“Oh yes! and you do wish it too, father, and the whole Council of War seems to be with you! Then, I should like it better if you said it out plainly! Only do not let us have this falsehood—this assurance to the people and the friends of peace that all this purchasing of weapons and demands for war-credits are only for the purpose of your beloved peace. If you are already showing your teeth and closing your fists, do not whisper soft words all the while. If you are trembling with impatience to draw the sword, do not make believe that it is only from precaution that you are laying your hand on the hilt.”
So I went on talking for a while with trembling voice and rising passion, while my father was too much taken aback to answer a word, and at last I ended by bursting into tears.
Now followed a time of fluctuating hopes and fears. To-day it was “Peace is secure,” to-morrow “War inevitable”. Most persons were of the latter view. Not so much because the situation pointed to a bloody arbitrament, but on this account, that if once the word “war” has been pronounced there may be a good deal of debating one way and the other, but experience shows that the end always is war. The little invisible egg which contains the casus belli is brooded over so long that at last the monster creeps out of it.
Daily did I note in the red volumes the phases of the varying strife, and thus I knew at that time, and still know to-day, how the eventful “war of ’66” was prepared and how it broke out. Without these entries I might easily find myself in the same ignorance about this precise piece of history as most men are who live where history is being played out. The great majority of the people usually know nothing about why or how a war exists. They only see it coming for a certain time, and then it is there. And when it is there people make no more inquiries about the petty interests and differences of opinion which brought it about, but are then only busied with the mighty events to which its progress gives birth. And when it is over at last, what one remembers chiefly are the terrors and losses we have personally experienced, the conquests and triumphs that have marked its course, but on the political grounds for its origin no one wastes a thought. In the many works of history which appear after every campaign under the title of “The war of the year so and so historically and strategically described,” or something to that effect, all the old motives for the strife and all the tactical movements of the campaign in question are recounted, and any one who takes an interest in such things can pick out the explanation from the literature in which it is wrapped up, but in the remembrance of the people such histories certainly do not live. Even of the feelings of hatred and enthusiasm, of embitterment and hope of victory, with which the whole population greets the commencement of the war—feelings expressed in the common saying: “This is a very popular war”—even of these feelings all is wiped out after a year or two.
On March 24 Prussia issued a circular note in which she complained of the threatening preparations of Austria. Then why do we not disarm, if we do not wish to threaten? Why, how can we? For on March 28 you see it is enacted on the side of Prussia that the fortresses in Silesia and two corps d’armée are to be put on a war footing.
March 31. Thank God! Austria declares that all the rumours in circulation about her secret preparations are false. It has never even entered into her head to attack Prussia. And on this she founds the demand that Prussia shall suspend her measures of warlike preparation. Prussia replies that she has not the remotest idea of attacking Austria, but that it has become compulsory, in consequence of the late preparations, to be prepared for attack.
And so the responsive song of the two voices goes on without pause:—
My preparations are defensive.
Your preparations are offensive.
I must prepare because you are preparing.
I am preparing because you prepare.
Then let us prepare,
Yes, let us go on preparing.
The newspapers give the orchestral accompaniments to this duet. The leading articles revel in what is called conjectural politics. It was all poking up, baiting, bragging, slandering. Historical works on the Seven Years’ War were published with the avowed intention of renewing the old enmity.
Meanwhile the exchange of notes went on. In that of April 7 Austria again officially denied her preparations, but laid stress on an oral expression said to have been used by Bismarck to Count Carolyi that “it would be easy to disregard the Gastein treaty”. Must, then, the destiny of nations depend on anything that two noble diplomatists may have said to one another, in a more or less good humour, about treaties? And what kind of treaties can those be after all, whose contents remain dependent on the good-will of the contracting parties, and are not assured by any higher Court of Arbitration?