Lay Down Your Arms: The Autobiography of Martha von Tilling

by Bertha von Suttner

To him, of course, it would have been better if he had come home along with troops who had been victorious, if he had contributed to conquer the province of Silesia for his emperor. Meantime, the very fact of having fought is in itself an honour for a soldier, even if he is one of the beaten, nay, one of the fallen: the latter is even more especially glorious. Thus Otto told us that in the academy at Wiener-Neustadt the names of all the students were inscribed on a table of honour, to whom the advantage had befallen of having been left dead on the battlefield, Tué à l’ennemi, they say in France; and in that country, as everywhere else, it is a much-prized ancestral distinction. The more progenitors one can point out in one’s family who have lost their lives in battles, whether won or lost, the prouder is the descendant of it, the more value may he set on his name, the less value on his life. In order to show oneself worthy of one’s slain ancestors, one must have a lively joy of one’s own in slaying, active and passive. Well, so much the better is it, that, as long as war exists, there should also be found people who see therein elevation and inspiration, nay, even pleasure. The number, however, of these people is daily becoming less, while the number of the soldiers becomes daily greater. Whither must this finally lead? To its becoming intolerable. And whither will this lead?

Conrad did not think so deeply. His way of looking at it was excellently expressed by the well-known song of the lieutenant in the “Dame Blanche”: “Oh, what delight is a soldier’s life, what delight!” To hear him speak, one might have actually envied him the expedition of which he had just formed part. My brother Otto was really filled with this envy. This warrior returned from his baptism of blood and fire, who even before looked so knightly in his hussar uniform, and who was now also adorned with an honourable scar over his chin, received in the shower of bullets, who had perhaps given their quietus to so many of the foe, he seemed to him now surrounded by a nimbus of glory.

“It was not a successful campaign, that I must admit,” said Conrad, “but I have brought back from it one or two grand reminiscences.”

“Tell us, tell us,” Lilly and Otto besought him.

“Well, I cannot give you many details; the whole thing lies behind me like a dream, the powder gets into one’s head in such a strange way. The intoxication, in fact, or the fever, the martial fire, in a word, begins from the moment of marching. The parting from one’s love indeed comes hard on one; it was the one hour in which my breast was full of tender pain, but when one is once off with one’s comrades; when the thought is, now I am going on the highest duty which life can lay on a man, viz., to defend my beloved country; when, then, the musicians struck up Radetzky’s March, and the silken folds of the flags rustled in the wind, I must confess, Lilly, that at that moment I would not have turned back—no, not into the arms of my love. Then I felt that I should never be worthy of that love except by doing my duty out there by the side of my brethren. That we were marching to victory we did not doubt. What did we know about the horrible needle bullets? It was they alone that were the cause of our defeat. I tell you they fell on our ranks like hail. And we had also bad leaders. Benedek, you will see, will yet be brought before a court-martial. We should have attacked. If I should ever become a general my tactics would be to advance, always advance, play a forward game, invade the enemy’s country. That surely is only another kind, and the most weighty one too, of defence:—

If it must be so, go forward—forward go.
The way is found by never looking back,

as the poet says. However, that is nothing to the point; the emperor has not put me in command, and so I am not responsible for the tactical blunders: the generals must see how they are to settle with their military superiors and with their own consciences; we, officers and soldiers, did our duty—we had to fight, and fight we did. And that is a grand sensation in itself. The very expectation, the very excitement one feels when one rushes on to the foe and when the word goes round ‘Now it is afoot,’ this consciousness that in that moment a portion of the world’s history is being enacted, and then the pride, the joy in one’s own courage, Death right and left, great and mysterious, and yet one bids him a manly defiance——”

“Just like poor Godfrey Tessow,” murmured Frederick to himself. “Well, of course, it is the same school.”

Conrad went on eagerly.

“One’s heart beats higher, one’s pulse flutters, there awakes—and that is the peculiar rapture of it—there wakes the joy of battle. The rage, the hate of the foe blazes up, and at the same time the most burning love for one’s menaced country, while the onward rush, the hewing down at them becomes a delight. One feels transported into another world from that in which one grew up, a world in which all the ordinary feelings and ways of looking at things are changed into their opposites. Life is changed into plunder; killing becomes a duty. Only, however, heroism, the most magnificent self-sacrifice, are left surviving—all other conceptions have perished in the tumult. Then add the powder-smoke, the battle-cries. I tell you it is a state of things to which no parallel is to be found elsewhere. At the most, perhaps, the same fire may glow through one in the lion or tiger hunt, when one stands in the face of the maddened wild beast, and——”