“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 it living? 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 of my life 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 and moves 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, that belongs to you, that never 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 a friend of 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. I rest in 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 its raison d’etre proclaims 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, that will 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 old and 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 that such a 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! For that love, 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!”
CHAPTER XI.
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.