WHEN for the first time I came to myself again peace had been concluded and the Commune was over. I had been in bed for a month ill, nursed by my faithful Mrs. Anna, without any consciousness of being alive. And what the illness was I know not to the present day. The people about me called it considerately “typhus,” but I believe that it was simply—madness.

So much I darkly recall, that the last interval had been filled with imaginations of crackling shots and blazing conflagrations; probably the events which were spoken of in my presence mingled in my phantasy with the truth, the battles, that is, between the Versaillese and the Communards, and the incendiary fires of the Petroleuses. That, when I recovered my reason and with it the knowledge of my deep misery, I did not do myself some harm, or the pang did not kill me, probably was due to my possession of my children. Through them I could, for them I was forced, to live. Even before my illness, on the very day when that terrible thing broke over me, Rudolf kept me alive. I was shrieking aloud, on my knees, while I repeated: “Die! Die! I must die!” Then two arms embraced me, and a praying, painfully solemn, lovely boy’s face was looking at me—“Mother!”

Up to that time I had never been called by my boy anything but “Mamma”. His using at this moment, for the first time, the word “Mother” said to me, in those two syllables: “You are not alone; you have a son who shares your pain, who loves and honours you above all things, who has no one in this world except you. Do not abandon your child, Mother!”

I pressed the dear creature to my heart, and to show him that I had understood him, I too faltered out: “My son, my son!”

At the same time I recollected my girl, his girl, and my resolution to live was fixed. But the pain was too intolerable. I fell into intellectual darkness; and not at this time only. For the space of years, at ever-increasing intervals, I remained subject to recurring attacks of abstraction, of which afterwards in the state of health absolutely no recollection remained to me. Now for several years I have been free from them. Free, that is, from the insensibility of my spirit pangs, but not from conscious attacks of the bitterest pain of soul. Eighteen years have gone since the 1st of February, 1871, but the deep resentment and the deep mourning, which the tragedy of that day awoke in me, no time can remove, even should I live a hundred years. Even though in these later times the days come ever more frequently in which I, absorbed in the events of the present, do not think about the misery of the past, in which I even sympathise so livelily with the joy of my children as to feel myself also filled with something like joy in my life, yet no night passes, no, not one, in which my wretchedness does not seize on me. That is something quite peculiar, something thing I can hardly describe, and which only those will understand who have experienced something similar themselves. It appears to me like a kind of double life of the soul. Although the single consciousness in the waking condition can sometimes be so taken possession of by the things of the outer world that it from time to time forgets, yet in the depths of my personality there is a second consciousness still which always retains that awful recollection with the same true pain; and that self, when the other has gone to sleep, asserts itself, and rouses the other up, as it were, to share its pain with it. Every night, and it must be at the same hour, I wake with an indescribable feeling of pain. My heart contracts painfully, and I feel as if forced to weep bitter tears and utter sighs of agony. This lasts a few seconds, without my awakened self quite knowing why the other unhappy self is so unhappy. The next stage after this is a compassion embracing the whole world, and a sigh, full of the most painful pity: “Oh you poor, poor men!” And then I see next shrieking shapes which are being torn to pieces by a rain of murderous shot, and then I recollect that my dearest love too was so torn in pieces.

But in my dreams, wonderful to relate, I never knew anything of my loss. Thus it happened often that I was speaking to Frederick and conversing with him as during his life. Whole scenes from the past were represented, but never any sad ones, our meeting again after Schleswig-Holstein, our jokes over Sylvia’s cradle, our walking tours in Switzerland, our hours of study over favourite books, and occasionally that same picture in the evening light, where my white-haired husband with his garden-shears was pruning the rose-branches, and was saying with a smile to me: “Are we not a happy old couple?”

I have never put off my mourning, not even at my son’s wedding. When any one has loved, possessed, and lost such a husband, and lost him as I did, her love “must be stronger than death,” her passion for vengeance can never cool. But whom does this anger threaten? On whom would I execute vengeance? The men who did the deed were not in fault. The only guilty party is the spirit of war, and it is on this that my work of persecution, all too weak as it is, must be exercised.

