CHAPTER X.

Austria will not forget that her princes were once the rulers of Germany, and will not regard modern Prussia as a co-partner, but only as a hostile rival. Prussia, it is held, must be opposed in all her efforts, because whatever profits Prussia injures Austria. The old unblessed jealousy has again burst out into a fierce flame. Prussia is to be weakened, destroyed, disinherited. With her no treaties are to be anylonger in force. Wherever we look in Germany we are surrounded by foes, and their war-cry is “Humiliation for Prussia”. Up to the last moment I have sought for and kept open the way to a friendly solution. Austria refused.

On the other hand, the Emperor Francis Joseph expresses himself thus:—

The latest events prove incontestably that Prussia is now setting open force in the place of right. Thus has the most impious of wars—a war of Germans against Germans—become inevitable. To answer for all the misery it will bring on individuals, families, neighbours and districts, I summon those who have brought it about before the judgment-seat of history, and of the Eternal and Almighty God.

“The opposite party” is always the one that wishes for war. The “opposite party” are always charged with setting up force in the place of right. Why, then, is it anyhow possible, consistently with public law, that this can happen? An “impious” war, because it is one of “Germans against Germans”. Quite true. The point of view is a higher one, which, beyond “Prussia” and “Austria,” raises the wider conception of Germany. But take one step more and we shall reach that still higher unity in the light of which every war—men against men, especially civilised men against civilised—will necessarily appear an impious fratricide. And to “summon before the judgment-seat of history”—what is the use of that? History, as it has been managed hitherto, has never pronounced any other judgment than a worship of success. When any one comes out of a war as conqueror the guild of historical scribblers fall in the dust before him, and praise him as the fulfiller of his “mission of educative culture”. And “before the judgment-seat of Almighty God”. Yes; but is not this He who is represented as the producer of the fights, is not the same almighty, irresistible will equally concerned with the outbreak as with the course of the war? Oh, contradiction on contradiction! And this is what must certainly take place always, whenever the truth is hidden under hypocritical phrases—when an attempt is made to hold equally holy two principles which are mutually destructive,such as war and justice, or national hatred and humanity, or the God of Love and the God of Battles.

And Benedek says:—

We are standing opposed to a war power which is composed of two halves—Line and Landwehr. The first is formed exclusively of young fellows who are not accustomed either to fatigue or privation, who have never taken part in any considerable campaign. The second consists of untrustworthy, discontented elements, who would like better to overthrow their own Government, which they dislike, than to have to fight us. The enemy has also, in consequence of the long period of peace, not a solitary general who has had the opportunity of educating himself on the field of battle. Veterans of Mincio and Palestro, you will, I think, count it as a special point of honour, acting under your old and tried leaders, not to yield to such antagonists even the smallest advantage. The enemy has for a long time been pluming himself upon his quick-firing needle gun; but I think, my men, that will not do him much good. We shall most likely leave him no time for that, but charge him home at once with the bayonet and the butt. As soon as, with God’s help, the enemy has been beaten and compelled to retreat, we shall follow on his traces, and you will rest from your toils in the foeman’s country, and demand in the amplest measure those refreshments which a victorious army will have fully merited.

Finally Prince Frederick Charles says:—

Soldiers! the faithless and covenant-breaking Austria has now for some time, without any declaration of war, disregarded the frontiers of Prussia in Upper Silesia. So I might have equally considered myself entitled to cross the Bohemian frontier without any declaration of war. But I have not done so. To-day I have forwarded a regular declaration of war, and to-day we tread the territory of our enemies, in order to protect our own country. May our commencement have God’s sanction. [Is this the same God with whose help Benedek promised to strike down the enemy?] Let us rest our cause in His hands, who guides the hearts of men, who decides the fate of nations and the result of battles, as it is written in the Scriptures. Let your hearts beat for God and your hands strike the foe. In this war, as you know, Prussia’s dearest interests, nay, the continued existence of our beloved Prussia, are in question. The enemy avows, in the most open manner, the wish to dismember and humiliate her. Shall then the rivers of blood which your fathers and mine poured out under Frederick the Great, and that which we lately poured out at Düppel and Alsen, have been poured out in vain?Never! we will maintain Prussia as she is, and make her stronger and more powerful by victory. We will show ourselves worthy of our fathers. We rely on the God of our fathers that He will be gracious to us, and bless the arms of Prussia! So, now, forward with our old battle-cry: “With God for king and fatherland. Long live the king.”

The Austro-Prussian war.—My husband with the army.—Parting letters.—Dr. Bresser.—The course of the war.—Victory of Custozza.—Austrian reverses in Bohemia.—War correspondence in the newspapers.—Discussions with my father.—A long letter to my husband.

SOit had come again—this greatest of all misfortunes—and was greeted by the populace with the accustomed rejoicing. The regiments marched out (in what state were they to return?) and wishes for victory, and blessings, and the shouting of the street boys were their accompaniment.

Frederick had been ordered to Bohemia some time previously, even before war had been declared; and just when matters were in such a position as to enable me to entertain a confident hope that the quarrel about the duchies, so unblessed and so contemptible, would be settled amicably. And, therefore, this time I was spared the heart-rending leave-taking which precedes the setting off of one’s beloved directly “to the war”. When my father brought me the news in triumph: “Now it is off,” I had been already alone for a fortnight. And for some time I had quite made my mind up to this news, as a criminal in his cell has made up his mind to the reading of the death-sentence.

I bowed my head and said nothing.

“Keep up a good heart, my child. The war will not last long; in a day or two we shall be in Berlin. And as your husband came back from Schleswig-Holstein, so he will come back from this campaign, but covered with much greener laurels. It may, indeed, be unpleasant for him, being himself of Prussianextraction, to fight against Prussia, but after he entered into the Austrian service he became one of us body and soul. Those Prussians! the arrogant windbags! they want to turn us out of the Bund! they will soon repent it; if Silesia becomes ours again, and if the Hapsburgs——”

I stretched out my hand: “Father—one request—leave me to myself”.

