time the most burning

love for one’s menaced country, while the onward rush, the hewing down

at them becomes a delight. One feels transported into another world from

that in which one grew up, a world in which all the ordinary feelings

and ways of looking at things are changed into their opposites. Life is

changed into plunder; killing becomes a duty. Only, however, heroism,

the most magnificent self-sacrifice, are left surviving--all other

conceptions have perished in the tumult. Then add the powder-smoke, the

battle-cries. I tell you it is a state of things to which no parallel is

to be found elsewhere. At the most, perhaps, the same fire may glow through one in the lion or tiger hunt, when one stands in the face of the maddened wild beast, and----”