No. XXXVI.
(_From Herr WOLFGANG OFFENMAUL, an actor_).
Most Gracious Majesty,--How strangely and uncomfortably the Fates sport
with us! It is but two years ago, I remember, that it came into my head
to look forward to the far-off day when I should shake off the stage and
all its agitations, its triumphs, its disappointments and even its
jealousies and its quarrels, and should be able to live my own life in
the pleasant and happy world of reality. But I put the thought by, for
much still remained to me to be endured and achieved in my profession,
and I thought that some day, if matters turned out favourably, I might
have the supreme glory of impersonating _Hamlet_ or _Macbeth_ under the
very eye of your Imperial Majesty and of noting that you were not
displeased with the performance of one of the most devoted of your
subjects. This hope, springing up in my breast, gave me new strength and
a fresh joy in the often dull round of my daily task, for in matters of
the stage your Majesty, being, as we often say among ourselves, the
greatest actor of us all and having from the earliest years imbibed the
love of the footlights and the limelight, is an incomparable judge of
the true histrionic art, and a word of praise from you is worth columns
and columns in the newspapers. It is to us as when a cobbler's boots are
praised by a rival cobbler.
And there is another point which then kept me from giving way any
further to my dreams of retirement from the theatre. Real life, so calm
for the most part and so regular, is but a dull thing to those who live
a fictitious life on the boards, in the midst of excitements and honour
and crimes, with murder and sudden death awaiting them, as it were,
round the corner. After _Hamlet_ has seen his mother's death, has killed
_Laertes_ and the _King_ and has himself expired, what is it to him to
come to life again and to sit down, without his royal trappings to a
supper of sausage and potatoes, while his wife sits by and darns his
stockings and the baby begins to cry in its cot? So thought I, and
resolved to continue my career of acting, though I acknowledged that
some day, perhaps, in the very distant future, retirement might have its
attractions.
All this was before the War broke out. When that happened I, like the
rest, was seized and thrust into a uniform and made to remember my drill
and was presented with a rifle and a bayonet. Finally, with my regiment
I was marched off to the Front in France, where I still linger in daily
expectation of death. Dreadful things have I seen, men blown into
nothingness by shells, men pierced through and through by the steel,
women murdered and worse than murdered, and children crushed under
fallen walls--sights I cannot bear to think of, though they force
themselves upon me and murder sleep. I was, perhaps, unduly contemptuous
of real life, but now I abhor it and try in vain to put it away from me.
I desire with a full-hearted longing to return to that life of
imagination where the most dreadful bloodshed ends at about eleven
o'clock every evening, without leaving any impression on those who take
part. Yes, give me again the life of the theatre and remove far away
this brutal scenery of trenches and shells and bombs and quick-firers
and men summoned from peace and ease to cut one another's throats
because a histrion KAISER has so willed it and none of his subjects
dared to say him nay. To get away from this and never to return to it I
would willingly consent to play the _First Murderer_ in _Macbeth_ for
the remainder of my life. It would be an innocent and an honourable
occupation compared with what I am forced day by day and night by night
to endure.
Yours, in respectful despair, WOLFGANG OFFENMAUL.
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[Illustration: ANOTHER CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR.
Mr. McKenna. "PREMIUM BONDS TO HELP TO WIN THE WAR! OH, MY DEAR FRIENDS!
THINK OF OUR MORAL PRINCIPLES!"]
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