_The Austro-Prussian war.--My husband with the army.--Parting
letters.--Dr. Bresser.--The course of the war.--Victory of
Custozza.--Austrian reverses in Bohemia.--War correspondence in the
newspapers.--Discussions with my father.--A long letter to my
husband._
So it had come again--this greatest of all misfortunes--and was greeted
by the populace with the accustomed rejoicing. The regiments marched out
(in what state were they to return?) and wishes for victory, and
blessings, and the shouting of the street boys were their accompaniment.
Frederick had been ordered to Bohemia some time previously, even before
war had been declared; and just when matters were in such a position as
to enable me to entertain a confident hope that the quarrel about the
duchies, so unblessed and so contemptible, would be settled amicably.
And, therefore, this time I was spared the heart-rending leave-taking
which precedes the setting off of one’s beloved directly “to the war”.
When my father brought me the news in triumph: “Now it is off,” I had
been already alone for a fortnight. And for some time I had quite made
my mind up to this news, as a criminal in his cell has made up his mind
to the reading of the death-sentence.
I bowed my head and said nothing.
“Keep up a good heart, my child. The war will not last long; in a day or
two we shall be in Berlin. And as your husband came back from
Schleswig-Holstein, so he will come back from this campaign, but covered
with much greener laurels. It may, indeed, be unpleasant for him, being
himself of Prussian extraction, to fight against Prussia, but after he
entered into the Austrian service he became one of us body and soul.
Those Prussians! the arrogant windbags! they want to turn us out of the
Bund! they will soon repent it; if Silesia becomes ours again, and if
the Hapsburgs----”
I stretched out my hand: “Father--one request--leave me to myself”.
He might have imagined that I felt the need of giving my tears full
vent; and as he was an enemy to all scenes of emotion, he willingly
granted my wish and took his departure.
I, however, did not weep. I felt as if a numbing stroke had fallen on my
head. Breathing heavily, staring blindly, I sat motionless for some
time. Then I went to my writing-table, opened the red volume, and made
this entry:--
“The sentence of death is pronounced. A hundred thousand men are to be
executed. Will Frederick be among them? And I also, as a consequence.
Who am I that I should not perish like the rest of the hundred thousand?
I wish I were dead already.”
From Frederick I received the same day a few hasty lines.
“My wife, be of good cheer; keep your heart up! We have been happy--no
one can take that from us--even if to-day for us, as for so many others,
the decree has gone forth--‘It is finished’. (The same thought here as I
expressed in my red book about the many others who were sentenced.)
To-day we go to meet ‘the enemy’. Perhaps I shall recognise there a few
comrades in battle at Düppel and Alsen--possibly my little cousin
Godfrey.... We are to march on Liebenau with the advanced guard of Count
Clam-Gallas. From this time there will be no more leisure for writing.
Do not look for any _letters_ for you. At the most, if opportunity
offers, a line, as a token that I am alive. But before that I should
like to find one single word which could comprehend in itself the whole
of my love that I might write it here for you in case it might be my
last. I can find only this word--‘Martha’. You know what that means for
me.”
Conrad Althaus had also to march. He was full of fire and delight in
battle, and animated by sufficient hatred of the Prussians to make him
start off with pleasure; still his parting was hard for him. The
marriage licence had arrived only two days before the order to march.
“Oh, Lilly, Lilly,” he cried with pain, as he said adieu to his
affianced bride, “why did you delay so long to accept me? Who knows now
whether I shall come back again?”
My poor sister was herself full of repentance. Now for the first time
there sprang up passionate love for him she had slighted so long. When
he was gone she sank into my arms in tears.
“Oh, why did I not say ‘yes’ long ago! I should now have been his wife.”
“Then, my poor Lilly, the parting would have been all the more painful
for you.”
She shook her head. I well understood what was going on in her mind,
perhaps more clearly than she understood herself; to be obliged to part
with love-longings still unfulfilled, and, perhaps, destined to remain
for ever unfulfilled; to see the cup torn from their lips, and possibly
shattered, before they had had a single draught--that might well be
doubly torturing.
