Lay Down Your Arms

to show ourselves worthy of our fathers’ fathers, as the old phrase goes? No. But of our grandsons’ grandsons. Mother,” said he, breaking off, “you are weeping. What is the matter with you? What do you see there?”

My gaze had been directed to the open glass door. The rays of the setting sun had thrown a halo of tremulous gold round a rosebush, and from this, rising up in lifelike clearness, was my dream-picture. I saw the garden-shears glitter, the white hair shine. He smiled at me as he said, “Are we not a happy old couple?”

Ah, woe is me!

Finis.

Endnotes

1. About the “Damenwahl” Bishop Ch. Wordsworth in his Annals of My Early Life, p. 141, thus speaks, describing a ball at Greifswald: “As I was standing among others looking on at a party of dancers, a fair Greifswaldese, who had been one of them, came up to me and offered me her hand. Not knowing who she was or what she said (for she spoke in German), I could only make to her a low bow and look abashed. It was explained to me afterwards that the cotillon, which was the dance going on, allows any lady to offer herself as a partner to any gentleman whom she chooses, and that I had declined a very pretty compliment.” ↩

2. “Gefreite”⁠—a soldier exempted from sentinel duty. ↩

3. This an Austrian fashion, and does not imply any extraordinary attachment or freedom. ↩

4. One of the chief streets of Vienna. ↩

5. The German words for “woo and win.” ↩

6. Sie, “you,” is used in German to strangers; Du, “thou,” to intimates. But as no such habit prevails in England, Du is translated into the ordinary “you” throughout the book. ↩

7. Schleswig-Holstein, brotherland, kick the Prussians out of the country. ↩

8. Braut, an engaged girl. ↩

9. These transactions were described eighteen years later as follows: General Boulanger writes in his work on the campaign of 1870: “After having obtained a legitimate satisfaction we wanted to impose a humiliation on the King of Prussia; and in doing so we went on to take a diplomatic attitude which was aggressive, nay, almost inconsistent. The formal renunciation of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern had been gained by us, and we had, besides, the assent of the King of Prussia to this renunciation. The reparation was sufficient, for it covered the respective domains of the interests of France, the rights of France, and the obligations of the chief of the house of Hohenzollern. We ought to have stopped there. Our Government pushed on farther. It wanted a categorical engagement from King William for the future. By carrying our claims so high it changed the object and ground of the strife. It converted it into a direct challenge to the sovereign of Prussia.” ↩

10. Briefe hervorragender Männer an Alexander Weill⁠—Zürich. ↩

Colophon

Lay Down Your Arms
was published in 1889 by
Bertha von Suttner.
It was translated from German in 1908 by
T. Holmes.

This ebook was produced for
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and is based on a transcription produced in 2015 by
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The cover page is adapted from
Bombing: Night,
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