He might have imagined that I felt the need of giving my tears full vent; and as he was an enemy to all scenes of emotion, he willingly granted my wish and took his departure.

I, however, did not weep. I felt as if a numbing stroke had fallen on my head. Breathing heavily, staring blindly, I sat motionless for some time. Then I went to my writing-table, opened the red volume, and made this entry:—

“The sentence of death is pronounced. A hundred thousand men are to be executed. Will Frederick be among them? And I also, as a consequence. Who am I that I should not perish like the rest of the hundred thousand? I wish I were dead already.”

From Frederick I received the same day a few hasty lines.

“My wife, be of good cheer; keep your heart up! We have been happy—no one can take that from us—even if to-day for us, as for so many others, the decree has gone forth—‘It is finished’. (The same thought here as I expressed in my red book about the many others who were sentenced.) To-day we go to meet ‘the enemy’. Perhaps I shall recognise there a few comrades in battle at Düppel and Alsen—possibly my little cousin Godfrey.... We are to march on Liebenau with the advanced guard of Count Clam-Gallas. From this time there will be no more leisure for writing. Do not look for anylettersfor you. At the most, if opportunity offers, a line, as a token that I am alive. But before that I should like to find one single word which could comprehend in itself the whole of my love that I might write it here for you in case it might be my last. I can find only this word—‘Martha’. You know what that means for me.”

Conrad Althaus had also to march. He was full of fire and delight in battle, and animated by sufficient hatred of the Prussians to make him start off with pleasure; still his parting was hard for him. The marriage licence had arrived only two days before the order to march.

“Oh, Lilly, Lilly,” he cried with pain, as he said adieu to his affianced bride, “why did you delay so long to accept me? Who knows now whether I shall come back again?”

My poor sister was herself full of repentance. Now for the first time there sprang up passionate love for him she had slighted so long. When he was gone she sank into my arms in tears.

“Oh, why did I not say ‘yes’ long ago! I should now have been his wife.”

“Then, my poor Lilly, the parting would have been all the more painful for you.”

She shook her head. I well understood what was going on in her mind, perhaps more clearly than she understood herself; to be obliged to part with love-longings still unfulfilled, and, perhaps, destined to remain for ever unfulfilled; to see the cup torn from their lips, and possibly shattered, before they had had a single draught—that might well be doubly torturing.

My father, sisters, and Aunt Mary now removed to Grumitz. I was easily persuaded to go there too with my little son. As long as Frederick was away, my own hearth seemed extinguished—I could not stay there. It is strange. I felt myself just as much a widow, to have done with life just as thoroughly, as if the news of the outbreak of war had been at the same time the news of Frederick’s death. Occasionally in the midst of my dull grief, a brighter thought would break in: “He is alive and surely may come back”; but along with it an idea of horror would rise again: “He is writhing and agonising in intolerable pains; he is fainting in a trench; heavy waggons are driving over his shattered limbs; flies and worms are crawling over his open wounds; the people who are clearing the field of battle take the stiffened object lying on the ground for dead, and areshovelling him still alive along with the dead into the damp trench: there he comes to himself and——”

With a loud scream I woke up from such images as these.

“What is the matter with you now, Martha,” said my father in a scolding tone. “You will drive yourself out of your senses if you brood in this way and cry out so; why will you summon up such foolish pictures out of your fancy? It is sinful.”

I had indeed often given expression aloud to these ideas of mine, and this irritated my father extremely.

“Sinful,” he went on, “and improper and nonsensical. Such cases as your excited fancy pictures, do no doubt occur once in a thousand times among the common men, but a staff-officer, as your husband is, is not left to lie on the field. Besides, as a general rule, folks should not think about such horrid things. Such conduct involves a kind of sacrilege, a profanation of war, in keeping these pitiful details before one’s eyes instead of the sublimity of the whole. One should not think about them.”

“Yes, yes, not think about it,” I replied, “that is always the custom of mankind in the presence of any human misery—‘don’t think about it,’ that is the support of all kinds of barbarity.”

Our family doctor, Dr. Bresser, was not at this moment at Grumitz, he had voluntarily placed himself at the disposal of the army medical department, and had started for the theatre of war, and the idea occurred to me also whether I should not go too, as a sick-nurse. Yes, if I could have known that I should be in Frederick’s neighbourhood, be at hand in case he was wounded, I would not have hesitated. But for others? No, there my strength broke down, my spirit of sacrifice failed. To see them die, hear the death-rattle, want to give help to hundreds begging for help, and have no help to give, to bring on myself all this pain, this disgust, this grief, without thereby getting to Frederick, on the contrary diminishing thereby the chance of meeting again, for the nurses themselves ran intovarious kinds of danger to their lives. No; that I would not do. Besides my father informed me that a private person like myself was altogether inadmissible for nursing in a field hospital, that this office could only be exercised by soldiers of the army medical service, or at the most by sisters of charity.

“To pluck charpie,” he said, “and prepare bandages for the Patriotic Aid Society, that is the only thing that you ladies can do to help the wounded, and that my daughters ought to do diligently, on that I bestow my blessing.”

And it was now to this occupation that my sisters and I devoted many hours of every day. Rosa and Lilly worked with gently compassionate, almost happy-looking faces. As we heaped up the fine threads under our fingers into soft masses, or folded up the strips of linen in beautiful order together, the occupation affected the two girls like an office of charitable nursing: they fancied themselves soothing the burning pains and staunching the bleeding wounds, hearing the sighs of relief and seeing the grateful glances of those on whom they attended. The picture they so formed of the condition of a wounded man was then almost a pleasant one. Enviable soldiers! who, delivered from the dangers of the raging fight, were now stretched on clean soft beds, and there would be nursed and pampered up to the time of their recovery, lulled for the most part in a half-unconscious slumber of luxurious fatigue, waking up again occasionally to the pleasant consciousness that their lives were saved, and that they would be able to return to their friends at home and relate to them how they had received their honourable wounds at the battle of——.