My father, sisters, and Aunt Mary now removed to Grumitz. I was easily
persuaded to go there too with my little son. As long as Frederick was
away, my own hearth seemed extinguished--I could not stay there. It is
strange. I felt myself just as much a widow, to have done with life just
as thoroughly, as if the news of the outbreak of war had been at the
same time the news of Frederick’s death. Occasionally in the midst of my
dull grief, a brighter thought would break in: “He is alive and surely
may come back”; but along with it an idea of horror would rise again:
“He is writhing and agonising in intolerable pains; he is fainting in a
trench; heavy waggons are driving over his shattered limbs; flies and
worms are crawling over his open wounds; the people who are clearing the
field of battle take the stiffened object lying on the ground for dead,
and are shovelling him still alive along with the dead into the damp
trench: there he comes to himself and----”
With a loud scream I woke up from such images as these.
“What is the matter with you now, Martha,” said my father in a scolding
tone. “You will drive yourself out of your senses if you brood in this
way and cry out so; why will you summon up such foolish pictures out of
your fancy? It is sinful.”
I had indeed often given expression aloud to these ideas of mine, and
this irritated my father extremely.
“Sinful,” he went on, “and improper and nonsensical. Such cases as your
excited fancy pictures, do no doubt occur once in a thousand times among
the common men, but a staff-officer, as your husband is, is not left to
lie on the field. Besides, as a general rule, folks should not think
about such horrid things. Such conduct involves a kind of sacrilege, a
profanation of war, in keeping these pitiful details before one’s eyes
instead of the sublimity of the whole. One should not think about them.”
“Yes, yes, not think about it,” I replied, “that is always the custom of
mankind in the presence of any human misery--‘don’t think about it,’
that is the support of all kinds of barbarity.”
Our family doctor, Dr. Bresser, was not at this moment at Grumitz, he
had voluntarily placed himself at the disposal of the army medical
department, and had started for the theatre of war, and the idea
occurred to me also whether I should not go too, as a sick-nurse. Yes,
if I could have known that I should be in Frederick’s neighbourhood, be
at hand in case he was wounded, I would not have hesitated. But for
others? No, there my strength broke down, my spirit of sacrifice failed.
To see them die, hear the death-rattle, want to give help to hundreds
begging for help, and have no help to give, to bring on myself all this
pain, this disgust, this grief, without thereby getting to Frederick, on
the contrary diminishing thereby the chance of meeting again, for the
nurses themselves ran into various kinds of danger to their lives. No;
that I would not do. Besides my father informed me that a private person
like myself was altogether inadmissible for nursing in a field hospital,
that this office could only be exercised by soldiers of the army medical
service, or at the most by sisters of charity.
“To pluck charpie,” he said, “and prepare bandages for the Patriotic Aid
Society, that is the only thing that you ladies can do to help the
wounded, and that my daughters ought to do diligently, on that I bestow
my blessing.”
And it was now to this occupation that my sisters and I devoted many
hours of every day. Rosa and Lilly worked with gently compassionate,
almost happy-looking faces. As we heaped up the fine threads under our
fingers into soft masses, or folded up the strips of linen in beautiful
order together, the occupation affected the two girls like an office of
charitable nursing: they fancied themselves soothing the burning pains
and staunching the bleeding wounds, hearing the sighs of relief and
seeing the grateful glances of those on whom they attended. The picture
they so formed of the condition of a wounded man was then almost a
pleasant one. Enviable soldiers! who, delivered from the dangers of the
raging fight, were now stretched on clean soft beds, and there would be
nursed and pampered up to the time of their recovery, lulled for the
most part in a half-unconscious slumber of luxurious fatigue, waking up
again occasionally to the pleasant consciousness that their lives were
saved, and that they would be able to return to their friends at home
and relate to them how they had received their honourable wounds at the
battle of----.
Our father also encouraged them in this innocent way of looking at it.
“Bravo, bravo, girls! working again to-day! You have now again prepared
delights for a number of our brave defenders. What a relief it is to get
a pad of charpie like that on a bleeding wound! I can tell you a tale
about that. Long ago, when I got that bullet in my leg at Palestro----”
and so on, and so on.
