Lay Down Your Arms

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 borderland; 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, goodbye for today, my all on earth!”

XI

The Austrian Reverses Increase⁠—Sketches from the Seat of War, Showing Its Realities, as Viewed by a Soldier Who Abhors War⁠—Death of Poor Puxl⁠—My Husband Avows His Determination Never to Serve in Another Campaign.

“Never was such a thing heard of⁠—defeat after defeat. First the village of Podol, barricaded by Clam-Gallas, carried by storm, taken in the night by moonlight, and by the light of the conflagration. Then Gitchin conquered. The needle-gun, the cursed needle-gun, mows our troops down by whole ranks at a time. The two great army corps of the enemy, that commanded by the Crown Prince and that under Prince Fr. Karl, have joined, and are pressing forward against Münchengrätz.” Thus sounded the terrible news, and my father communicated it with as great a degree of lamentation as he had shown joy in telling us the victorious news from Custoza. But his confidence was not yet shaken.

“Let them come, all of them, all, into our Bohemia, and be annihilated there, to the last man. There is no escape there, no retreat for them; we hem them in, we encircle them, and the enraged country folks themselves will give them the finishing stroke. It is not altogether so advantageous as you might suppose to operate in an enemy’s country; for in that case you have not only the army but the whole population against you. The people poured boiling water and oil on the Prussians from the windows of the houses at⁠—.”

I uttered a low sound of disgust.

“What would you have?” said my father, shrugging his shoulders. “It is horrible, I grant, but it is war.”

“Then at least never assert that war ennobles men. Confess that it unmans them, makes them tigers, devils. Boiling oil! Uh!”

“Self-defence, which is enjoined on us, and righteous retribution, my dear Martha. Do you think that our people like the bullets of their needle-guns? Our brave fellows have to be exposed, like defenceless cattle in a slaughterhouse, to this murderous weapon. But we are too numerous, too disciplined, too warlike, not to conquer these ‘tailors’ for all that. At the beginning one or two failures have taken place; that I admit. Benedek ought to have crossed the Prussian frontier at once. I have my doubts whether this choice of a general was quite a happy one. If it had been determined to send the Archduke Albert there and give Benedek the Army of the South⁠—but I will not despond too soon. Up to the present there have really been only some preliminary engagements which have been magnified by the Prussians into great victories. The decisive battles are still to come. We are now concentrating on Königgrätz; there we shall await the enemy, a hundred thousand strong. There our northern Custoza will be