Our father also encouraged them in this innocent way of looking at it. “Bravo, bravo, girls! working again to-day! You have now again prepared delights for a number of our brave defenders. What a relief it is to get a pad of charpie like that on a bleeding wound! I can tell you a tale about that. Long ago, when I got that bullet in my leg at Palestro——” and so on, and so on.

I however sighed and said nothing. I had heard other histories of wounds than those which my father loved to relate, histories which bore about the same relation to the usual veterans’ anecdotes, as the realities of the life of a poor shepherd do to the pastoral pictures of Watteau.

The Red Cross. I knew through what an impulse of popular sympathy, shocked to the most painful degree, that institution had been called into life. In its time I had followed the debate which took place at Geneva on the subject, and had read the tract by Dunant, which gave the impetus to the whole thing. A heart-rending cry of woe was that tract! The noble patrician of Geneva had hurried to the field of Solferino, in order to give what aid he could; and what he found there he related to the world. Innumerable wounded men, who had been lying there for five or six days without any assistance. He would have liked to save them all; but what could he, a single person, do, what could the other few individuals, in the face of this mass of misery? He saw men whose lives might have been saved by a drop of water, by a mouthful of bread. He saw men who, still breathing, had to be buried in fearful haste.... Then he spoke out; said what had often been admitted, but now found an echo for the first time,viz., that the means for nursing and rescue at the disposal of the army administration had not grown in proportion to the requirements of a battle. And so the “Red Cross” was founded.

Austria had at that time not yet adhered to the Geneva Convention. Why? Why is there resistance opposed to everything that is new, however rich in blessing, and however simple it may be? Because of the law of laziness, the power of holy custom. “The idea is very fine, but impracticable,” is the saying. I often heard my father repeat these arguments of hesitation used by several of the delegates at the Conference of 1863. “Impracticable, and, even if practicable, yet in many points of view unbecoming. The military authorities could not allow that private action on the field of battle was admissible. In war tactical aims must have the priority over the friendly officesof humanity; and how could this private action be surrounded with proper guarantees against the existence of espionage? And the expenses! Is not war costly enough already? The voluntary nurses would, through their own material wants, fall as a burden on the provision department; or, if they are to supply themselves in the country occupied, will there not arise a regrettable difficulty for the army administration through the purchase of the articles necessary for the service, and the immediate raising of their price?”

Oh, this official wisdom! so dry, so well-instructed, so real, so redolent of prudence, and so unfathomably stupid!

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The first engagement between our troops in Bohemia and the enemy took place on June 25 at Liebenau. My father brought us this news with his usual triumphant mien.

“That is a grand beginning,” he said; “you can see heaven is on our side. It is significant that the first with whom these windbags had to do were the troops of our celebrated ‘Iron Brigade’. You know, of course, the Poschach Brigade which defended Königsberg in Silesia so valiantly—they will give them all they want!” (However, the next news from the seat of war showed that after five hours’ fighting this brigade, forming part of the advanced guard of Clam-Gallas, retreated to Podol. Also that Frederick was there—which I did not know—and that in the same night Podol, which had been barricaded, was attacked by General Horn, and the fight renewed by the bright moonlight; which also I heard later.) “But,” continued my father, “even more splendid than in the north is the beginning of matters in the south. At Custozza we have gained a victory, children, more glorious than any but one. I have always said it: Lombardy must become ours! Are you not delighted? I regard the war as already decided; for if we get done with the Italians, who do at any rate set a regular trained army in the field against us, we shall not find it hard to deal with these ‘tailors’ apprentices’. This Landwehr—it is really an impudence—but it is just of a piece with the whole Prussianconceit to take the field against regular armies with such stuff. There are these fellows, torn away from the workbench and the writing-desk; they are not inured to any hardship, and so it is impossible that they can stand in the field against soldiers proof against blood and steel. Just look there—at what theWiener Zeitungof June 24 writes in its ‘original correspondence’—surely that is good news: ‘In Prussian Silesia cattle plague has broken out, and, as is understood, in a highly threatening form’.”

“ ‘Cattle plague,’ ‘threatening form,’ ‘joyful news,’ ” I said with a slight shake of the head; “nice things people must take pleasure in in times of war. However, one good thing is that black and yellow posts are erected on the frontiers, so that the plague cannot cross.”

But my father did not hear, and went on reading his pleasant intelligence:—

Fever is raging among the Prussian troops at Neisse. The unhealthy marsh-land, the bad treatment and the miserable shelter of the troops accumulated in the villages around, must necessarily produce such results. In Austria we have no idea of the treatment of the Prussian soldiery. The nobles believe themselves entitled to give any orders they please to the “common folk”. Six ounces of pork per man is all—and that for men who are not experienced soldiers.

“The newspapers are all full of capital news; above all, the account of the glorious day of Custozza. You should keep these papers, Martha.”

And I have kept them. It is what people should always do; and when a new national quarrel is impending, then read, not the most recent newspapers, but those dating from the former war, and then you will see what weight to attach to all their prophesying and boasting, and even to their accounts and intelligence.Thatis instructive.

From the seat of war in the north—from headquarters of the Army of the North—they write to us as follows, on the subject of the Prussian plan of campaign (!): “According to the latest advices, the Prussian army has shifted its headquarters to Eastern Silesia. (Then follows in the usual tactical style a long narrative of the projected movements andpositions contemplated by the enemy, according to which the gentleman who furnished the news must have had a much clearer picture before him than Moltke and Roon.) According to this, it seems to be the object of the Prussians to anticipate in this way our march on Berlin by their own in which, however, they will hardly succeed, having regard to the precautions taken (with which again ‘our special correspondent’ is much more familiar than Benedek). Favourable accounts may be looked for from the northern army with the utmost confidence, even if they do not arrive so quickly as the popular longing desires them to do. They will, however, thereby become more decisive and more important.”

