But another officer (of whom I spoke in my last chapter) the poet Fritz von Unruh, first Lieutenant of Uhlans on the western front, has written dramatic scenes in verse and prose. These have appeared recently under the title Before the Decision (Vor der Entscheidung). It is a dramatic poem in which the author has noted his own impressions and his moral transformations. The hero, who like himself, is an officer of Uhlans, passes through various centers of the war and remains everywhere a stranger; his soul is detached from murderous passions, he sees the abominable reality until his sufferings from it amount to agony. The two scenes reproduced by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung show us a muddy and bloodstained trench, where German soldiers, like beasts in a slaughter-house, die or await death with bitter words—and officers getting drunk on champagne around a 42mm. mortar, laughing and getting excited till they fall beneath the weight of sleep and fatigue.
From the first scene I take these terrible words of one of those who wait in the trenches under fire[{173}] of the machine guns, a Dreissigjæhriger (man of thirty).
In my village they are laughing—they drink to each victory. They slaughter us like butcher's cattle—and they say "It's war!" When it is over, they are no fools, they will feast us for three years. But the first cripple won't be grey headed before they will laugh at his white hairs.
And the Uhlan, possessed by horror in the midst of the massacre, falls on his knees and prays:
Thou who gavest life and takest it—how shall I recognize Thee? (In these trenches strewn with mutilated bodies) I find Thee not. Does the piercing cry of these thousands suffocated in the terrible embrace of Death reach not up to Thee? Or is it lost in frozen space? For whom does Thy Springtime blossom? For whom is the splendor of Thy suns? For whom, O God? I ask it of thee in the name of all those whose mouths are closed by courage and by fear in face of the horror of Thy darkness: What heat is left within me? What light of truth? Can this massacre be Thy will? Is it indeed Thy will?
(He loses consciousness and falls.)
A pain less lyrical, less ecstatic, more simple, more reflective, and nearer to ourselves marks the sequence of Feldpostbriefe of Dr. Albert Klein, teacher in the Oberrealschule at Giessen and Lieutenant of the Landwehr, killed on the 12th of February[{174}] in Champagne.[38] Passing over what are, perhaps, the most striking pages from the point of view of artistic quality and power of thought, I will only give two extracts from these letters which are likely to be of special interest to French readers.
The first describes for us with an unusual frankness the moral condition of the German army:
Brave, without care for his own life! Who is there among us that is that? We all know too well our own worth and our own possibilities; we are in the flower of our age: force is in our arms and in our souls; and as no one willingly dies, no one is brave (tapfer) in the usual sense of the word: or at least such are very rare. It is just because bravery is so rare in life, it is just for that that we expend so much religion, poetry, and thought (and this begins already at school), in celebrating as the highest fate death for one's fatherland, until it attains its climax in the false heroism which makes such a sensation about us in newspapers and speeches and which is so cheap—and also in the true heroism of a small number who do risk themselves and lead on the others.... We do our duty, we do what we ought; but it is a passive virtue.... When I read in the papers the scribblings of those who have a bad conscience because they are safely in the rear—when I read this talk which makes every soldier into a hero, I feel hurt. Heroism is[{175}] a rare growth, and you cannot build on it a citizen army. To keep such an army together the men must respect their superiors, and even fear them more than the enemy. And the superiors must be conscientious, do their duty well, know their business thoroughly, decide rapidly, and have control of their nerves. When we read the praises which those behind the line write of us, we blush. Thank God, old-fashioned, robust shame is not dead in us.... Ah! my dear friends, those who are here don't speak so complacently of death, of disease, of sacrifice, and of victory as do those who behind the line ring the bells, make speeches, and write newspapers. The men here accustom themselves as best they may to the bitter necessity of suffering and of death if fate wills; but they know and see that many noble sacrifices, innumerable, innumerable sacrifices have already been made, and that already for a long while we shall have had more than enough of destruction on our side as well as the other. It is precisely when one has to look suffering in the face as I have that a tie begins to be formed that unites one to those over there, on the other side (and one that unites you too with them, my friends! Yes, surely you feel it too, don't you?) If I come back from here (which I scarcely hope for any more) my dearest duty will be to soak myself in the study and the thoughts of those who have been our enemies. I wish to reconstruct my nature on a wider basis.... And I believe that it will be easier after this war than after any other to be a human being.
The second fragment is the account of a touching encounter with a French prisoner:[{176}]