hospital in a quiet little Austrian town thirty miles from the front. It
is an evening late in autumn. The tattoo has just sounded. All is quiet.
From afar comes the sound of heavy guns, as if huge dogs were baying
underground. Some young wounded officers are enjoying the peace of the
evening. Three of them are talking gaily with two ladies. The fourth, a
Landsturm lieutenant, in civil life a well-known composer, sits gloomily
apart. He has had a severe nervous shock, and is utterly prostrated, so
that not even the arrival of his fair young wife enables him to pull
himself together. When she speaks to him, he is unmoved. When she tries
to touch him, he draws irritably away. She suffers, and cannot
understand his enmity. The other woman takes the lead in the
conversation. She is a Frau Major, a major's wife, who spends all her
time at the hospital and has acquired there "a peculiar, garrulous
cold-bloodedness." She is surfeited with horrors; her endless curiosity
gives the impression of hardness and hysterical cruelty. The men are
discussing, what is "the finest thing" in the war. According to one of
them the finest thing is to find oneself, as this evening, in women's
company.
"....For five months to see nothing but men--and then all of a sudden to
hear a dear woman's clear voice! That's the finest thing of all. It's
worth going to war for."
One of the others rejoins that the finest thing is to have a bath, a
clean bandage, to get into a nice white bed, to know that for a few
weeks you are going to have a rest. Number three says:
"The finest thing of all, I think, is the quiet--when you've been lying
up there in the mountains where every shot is echoed five times, and all
of a sudden it turns absolutely quiet, no whistling, no howling, no
thundering--nothing but a glorious quiet that you can listen to as to a
piece of music! The first few nights I sat up the whole time and kept my
ears cocked for the quiet, the way you try to catch a tune at a
distance. I believe I even shed a tear or two--it was so delightful to
listen to no sound."
The three young men tease the last speaker good-naturedly, and they all
laugh together. Every one of them is intoxicated by the peace of the
sleeping town and the autumn garden. Every one of them wants to make the
most of his time, to lose nothing, "to take everything easily with his
eyes tight shut, like a child before it enters a dark room."
Now the Frau Major breaks in, breathing more quickly as she speaks:
"...But, tell me, what was the most awful thing you went through out
there?"
The men purse up their lips. This theme does not enter into their
program. Suddenly a strident voice speaks out of the darkness:
"Awful? The only awful thing is the going off. You go off to war--and
they let you go. That's the awful thing."
A glacial silence follows. The Frau Major makes a bolt for it, to escape
hearing the sequel. On the pretext that she has got to get back into the
town, and that the last tram is just leaving, she takes with her the
unhappy little wife, to whom the husband's words have come as a veiled
reproach. The officers are left alone, and one of them, hoping to change
the current of thought in the sick man's mind, passes a friendly
compliment upon the wife's appearance. The other springs to his feet and
says in a fury: "Chic wife? Oh, yes. Very dashing!... She didn't shed a
tear when I left on the train. Oh, they were all very dashing when we
went off. Poor Dill's wife was, too. Very plucky. She threw roses at him
in the train, and she'd been his wife for only two months.... Roses! He,
he! 'See you soon again!' They were all so patriotic!..."
He goes on to recount what happened to Dill. Poor Dill was showing to
his comrades the new photograph his wife had sent him, when an exploding
shell sent a boot flying against his head. In the boot was the leg of a
cavalryman who had been blown to pieces many yards away. On the boot was
a great spur which stuck into Dill's brain. It took four of them to
pull the boot out, and a piece of brain came away with the spur, looking
"just like a grey jellyfish." One of the officers, horrified by the
tale, rushed away for the doctor. The latter, on arrival, tried to coax
the sick man to go in:
"You must go to bed now, Lieutenant...."
"Must go, of course," repeated the lieutenant emphatically, heaving a
profound sigh. "We must all go. The man who doesn't go is a coward, and
they have no use for a coward. That's how it is. Don't you understand?
Heroes are in fashion now. The chic Madame Dill wanted a hero to match
her new hat. Ha, ha! That's why poor Dill had to have his brains
spilled. I must go; you must go; we must all go to die.... The women
look on, plucky, because that's the fashion now...."
