“But there’s no end to it. How bitter winter seems in the trenches. Always more dead, and more, and more. My feet are freezing. I am badly fed. Oh, my slippers, my nice, comfortable slippers, my darling wife who used to light my long pipe for me, and who used to cuddle me warm in bed! Sakrament! What’s this horrible war about? They told me it would be such an easy matter. After all, what do I, good, honest Michael, care about ruling the world? Must I pay for this with my skin? No, no; I’m only a poor man. What business is it of mine, this ruling of the world? Oh, lieber Gott, let the war end soon, let me get back to my village, my pub, my bed, and my children!”
Thus has Michael reasoned, and thus he continues to reason. It is not heroic. Sancho Panza would shake him by the hand as a true comrade. Still, why should Michael be a Don Quixote? Has Germany ever claimed to be a Dulcinea? Has she manifested herself to him as charming, winsome, gentle, and maternal, as loving him unselfishly for his own sake? Nothing of the sort! On the contrary, Germany has terrorized him with rough orders, and has made him efface himself by her display of aggressive force. She has appealed to the traditional servility of his imagination, not to the nobility of his heart. She has desired obedience, not affection.
Now the great hour has arrived, the gloomy hour of sacrifice. It is not enough to sing:
Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein.…
No, one simply has to die so that the country one loves may live.
Love is an easy word to say. We have so often been told that the Germans loved Germany, that they were the true patriots, while we, the French, were nothing but anarchists. Yet, after a year of war, these Gallic “grumblers,” who are always wrangling, who take ideas into their heads, and who hold to these ideas so firmly that you sometimes hear them cry, “Perish countries, so long as principle lives and humanity becomes established”—these ungovernable and intractable “anarchists” remain a single body and soul, exhibit infinite patience, and continue the most formidable warlike efforts. Why? Are they inconsistent? Not for a moment. For them, France is justice; France is the human ideal. They save their souls by saving France. They can die, for they would not wish to go on living if beautiful Europe were to fall beneath the German yoke.
But why should you expect these little Michaels of Germany to die cheerfully? Why, as the slaughter increases, should they stand shoulder to shoulder round their leaders, firmly resolved to conquer or to perish? Is Germany really worth dying for?
This much is certain, that the mystical admirers of justice and liberty, who, in time of peace, filled the men of order with dismay, are to-day the most disciplined in the world; whilst the pillars of order, the singers of unity, the adorers of powerful Germania, those who made a mystical cult of force and force alone, have taken to grumbling, are reasoning like ill-conditioned individualists, have denied their faith.
I have noticed a thousand times that these Teuton soldiers who, through dread of their leaders, are not yet traitors in fact, are nevertheless traitors in soul.
This no longer surprises me. I understand why they regard us without hatred, why they long for peace at any price, and why, if the war is to continue, they look forward to being made prisoners. They suffer too much, and their suffering has overwhelmed their patriotism.