I however sighed and said nothing. I had heard other histories of
wounds than those which my father loved to relate, histories which bore
about the same relation to the usual veterans’ anecdotes, as the
realities of the life of a poor shepherd do to the pastoral pictures of
Watteau.
The Red Cross. I knew through what an impulse of popular sympathy,
shocked to the most painful degree, that institution had been called
into life. In its time I had followed the debate which took place at
Geneva on the subject, and had read the tract by Dunant, which gave the
impetus to the whole thing. A heart-rending cry of woe was that tract!
The noble patrician of Geneva had hurried to the field of Solferino, in
order to give what aid he could; and what he found there he related to
the world. Innumerable wounded men, who had been lying there for five or
six days without any assistance. He would have liked to save them all;
but what could he, a single person, do, what could the other few
individuals, in the face of this mass of misery? He saw men whose lives
might have been saved by a drop of water, by a mouthful of bread. He saw
men who, still breathing, had to be buried in fearful haste.... Then he
spoke out; said what had often been admitted, but now found an echo for
the first time, _viz._, that the means for nursing and rescue at the
disposal of the army administration had not grown in proportion to the
requirements of a battle. And so the “Red Cross” was founded.
Austria had at that time not yet adhered to the Geneva Convention. Why?
Why is there resistance opposed to everything that is new, however rich
in blessing, and however simple it may be? Because of the law of
laziness, the power of holy custom. “The idea is very fine, but
impracticable,” is the saying. I often heard my father repeat these
arguments of hesitation used by several of the delegates at the
Conference of 1863. “Impracticable, and, even if practicable, yet in
many points of view unbecoming. The military authorities could not allow
that private action on the field of battle was admissible. In war
tactical aims must have the priority over the friendly offices of
humanity; and how could this private action be surrounded with proper
guarantees against the existence of espionage? And the expenses! Is not
war costly enough already? The voluntary nurses would, through their own
material wants, fall as a burden on the provision department; or, if
they are to supply themselves in the country occupied, will there not
arise a regrettable difficulty for the army administration through the
purchase of the articles necessary for the service, and the immediate
raising of their price?”
Oh, this official wisdom! so dry, so well-instructed, so real, so
redolent of prudence, and so unfathomably stupid!
* * * * *
The first engagement between our troops in Bohemia and the enemy took
place on June 25 at Liebenau. My father brought us this news with his
usual triumphant mien.
“That is a grand beginning,” he said; “you can see heaven is on our
side. It is significant that the first with whom these windbags had to
do were the troops of our celebrated ‘Iron Brigade’. You know, of
course, the Poschach Brigade which defended Königsberg in Silesia so
valiantly--they will give them all they want!” (However, the next news
from the seat of war showed that after five hours’ fighting this
brigade, forming part of the advanced guard of Clam-Gallas, retreated to
Podol. Also that Frederick was there--which I did not know--and that in
the same night Podol, which had been barricaded, was attacked by General
Horn, and the fight renewed by the bright moonlight; which also I heard
later.) “But,” continued my father, “even more splendid than in the
north is the beginning of matters in the south. At Custozza we have
gained a victory, children, more glorious than any but one. I have
always said it: Lombardy must become ours! Are you not delighted? I
regard the war as already decided; for if we get done with the Italians,
who do at any rate set a regular trained army in the field against us,
we shall not find it hard to deal with these ‘tailors’ apprentices’.
This Landwehr--it is really an impudence--but it is just of a piece with
the whole Prussian conceit to take the field against regular armies
with such stuff. There are these fellows, torn away from the workbench
and the writing-desk; they are not inured to any hardship, and so it is
impossible that they can stand in the field against soldiers proof
against blood and steel. Just look there--at what the _Wiener Zeitung_
of June 24 writes in its ‘original correspondence’--surely that is good
news: ‘In Prussian Silesia cattle plague has broken out, and, as is
understood, in a highly threatening form’.”