He gazed round questioningly.
"Isn't it sad?" he asked softly. Then, in a fury once more, he cried:
"Weren't they humbugging us?... Was I an assassin? Was I a swashbuckler?
Didn't I suit her when I sat at the piano playing? We were expected to
be gentle and considerate! Considerate! And all at once, because the
fashion changed, they wanted us to be murderers. Do you understand?
Murderers!"
Speaking now in a lower tone, he went on plaintively:
"My wife was in the fashion too, of course. Not a tear! I kept waiting,
waiting for her to begin to weep, to beg me to get out of the train, not
to go with the others--beg me to be a coward for her sake. But none of
them had the pluck to do that. They all wanted to be in the fashion.
Mine too! Mine too! She waved her handkerchief, just like the others."
His twitching arms writhed upwards, as though he were calling the
heavens to witness.
"You want to know what was the most awful thing? The disillusionment was
the most awful thing--the going off. The war wasn't. The war is what it
has to be. Did it surprise you to find out that war is horrible? The
only surprising thing was the going off. To find out that women are
cruel--that was the surprising thing. That they can smile and throw
roses; that they can give up their husbands, their children, the little
boys they have put to bed a thousand times, tucked up a thousand times,
have fondled, have created from their own flesh and blood. That was the
surprise. That they gave us up--that they sent us--actually sent us. For
every one of them would have been ashamed to stand there without a hero.
That was the great disillusionment.... Do you think we should have gone
if they had not sent us? Do you think so?... No general could have done
anything if the women hadn't allowed us to be packed into the trains, if
they had screamed out that they would never look at us again if we
became murderers. Not a man would have gone if they had sworn never to
give themselves to one who had split open other men's skulls or shot and
bayoneted his fellows. Not one man, I tell you, would have gone. I
didn't want to believe that they could stand it like that. 'They're only
pretending,' I thought. 'They're just holding themselves in. But when
the whistle blows they'll begin to scream, and tear us out of the train,
and rescue us.' That one time they had the chance to protect us. But all
they cared about was to be in the fashion!..."
He broke down, and collapsed once more on to the bench. He began to
weep. A little circle of people had formed round him. The doctor said
gently:
"Come, come, Lieutenant, let's get along to bed. Women are like that,
you know, and we can't help it."
The sick man leapt to his feet in a rage.
"Women are like that? Women are like that? Since when? Since when? Have
you never heard of the suffragettes who boxed the ears of ministers of
state, who set museums on fire, who chained themselves to lamp-posts,
all for the sake of the vote? For the sake of the vote, do you hear? But
for the sake of their men? Nothing!"
He paused to take breath, overwhelmed with a throttling despair. Then,
fighting with sobs, like a hunted beast, he cried out:
"Have you heard of one woman throwing herself in front of the train for
the sake of her husband? Has a single one of them slapped a statesman's
face, or tied herself to the railway lines, for our sake? Not one has
had to be saved from such desperate courses.... The whole world over,
not one of them has moved a finger for us. They drove us forth! They
gagged us! They gave us the spur, like poor Dill. They sent us to
murder, they sent us to die--for their vanity. Are you going to defend
them? No! They must be plucked out. Like weeds, they must be torn up by
the roots! You must pull four at a time, as we had to do with Dill. Four
of you together, then you'll get her up. Are you the doctor? There! Do
it to my head! I don't want a wife! Pull--pull her out!"
He struck himself on the head with his fist. He was dragged into the
house, howling at the top of his voice. Soon the garden was empty. By
degrees the lights were extinguished and the noise was stilled, except
for the distant artillery fire. The patrol which had helped to take the
madman back into the hospital repassed, with the old corporal in the
rear, hanging his head. From afar off came the flash of an explosion,
followed by a prolonged rumbling. The old man stood still, listened,
shook his fist, spat disgustedly, and muttered:
"Oh, Hell!"
I have given lengthy extracts from this story, for I wished to convey a
notion of the author's pulsating, vibrant, and impassioned style. There
is more of the drama here than of the novel, and an elemental fierceness
like that of Shakespearean drama. It would be well if these pages, so
profound in the bitterness of their injustice, were to become widely
known. It would be well if the poor women who, in all love as a rule,
adopt a superhuman pose, could be made to realise, by means of this
madman's outpourings, the secret thoughts which no man will dare to tell
them, to understand the mute and almost shamefaced appeal to their poor
human kindliness, to their simple and motherly compassion.
