"C'est la cendre des morts qui créa la patrie."
A consideration of these three influences, economic conditions, educational appeal to the intellect, historical appeal to tradition, will help us to understand the power of German patriotism.
In one of the thoughtful editorials to which readers of the 'Irish Homestead' are accustomed, I find condensed into a single phrase the idea which I have been struggling to express. "Duty to one's race," says "A. E.," "is not inevitable. It is the result of education, of intellectual atmosphere, or of the social order."
It is very necessary, but very difficult in war, to keep in view the best side of the enemy's national character. Now among the doctors, hospital attendants, officers and men of the German army with whom I came in contact during my stay in Germany, I occasionally met with straight-dealing and kindness. Three there are among them to whom I would gladly give my hand. But though in the main the Germans are a treacherous race, coarse in pleasure, bestial in drunkenness, viciously brutal in war; they are also brave, disciplined, and patriotic. When the Fatherland is seen to be in danger they will fight to the last loaf, to the last cartridge, to the last man. There will be no sudden collapse. There will be no surrender by attrition. Ours is no easy road to victory.
The night was well on before our visitors retired to their own compartment. The gold-spectacled, bald-headed escort fell into a heavy sleep, uninterrupted by the frequent stopping at cold, dark, and lonely stations, where the train would sometimes remain quiet and peaceful for perhaps a quarter of an hour, but always started with a sudden rattle and jerk just as I was thankfully dozing off.
Of the following day I have little recollection. Early in the morning we changed trains at a small junction. It was bitterly cold, and the platform, which was covered with snow, was deserted. No stretchers or stretcher-bearers were provided, and those of us who could not walk were wheeled across the station in a truck by two aged porters. Before starting afresh we had a cup of hot coffee and a very small roll of bread each.
The railway now ran through a hilly and thickly wooded country, and our speed, which had never been very rapid, was much reduced by long curved gradients. Snow lay thick on the branches in the dark spruce forests. Rosy-faced children, well wrapped up, on their way to school, stopped on the hard frozen road which ran beside the railway line to watch the train go by and to wave their hands and cheer. A pale wintry sun crept round the horizon.
The railway carriage was almost as cold as the corridor in the Festung Marienberg. Yesterday's feeling of joy merely at the fact of being outside the Fortress was now giving way to impatience at the length of our journey and the slowness of the train.
The picture changed in the afternoon. The train was crossing the broad corn-lands of Westphalia, which, as one huge field, stretch away to the horizon. Here and there were patches of snow, but no hedges, walls, or fence of any kind, and scarcely a tree, can be seen to break the monotony of the landscape. The farmhouses, few and far apart, present a lonely and desolate appearance.