“‘Cattle plague,’ ‘threatening form,’ ‘joyful news,’” I said with a
slight shake of the head; “nice things people must take pleasure in in
times of war. However, one good thing is that black and yellow posts are
erected on the frontiers, so that the plague cannot cross.”
But my father did not hear, and went on reading his pleasant
intelligence:--
Fever is raging among the Prussian troops at Neisse. The unhealthy
marsh-land, the bad treatment and the miserable shelter of the
troops accumulated in the villages around, must necessarily produce
such results. In Austria we have no idea of the treatment of the
Prussian soldiery. The nobles believe themselves entitled to give
any orders they please to the “common folk”. Six ounces of pork per
man is all--and that for men who are not experienced soldiers.
“The newspapers are all full of capital news; above all, the account of
the glorious day of Custozza. You should keep these papers, Martha.”
And I have kept them. It is what people should always do; and when a new
national quarrel is impending, then read, not the most recent
newspapers, but those dating from the former war, and then you will see
what weight to attach to all their prophesying and boasting, and even to
their accounts and intelligence. _That_ is instructive.
From the seat of war in the north--from headquarters of the Army of
the North--they write to us as follows, on the subject of the
Prussian plan of campaign (!): “According to the latest advices,
the Prussian army has shifted its headquarters to Eastern Silesia.
(Then follows in the usual tactical style a long narrative of the
projected movements and positions contemplated by the enemy,
according to which the gentleman who furnished the news must have
had a much clearer picture before him than Moltke and Roon.)
According to this, it seems to be the object of the Prussians to
anticipate in this way our march on Berlin by their own in which,
however, they will hardly succeed, having regard to the precautions
taken (with which again ‘our special correspondent’ is much more
familiar than Benedek). Favourable accounts may be looked for from
the northern army with the utmost confidence, even if they do not
arrive so quickly as the popular longing desires them to do. They
will, however, thereby become more decisive and more important.”
The new _Frankfurter Zeitung_ relates a pleasant interlude, the march of
Austrian troops of Italian nationality through Munich, as follows:--
Among the troops passing through Munich were some battalions of the
line. They, like the rest of the troops passing through the
Bavarian capital, were entertained in the garden of an inn situated
near the station. Any one might convince himself with what delight
these Venetians testified to their joy in fighting the foes of
Austria (perhaps too “any one” might have imagined that drunken
soldiers would willingly show enthusiasm for anything they were
told to be enthusiastic about). In Würzburg the station was filled
by the rank and file of an Austrian regiment of infantry of the
line. As far as could be ascertained the whole consisted of
Venetians. They were received with equal friendliness (_i.e._, were
made equally drunk); and the men could not find words to express
with sufficient warmth their joy and their determination to fight
against the truce-breakers (of two parties at war with each other
the other is always “the truce-breakers”). The hurrahs were
endless. (Could not this “Mr. Any One,” who was thus lounging about
the railway station, and so edified by the cries of the soldiery,
find out that there is nothing so contagious as hurrahing--that a
thousand voices shouting together are not the expression of a
thousand unanimous sentiments, but simply exemplify the working of
the natural instinct of imitation?)
At Böhmisch-Trübau Field-Marshal Benedek communicated to the Army of the
North the three bulletins relative to the victory of the Army of the
South, and added the following order of the day:--
In the name of the Army of the North, I have despatched the
following telegram to the commander of the Army of the South:
Field-Marshal Benedek and the whole northern army to the glorious
and most illustrious Commander-in-chief of the brave southern army
with joyful admiration, sends most hearty congratulations on the
news of the famous day of Custozza. The campaign in the south is
opened with a new and glorious victory for our arms. Glorious
Custozza shines on the escutcheon of the imperial army.
Soldiers of the Army of the North! You will receive the news with
shouts of joy. You will move to battle with increased enthusiasm,
so that we also may very soon inscribe names of fame on that same
shield, and announce to the emperor a victory from the north also
towards which our warlike ardour burns, and which your valour and
devotion will conquer, to the cry “Long live the emperor”.
BENEDEK.
