"Women are like that? Women are like that? Since when? Since when? Have you never heard of the suffragettes who boxed the ears of ministers of state, who set museums on fire, who chained themselves to lamp-posts, all for the sake of the vote? For the sake of the vote, do you hear? But for the sake of their men? Nothing!"
He paused to take breath, overwhelmed with a throttling despair. Then, fighting with sobs, like a hunted beast, he cried out:
"Have you heard of one woman throwing herself in front of the train for the sake of her husband? Has a single one of them slapped a statesman's face, or tied herself to the railway lines, for our sake? Not one has had to be saved from such desperate courses.... The whole world over, not one of them has moved a finger for us. They drove us forth! They gagged us! They gave us the spur, like poor Dill. They sent us to murder, they sent us to die—for their vanity. Are you going to defend them? No! They must be plucked out. Like weeds, they must be torn up by the roots! You must pull four at a time, as we had to do with Dill. Four of you together, then you'll get her up. Are you the doctor? There! Do it to my head! I don't want a wife! Pull—pull her out!"
He struck himself on the head with his fist. He was dragged into the house, howling at the top of his voice. Soon the garden was empty. By degrees the lights were extinguished and the noise was stilled, except for the distant artillery fire. The patrol which had helped to take the madman back into the hospital repassed, with the old corporal in the rear, hanging his head. From afar off came the flash of an explosion, followed by a prolonged rumbling. The old man stood still, listened, shook his fist, spat disgustedly, and muttered:
"Oh, Hell!"
I have given lengthy extracts from this story, for I wished to convey a notion of the author's pulsating, vibrant, and impassioned style. There is more of the drama here than of the novel, and an elemental fierceness like that of Shakespearean drama. It would be well if these pages, so profound in the bitterness of their injustice, were to become widely known. It would be well if the poor women who, in all love as a rule, adopt a superhuman pose, could be made to realise, by means of this madman's outpourings, the secret thoughts which no man will dare to tell them, to understand the mute and almost shamefaced appeal to their poor human kindliness, to their simple and motherly compassion.
*
* *
I shall deal more briefly with the other episodes.
The second, "Baptism of Fire" (Feuertaufe), is long, perhaps too long, but full of pity and of pain. Almost the whole scene is played within the soul of Captain Marschner, a man of fifty, who is leading his company to the front-line trench under the enemy's fire. He is not a professional soldier. As a young man he had been an officer, but at the age of thirty he had gone to school again, wishing to quit the trade of war and to become a civil engineer. Now the war had brought him back to the army. He had been in Vienna only the day before yesterday. His men were fathers of families, stonemasons, peasants, factory hands, and so on. None of them had any patriotic enthusiasm. He read their minds, and felt ashamed of himself because he was leading to certain death these poor fellows who trusted him. Beside him marched Weixler, a young lieutenant, cold, ruthless, inhuman—as one so often is at twenty years of age "when one has had no time yet to learn the value of life." The hardness of this man (an irreproachable officer) arouses in Marschner mingled anger and suffering. By degrees a fierce but unspoken feud arises between them. At the very end, just when open war is about to break out between the two, a huge shell bursts in their trench and both are buried under the wreckage. The captain comes to himself with a shattered skull. At a few paces' distance lies the implacable lieutenant, his entrails trailing on the ground beside him. They exchange a last look. Marschner sees a face that is almost strange to him, pale and sad, with timid eyes. The whole expression is gentle and plaintive; there is an unforgettable air of tender, anxious resignation.
"He is suffering!" flashed through the captain's mind. "He is suffering!" Marschner is transported with joy. And therewith he dies.