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 offices of 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 Prussian conceit 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 the Wiener Zeitung of 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:—