Of the worst of all I have not written.... It is not the slaying, not
the mounds of dead, which we are always passing, and not the wounded
(they have the morphine needle and they lie quiet and peaceful in the
straw of the requisitioned peasant carts). To me the worst is the
distress and suffering to which man and beast are constantly subjected
by the terrible strain. We have just buried my first mount, a glorious
animal, virtually driven to his death. Driven to death by me! Can you
imagine that a person as peaceable as I could find it possible to drive
a horse to death with whip and spurs?
There is no help for it. The word is forward--always forward!
Oh, this everlasting driving on!
One stands beside a team that can go no further and compels the
drivers, with kindness or threats, to force the impossible out of the
horses. The poor animals are all in, but one grabs the whip himself and
mercilessly beats away at the miserable beasts till they move again.
That is the shocking thing--that one is constantly compelled to make
demands upon the poor animals to which they are not equal. Everything
here is beyond one's strength. The impossible is made possible. It must
go--till something or other breaks.
Or picture this to yourself: Shaken with fever and with burning eyes, a
boy comes to me, whimpering--he can endure no more--and I ride into him
and drive him back to the front. Can you picture that? But it must be!
Everything here is beyond one's strength. My God! We ourselves must
do impossible things. But can one demand that of the others? We know
that the struggle is for the German idea in the world--that it is to
defend German understanding, German perception against the onslaught
of Asiatic barbarism and Romanic indifference. We know what is on the
cards if we do not do our utmost.
But the men? How often since we came to this God-forsaken region did
we tell ourselves that it was impossible to go forward at night. It is
really impossible. And then came an order--an order which could not be
carried out during the day, so it went at night. It went because it
must. Because "the order" is the great unavoidable--something that must
be carried out--Fate, the all-determining. We know what "the order"
means now! It is that which gives our people the ascendancy over the
whole world.