Lay Down Your Arms 60

Lay Down Your Arms 60

“I have,” he said, “renounced the trade of war, and that I have done

from convictions gained in actual war. I will now work for these

convictions. I enter the service of the peace army. A very small army

indeed, it is true, and one whose combatants have no other shield or

sword than the sentiment of justice and the love of humanity. Still,

everything which has ultimately become great has started from small or

invisible beginnings.”

 

“Ah!” I sighed; “it is a hopeless beginning. What can you--a single

man--achieve against that mighty fortress, thousands of years old, and

garrisoned by millions of men?”

 

“Achieve? I? I am not really so foolish as to hope that I personally

shall bring about a conversion. I was only saying just then that I

wished to enter the _ranks_ of the peace-army. When I had my place in

the army of war, did I, do you suppose, hope that _I_ should save my

country, that _I_ should conquer a province? No; the individual can only

_serve_. And still further, he _must_ serve. A man who is penetrated by

any cause cannot do better than work for it--than devote his life to it,

even if he knows how little this life, in and by itself, can contribute

towards its victory. He serves because he must; not only the state, but

our own conviction, if it is enthusiastic, lays on us the duty of

defending it.”

 

“You are right, and if at length there are enough millions animated by

the enthusiasm of this duty, then that thousand-year-old fortress will

be abandoned by its garrison and must fall.”

 

From Vienna, I made a pilgrimage to Grumitz, whose mistress I had now

become. But I did not even enter the château. I only laid down four

wreaths in the churchyard, and drove back again. After my most important

matters of business were put in order, Frederick proposed a little

journey to Berlin, in order to pay a visit to Aunt Cornelia, who was so

much to be pitied. I assented. During our absence I put my little son

Rudolf in the charge of Aunt Mary. The latter had been cast down more

than I can describe by the events of the cholera week at Grumitz. Her

whole love, her whole interest in life, she now concentrated on my

little Rudolf. I even hoped that she might be somewhat diverted and

raised in her spirits by having the child with her for a time.

 

We left Vienna on November 1. We broke our journey in Prague, intending

to spend the night there. Next day, instead of pursuing our journey to

Berlin, we made a new pilgrimage.

 

“All Souls’ Day,” said I. “How many poor dead bodies are lying on the

battlefield in this neighbourhood, for whom even this day of honour to

the graves does nothing, because they have no graves. Who will pay them

a visit?”

 

I looked at him for a while in silence. Then, half aloud, I said:--

 

“Will you?”

 

He nodded. We understood one another, and in an hour we were on our way

to Chlum and Königgrätz.

 

* * * * *

 

What a prospect. An elegy of Tiedge came into my mind.

 

Oh, sight of horror! mighty prince, come, see,

And o’er this awful heap of mouldering clay

Swear to thy folk a gentler lord to be,

And give to earth the light of peaceful day.

 

Great leader, when thou thirstest for renown,

Come, count these skulls, before the solemn hour

When thine own head must lay aside its crown,

And in Death’s silence ends thy dream of power.

 

Let the dread vision hover o’er thee ever

Of these sad corpses here around thee strown,

And then say, does it charm thee, the endeavour

Upon men’s ruins to erect thy throne?

 

Yes, unfortunately it will charm men, so long as the histories of the

world, _i.e._, those who write them, build the statues of their heroes

out of the ruins of war, so long as they offer their crowns to the

Titans of public murder. To refuse the laurel crown, to give up fame,

would be nobler. Is that what the poet means? The first thing to do

should be to despoil the thing, which it should appear so beneficent to

renounce, of its glory, and then there would be no ambitious man any

longer to grasp after it.

 

It was twilight already when we got to Chlum, and from thence walked on,

arm in arm, to the battlefield, near at hand, in silent horror. A mist

was falling, mingled with very fine snowflakes, and the dull branches of

the trees were bent by the shrill-sounding pipe of a cold November wind.

Crowds of graves, and the graves of crowds, were all around us. But a

churchyard?--no. No pilgrim weary of life had there been invited to rest

and peace; there, in the midst of their youthful fire of life, exulting

in the fullest strength of their manhood, the waiters on the future had

been cast down by force, and had been shovelled down into their grave

mould. Choked up, stifled, made dumb for ever, all those breaking

hearts, those bloody mangled limbs, those bitterly-weeping eyes, those

wild shrieks of despair, those vain prayers.

 

On this field of war it was not lonely. There were many--very many--whom

All Souls’ Day had brought hither, from friends’ and enemies’ country,

who were come here to kneel down on the ground where what they loved

most had fallen. The train itself which brought us was full of other

mourners, and thus I had heard now for several hours weeping and wailing

going on around me. “Three sons--three sons, each one more beautiful and

better and dearer than the others, have I lost at Sadowa,” said to us an

old man who looked quite broken down. Many others, besides, of our

companions in the carriage mingled their complaints with his--for

brother, husband, father. But none of these made so much impression on

me as the tearless, mournful “Three sons--three sons” of the poor old

man.

 

On the field one saw on all sides, and on all the roads, black figures

walking, or kneeling, or painfully staggering along and breaking out

from time to time into loud sobs. There were only a few there who were

buried by themselves--few crosses or stones with an inscription. We bent

down and deciphered, as well as the twilight permitted, some of the

names.

 

“Major v. Reuss of the Second Regiment of the Prussian Guards.”

 

“Perhaps a relation of the one engaged to our poor Rosa,” I remarked.

 

“Count Grünne. Wounded, July 3. Died, July 5.”

 

What might he not have suffered in those two days! Was he, I wondered, a

son of the Count Grünne who uttered, before the war, the well-known

sentence: “We are going to chase the Prussians away--wet foot”? Ah, how

frantic and blasphemous! how shrilly out of tune sounds of a surety

every word of provocation spoken before a war when one stands on a place

like this! Words, and nothing more, boasting words, scornful words,

spoken, written and printed; it is _these_ alone that have sown the seed

of fields like these.

 

We walk on. Everywhere earth heaps, more or less high, more or less

broad, and even there where the earth is not elevated, even under our

feet, soldiers’ corpses are perhaps mouldering!

 

The mist grows thicker constantly. “Frederick, pray put your hat on, you

will take cold.”

 

But Frederick remained uncovered, and I did not repeat my warning a

second time.

 

Among the mourners who were wandering about here were also many officers

and soldiers, probably such as had themselves shared in the nobly

contested day of Königgrätz, and now were making a pilgrimage to the

place where their fallen comrades were sleeping.

 

We had now come to the spot where the largest number of warriors, friend

and foe together, lay entombed. The place was walled off like a

churchyard. Hither came the greatest number of mourners, because in this

spot there was most chance that their dear ones might be entombed.

Round this enclosure the bereaved ones were kneeling and sobbing, and

here they hung up their crosses and their grave-lights.

 

A tall, slender man, of distinguished, youthful figure, in a general’s

cloak, came up to the mound. The others gave place reverently to him,

and I heard some voices whisper: “The emperor”.

 

Yes, it was Francis Joseph. It was the lord of the country, the supreme

lord of war, who had come on All Souls’ Day to offer up a silent prayer

for the dead children of his country, for his fallen warriors. He also

stood with uncovered and bowed head there, in agonised devotion, before

the majesty of Death.

 

Long, long he stood without moving. I could not turn my eyes away from

him. What thoughts must be passing through his soul, what feelings

through his heart, which after all was, as I knew, a good and a soft

heart? It came into my mind that I could feel with him, that I could

think the thoughts at the same time as he, which were passing through that bowed head of his.