The newFrankfurter Zeitungrelates a pleasant interlude, the march of Austrian troops of Italian nationality through Munich, as follows:—

Among the troops passing through Munich were some battalions of the line. They, like the rest of the troops passing through the Bavarian capital, were entertained in the garden of an inn situated near the station. Any one might convince himself with what delight these Venetians testified to their joy in fighting the foes of Austria (perhaps too “any one” might have imagined that drunken soldiers would willingly show enthusiasm for anything they were told to be enthusiastic about). In Würzburg the station was filled by the rank and file of an Austrian regiment of infantry of the line. As far as could be ascertained the whole consisted of Venetians. They were received with equal friendliness (i.e., were made equally drunk); and the men could not find words to express with sufficient warmth their joy and their determination to fight against the truce-breakers (of two parties at war with each other the other is always “the truce-breakers”). The hurrahs were endless. (Could not this “Mr. Any One,” who was thus lounging about the railway station, and so edified by the cries of the soldiery, find out that there is nothing so contagious as hurrahing—that a thousand voices shouting together are not the expression of a thousand unanimous sentiments, but simply exemplify the working of the natural instinct of imitation?)

At Böhmisch-Trübau Field-Marshal Benedek communicated to the Army of the North the three bulletins relative to the victory of the Army of the South, and added the following order of the day:—

In the name of the Army of the North, I have despatched the following telegram to the commander of the Army of the South: Field-Marshal Benedek and the whole northern army to the glorious and mostillustrious Commander-in-chief of the brave southern army with joyful admiration, sends most hearty congratulations on the news of the famous day of Custozza. The campaign in the south is opened with a new and glorious victory for our arms. Glorious Custozza shines on the escutcheon of the imperial army.Soldiers of the Army of the North! You will receive the news with shouts of joy. You will move to battle with increased enthusiasm, so that we also may very soon inscribe names of fame on that same shield, and announce to the emperor a victory from the north also towards which our warlike ardour burns, and which your valour and devotion will conquer, to the cry “Long live the emperor”.Benedek.

Soldiers of the Army of the North! You will receive the news with shouts of joy. You will move to battle with increased enthusiasm, so that we also may very soon inscribe names of fame on that same shield, and announce to the emperor a victory from the north also towards which our warlike ardour burns, and which your valour and devotion will conquer, to the cry “Long live the emperor”.

Benedek.

To the foregoing telegram the following answer from Verona reached Böhmisch-Trübau:—

The Army of the South and its commander return their thanks to their beloved ex-commander and his brave army. Convinced that we also shall soon have to send our congratulations for a similar victory.

“Convinced! Convinced!” ...

“Does not your heart leap up, my children, when you read such things?” shouted my father in delight. “Can you not rise up to a sufficient height of patriotic feeling to throw into the background your private circumstances at the sight of such triumphs, you, Martha, to forget that your Frederick, and you, Lilly, that your Conrad is exposed to some danger? Danger which probably they will come out of safe and sound: and even to succumb to which—a fate which they share with the best sons of our country—would redound to their fame and honour. There is not a soldier who would not willingly die to the call, ‘For our country!’ ”

“If, after a lost battle, a man is left lying with shattered limbs on the field,” I replied, “and lies there undiscovered for four or five days and nights in indescribable agonies from thirst and hunger, rotting while still alive, and so perishes, knowing all the while that his death has not helped his country you talk of one bit, but has brought his loved ones to despair, I should like to know whether all this time he is gladly dying to the call you speak of.”

“You are outrageous, and besides you speak in such shrill tones, quite unbecoming for a lady.”

“Oh yes, the true word, the naked reality, is outrageous, is shameless. Only the phrase which by thousandfold repetition has become sanctioned is ‘proper,’ but I assure you, father, that this unnatural ‘joy in dying’ which is thus exacted from all men, however heroic it may seem to him who uses the phrase, sounds to me like aspoken death-knell.”

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Among Frederick’s papers, many years later, I found a letter which in those days I sent to the seat of war. This letter shows as clearly as possible with what feelings I was filled at that time.

“Grumitz,June 28, 1866.

“Dear one,—I am not alive. Fancy that in the next room people are debating whether I am to be executed in the next few days or no, while I have to wait outside for their decision. During this period of waiting I do indeed breathe, but can I call itliving? The next room, in which the question is to be decided, is called Bohemia. But no, my love, the picture is hardly yet correct. For if it were only a matter ofmylife or death, the anxiety would not be so great. For my anxiety concerns a far dearer life than my own; and my fear is concerned even with something still worse than your death—with your possible agony in dying. Oh that all this were over, over! Oh that our victories would come in speedy succession; not for the sake of the victory, but of the end!

“Will these lines ever reach you? and where, and how? Whether after a hot day’s fight or in camp, or perhaps in hospital? In any case it will do you good to get news of your dear ones. If I can write nothing but what is mournful—and what else but what is mournful can be felt during this time, when the sun is darkened by the great black pall hoisted up in the name of ‘our country,’ to fall down on the country’s sons?—still my lines will bring you refreshment, for I am dear to you, Frederick—I know how dear, and my written word rejoices andmoves you, as would a soft touch from my hand. I am near you, Frederick—be assured of that—with every thought, with every breath, by day and night. Here, in my own circle, I move and act and speak mechanically. My innermost self,thatbelongs to you,thatnever leaves you for a moment; only my boy reminds me that the world still contains for me a thing which is not you. The good little fellow—if you knew how he asks and cares for you! We two talk together of nothing but ‘papa’. He knows well, like a boy of sharp perceptions, what object fills my heart; and however little he may be (you know that!) he is already in a sense afriendof his mother. I even begin to speak with him as with a reasonable being, and for this he is thankful. I, on my part, am thankful to him for the love he shows to you. It is so seldom that children get on well with their step-parents. It is true there is nothing of the stepfather about you—you could not be more tender and kind to a child of your own, my own tender and kind one! Yes, kindness, great, soft, and mild, is the foundation of your being; and what does the poet say? ‘As heaven is vaulted by one single great sapphire, so the greatness of character of a noble man is formed of one single virtue, kindness.’ In other words, I love you, Frederick! That is still always the refrain of all my thoughts about you and your qualities. I love you so confidingly, with such assurance. Irestin you, Frederick, warm and soft—that is when I have you, of course. Now when you are again torn from me, my repose is naturally gone. Oh, if the storm were only over, over; if you all were only in Berlin to dictate terms of peace to King William! For my father is firmly convinced that this will be the end of the campaign; and from all that is heard and read here, I also most believe him. ‘As soon as, with God’s help, the enemy is struck down’—so runs Benedek’s proclamation—‘we will follow on his track, and you shall repose in the country of the foe, and enjoy those refreshments——’ and so on. What, then, are these refreshments? At this day no general dare say openly, and without circumlocution: ‘You shall plunder, burn,murder, and ravish,’ as they used to say in the middle ages to excite their hordes. Now, at the most, all that could be kept before their eyes as a reward would be the free distribution of beer and sausages; but that would be a little tame, and so it was put figuratively—‘those refreshments,’ and so on. Every one may make out of that what he pleases. The principle that in ‘the country of the foe’ is to be found the reward of war is still maintained in military language.... And how will you feel in ‘the foeman’s land,’ which is really your own ancestral country, where your friends and your cousins are living? Will you ‘refresh’ yourself by laying Aunt Cornelia’s pretty villa even with the ground? ‘Enemy’s country;’ that is really a fossilised conception of those times when war was openly what itsraison d’etreproclaims it, a piracy; and when the enemy’s country attracted the combatant as a land of prey which promised him a recompense.

