The nurses carried on their work of mercy here also. They gave the wounded men drink and food, such as they could hunt up, but often there was nothing to be had. The provisions in the refreshment rooms were generally exhausted. This movement at the stations, especially at the large ones, had a bewildering effect on me. It seemed to me like an evil dream. All this running hither and thither, this confused pell-mell—troops marching out, people flying away, sick-bearers, heaps of bleeding and complaining soldiers, sobbing women wringing their hands, shouts, harsh words of command—crowds on all hands, no free passage anywhere—baggage being sent in, war material, cannons—on another side horses and bellowing cattle, and amongst them the continuous sound of the telegraph—trains rushing through filled, or crowded rather, with the reserves coming up from Vienna. These soldiers were brought along in third and fourth class carriages—nay, also in baggage and cattle trucks—just in the same way as cattle to be slaughtered, and regarding it as a matter of fact, I could not repress the thought: “What else were they in reality? Were they not like the cattle marked out for slaughter—were they not, like them, sent to the great political market, where business is done in food for powder—what the French call chair-à-canon?” A mad roar—was it a war song?—pealed out and drowned the rattling sound of the wheels—one minute, and the train was gone. With the speed of the wind it bore a portion of its freight to certain death. Yes, certain death. Even if no individual can say of himself that he is sure to fall, yet a certain percentage of the whole must and will fall. An army marching to the field, as they sweep along the high road on foot or on horseback, may have a touch of antique poetry about it; but for the railroad of our modern day, the symbol of culture binding nations together, to serve as the means for promoting barbarism let loose—that is a thing altogether too inconsistent and horrible. And what a false ring also has the telegraph signal used in this service—that splendid sign of the triumph of the human intellect, which has enabled us to propagate thought with lightning speed from one land to another. All these inventions of the new era which are designed to promote the intercourse of nations, to lighten, beautify, and enrich life, are now misapplied by that old-world principle which aims at dividing the peoples and annihilating life. Our boast before savages is: “Look at our railroads, look at our telegraphs; we are civilised nations”; and then we use these things to increase a hundredfold our own savagery.
My being forced to torture myself with such thoughts as these, and these only, as I waited at the station or pursued my way in the train, made my grief still more deep and bitter. I almost envied those who merely wrung their hands and wept in simple pain, who did not rise up in wrath against the whole hideous comedy, who accused no one—not even that “Lord of armies” of whom yet they believed that He was so, and that it was He who was keeping suspended over their heads the misery that had come to them.
It was late at night when I got to Königinhof. My travelling companions had been obliged to get out at an earlier station. I was alone, in fear and anxiety. How if Dr. Bresser were prevented from coming? What step could I then take in this place? Besides I was, so to speak, broken on the wheel by the journey, quite unnerved by all the experiences of grief and terror that I had passed through. If it had not been for my longing for Frederick I should have wished now for nothing but death. To be able to lie down, go to sleep, and never wake again in a world where things go on so horribly and so madly! But preserve me from one thing at least, to live on and know that Frederick is among the “missing”!
The train stopped. Tired and trembling, I alighted and took out my handbaggage. I had taken with me a hand-basket, with some linen for myself and charpie and bandages for the wounded, and also my travelling dressing-case. This I had taken quite mechanically, in the belief in which I was brought up that one could not exist without the silver cases and baskets, the soaps and essences, the brushes and combs. Cleanliness, that virtue of the body, corresponding to honour in the soul, that second nature of educated humanity, what a lesson had I now to learn, that there can be no thought of it at such times as these! That, however, is only consistent—war is the negation of education, and therefore all the triumphs of education must be annihilated by it; it is a step backwards into barbarism and must therefore have everything that is barbarous in its train, and amongst others that thing which to the cultured man is so utterly abominable—dirt.
The chest with materials for the hospitals, which I had looked out for Dr. Bresser in Vienna, had been given over with
