“Calm yourself, dear Tilling. You are a genuine faddist. If you could only point me out a means to do away with war it would be a perfect benefit, to be sure. But as that is not possible, every nation must surely endeavour to prepare itself for it as well as possible, in order to assure itself of the greatest chance of winning in the inevitable ‘struggle for existence’—that is the cant word of the fashionable Darwinism, is it not?”
“If I should choose to suggest to you the means of doing away with wars, you would again call me a silly faddist, a sentimental dreamer rendered morbid by the ‘humanitarian craze’—that, I think, is the cant word in favour with the war party, is it not?”
“To be sure, I cannot conceal from you that no practical foundation exists for the realisation of such an ideal. One must calculate with the actual factors. In these are classed the passions of men; their rivalries; the divergences of interests; the impossibility of coming to an agreement on all questions.”
“But that is not necessary. When disagreements begin an arbitration tribunal—not force—is to decide.”
“The sovereign states would never betake themselves to such a tribunal—nor would the peoples.”
“The peoples? The potentates and diplomatists would not—but the people? Just inquire, and you will find that the wish for peace is warm and true in the people, while the peaceful assurances which proceed from the governments are frequently lies, hypocritical lies—or at least are regarded as such on principle by other governments. That is precisely what is called ‘diplomacy.’ And the peoples will go on ever more and more calling for peace. If the general obligation of defence should extend, the dislike of war will increase in the same proportion. A class of soldiers animated with love for their calling is, of course, imaginable; their exceptional position, which they take for a position of honour, is offered to them as a recompense for the sacrifices which it entails, but when the exception ceases the distinction ceases also. The admiring thankfulness disappears which those who stay at home offer to those who go out in their defence—because then there will be no one to stay at home. The war-loving feelings which are always being suggested to the soldier—and in so doing are often awakened in him—will be more seldom kindled; for who are those that are of the most heroic spirit, who are most warm in their enthusiasm for the exploits and dangers of war? Those who are safe against them—the professors, the politicians, the beer-shop chatterers—the chorus of old men, as it is called in Faust. When the safety is lost, that chorus will be silenced. Besides, if not only those devote themselves to the military life who love and praise it, but all those also are forcibly dragged into it who look on it with horror, that horror must work. Poets, thinkers, friends of humanity, timid persons, all these will, from their own points of view, curse the trade they are forced into.”
“But they will beyond doubt have to keep silent about this way of thinking, in order not to pass for cowards—in order not to expose themselves to the displeasure of the higher powers.”
“Keep silence? Not forever. As I talk—though I have myself kept silence long—so will the others also break out into speech. If the thought ripens, the word will come. I am an individual who have come to the age of forty before my conviction acquired sufficient strength to expand itself in words. And as I have required two or three decades, so the masses will perhaps require two or three generations—but speak they will at last.”
XVI
New-Year’s Day, 1867—The Luxembourg Question—Disputes Between France and Prussia—Arbitration—The Alarm Blows Over—We Visit Paris—Plan of Napoleon III For General Disarmament—Frederick’s Efforts in the Cause of Peace—“The Protocol of Peace”—A Little Daughter Is Born to Us—Renewed Happiness—Frederick’s Studies—M Desmoulin’s Proposals—Return to Paris, and Reentry Into the Gay World—Talk of the “Revanche de Sadowa”—Pressure of the War Party on Napoleon III—Whirl of Gaiety—We Seek Repose in Switzerland—Illness of My Little Daughter—Return to Paris in March, 1870—Napoleon III Drops His Plan of Disarmament Under the Pressure of the War Party—Still Peace Seems Assured.
The New Year, ’67! We kept the Sylvester Night quite alone, my Frederick and I. When it struck twelve—
“Do you recollect,” I asked with a sigh, “the speech my poor father made in proposing a toast last year at this same hour? I do not dare to wish you good fortune now. The future sometimes hides something so unexpectedly terrible in its bosom; and no wish has ever availed to turn it aside.”
“Then let us use the turn of the year, Martha, as an occasion not for thinking of what is coming, but for looking back into the year which has just flown by. What sufferings you have had to endure, my poor, brave wife! So many of your dear ones buried—and those days of horror on the battlefields in Bohemia.”
“I do not grieve that I have seen the cruel things that took place there. Now I can at least participate with all the might of my soul in your efforts.”
“We must bring up your—or rather our—Rudolf with a view of his pushing these efforts further. In his time a visible mark will perhaps arise above the horizon—hardly in ours. What a noise the people are making in the streets! they are greeting with shouts the new year in spite of the sufferings which the old one (that was greeted in the same way) brought on them. Oh, how forgetful men are!”
“Do not chide them too much for their forgetfulness, Frederick. We too are beginning to brush away from our memory the sufferings