* * * * *
I shall deal more briefly with the other episodes.
The second, "Baptism of Fire" (Feuertaufe), is long, perhaps too long,
but full of pity and of pain. Almost the whole scene is played within
the soul of Captain Marschner, a man of fifty, who is leading his
company to the front-line trench under the enemy's fire. He is not a
professional soldier. As a young man he had been an officer, but at the
age of thirty he had gone to school again, wishing to quit the trade of
war and to become a civil engineer. Now the war had brought him back to
the army. He had been in Vienna only the day before yesterday. His men
were fathers of families, stonemasons, peasants, factory hands, and so
on. None of them had any patriotic enthusiasm. He read their minds, and
felt ashamed of himself because he was leading to certain death these
poor fellows who trusted him. Beside him marched Weixler, a young
lieutenant, cold, ruthless, inhuman--as one so often is at twenty years
of age "when one has had no time yet to learn the value of life." The
hardness of this man (an irreproachable officer) arouses in Marschner
mingled anger and suffering. By degrees a fierce but unspoken feud
arises between them. At the very end, just when open war is about to
break out between the two, a huge shell bursts in their trench and both
are buried under the wreckage. The captain comes to himself with a
shattered skull. At a few paces' distance lies the implacable
lieutenant, his entrails trailing on the ground beside him. They
exchange a last look. Marschner sees a face that is almost strange to
him, pale and sad, with timid eyes. The whole expression is gentle and
plaintive; there is an unforgettable air of tender, anxious resignation.
"He is suffering!" flashed through the captain's mind. "He is
suffering!" Marschner is transported with joy. And therewith he dies.
"My Comrade" (Der Kamarad) is the diary of a soldier in hospital. This
man has been driven mad by the terrible sights at the front, and above
all by the vision of a wounded man in the death agony, a poor wretch
whose face had been torn away by a grapnel. The sight was seared upon
his brain. The image never left him by day or by night. It sat down
beside him at meals; went to bed with him; got up with him in the
morning. It had become "My Comrade." The description is positively
hallucinating, and this story contains some of the most forceful
passages in the book, directed against the warmongers and against the
humbugs of the press.
"A Hero's Death" (Heldentod) describes the death in hospital of First
Lieutenant Otto Kadar. He has a fractured skull. While the regimental
officers were listening to a gramophone playing the Rakoczy march, a
bomb exploded among them. The dying man never stops talking of the
Rakoczy march. He imagines that he is looking at the corpse of a young
officer whose head has been carried away, and in place of the head,
screwed into the neck, is the gramophone disc. In his growing delirium,
he fancies that the same thing has happened to all the common soldiers,
to all the officers, to himself; that in each one the head has been
replaced by a gramophone disc. That is why it is so easy to lead them to
the slaughter. The dying man makes a frantic effort to tear away the
disc from his own neck, and as he does so all is over. The old major
looking on says in a voice vibrating with respect: "He died like a true
Hungarian--singing the Rakoczy march."
"Home Again" (Heimkehr) tells of the homecoming of Johann Bogdan, who
had been the handsomest man in his native village. He returns from the
war hopelessly disfigured. In hospital his face has been remade for him
by means of a number of plastic operations. But when he looks at himself
in the glass he is horror-stricken. No one in the village recognises
him. The only exception is a hunchback whom he had looked on with
contempt, and who now greets him familiarly. The countryside has been
transformed by the building of a munition factory. Marcsa, Bogdan's
betrothed, works there, and has become the factory owner's mistress.
Bogdan sees red, and stabs the man, to be struck down dead himself a
moment later.--In this story the growth of the revolutionary spirit is
manifest. Bogdan, a dull conservative by nature, is inspired with it
against his will. We have a threatening vision of the return of the
soldiers from all the armies, and of how they will take vengeance upon
those who sent others to death while remaining at home to enjoy life and
to grow rich by speculation.
