In order to be able to stand a siege, which might possibly be a long one, the city was provisioned. Up to the present time, according to all experience, no such thing as an impregnable fortification has been known, capitulation is always only a question of time. And yet fortresses have always been erected anew, and provisioned anew with necessaries, in spite of the mathematical impossibility of protecting oneself against the duration of a blockade.
The measures taken were on a great scale. Mills were erected, and cattle parks laid out, and yet at last the moment must come when the corn will give out and the meat be consumed. But people do not carry their thoughts so far—by that time the enemy will be driven back over the frontier, or annihilated in the country. Now the whole people are joining the army of the fatherland. Every one offers himself for the service, or is pressed into it; and all the firemen in the country were called in to join the garrison of Paris. There might be fires in the provinces, but what of that? Such little accidents disappear when a national “disaster” is in question. On Aug. 17, 60,000 firemen had already been enrolled in the capital. The sailors too were called in, and new troops of soldiers were formed every day under various names—volontaires, éclaireurs, franc-tireurs.
Events followed each other in ever-hastening movement. But now only military events. Everything else was suspended. Nothing else was any more thought of around us except “mort aux Prussiens.” A storm of savage hatred collected: it had not yet broken out, but one heard it rumble. In all official proclamations, in all the street cries, in all public transactions, the conclusion was always “mort aux Prussiens.” All these troops, regular and irregular, these munitions, these work-people pressing to the fortifications with their tools and barrows, these transports for weapons, everything that one sees and hears means, in its every form and tone, in all its lightning and bluster, in all its flame and rage, “mort aux Prussiens.” Or in other words, and then indeed it sounds like a cry of love and warms even the softest hearts, it means “pour la patrie,” but in essence it is the same.
I asked Frederick: “You are of Prussian extraction, how does all this unfriendly feeling, which is now finding loud expression, affect you?”
“You said the same to me before, in 1866, and I answered you then as I do today, that I suffer from these expressions of hatred not as the subject of any country, but as a man. If I judge of the opinions of the people here from a national point of view I cannot but think them right, they call it la haine sacrée de l’ennemi, and that motive forms an important element in warlike patriotism. They are now occupied with this one thought, to liberate their country from a hostile invasion. That it is themselves who provoked this invasion by declaring war, they have forgotten. Indeed it was not they who did it, but their Government, which they believed on its word; and now they lose no time over reproaches or reflections, as to who called down this misfortune on them: it has come, and all their force, all their enthusiasm must be spent on turning it aside again, or else uniting with unthinking self-sacrifice in a common ruin. Trust me, there is much noble capacity for love in us children of men, the pity only is that we lavish it on the old-world tracks of hatred. … And on the other side, the hated ones, the invaders, ‘the red-haired eastern barbarians,’ what are they doing? They were the challenged; and they are pressing forward into the country of those who threatened to overrun theirs—‘À Berlin, à Berlin.’ Do not you recollect how this cry kept pealing through the whole city, even down from the roofs of omnibusses?”
“And now these are marching ‘Nach Paris.’ Why do the shouters of ‘À Berlin’ attribute that as a crime to them?”
“Because there cannot be any logic or justice in that national sentiment whose foundation is the assumption that we are ourselves, that is the first, and the others are barbarians. And this forward march of the Germans from victory to victory strikes me with admiration. I have been a soldier also, and I know with what a magical power victory fastens on the mind, what pride, what joy are contained in it. It is in any case the aim, the reward for all the sacrifices made, for the renunciation of rest and happiness, for the risk of life.”
“But then why do not the conquered adversaries, since they too are soldiers, and know what fame accompanies victory, why do they not admire their conquerors? Why is it never said in an account of a battle by the losing party: ‘The enemy has obtained a glorious victory’?”
“I repeat, because the war spirit and patriotic egotism are the denial of all justice.”
So it came about—I can see it from all our conversations entered in the red books in those days—that we did not and could not think of anything at that time except the result of the present national duel.
Our happiness, our poor happiness, we had it, but we dared not enjoy it. Yes, we possessed everything that might have procured for us a heaven of delight on earth—boundless love, riches, rank, the charming, growing boy Rudolf, our heart’s idol
