Further entries in my diary during May echo all kinds of events from abroad:
... The great sea fight which the public of the arena is so anxiously awaiting is still unfought. Epidemics are breaking out in Cuba and the Philippines, and “the red cock,” that dreadful bird, is flying from place to place....
... The craze for fleets has also reached Austria. Enormous plans for strengthening the navy have been broached. Unions of the great industries are pleading for it. The slogan “Protection for exports” is throwing a mantle of political economy around the wish to pocket great profits from manufacturing and furnishing supplies. Nevertheless Switzerland has an export trade, and without a fleet, either!
... Debates over the increased price of grain. Of course the price of bread is not raised by the American war and the closely guarded boundaries! Oh, no! Our political economists know better. The Stock Exchange is to blame for everything; and a sure means for relief of the distress has been proposed by a friend of our mayor,—hang three thousand Jews; or, still better, grind up all the Jews for artificial fertilizer. This last proposition was only meant humorously—gentlemen can also be witty....
... [The Dreyfus Affair.] The Zola case is to be brought once more into court. Esterhazy threatens to kill Picquart; the mob insults Zola—à l’eau! à l’eau!—and the persecuting press again resumes its system of abuse and slander.
... In England the Colonial Secretary gives utterance to a speech which has brought the whole European press into turmoil. He said that war should have been declared against Russia long before.... The speech is universally pronounced unstatesmanlike. Well, yes, the accepted course is to prepare for war, make plans, bring it on, and scheme for it,—that the diplomatists do; but to call it by name in times of peace, oh, never! The customary method demands that one must speak of the familiar “good relations.”
Chamberlain also jostles the Transvaal; he is bound that the sovereignty of England shall be recognized there. Kruger produces the text of treaties which make such a demand untenable, and suggests submitting the matter to an arbitration tribunal. Chamberlain and his organs haughtily announce that a question regarding Great Britain’s right of sovereignty shall never under any conditions be submitted to arbitration. How far below par has the splendid thought, “Right instead of Might,” everywhere fallen! The waves are hissing and roaring around it on all sides, are threatening to swallow it up; but this thought is a rock,—the billows will dash into spray and fall back, and the thought will tower on high.
Up till to-day (May 28) the two hostile fleets have not met. The great naval battle for which the whole body of spectators is waiting (glass-house owners who anxiously want to see how the stones fly) has not as yet taken place. Only a privateering game is played on the ocean. A prize court has been instituted in order to decide whether a ship is rightfully captured or not. Why not a court that shall discontinue the whole business of official piracy?
The month of June brought an unexpected bereavement into our family circle. One afternoon, I remember, my sister-in-law Lotti, the Countess Sizzo, came into our room and sank with a groan into an easy-chair. She held a great bunch of roses in her hand and had just come in from the garden, where she had got overheated in picking and watering the flowers. After a while she felt better, chatted quite gayly, and left us to go to her own room. There, as we were immediately informed, she fainted. She was put to bed. It was a slight stroke of apoplexy. A physician was summoned from Vienna. When he arrived she seemed better, and he announced that the invalid would be well in three weeks. It was about the twelfth of June, and with minds at rest we took our usual wedding anniversary excursion. When we got back our poor “Hendl”—this was my sister-in-law’s nickname, but I do not know why she was called so—had grown decidedly worse. The Vienna doctor had come again and was now ordering constant application of ice bags to her head. The sisters took turns in caring for her, and My Own also spent many hours by Lotti’s sick bed, for she seemed most grateful and happy to have her brother near her. On the eighth or tenth day the death agony began. The death rattle lasted from four o’clock in the afternoon until one at night. We were all gathered around her bed and in the next room,—the aged parents, the two sisters, Marianne and Luise, the families from Stockern, and also a cousin who had loved Lotti for years. I still see him before me as, hearing from the next room the heavy breathing, he staggered, leaned against the wall with outstretched arms like one crucified, and cried, “That is the end—the end!”
And it was the end. The pastor was summoned. Then it lasted an hour or two longer; the rattling grew more subdued, the breathing less frequent, and the last sigh was drawn gently.