“I am talking now with you, as I used in those happy hours when you were at my side, and when, after the reading of some book of the progressive school, we used to philosophise with each other about the contradictions of our times, so intimately, so entirely understanding and supplementing each other. In my circle there is no one—no one—with whom I could talk about matters of that kind. Doctor Bresser would have been the only one with whom ideas condemnatory of war could be exchanged; and he also is now gone—himself drawn into this horrible war—but with the purpose of healing wounds, not inflicting them; another contradiction really, this ‘humanity’ in war: an essential contradiction. It is about the same as ‘enlightenment’ in faith. One thing or the other; but humanity and war; reason and dogma,thatwill not do. The downright, burning hatred of the enemy, coupled with an entire contempt for human life, that is the vital nerve of war, exactly as the unquestioning suppression of reason is the fundamental condition of faith. But we live in a time of compromise. The old institutions and the new ideas are working with equal power. And so people, who do not wish to break entirely with the oldand who cannot entirely comprehend the new, make an attempt to fuse the two together; and it is this which generates this mendacious, inconsistent, contradictory, half-and-half system under which spirits who thirst for truth, accuracy, and completeness so groan and suffer.

“Ah, why do I compose all this treatise! You will at the present time be scarcely disposed for such generalisations, as you used to be in our happy hours of chat. You hear raging round you a horrible reality, with which you have to reckon. How much better would it be if you could accept it with the simple assurance of ancient times, when the warlike life was to the soldier a proud pleasure and a delight. Better also would it be if I could write to you, as other wives do, letters full of wishes for prosperity, confident promises of victory, and incitements to your courage. Girls of the present day are educated in patriotism, so that at the proper time they might cry to their husbands: ‘Go on, die for your country—that is the most glorious of deaths’; or, ‘Come back with victory, and then we will reward you with our loves. In the meantime we will pray for you. The God of battles, who protects our army, He will hear our prayers. Day and night our intercession is rising up to heaven, and we are sure to take His favour by storm. You will come back crowned with fame. We never tremble for an instant, for we are worthy comrades of your valour. No! no! the mothers of your sons must be no cowards if they would raise up a new race of heroes; and even if we have to give up what is dearest to us—for king and country no sacrifice is too great!’

“That would be the right letter for a soldier’s wife, would it not? But not such a letter as you would wish to read from your wife—from the partner of your thoughts, from her who shares your disgust at the old blind delusion of mankind. Oh, such disgust—so bitter, so painful that I cannot describe it to you.” When I picture to myself these two armies, composed of individuals with the gift of reason, and for the most part kind and gentle men, how they are rushing on each other, to annihilate each other, desolating at the same time the unfortunate land,in which they cast aside the villages they have ‘taken’ like cards in their game of murder. When I picture all this, I feel inclined to shriek out: ‘Do bethink you!’ ‘Do stop!’ And out of the 100,000, 90,000 individuals would certainly be glad to stop; but the mass is compelled to go on in its fury.

But enough; you will prefer to hear the accounts and the news from home. Well, then, we are all well. My father is constantly in the highest state of excitement over present events. The victory of Custozza fills him with radiant pride. He behaves as if he had won it himself. In any case he regards the splendour of that day as so bright that the reflection which falls on him as an Austrian and a general makes him completely happy. Lori, too, whose husband, as you know, is with the Army of the South, writes me a letter of triumph about this same Custozza. Do you recollect, Frederick, how jealous I was for a quarter of an hour about this same good Lori? And how I came out after that attack with stronger love and stronger trust in you? Oh, if only you had betrayed me then; if only you had sometimes a little ill-treated me; then I should perhaps bear your absence now more easily. But to know thatsucha husband is in the storm of bullets! Let me go on with my news. Lori has offered to spend the remainder of her grass-widowhood in Grumitz, along with her little Beatrix. I could 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! Forthatlove, 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 border-land; 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, good-bye for to-day, my all on earth!”

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.

“NEVERwas 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 Custozza. 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 slaughter-house, 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 Custozza will be fought.”

Frederick was to fight there too. His last letter, arrived that morning, brought the news: “We are bound for Königgrätz”.

Up to this time I had had tidings regularly. Though in his first letter he had prepared me for his being able only to write little, yet Frederick had made use of every opportunity to send me a word or two. In pencil, on horseback, in his tent, in a hasty scrawl only legible by me, he would write on pages torn out of his note-book letters destined for me. Some he found opportunities for sending, and some did not come into my hands till the campaign was over.

