Another political event of those days was that Austria at length joined the Geneva convention.
“Well, are you contented now?” asked my father as he read the news. “Do you agree that war, which you are always calling a barbarity, is always becoming more humane as civilisation progresses? I too am indeed in favour of carrying on war humanely: the wounded should have the most careful nursing and all possible relief. … Even on strategic principles, which in the long ran are surely the most important in warlike matters, by a proper treatment of the sick very many may become fit for service again, and be replaced in the ranks in a shorter space of time.”
“You are right, papa. Material to be used again, that is the chief thing. But after the things which I have seen, no Red Cross will be enough, even if they had ten times as much of men and means, to conjure away the misery which one battle brings with it—”
“No, indeed, not to conjure it away, but to mitigate it. What cannot be prevented, one must always seek to mitigate.”
“Experience teaches that no sufficient mitigation is possible. I should therefore wish the maxim to be inverted, ‘What cannot be mitigated ought to be prevented.’ ”
It began to be a fixed idea with me, that war must cease. And every individual must contribute, all that he is able, to bring mankind nearer to this end, were it but by the thousandth part of a line. I could not get away from the scenes which I had witnessed in Bohemia. Especially at night, when I woke out of a sound sleep, I would feel that sore pain at my heart, and felt at the same time in my conscience the admonition, just as if someone was giving me the command, “Stop it, prevent it, do not suffer it.” It was not till I was wide awake and thought on what I was that the perception of my impotence came over me. What then was I to stop or to prevent? A man might as well order me, in face of the sea swelling with winds and waves, “Not to suffer it, dry it up.” And my next thought was, especially as I listened to his breathing, one of deep happiness, “I have Frederick again,” and I would plunge into this idea as vividly as I could, and then I would put my arm round him as he lay beside me, even at the risk of wakening him, and kiss his lips.
My son Rudolf had really reason to be jealous of his stepfather, and this feeling was actually aroused in the boy’s heart, especially since recent days. That I had gone away from Grumitz without bidding him goodbye, that after my return my first wish was not to embrace him, that as a general rule I did not move from my husband’s side for almost the whole day—all this put together caused the poor little fellow one fine morning to throw himself weeping on my neck, and sob out: “Mamma, mamma, you do not love me a bit.”
“What nonsense are you talking, child?”
“Yes—only—only papa. I—I will not grow up at all—if you no longer like me.”
“No longer like you—you my treasure!” I kissed and caressed the weeping child. “You, my only son, my pride, the joy of my future. I love you so—so above—no, not above everything—but infinitely.”
After this little scene, my love for my boy came more vividly into my feelings. In the days just past, I had in fact been so much engrossed by my fears for Frederick, that poor Rudolf had got thrust a little into the background.
The plans which Frederick and I had made up between ourselves for the future were as follows: After the war was over, to quit the military service, and retire to some small, cheap place, where Frederick’s pension as colonel, and what I could contribute, would suffice to keep up our little household. We rejoiced over this solitary independent life together, as if we had been a pair of young lovers. By means of the events of our recent experience, we had been taught thoroughly that we each formed the whole world to the other. Little Rudolf, moreover, was not excluded from this fellowship. His education was a main business in filling up the existence we were planning. We were not to pass our days therein in idleness and without any aim; amongst other things we had marked out a whole list of studies, which we were to pursue in common. In especial, there was among the sciences a branch of the science of law, international, to which Frederick intended to devote himself particularly. His aim was, quite apart from all Utopian and sentimental theory, to investigate the practical side of national peace. By means of the perusal of Buckle—to which I had given him the impulse—by means of an acquaintance with the newest acquisitions in natural philosophy, which had been revealed to him in the works of Darwin, Büchner, and others, the conviction had come before him that the world was arriving at a new phase of knowledge, and to make this knowledge his own, as far as possible, appeared to him sufficient to fill up life, along with domestic pleasures.
My father, who meanwhile knew nothing of our views, was making quite other plans for the future on our behalf. “You will now, Tilling, be colonel at an early age, and in ten years you will certainly be general. A fresh war will no doubt break out again about that time, and you may get the command of an entire corps d’armée, or who knows but that you may reach the rank