To the foregoing telegram the following answer from Verona reached
Böhmisch-Trübau:--
The Army of the South and its commander return their thanks to
their beloved ex-commander and his brave army. Convinced that we
also shall soon have to send our congratulations for a similar
victory.
“Convinced! Convinced!” ...
“Does not your heart leap up, my children, when you read such things?”
shouted my father in delight. “Can you not rise up to a sufficient
height of patriotic feeling to throw into the background your private
circumstances at the sight of such triumphs, you, Martha, to forget that
your Frederick, and you, Lilly, that your Conrad is exposed to some
danger? Danger which probably they will come out of safe and sound: and
even to succumb to which--a fate which they share with the best sons of
our country--would redound to their fame and honour. There is not a
soldier who would not willingly die to the call, ‘For our country!’”
“If, after a lost battle, a man is left lying with shattered limbs on
the field,” I replied, “and lies there undiscovered for four or five
days and nights in indescribable agonies from thirst and hunger, rotting
while still alive, and so perishes, knowing all the while that his death
has not helped his country you talk of one bit, but has brought his
loved ones to despair, I should like to know whether all this time he is
gladly dying to the call you speak of.”
“You are outrageous, and besides you speak in such shrill tones, quite
unbecoming for a lady.”
“Oh yes, the true word, the naked reality, is outrageous, is shameless.
Only the phrase which by thousandfold repetition has become sanctioned
is ‘proper,’ but I assure you, father, that this unnatural ‘joy in
dying’ which is thus exacted from all men, however heroic it may seem to
him who uses the phrase, sounds to me like a _spoken death-knell_.”
* * * * *
Among Frederick’s papers, many years later, I found a letter which in
those days I sent to the seat of war. This letter shows as clearly as
possible with what feelings I was filled at that time.
“Grumitz, _June 28, 1866_.
“Dear one,--I am not alive. Fancy that in the next room people are
debating whether I am to be executed in the next few days or no, while I
have to wait outside for their decision. During this period of waiting I
do indeed breathe, but can I call it _living_? The next room, in which
the question is to be decided, is called Bohemia. But no, my love, the
picture is hardly yet correct. For if it were only a matter of _my_ life
or death, the anxiety would not be so great. For my anxiety concerns a
far dearer life than my own; and my fear is concerned even with
something still worse than your death--with your possible agony in
dying. Oh that all this were over, over! Oh that our victories would
come in speedy succession; not for the sake of the victory, but of the
end!
“Will these lines ever reach you? and where, and how? Whether after a
hot day’s fight or in camp, or perhaps in hospital? In any case it will
do you good to get news of your dear ones. If I can write nothing but
what is mournful--and what else but what is mournful can be felt during
this time, when the sun is darkened by the great black pall hoisted up
in the name of ‘our country,’ to fall down on the country’s sons?--still
my lines will bring you refreshment, for I am dear to you, Frederick--I
know how dear, and my written word rejoices and moves you, as would a
soft touch from my hand. I am near you, Frederick--be assured of
that--with every thought, with every breath, by day and night. Here, in
my own circle, I move and act and speak mechanically. My innermost self,
_that_ belongs to you, _that_ never leaves you for a moment; only my boy
reminds me that the world still contains for me a thing which is not
you. The good little fellow--if you knew how he asks and cares for you!
We two talk together of nothing but ‘papa’. He knows well, like a boy of
sharp perceptions, what object fills my heart; and however little he may
be (you know that!) he is already in a sense a _friend_ of his mother. I
even begin to speak with him as with a reasonable being, and for this he
is thankful. I, on my part, am thankful to him for the love he shows to
you. It is so seldom that children get on well with their step-parents.
It is true there is nothing of the stepfather about you--you could not
be more tender and kind to a child of your own, my own tender and kind
one! Yes, kindness, great, soft, and mild, is the foundation of your
being; and what does the poet say? ‘As heaven is vaulted by one single
great sapphire, so the greatness of character of a noble man is formed
of one single virtue, kindness.’ In other words, I love you, Frederick!
