It was the German in Baron von Stengel, not the man, who spoke, enunciating the doctrine that war is necessary, that war is a natural function of social life.
“For the rest,” he added, humanizing to the best of his ability the myth formulated by the German, for now the natural man was resuming sway, “once war has broken out, it is the duty of us all to do our best to diminish its horrors. Men differ widely, and yet, through contact with upright and noble characters, even the worst of human beings, even those of malignant and dark nature, come to learn the value of peace, of good understanding, and acquire the faculty of enduring with equanimity.”
Thus talking, we reached the great iron gate, adorned with the Bavarian lions. I rang. The gate was opened, the baron drew aside to allow his “boarders” to pass in, and these in turn signalled to him to take precedence.
The commandant major, Baron Stefan von Stengel, very erect, head held high, passed through the gateway. The guard, fully armed, stood at attention, lined up in two rows. Upon an order from the Feldwebel, “Hurrah für den Major,” twenty recruits shouted with a single voice. Night had fallen. All the windows of the fort, which had been invisible as long as we were outside the walls, were now seen to be lighted up, and the red of the bricks was manifest in the starlight. We crossed the drawbridge. “Now that the snows have come,” said the commandant, pointing to the ditch, “we could make a good skating-rink there.” He saluted, and withdrew into his casemate.
As a matter of fact, I have not entirely lost my time here, since I have succeeded in classifying adequately in the social hierarchy such a man as Baron von Stengel, who is neither hero nor genius, who has no ambition to display supernatural virtues, but who is simply a man with pleasant manners, refined, well-bred, free from all stiffness, easy to get on with, a truly civilized being.
You, my friends, have spoiled me. It is owing to you that I had always remained ignorant how restricted is the genus of “decent folk.” The war has changed my views in this respect. Hardened, simplified, freer in relation to external conditions, as adaptable as any one could wish—when the campaign is over I shall be somewhat less confiding than of yore towards my kind. Now that I sample them in the mass, elbowing them unceasingly morning, noon, and night throughout the entire day of twenty-four hours, listening to them as they talk, chatter, grumble, quarrel, and snore, looking on at them while they enjoy themselves, complain, play, eat, bargain, pull out the personal stop, pass judgments, take things at their ease; now that I no longer contemplate them through the prism of my doctrines and of my leniency, but look at them as they really are, all the scenery of civil life removed, all social trappings stripped off—there are certain categories of mind which I understand better than before. I understand better, for example, hermits, misanthropes, jansenists, and all pessimists, pagan as well as Christian, all those who can see nothing in man but the primitive beast, and those who never cease talking of original sin. How greatly now do I prize good manners, the veneer of culture, the mask of decency. These are but externals, things which do not give expression to man’s intimate nature. They even aim at veiling that nature. But precisely because they exercise this occlusive and embellishing function, they seem to me august. The sight of the real arouses an appetite for fiction, creates a necessity for art and for dreams. Are these lies? Yes, they are lies, poor lies! What matter? Must we live in hell by deliberate choice? It cannot be asserted that such illusions make a paradise of our ill-conditioned and sordid world; but at least they mitigate the stench to some extent, neutralize its offensiveness, and render the bestial hustle a thought less aggressive.
My nose is still uneasy with the memory of the carrion odour from the battlefields of Moncourt, Lagarde, and Kerprich. It was here that I learned the value of shroud, coffin, quicklime, and tomb. Now that I have come to know men better, I know also that the trifling restraints and delicate veils of conventional good manners are absolutely essential.