I have kept these memorials up to the present hour. They are not careful, polished descriptions of the war, such as the war correspondents of the papers offer in their despatches, or the historians of the war in their publications; no sketches ofbattles worked up with all the technicalities of strategical details; no battle-pictures heightened with rhetorical flights, in which the narrator is always occupied in letting his own imperturbability, heroism, and patriotic enthusiasm shine out. Frederick’s sketches are nothing of this sort, I know. But what they are, I need not decide. Here are some of them:—

“In bivouac. Outside the tent, it is indeed a mild, splendid summer night; the heavens, so great and so indifferent, full of shining stars. The men are lying on the earth, exhausted by their long, fatiguing marches. Only for us, staff officers, have one or two tents been pitched. In mine there are three field-beds. My two comrades are asleep. I am sitting at the table, on which are the empty grog glasses and a lighted candle. It is by the feeble, flickering light of this (a draught of wind comes in through the open flap) that I am writing to you, my beloved wife. I have left my bed to Puxl, he was so tired, the poor fellow! I am almost sorry I brought him with me; he too is, as our men say the Prussian Landwehr are, ‘not used to the hardships and privations of a campaign’. Now he is snoring sweetly and happily—is dreaming, I fancy, very likely, of his friend and patron, Rudolf, Count Dotzky. And I am dreaming of you, Martha; I am silly, I know, but I see your dear form as like you as the image of a dream sitting in yonder corner of the tent on a camp-stool. What longing seizes me to go thither and lay my head on your bosom. But I do not do so, because I know that then the image would disappear.

“I have just been out for an instant. The stars are shining as indifferently as ever. On the ground a few shadows are gliding—those of stragglers. Many, many men are left behind on the road; these have now slipped in here drawn on by the light of our watch-fires. But not all; some are still lying in some far-off ditch or cornfield. What a heat it was during this forced march! The sun flamed as if it would boil your brains, add to that the heavy knapsack and the heavy musket on their galled shoulders; and yet no one murmured. But a few fell out and could not get up again. Two or three succumbed tosunstroke and fell dead at once. Their bodies were put on an ambulance waggon.

“This June night, however illuminated by moon and stars, and however warm it may be, is still disenchanted. There are no nightingales or chirping crickets to be heard, no scents of rose and jasmine to be breathed. All the sweet sounds are drowned by the noise of snorting or neighing horses, by the men’s voices and the tramp of the sentries’ tread; all sweet scents overpowered by the smell of the harness and other barrack odours. Still all that is nothing; for now you do not hear the ravens croaking over their feast, you do not smell gun-powder, blood, and corruption. All that is coming—ad majorem patriæ gloriam. It is worth noting how blind men are. In looking at the funeral piles which have been lighted ‘for the greater glory of God’ in old times, they break out into curses over such blind, cruel, senseless fanaticism, but are full of admiration for the corpse-strewn battlefields of the present day. The torture chambers of the dark middle ages excite their horror, but they feel pride over their own arsenals. The light is burning down—the form in that corner has disappeared. I will also lie down to rest, beside our good Puxl.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“Up on a hill, amidst a group of generals and high officers, with a field-glass at his eye—that is the situation in a war which produces the greatest æsthetic effect. The gentlemen who paint battle pieces and make illustrations for the journals know this too. Generals on a hill reconnoitring with their glasses are represented again and again; and just as often a leader pressing forward at the head of his troops on a horse, as white and light-stepping as possible, stretching his arm out towards a point in the background all in smoke, and turning the head towards those rushing on after him, plainly shouting ‘Follow me, lads!’

“From my station on this hill one sees really a piece of battle poetry. The picture is magnificent, and sufficiently distant to have the effect of a real picture, without the details, the horrors,and disgusts of the reality; no gushing blood, no death-rattles, nothing but elevated and magnificent effects of line and colour. Those far-extended ranks of the army corps winding on, that unbounded procession of infantry regiments, divisions of cavalry, and batteries of artillery, then the ammunition train, the requisitioned country waggons, the pack horses, and, bringing up the rear, the baggage. The picture comes out still more imposing if, in the wide country stretched out beneath the hill, you can see, not merely the movements ofone, but the meeting of two armies. Then how the flashing sword-blades, the waving flags, the horses rearing up like foaming waves, mingle with each other, while amongst them clouds of smoke arise, forming themselves in places into thick veils which hide all the picture, and when they lift show groups of fighters. Then, as accompaniment, the noise of shots rolling through the mountains, every stroke of which thunders the word Death! Death! Death! through the air. Yes, that sort of thing may well inspire battle lays. And for the composition, too, of those contributions to the history of the period which are to be published after the conclusion of the campaign, the station on the hill-top offers favourable opportunities. There, at any rate, the narrative can be made out with some exactness. The X Division met the enemy at N, drove him back, reached the main bulk of the army; strong forces of the enemy showed themselves on the left flank—and so on, and so on. But one who is not on the hill, peering through his field-glass, one who is himself taking part in the action, he cannever, never relate the progress of a battle in a way worthy of belief. He sees, feels, and thinks of only what is close to him. All the rest of his narrative is from intuition, for which he avails himself of the old formulas. ‘Look, Tilling,’ one of the generals said to me, as I was standing near him on the hill. ‘Is not that striking? A grand army, is it not? Why, what are you thinking about?’ What was I thinking about, my Martha? About you. But to my superior officer I could not say so. So I answered, with all due deference, some untruth. ‘All due deference’and ‘truth’ have besides little to do with each other. The latter is a very proud fellow, and turns with contempt from all servility.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“The village is ours—no, it is the enemy’s—now ours again—and yet once more the enemy’s; but it is no longer a village, but a smoking mass of the ruins of houses.