That is still always the refrain of all my thoughts about you and your
qualities. I love you so confidingly, with such assurance. I _rest_ in
you, Frederick, warm and soft--that is when I have you, of course. Now
when you are again torn from me, my repose is naturally gone. Oh, if the
storm were only over, over; if you all were only in Berlin to dictate
terms of peace to King William! For my father is firmly convinced that
this will be the end of the campaign; and from all that is heard and
read here, I also most believe him. ‘As soon as, with God’s help, the
enemy is struck down’--so runs Benedek’s proclamation--‘we will follow
on his track, and you shall repose in the country of the foe, and enjoy
those refreshments----’ and so on. What, then, are these refreshments?
At this day no general dare say openly, and without circumlocution: ‘You
shall plunder, burn, murder, and ravish,’ as they used to say in the
middle ages to excite their hordes. Now, at the most, all that could be
kept before their eyes as a reward would be the free distribution of
beer and sausages; but that would be a little tame, and so it was put
figuratively--‘those refreshments,’ and so on. Every one may make out of
that what he pleases. The principle that in ‘the country of the foe’ is
to be found the reward of war is still maintained in military
language.... And how will you feel in ‘the foeman’s land,’ which is
really your own ancestral country, where your friends and your cousins
are living? Will you ‘refresh’ yourself by laying Aunt Cornelia’s pretty
villa even with the ground? ‘Enemy’s country;’ that is really a
fossilised conception of those times when war was openly what its
_raison d’etre_ proclaims it, a piracy; and when the enemy’s country
attracted the combatant as a land of prey which promised him a
recompense.
“I am talking now with you, as I used in those happy hours when you were
at my side, and when, after the reading of some book of the progressive
school, we used to philosophise with each other about the contradictions
of our times, so intimately, so entirely understanding and supplementing
each other. In my circle there is no one--no one--with whom I could talk
about matters of that kind. Doctor Bresser would have been the only one
with whom ideas condemnatory of war could be exchanged; and he also is
now gone--himself drawn into this horrible war--but with the purpose of
healing wounds, not inflicting them; another contradiction really, this
‘humanity’ in war: an essential contradiction. It is about the same as
‘enlightenment’ in faith. One thing or the other; but humanity and war;
reason and dogma, _that_ will not do. The downright, burning hatred of
the enemy, coupled with an entire contempt for human life, that is the
vital nerve of war, exactly as the unquestioning suppression of reason
is the fundamental condition of faith. But we live in a time of
compromise. The old institutions and the new ideas are working with
equal power. And so people, who do not wish to break entirely with the
old and who cannot entirely comprehend the new, make an attempt to fuse
the two together; and it is this which generates this mendacious,
inconsistent, contradictory, half-and-half system under which spirits
who thirst for truth, accuracy, and completeness so groan and suffer.
“Ah, why do I compose all this treatise! You will at the present time be
scarcely disposed for such generalisations, as you used to be in our
happy hours of chat. You hear raging round you a horrible reality, with
which you have to reckon. How much better would it be if you could
accept it with the simple assurance of ancient times, when the warlike
life was to the soldier a proud pleasure and a delight. Better also
would it be if I could write to you, as other wives do, letters full of
wishes for prosperity, confident promises of victory, and incitements to
your courage. Girls of the present day are educated in patriotism, so
that at the proper time they might cry to their husbands: ‘Go on, die
for your country--that is the most glorious of deaths’; or, ‘Come back
with victory, and then we will reward you with our loves. In the
meantime we will pray for you. The God of battles, who protects our
army, He will hear our prayers. Day and night our intercession is rising
up to heaven, and we are sure to take His favour by storm. You will come
back crowned with fame. We never tremble for an instant, for we are
worthy comrades of your valour. No! no! the mothers of your sons must be
no cowards if they would raise up a new race of heroes; and even if we
have to give up what is dearest to us--for king and country no sacrifice
is too great!’
