“Who knows,” I suggested, “perhaps our enmity with Prussia will cease. Perhaps we shall some day conclude an alliance with them.”
My father shrugged his shoulders. “If women would only abstain from talking politics!” he said disdainfully. “After what has taken place, we have to chastise these insolent fellows, we have to get the annexed (as they call them—I call them ‘plundered’) states back to their severed allegiance; that is what our honour demands, and the interest of our position amongst the Powers of Europe. Friendship—alliance with these transgressors? Never! unless they came and begged humbly for it.”
“In that case,” remarked Frederick, “we should perhaps set our feet on their necks. Alliances are sought and concluded only with those whom one respects, or who can offer one protection against a common foe. In state-craft the ruling principle is egotism.”
“Oh yes,” my father replied, “if the ego means one’s country, everything else is certainly to be subordinated to it, and everything is certainly allowable and commanded which seems serviceable to its interests.”
“It is, however, to be wished,” answered Frederick, “that in the behaviour of communities the same elevated civilisation should be reached, as has banished from the behaviour of individuals the rough self-worship, resting on fist-law, and that the view should prevail more and more that one’s own interests are really most effectually furthered by avoiding damage to those of foreigners, or rather in union with the latter.”
“Eh?” asked my father, with his hand to his ear.
But Frederick could not, of course, repeat this long sentence and illustrate it, and so the discussion ended.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“I shall be at Grumitz to-morrow at one o’clock.—Conrad.”
Everybody can imagine the delight which this telegram caused Lilly. No other arrival is hailed with such joy and rapture as that of one returning from the wars. It is true that in this case there was not also what is the favourite subject of the common ballads and engravings, viz., “The conqueror’s return”; but the human feelings of the loving sweetheart would not be interfered with by patriotic considerations, and if Conrad had “taken” the city of Berlin, I believe this would not have availed to heighten the warmth of Lilly’s reception of him.