Güntz had handed over to him the justification for his resignation which he had written out before the duel with Landsberg. It had been unnecessary to add or to erase anything.
Reimers had often in old days wished to have his friend's opinions in black and white before him, in order to overthrow them singly, point by point, brilliantly to overthrow them. He now held in his hand Güntz's views, succinctly and definitely expressed; but whither had flown his former keen spirit? He could no longer summon up the old impetuous dash with which he had meant to fall upon his opponent's arguments one after another, raze them to the ground and trample them underfoot like the entrenchments and fortifications in some mock combat.
He compared Güntz's statement with the notes he had taken of his conversations with Falkenhein, during the short period of his adjutancy. There was much in which they agreed, and this agreement staggered him. Here were two men of fundamentally different nature whose judgment concurred; both of them were distinguished by clarity of perception and exhaustive knowledge of the circumstances with which they were dealing, and both were entitled to their opinions by a past record that excluded all idea of bias.
Were they both right, then? The one with his vague uneasiness, the other with his heavy disquietude?
Reimers could not dismiss the doubts of these two men. At most he might reply to Güntz that this unsatisfactory state of affairs was not so widespread as his friend asserted.
This inclination to outward show was a universal sign of the times, and was not confined to Germany. In France a cavalry charge had been made upon the grand stand where the President was seated beside the Tsar. Was that not more theatrical than some of the impossible evolutions undertaken in the German manœuvres?
But to this consolation was opposed the old teaching of experience, that a nation in extremity is capable of the most unheard-of exertions in reparation of its errors. The cheerful self-sacrifice of Prussia in 1813 was almost without parallel in the history of the world; and yet the sensitive, heavily-chastened French nation was effecting a similar arduous work, the more striking by reason of its long persistence.
France had, besides, this advantage; in actual fact a great number of the French people, through an artificially nourished feeling of embitterment, were keen for war with their eastern neighbour. Germans, on the contrary, thought no more of the "hereditary enemy" of 1870; in the progress of science and the development of art they felt themselves closely connected with France. Germany had linked herself to France that they might march together arm-in-arm in the forefront of civilisation.
Germany desired peace. It was not exactly that the German had become unwarlike; but, because of his Teutonic thoroughness and sobriety, he was deeply impressed with the necessity and utility of peace, as the most truly rational condition of things. Once the danger of vengeance from the west had blown over, any and every war would have been unpopular in Germany, except perhaps one with England, which, as a naval war, would less immediately affect the masses of the people, and everybody in Germany held the conviction that warlike developments would never arise from an irresistible outbreak of popular feeling, but only from political or dynastic mismanagement.
In this way--that is, as a failing in warlike ardour--did Reimers account for the want of patriotism which Güntz pointed to as the most significant inward danger of the present military system.