I have kept the third story to the last, for it contrasts with the
others by the sobriety of its emotion. It is entitled "The Victor" (Der
Sieger). In the other episodes, the tragic element is nude and bleeding.
Here tragedy is veiled with irony, and is all the more formidable.
Revolt simmers beneath the calm words; the butchers are pilloried by the
bitter satire.
The victor is His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief, the renowned
Generalissimo X., universally known in the press as "The Victor of * *
*." He is there in all his glory, in the principal square of the town
which is now the military headquarters. Here he is absolute master. Here
there is nothing which he cannot do or undo at his will. The band is
playing, on a fine autumn afternoon. His Excellency sits out of doors in
front of a café, amid smart officers and elegantly dressed ladies. It is
nearly forty miles from the front. Strict orders have been given that no
wounded or convalescent soldier, or any man whose appearance might have
a depressing effect on the general war enthusiasm or might trouble the
comfort of those who are at ease, shall be allowed out of hospital. We
are told how much His Excellency is enjoying himself. He finds the war
splendid. People have never had a jollier time. "Did you notice the
young fellows back from the front? Sunburnt, healthy, happy!... I assure
you the world has never been so healthy as it is now." The whole company
chimes in to celebrate the beneficial effects of the war. His Excellency
meditates upon his good luck, his titles, his decorations, harvested in
a single year of war, after he had vegetated for nine-and-thirty years
in peace and mediocrity. It has been a perfect miracle. He is now a
national hero. He has his motor, his country mansion, his chef, delicate
fare, a lordly retinue of servants--and he has not to pay a penny for
it. Only one thing troubles his reflections, the thought that the whole
fairy tale may vanish as suddenly as it came, and that he may relapse
into obscurity. What if the enemy were to break through? But he
reassures himself. All is going well. The great enemy offensive, which
has been expected for the last three months, and which actually began
twenty-four hours ago, hurls itself vainly against a wall of iron. "The
human reservoir is full to overflowing. Two hundred thousand young
stalwarts of exactly the right age are ready to be caught up in the
whirl of the dance, until they sink in a marish of blood and bones." His
Excellency's agreeable reverie is interrupted by an aide-de-camp, who
informs him that the correspondent of an influential foreign newspaper
has requested an interview. This scene is brilliantly described. The
general does not allow the journalist to get a word in. He has his
speech ready:
"He delivered it now, speaking with emphasis, and pausing occasionally
to recall what came next. First of all, he referred to his gallant
soldiers, lauding their courage, their contempt for death, their doings
glorious beyond description. He went on to express regret that it was
impossible to reward all these heroes according to their deserts.
Raising his voice, he invoked the fatherland's eternal gratitude for
such loyalty and self-renunciation even unto death. Pointing to the
heavy crop of medals on his chest, he explained that the distinctions
conferred on him were really a tribute to his men. Finally he interwove
a few well-chosen remarks anent the military calibre of the enemy and
the skilled generalship displayed by the other side. His last words
conveyed his inviolable confidence in ultimate victory."
When the oration was finished, the general became the man of the world.
"You are going to the front now?" he asked with a courteous smile, and
responded to the journalist's enthusiastic "yes" with a melancholy sigh.
"Lucky man! I envy you. You see, the tragedy in the life of the modern
general is that he cannot lead his men personally into the fray. He
spends his whole life making ready for war; he is a soldier in body and
mind, and yet he knows the excitement of battle only from hearsay."
Of course the correspondent is delighted that he will be able to depict
this all-powerful warrior in the sympathetic role of renunciation.
The agreeable scene is disturbed by the intrusion of an infantry captain
who is out of his mind and has escaped from hospital. His Excellency,
though in a towering rage, controls his temper for the sake of
appearances, and has the inconvenient visitor sent back in his own car.
