“Then I ask of what blessing is the army to the citizen, to the people as a whole? It takes away his children; it uses up the best years in their lives,—those years in which the youth ripens into a man, and in which his character matures. It is during those years that our sons are often treated with injustice and brutality, and, as a natural consequence, they return from the army into work-a-day life, as the bitter enemies of a government which dismisses many of them as helpless cripples or as physical wrecks without ever thinking of making suitable award. Then, still more frequently, our sons, after spending the best strength they have in the service of the state, in hard toil, and in exposing themselves to all rigors of a changeable climate, are sent back into the world, dismissed from the army, just because of some trivial offence,—kicked out into the cold as one might a dog, compelling him to hunt for food and to seek a new master. Therefore, I say, let us compel the government to spend hereafter the money so uselessly wasted for the enlargement of an army that has already overgrown its proper size, rather for more useful purposes, so that the people, the masses, will know what they have sacrificed themselves for.”
The words of the speaker, drawn so largely from his own bitter experiences, were frequently interrupted by a loud acclaim; but as Schmitz now stepped down from his eminence to mingle with his auditors, the large crowd that filled the hall to suffocation began to rend the air with frantic cheers. They threw up their caps and shouted approval; scores of them cried: “Bravo, Schmitz!”; while others crowded up to him to shake him by the hand. It was an ovation as enthusiastic as Schmitz had never aspired to in his boldest moments, and his natural vanity felt intensely gratified. As to these people, he had indeed gained them over to his way of thinking.
His words had sounded so convincing, they had struck the popular chord so accurately, that many a one in this dense throng who had merely come that night as a spectator, drawn by idle curiosity, had been convinced of the justice of the Socialist cause, and resolved to join the party which espoused the claims of the poor.
And so Schmitz had that night become not only an adherent but a leader of the “red” party,—a party which in this large manufacturing town was becoming more and more formidable.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] “Steckbrief,” a term in German law meaning a circular demand on all domestic or foreign authorities to arrest and hold in custody for extradition an escaped criminal.—Tr.
Chapter IX
RESIGNATIONS ARE IN ORDER
Sergeant-Major Krohn, the regimental chief clerk, was leaning against the iron railing which shut off from the vulgar civilian world the edifice holding the offices and administrative bureaux.
He was smoking his morning cigar with considerable zest and reading the Deutsche Zeitung, which the letter-carrier had just left for the colonel. He was at leisure just then, for the colonel had gone on horseback to view the regimental drill on the parade grounds, quite a distance from town; and on such days it was the habit of the adjutant to recompense himself by a sound matutinal slumber for the nightly sleep he had missed in attending this banquet or that carousal.