lay down your arms 75

lay down your arms 75

“Oh that will be out of use for long. The war, which is now being fought

out, is of too powerful a nature not to proceed to its end, and give

rise to renewed war. On the side of the vanquished it has scattered such

a plenty of the seeds of hatred and revenge, that a future harvest of

war must grow out of them; and on the other side, it has brought such

magnificent and bewildering successes to the victors, that for them an

equally great seed-time of warlike pride must grow out of it.”

 

“What, then, has happened of such importance?”

 

“King William has been proclaimed German Emperor in Versailles. There is

now _one_ Germany--one single empire--and a mighty empire too. That

forms a new chapter in what is called the history of the world. And you

may think for yourself, how, from the birth of this empire, which is

the product of war, that trade will be held high in honour. It is,

therefore, from this time, the two continental states most advanced in

civilisation which will chiefly nourish the war spirit--the one, in

order to return the blow it has received, the other, in order to keep

the position it has conquered amongst the powers--from hatred on that

side, from love on this--on that side from lust of revenge, on this from

gratitude--it comes to the same thing. Shut your _Protocol of

Peace_--for a long time henceforth we shall abide under the

blood-and-iron sign of Mars.”

 

“German Emperor!” I cried, “that really is grand;” and I got him to tell

me the particulars of this event.

 

“I cannot help, Frederick,” I said, “being pleased at this news. The

whole work of slaughter has not then been for nothing, if a great new

empire has grown out of it.”

 

“But from a French point of view it has been for less than nothing. And

we two must have surely the right of looking at this war, not from one

side--the German side--only. Not only as men, but even from the narrow

national conception, we should have the right to bewail the successes of

our enemies and conquerors in 1866. However I agree with you that the

union of dismembered Germany, which has now been attained, is a _fine_

thing--that this agreement of the rest of the German princes to give the

Imperial Crown to the old victor, has something inspiring, something

admirable about it. The only pity is that this union did not arise from

a peaceful, but from a warlike exploit. How was it then that there was

not enough love of country, enough popular power in Germany, even though

Napoleon III. had never sent the challenge of July 19, to form, of their

own will, that entity on which their national pride is now to rest--‘one

single people of brothers’? Now they will be jubilant--the poet’s wish

is fulfilled. That only four short years ago all were at daggers drawn

with each other, that for Hanoverians, Saxons, Frankforters, Nassauers,

there was no name more hateful than ‘Prussians,’ will luckily be

forgotten. In place of this, however, the hatred of Germans in this

country, how it will ripen from this time!”

 

I shuddered. “The mere word, hatred----” I began.

 

“Is hateful to you? You are right. As long as this feeling is not

banished and outlawed, so long is there no humane humanity. Religious

hatred is conquered, but national hatred forms still part of civil

education. And yet there is only one ennobling, cheering feeling on this

earth, and that is Love. We could say something about that, Martha,

could we not?” I leaned my head on his shoulder, and looked up at him,

while he tenderly stroked the hair off my forehead.

 

“We know,” he went on, “how sweet it is that so much love should reside

in our hearts for our little ones, for all the brothers and sisters of

the Great Family of Man, whom one would so gladly--aye, so gladly--spare

the pain that threatens them. But they will not----”

 

“No, no, Frederick. My heart is not yet so comprehensive. I cannot love

all the haters.”

 

“You can, however, pity them?”

 

And so we talked on a long while in this strain. I still know it all so

exactly, because at that time I often--along with the events of the

war--entered also fragments of our conversation which bore upon them

into the red volumes. On that day we talked again once more about the

future; Paris would now capitulate, the war would be over, and then we

could be happy with a safe conscience. Then we recapitulated all the

guarantees of our happiness. During the eight years of our married life

there had never been a harsh or unfriendly word between us--we had

passed through so many sorrows and joys together--and so our love, our

unity, was of such a solid kind, that no diminution of it was any longer

to be feared. On the contrary, we should only be ever more intimately

joined together, every new experience in common would at the same time

result in a new tie. When we had become a pair of white-haired old

folks, with what joy should we look back on the untroubled past, and

what a softly glowing evening of life would then lie before us! This

picture of the happy old couple, into which we should then have turned,

I had set before myself so often and so livelily, that it became quite

clearly stamped on my mind, and even reproduced itself in dreams, as if

it had really happened, with various details--Frederick in a velvet

skull-cap, and with a pair of gardening shears--I have no notion why,

for he had never shown any love for gardening, and there had yet been no

talk of any skull-cap--I with a very coquettishly arranged black lace

mantilla over my silvery hair, and as a surrounding for all this a

corner of the park warmly lighted by the setting summer sun; and

friendly looks and words smilingly exchanged the while. “Do you know

now----” “Do you recollect that time when----”