“The inhabitants (was it not reallytheirvillage?) had left it previously and were away—luckily for them, for the fighting in an inhabited place is something really fearful; for then the bullets from friend and foe fall into the midst of the rooms and kill women and children. One family, however, had remained behind in the place which yesterday we took, lost, re-took, and lost again—namely, an old married couple and their daughter, the latter in childbed. The husband is serving in our regiment. He told me the story as we were nearing the village. ‘There, colonel, in that house with the red roof, is living my wife with her old parents. They have not been able to get away, poor creatures; my wife may be confined any moment, and the old folks are half-crippled; for God’s sake, colonel, order me there!’ Poor devil! he got there just in time to see the mother and child die; a shell had exploded under their bed. What has happened to the old folks I do not know. They are probably buried under the ruins; the house was one of the first set on fire by the cannonade. Fighting in the open country is terrible enough, but fighting amongst human dwellings is ten times more cruel. Crashing timber, bursting flames, stifling smoke; cattle run mad with fear; every wall a fortress or a barricade, every window a shot-hole. I saw a breastwork there which was formed of corpses. The defenders had heaped up all the slain that were lying near, in order, from that rampart, to fire over on to their assailants. I shall surely never forget that wall in all my life. A man, who formed one of its bricks, penned in among the other corpse-bricks, was still alive, and was moving his arm.

“ ‘Still alive’—that is a condition, occurring in war with athousand differences, which conceals sufferings incalculable. If there were any angel of mercy hovering over the battlefields he would have enough to do in giving the poor creatures—men and beasts—who are ‘still alive’ theircoup de grâce.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“To-day we had a little cavalry skirmish in the open field. A Prussian cavalry regiment came forward at a trot, deployed into line, and then, with their horses well in hand and their sabres above their heads, rode down on us at a hand gallop. We did not wait for their attack, but galloped out against the enemy. No shots were exchanged. When a few paces from each other both ranks burst out into a thundering ‘hurrah’ (shouting intoxicates; the Indians and Zulus know that even better than we do); and so we rushed on each other, horse to horse, knee to knee; the sabres whistled in the air and came down on the men’s heads. Soon all were huddled together too close to use their weapons; then they struggled breast to breast, and the horses, getting wild and frightened, snorted and plunged, reared up, and struck about them. I too was on the ground once, and saw—no very pleasant sight—a horse’s hoof striking out within a hair’s breadth of my temples.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“Another day of marching, with one or two skirmishes. I have experienced a great sorrow. Such a mournful picture accompanies me. Among the many pictures of woe which are all around me this ought not so to strike me, ought not to give me such pain. But I cannot help it; it touches me nearly, and I cannot shake it off. Puxl—our poor, happy, good, little dog—oh, if I had only left him at home with his little master, Rudolf! He was running after us, as usual. Suddenly he gave a shriek of pain; the splinter of a shell had torn off his fore-leg. He could not come after us, so is left behind, and is ‘still alive’. Between twenty-four and forty-eight hours have passed, and he is ‘still alive’. ‘Oh master! my good master!’ his cries seemed to say. ‘Do not leavepoor Puxl here! His heart will break!’ And what especially pains me is the thought that the faithful dying creature must misunderstand me. For he saw that I turned round, that I must have understood his cry for help and yet was so cold and so cruel as to leave him there. Poor Puxl could not understand that a regiment advancing to the attack, out of whose ranks comrades are falling and are left on the ground, cannot be ordered to halt for the sake of a dog who has been hit. He has no conception of the higher duty which I had to obey: and so the poor true heart of the dog is complaining of my unmercifulness. Only think of troubling oneself about such trumpery in the midst of the ‘great events’ and gigantic misfortunes which fill the present time. That is what many would say, with a shrug of the shoulders; but not you, Martha, not you. I know that a tear will come into your eyes for our poor Puxl.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“What is happening there? The execution party is drawn out. Has a spy been caught? One? Seventeen this time. There they come, in four ranks, each one of four men, surrounded by a square of soldiers. The condemned men step out, with their heads down. Behind comes a cart with a corpse in it; and bound to the corpse the dead man’s son—a boy of twelve, also condemned.

“I could not look on at the execution, and withdrew; but I heard the firing. A cloud of smoke rose from behind the walls. All were dead, the boy included.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“At last a comfortable night’s lodging in a little town! The poor little nest! Provisions, which were to have served the people for months, we have taken on requisition. ‘Requisition!’ Well, it is one good thing to have a pretty recognised name for a thing. However, I was at least glad to have got a good night’s lodging and a good night’s food; and—let me tell you a story:—

“I was just going to lie down in bed, when my orderly announced that a man of my regiment was there, and earnestlybegged for admission, as he had something for me. ‘Well, let him come in;’ and the man entered. And before he went out I had rewarded him handsomely, shaken him by both hands, and promised to look after his wife and children. For what he brought me, the fine fellow, had given me the greatest pleasure, and had freed me from a pain under which I had been suffering for the last thirty-six hours. It was my Puxl. Injured, it is true—honourably wounded—but still alive, and so happy to be with his master, by whose behaviour he must certainly have seen that he had been wrong in charging him with want of fondness for him. Ah, that was indeed a scene of re-union. First of all, a drink of water! How good it was! He interrupted his greedy drinking ten times to bark out his joy to me. Then I bound up the stump of his leg for him, set before him a tasty supper of meat and cheese, and put him to sleep on my bed. We both slept well. In the morning when I woke he licked my hand again and again in token of thanks. Then he stretched out his poor little leg, breathed deep, and—was no more. Poor Puxl! It is better so.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“What is all I have seen to-day? If I shut my eyes, what has passed before them comes with terrible distinctness into my memory. ‘Nothing but pain and pictures of horror,’ you will say. Why then do other men bring such fresh, such joyful images away with them from war? Ah, yes! These others close their eyes to the pain and the horror. Theysay nothing about them. If they write, or if they narrate, they give themselves no trouble to paint their experiences after nature; but they occupy themselves in imitating descriptions which they have read, and which they take as models, and in bringing out those impressions which are considered heroic. If they occasionally tell also of scenes of destruction, which contain in themselves the bitterest pain and the bitterest terror, nothing of either is to be discovered in their tone. On the contrary, the more terrible the more indifferent are they, the morehorrible the more easy. Disapprobation, anger, excitement? Nothing of all this. Well, perhaps instead of this, a slight breath of sentimental pity, a few sighs of compassion. But their heads are soon in the air again. ‘The heart to God, and the hand against the foe.’ Hurrah, Tra-ra-ra!