He turns the incident to account by uttering a few touching phrases
concerning the impossibility for a general to do his duty if he had to
witness all the misery at the front. He evades the correspondent's final
question, "When does Your Excellency hope for peace?" by pointing across
the square to the old cathedral, saying, "The only advice I can give you
is to go over there and ask our Heavenly Father. No one else can answer
that question."--Then His Excellency descends upon the hospital like a
whirlwind, blusters at the old staff-surgeon, and reiterates the order
to keep all the patients safely under lock and key. His wrath by now is
slightly assuaged, but it is revived by a message from the front. A
brigadier-general reports terrible losses, and declares that he cannot
hold the line without reinforcements. It was part of His Excellency's
plan that this brigade should be wiped out, after resisting the attack
as long as possible. But he is angry that his victims should have any
advice to offer, and sends curt orders, "The sector is to be held."--At
length, the day's work being over, the great man drives home in his
motor, still fiercely excogitating the correspondent's idiotic question,
"When does Your Excellency hope for peace?"
"Hope!... How tactless!... Hope for peace! What good has a general to
expect from peace? Could not this civilian understand that a
commander-in-chief is only a commander-in-chief in war-time, and that in
peace-time he is nothing more than a professor with a collar of gold
braid?"
The general is annoyed once more when the car pulls up because it is
necessary to close the hood on account of the rain. But during the pause
His Excellency hears the sound of distant firing. His eyes
brighten.--Thank God, there was still war.
* * * * *
My quotations have been enough to show the emotional force and the
trenchant irony of Latzko's book. It scorches. It is a torch of
suffering and revolt. Both its merits and its defects are sib to this
frenzy. The author is master of the writer's art, but he is not always
master of his own feelings. His memories are still open wounds. He is
possessed by his visions. His nerves vibrate like violin strings. Almost
without exception, his analyses of emotion are tremulous monologues. His
shattered spirit cannot find repose.
Doubtless he will be criticised for the preponderant place assumed in
his book by physical pain. The work is full of it. Pain monopolises the
reader's mind and wearies his eyes. Not until we have read _Men in
Battle_ do we fully appreciate Barbusse's chariness in the use of
material effects. If Latzko is persistent in their employment, this is
not merely because he is haunted by memories of pain. He wishes,
deliberately wishes, to communicate these impressions to others, for he
has suffered greatly from others' insensibility.
In very truth, such insensibility has been the saddest of all our
experiences during this war. We knew man to be stupid, mediocre,
selfish: we knew that on occasions man could be extremely cruel. But
though we had few illusions, we had never believed that man could
remain so monstrously indifferent to the cries of millions of victims.
We had never believed that there could be a smile such as we have
witnessed upon the lips of the young fanatics and of the old demoniacs
who, from their safe seats, are never weary of looking on at the mutual
slaughter of the nations, of those who kill one another for the
pleasure, the pride, the ideas, and the interests of the onlookers. All
the rest, all the crimes, we can tolerate; but this aridity of soul is
the worst of all, and we feel that Latzko has been overwhelmed by it.
Like one of his own characters, who is regarded as a sick man because he
cannot forget the sufferings he has witnessed, Latzko cries to the
apathetic public:
"Sick!... No! It is the others that are sick. They are sick who gloat
over news of victories and see conquered miles of territory arise
resplendent above mountains of corpses. They are sick who stretch a
barrier of many-coloured bunting between themselves and their better
feelings, lest they should see what crimes are being committed against
their brothers in the beyond that they call 'the front.' Every man is
sick who can still think, talk, argue, sleep, knowing that other men,
holding their own entrails in their hands, are crawling like
half-crushed worms across the furrows in the fields, and are dying like
animals before they can reach the ambulance station, while somewhere,
far away, a woman with longing in her heart is dreaming beside an empty
bed. All those are sick who fail to hear the moaning, the gnashing of
teeth, the howling, the crashing and bursting, the wailing and cursing
and agonising in death, because their ears are filled with the murmur of
everyday affairs. These blind and deaf ones are sick, not I. Sick are
those dumb beings whose soul can give voice neither to compassion nor to
anger...." ("My Comrade").
The author's aim is to arouse these sick beings from their torpor, to
treat them with the actual cautery of pain. This aim is portrayed in the
person of Captain Marschner ("Baptism of Fire"), who, when his company
is in the thick of the slaughter, suffers from nothing so intensely as
from the harsh impassivity of his lieutenant, but who, himself at the
point of death, finds it a positive solace to see on Weixler's stern
face a shadow of pain, brotherly pain.
"Thank God," he thinks. "At last he knows what suffering is!"