“It is decided—if I come back from this campaign, I quit the service. Setting everything else aside, if one has learned to regard anything with such horror as war produces in me, it would be a continual lie to keep in the service of that thing. Even before this, I went, as you know, to battle unwillingly, and with a judgment condemnatory of it; but now this unwillingness has so increased, this condemnation has become so strengthened, that all the reasons which before determined me to persevere with my profession have ceased to operate. The sentiments derived from my youthful training, and perhaps also, to some extent, inherited, which still pleaded with me in favour of the military life, have now quite departed from me in the course of the horrors I have just experienced. I do not know whether it is the studies, which I undertook in common with you, and from which I discovered that my contempt for war is not an isolated feeling, but is shared by the best spirits of the age, or whether it is the conversations I have had with you, in which I have strengthened myself in my views by their free expression and your concurrence in them; in one word, my former vague, half-smothered feeling has changed into a clear conviction, a conviction which makes it from this time impossible to do service to the war god. It is the same kind of change as comes to many people in matters of belief. First they are somewhat sceptical and indifferent, still they can assist at the business of the temple with a certain sense of reverence. But when once all mysticism is put aside, when they rise to the perception that the ceremony which they are attending rests on folly, and sometimes on cruel folly, as in the case of the religious death-sacrifices, then they will no longer kneel beside the other befooled folks, no longer deceive themselves and the world by entering the now desecrated temple. This is the process which has gone on with me in relation to the cruel worship of Mars. The mysterious, supernatural, awe-inspiring feeling which the appearance of this deity generally awakes in men, and which in former times obscured my senses also, has now entirely passed away for me. The liturgy of the bulletins and the ritual of heroic phraseology no longer appear to me as a divine revelation; the mighty organ-voice of the cannon, the incense-smoke of the powder have no charm more for me. I assist at the terrible worship perfectly devoid of belief or reverence, and can now see nothing in it except the tortures of the victims, hear nothing but their wailing death-cries. And thence comes it that these pages, which I am filling with my impressions of war, contain nothing except pain seen with pain.”
XII
Ruin of the Austrian Cause at Königgrätz—Dr. Bresser at the Seat of War—I Resolve to Join Him and Seek for My Husband—Aspect of the Railway Station and Line in a Time of Defeat—The Journey—The Regimental Surgeon’s Experiences of the Horrors of War—I Arrive at the Seat of War and Meet Dr. Bresser and Frau Simon—Night Journey to Horonewos—The Horrors I Saw There—I Sink Exhausted Under Them, and Am Carried Back by Dr. Bresser to Vienna—My Father Takes Me Home, and There I Am Joined by My Husband, Who Had Been Wounded.
The battle of Königgrätz had been fought. Another defeat! And this time as it seemed a decisive one. My father communicated the news to us in such a tone as he would have used in announcing the end of the world.
And no letter, no telegram from Frederick. Was he wounded? dead? Conrad gave his fiancée news of himself—he was untouched. The lists of the slain had not yet arrived, it was only known that there were 40,000 killed and wounded at Königgrätz; and the latest news I had had ran: “We are moving today to Königgrätz.”
On the third day still not a line. I wept and wept for hours: I could weep just because my grief was not quite hopeless; if I had known that all was over, there would have been no tears for my load of woe. My father too was deeply depressed. And my brother Otto was mad with thirst for revenge. It was announced that corps of volunteers were to be formed in Vienna. He wanted to join them. It was further announced that Benedek was to be removed from his command and the victorious Archduke Albert summoned to the north to take his place, and then perhaps there might yet be a rally; the overweening enemy, who wanted altogether to annihilate us, might be beaten back, as he would be caught on his march on Vienna. Fear, rage, pain filled all minds; all pronounced the name of “the Prussians” as if they were all that is detestable. My only thought was Frederick—and no news—none!
A few days afterwards arrived a letter from Dr. Bresser. He was busy in the neighbourhood of the battlefield in giving what assistance he could. The need, he wrote, was without limit, mocking all power of imagination. He had joined a Saxon physician,