“Now look at two of the pictures which impressed themselves on me.

“Steep, rocky heights. Jägers nimble as cats climbing up them. The object was to ‘take’ the heights, from the top of which the enemy was firing. What I see are the forms of the assailants who are climbing up, and some of them who are hit by the enemy’s shot, suddenly stretch both arms out, let their muskets fall, and with their heads falling backwards, drop off the height, step by step, from one rocky point to another, smashing their limbs to pieces.

“I see a horseman at some distance obliquely behind me, at whose side a shell burst. His horse swerved aside, and came against the tail of mine, then shot past me. The man sat still in the saddle, but a fragment of the shell had ripped his belly open, and torn all the intestines out. The upper part of his body was held on to the lower only by the spine. From the ribs to the thighs nothing but one great bleeding cavity. A short distance further he fell to the ground, with one foot still clinging in the stirrup, and the galloping horse dragging him on over the stony soil.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“An artillery division is sticking fast in a part of the road which is steep and soaked with rain. The guns are sinking deeper than their wheels in the morass. It is only with the most extreme exertion, dripping with sweat, and animated by the most unmerciful flogging, that the horses can get forward. One, however, dead beat before, now can do no more. Thumping him does no good; he is quite willing, but he cannot. He literallycannot. Cannot that man see this, whose blows are raining down on the poor beast’s head? If the cruel brute had been the driver of a waggon in the service of some builder, any peace officer, even I myself, would have had himarrested. But this gunner, who has to get his death-laden carriage forward anyhow, is only doing his duty. The horse, however, cannot know this. The tortured, well-meaning, noble creature, who has exerted himself to the utmost limit of his vital power, what must he think in his inmost heart of such hard-heartedness and such want of sense? Think, as animals do think, not in words and conceptions, but in feelings, and feelings which are all the more lively for wanting expression. There is butoneexpression for it, the shriek of pain; and he did shriek, that poor horse, till at last he sank down, a shriek so long drawn and so resounding, that it still rings in my ear, that it haunted me in my dream the next night—a horrible dream in other respects. I thought that I was—how can I ever tell you the story? dreams are so senseless that language conformable to sense is hardly adapted to their reproduction—that I was the sense of pain in such an artillery horse—no, not one, but in 100,000, for in my dream I had quickly summed up the number of the horses slaughtered in one campaign, and thus this pain multiplied its effect at once a hundred-thousandfold. The menknowat least why their lives are exposed to danger. They know whither they are going, and what for; but we poor unfortunates know nothing—all around us is night and horror. The men seem to go with pleasure to meet their foes, but we are surrounded by foes—our own masters, whom we would love so truly, to serve whom we spend our last energies, they rain blows on us, they leave us lying helpless; and all that we have to suffer besides, the fear that makes the sweat of agony run from our whole body, the thirst—for we too suffer from fever—oh, that thirst! the thirst of us poor bleeding, maltreated 100,000 horses!... Here I woke, and clutched the water bottle. I was myself suffering from burning, feverish thirst.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“Another street fight in the little town of Saar. To the noise of the battle-cries and the shots is joined the crashing of timber and the falling of walls. A shell burst in one of thehouses, and the pressure of the air, caused by its explosion, was so powerful that several soldiers were wounded by the ruins of the house which were borne along by the air. A window flew over my head with the window-sash still in it. The chimney-stack tumbled down, the plaster crumbled into dust and filled the air with a stifling cloud that stung one’s eyes. From one lane to another (how the hoofs rang on the jagged pavements) the fight wound on, and reached the market-place. In the middle of the square stands a high pillar of the Virgin. The Mother of God holds her child in one arm and stretches the other out in blessing. Here the fight was prolonged—man to man. They were hacking at me, I was laying about me on all sides. Whether I hit one or more of them I know not: in such moments one does not retain much perception. Still two cases are photographed on my soul, and I fear that the market-place at Saar will remain always burned into my memory. A Prussian dragoon, strong as Goliath, tore one of our officers (a pretty, dandified lieutenant—how many girls are perhaps mad after him) out of his saddle, and split his skull at the feet of the Virgin’s pillar. The gentle saint looked on unmoved. Another of the enemy’s dragoons—a Goliath too—seized, just before me almost, my right-hand man, and bent him backwards in his saddle so powerfully that he broke his back—I myself heard it crack. To this also the Madonna gave her stony blessing.”

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“From a height to-day the field-glass of the staff officer commanded once more a scene rich in changes. There was, for instance, the collapse of a bridge as a train of waggons was moving across it. Did the latter contain wounded? I do not know. I could not ascertain. I only saw that the whole train—waggons, horses, and men—sank into the deep and rushing stream and there disappeared. The event was a ‘fortunate’ one, since the train of waggons belonged to the ‘blacks’. In the game now being played I designate ‘us’ as the white side. The bridge did not collapse by accident; the whites, knowingthat their adversaries had to cross it, had sawn through the pillars—a dexterous stroke that.

“A second prospect, on the other hand, which one might view from the same height represented one of the follies of the “whites”. Our Khevenhüller Regiment was directed into a morass, from which it could not extricate itself, and they were all, except a few, shot down. The wounded fell into the morass, and there had to sink and be smothered, their mouth, nose, and eyes filled with mud, so that they could not even utter a cry. Oh yes! it must be admitted to have been an error of the man who commanded the troops to go there; but ‘to err is human,’ and the loss is not a great one—might represent a pawn taken—a speedy, lucky move of castle or queen, and all is right again. The mud, it is true, remains in the mouth and eyes of the fallen, but that is a very secondary consideration. What is reprehensible is the tactical error; that has to be wiped out by some later fortunate combination, and then the leader implicated in it may still be decorated with grand orders and promotions. That lately our 18th battalion of Jägers in a night battle was firing for several hours on our King of Prussia Regiment, and the error was not found out till break of day; that a part of the Gyulai Regiment was led into a pond—these are little oversights, such as may happen even to the best players in the heat of a game.”

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“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 favourof 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.”

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