 

* * * * *

 

Many of the previous pages have I written with shuddering and with

self-compulsion. It was not without inward horror that I could describe

the scenes through which I passed in my journey to Bohemia, and the

cholera week at Grumitz. I have done it in order to obey my sense of

duty. Beloved lips once gave me the solemn command: “In case I die

before you, you must take my task in hand and labour for the work of

Peace”. If this binding injunction had not been laid on me, I could

never have so far prevailed over myself as to tear open the agonised

wounds of my reminiscences so unsparingly.

 

Now, however, I have come to an event, which I will relate, but which I

will not, nor can I describe.

 

No--I cannot, I cannot!

 

I have tried--ten half-written torn pages are lying on the floor by the

side of my writing-table--but a heart-pang seized me; my thoughts froze

up, or got into wild entanglement in my brain, and I had to throw the

pen aside and weep, bitter hot tears, with cries like a child.

 

Now a few hours afterwards I resume my pen. But as to describing the

particulars of the next event, as to relating what I felt when it

happened, I must give that up--the thing itself is sufficient.

 

Frederick--my own one--was, in consequence of a letter from Berlin that

was found in his house, suspected of espionage--was surrounded by a mob

of fanatics, crying: “_A mort--à mort le Prussien_”--dragged before a

tribunal of patriots, and on February 1, 1871, shot by order of a

court-martial.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XIX.

 

_Serious mental illness, consequent on my husband’s death.--This

recurs occasionally.--Conclusion of my diary.--Additions to “The

Protocol of Peace”.--Progress of the Peace movement.--Mr. Hodgson

Pratt’s letter.--The Emperor Frederick’s manifesto.--I write the

last word of my autobiography.--My grandson’s christening.--My

daughter’s engagement.--Rudolf’s speech at the christening.--“Hail

to the Future!”--Finis._

 

 

When for the first time I came to myself again peace had been concluded

and the Commune was over. I had been in bed for a month ill, nursed by

my faithful Mrs. Anna, without any consciousness of being alive. And

what the illness was I know not to the present day. The people about me

called it considerately “typhus,” but I believe that it was

simply--madness.

 

So much I darkly recall, that the last interval had been filled with

imaginations of crackling shots and blazing conflagrations; probably the

events which were spoken of in my presence mingled in my phantasy with

the truth, the battles, that is, between the Versaillese and the

Communards, and the incendiary fires of the Petroleuses. That, when I

recovered my reason and with it the knowledge of my deep misery, I did

not do myself some harm, or the pang did not kill me, probably was due

to my possession of my children. Through them I could, for them I was

forced, to live. Even before my illness, on the very day when that

terrible thing broke over me, Rudolf kept me alive. I was shrieking

aloud, on my knees, while I repeated: “Die! Die! I must die!” Then two

arms embraced me, and a praying, painfully solemn, lovely boy’s face

was looking at me--“Mother!”

 

Up to that time I had never been called by my boy anything but “Mamma”.

His using at this moment, for the first time, the word “Mother” said to

me, in those two syllables: “You are not alone; you have a son who

shares your pain, who loves and honours you above all things, who has no

one in this world except you. Do not abandon your child, Mother!”

 

I pressed the dear creature to my heart, and to show him that I had

understood him, I too faltered out: “My son, my son!”

 

At the same time I recollected my girl, _his_ girl, and my resolution to

live was fixed. But the pain was too intolerable. I fell into

intellectual darkness; and not at this time only. For the space of

years, at ever-increasing intervals, I remained subject to recurring

attacks of abstraction, of which afterwards in the state of health

absolutely no recollection remained to me. Now for several years I have

been free from them. Free, that is, from the insensibility of my spirit

pangs, but not from conscious attacks of the bitterest pain of soul.

Eighteen years have gone since the 1st of February, 1871, but the deep

resentment and the deep mourning, which the tragedy of that day awoke in

me, no time can remove, even should I live a hundred years. Even though

in these later times the days come ever more frequently in which I,

absorbed in the events of the present, do not think about the misery of

the past, in which I even sympathise so livelily with the joy of my

children as to feel myself also filled with something like joy in my