“That would be the right letter for a soldier’s wife, would it not? But
not such a letter as you would wish to read from your wife--from the
partner of your thoughts, from her who shares your disgust at the old
blind delusion of mankind. Oh, such disgust--so bitter, so painful that
I cannot describe it to you.” When I picture to myself these two armies,
composed of individuals with the gift of reason, and for the most part
kind and gentle men, how they are rushing on each other, to annihilate
each other, desolating at the same time the unfortunate land, in which
they cast aside the villages they have ‘taken’ like cards in their game
of murder. When I picture all this, I feel inclined to shriek out: ‘Do
bethink you!’ ‘Do stop!’ And out of the 100,000, 90,000 individuals
would certainly be glad to stop; but the mass is compelled to go on in
its fury.
But enough; you will prefer to hear the accounts and the news from home.
Well, then, we are all well. My father is constantly in the highest
state of excitement over present events. The victory of Custozza fills
him with radiant pride. He behaves as if he had won it himself. In any
case he regards the splendour of that day as so bright that the
reflection which falls on him as an Austrian and a general makes him
completely happy. Lori, too, whose husband, as you know, is with the
Army of the South, writes me a letter of triumph about this same
Custozza. Do you recollect, Frederick, how jealous I was for a quarter
of an hour about this same good Lori? And how I came out after that
attack with stronger love and stronger trust in you? Oh, if only you had
betrayed me then; if only you had sometimes a little ill-treated me;
then I should perhaps bear your absence now more easily. But to know
that _such_ a husband is in the storm of bullets! Let me go on with my
news. Lori has offered to spend the remainder of her grass-widowhood in
Grumitz, along with her little Beatrix. I could not say ‘no’; yet
frankly any society is at the present time disagreeable to me. I want to
be alone, alone with my longing for you, the extent of which no one but
you can measure. Next week Otto begins his vacation. He laments in every
letter that the war should have begun before, instead of after, his
admission to officer’s rank. He hopes to God that the peace will not
‘break out’ before he leaves the academy. That word ‘break out’ is not
perhaps the one he used, but in any case it expresses his meaning, for
peace appears to him a threatening calamity. It is indeed the way they
are brought up. As long as there are wars men must be brought up to be
war-loving soldiers; and so long as there are war-loving soldiers there
must be war. Is that our eternal, inevitable circle? No, God be
thanked! For _that_ love, in spite of all school training, is constantly
diminishing. We found the proof of this diminution in Henry Thomas
Buckle. Do not you recollect? But I don’t want any printed proof; a
glance into your heart, your noble human heart, my Frederick, is enough
to demonstrate this to me. Let me get on with my news. From all our
landed connections and acquaintances in Bohemia we get on all sides
epistles of lamentation. The march of the troops through the country,
even if they are marching to victory, devastates it and sucks everything
out of it. And how if once the enemy should advance into it, if the
fight should be played out in their neighbourhood, there where their
possessions, their châteaux and fields are situated? All is ready for
flight, all their effects packed up and their treasures buried. Adieu to
our happy tours among the Bohemian Spas; adieu to the pleasant visits to
the country houses; adieu to the brilliant autumn hunting parties; and,
in any case, adieu to the usual revenues from farms and businesses. The
harvests are trampled down, the factories, if they are not battered down
and burned, are robbed of their labourers. ‘It is indeed a real
misfortune,’ they write, ‘that we live exactly on the border-land; and
it is a second misfortune that Benedek did not assume the offensive with
more vigour, so as to fight out the war in Prussia.’ Perhaps it might
also be called a misfortune that the whole political quarrel could not
have been adjusted before a court of arbitration, but that the murderous
devastation must be carried out on Bohemian or Silesian soil (for in
Silesia also, if we believe the accounts of trustworthy travellers,
there are really men and fields and crops). But that idea does not occur
to anybody!
“My little Rudolf is sitting at my feet while I am writing. He sends you
a kiss, and his love to our dear Puxl. We both miss him much, the good,
merry little dog; but, on the other hand, he would have missed his
master sadly, and he will be a diversion and a companion to you. Give
Puxl both our loves. I shake his paw, and Rudi kisses his dear black
snout.
“And now, good-bye for to-day, my all on earth!”