Lay Down Your Arms: The Autobiography of Martha von Tilling

by Bertha von Suttner

“I cannot help, Frederick,” I said, “being pleased at this news. The whole work of slaughter has not then been for nothing, if a great new empire has grown out of it.”

“But from a French point of view it has been for less than nothing. And we two must have surely the right of looking at this war, not from one side—the German side—only. Not only as men, but even from the narrow national conception, we should have the right to bewail the successes of our enemies and conquerors in 1866. However I agree with you that the union of dismembered Germany, which has now been attained, is a fine thing—that this agreement of the rest of the German princes to give the Imperial Crown to the old victor, has something inspiring, something admirable about it. The only pity is that this union did not arise from a peaceful, but from a warlike exploit. How was it then that there was not enough love of country, enough popular power in Germany, even though Napoleon III. had never sent the challenge of July 19, to form, of their own will, that entity on which their national pride is now to rest—‘one single people of brothers’? Now they will be jubilant—the poet’s wish is fulfilled. That only four short years ago all were at daggers drawn with each other, that for Hanoverians, Saxons, Frankforters, Nassauers, there was no name more hateful than ‘Prussians,’ will luckily be forgotten. In place of this, however, the hatred of Germans in this country, how it will ripen from this time!”

I shuddered. “The mere word, hatred——” I began.

“Is hateful to you? You are right. As long as this feeling is not banished and outlawed, so long is there no humane humanity. Religious hatred is conquered, but national hatred forms still part of civil education. And yet there is only one ennobling, cheering feeling on this earth, and that is Love. We could say something about that, Martha, could we not?” I leaned my head on his shoulder, and looked up at him, while he tenderly stroked the hair off my forehead.

“We know,” he went on, “how sweet it is that so much love should reside in our hearts for our little ones, for all the brothers and sisters of the Great Family of Man, whom one would so gladly—aye, so gladly—spare the pain that threatens them. But they will not——”

“No, no, Frederick. My heart is not yet so comprehensive. I cannot love all the haters.”

“You can, however, pity them?”

And so we talked on a long while in this strain. I still know it all so exactly, because at that time I often—along with the events of the war—entered also fragments of our conversation which bore upon them into the red volumes. On that day we talked again once more about the future; Paris would now capitulate, the war would be over, and then we could be happy with a safe conscience. Then we recapitulated all the guarantees of our happiness. During the eight years of our married life there had never been a harsh or unfriendly word between us—we had passed through so many sorrows and joys together—and so our love, our unity, was of such a solid kind, that no diminution of it was any longer to be feared. On the contrary, we should only be ever more intimately joined together, every new experience in common would at the same time result in a new tie. When we had become a pair of white-haired old folks, with what joy should we look back on the untroubled past, and what a softly glowing evening of life would then lie before us! This picture of the happy old couple, into which we should then have turned, I had set before myself so often and so livelily, that it became quite clearly stamped on my mind, and even reproduced itself in dreams, as if it had really happened, with various details—Frederick in a velvet skull-cap, and with a pair of gardening shears—I have no notion why, for he had never shown any love for gardening, and there had yet been no talk of any skull-cap—I with a very coquettishly arranged black lace mantilla over my silvery hair, and as a surrounding for all this a corner of the park warmly lighted by the setting summer sun; and friendly looks and words smilingly exchanged the while. “Do you know now——” “Do you recollect that time when——”

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Many of the previous pages have I written with shuddering and with self-compulsion. It was not without inward horror that I could describe the scenes through which I passed in my journey to Bohemia, and the cholera week at Grumitz. I have done it in order to obey my sense of duty. Beloved lips once gave me the solemn command: “In case I die before you, you must take my task in hand and labour for the work of Peace”. If this binding injunction had not been laid on me, I could never have so far prevailed over myself as to tear open the agonised wounds of my reminiscences so unsparingly.