My son Rudolf agrees with my views, though this of course does not prevent him from going through his military exercises every year, and could not prevent him, either, from marching to the frontier, if the European war, which is always hanging over our heads, should break out. And then, perhaps, I shall have once more to see how all that is dearest to me in the world has to be sacrificed on the altar of Moloch, how a hearth blessed with love, and which is the sign to my old age of all its rest and peace, has to be laid in ruins. Shall I have to see all this once more, and then once more to fall into irrecoverable madness, or shall I yet behold the triumph of justice and humanity, which now, at this very moment, is striving for accomplishment in widely extended associations and in all strata of society?

The red volumes, my diary, contain no further entries. Under the date February 1, 1871, I marked a great cross, and so closed the history of my life also. Only the so-called Protocol, a blue volume which Frederick began along with me and in which we described the phases of the idea of peace, has been since that time enriched with a few notes.

In the first years which succeeded the Franco-German war, I had few opportunities, even apart from my diseased condition of mind, for marking any tidings of peace. The two most influential nations on the Continent were revelling in thoughts of war; the one proudly looking back on the victories she had gained, the other longingly expecting her impending revenge. The current of these feelings gradually began to subside. On this side of the Rhine the statues of Germania were a little less shouted over, and on that side those of Strasbourg decked with fewer mourning-wreaths. Then, after ten years, the voice of the servants of peace might again be heard. It was Bluntschli, the great professor of international law, the same with whom my lost one had put himself in communication, who set to work to obtain the views of various dignitaries and Governments on the subject of national peace. And then the silent “thinker-out of battles” let fall the well-known expression: “Everlasting peace is a dream, and not a pretty dream either”.

“Oh, of course,” I wrote at the time in my blue book, beside Moltke’s words, “if Luther had asked the Pope what he thought of the revolt from Rome, the answer he would have received would not have been very favourable to the Reformation.” To-day there is hardly any one left who has not dreamed this dream, or who would not confess its beauty. And there are watchers too; watchers conspicuous enough, who are longing to awake mankind out of the long sleep of savagery, and energetically and with a single eye to their object collecting themselves for the purpose of planting the white flag. Their battle-cry is, “War on War,” their watchword, the only word which can have power to deliver from ruin Europe armed against herself is, “Lay down your arms”. In all places, in England and France, in Italy, in the northern countries, in Germany, in Switzerland, in America, associations have been formed, whose object is, through the compulsion of public opinion, through the commanding pressure of the people’s will, to move the Governments to submit their differences in future to an Arbitration Court, appointed by themselves, and so once for all to enthrone justice in place of brute force. That this is no dream, no “enthusiasm,” is proved by the facts that the questions of the Alabama, the Caroline Islands, and several others have already been settled in this manner. And it is not only people without power or position, like the poor blacksmith of a former time, who are now co-operating in this work of peace; no, members of parliament, bishops, professors, senators, ministers are inscribed on the lists. I know all this (which is unknown to most people), because I have kept in communication with all those persons, with whom Frederick established relations in the pursuit of his noble aim. What I found out, by means of these persons, about the successes and the designs of the peace societies has been duly entered in The Protocol of Peace. The last of these entries is the following letter which the president of the International Arbitration and Peace Association, having its headquarters in London, wrote me in answer to an inquiry bearing on this subject:—

There is also to be found in the blue book the manifesto of a prince, dated March, 1888, a manifesto from which at last, breaking with old usage, instead of a warlike a peaceful spirit shines forth. But the noble one, who left these words to his people, the dying one, who with the last effort of his strength grasped the sceptre which he would have swayed as if it had been a palm branch, remained helplessly chained to his bed of pain, and after a short interval all was over.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“Mother, will you not put your mourning off for the day after to-morrow?”

Rudolf came into my room with these words to-day. For the christening of his first-born son is fixed for the day after to-morrow.

“No, my dear,” I replied.

“But think; at such a festival you surely will not be mournful. Why then keep the outer signs of mourning?”

“And you will not be superstitious, and fear that the black dress of the grandmother will bring bad luck to the child?”

“Oh no; but it does not harmonise with the surrounding gaiety. Have you then sworn an oath?”

“No; it is only a firm resolution. But a resolution linked to such a memory—you know my meaning—that it partakes of the inviolability of an oath.”

My son bowed his head, and did not urge me further.

“I have interrupted you in what you were about—you were writing?”

“Yes—my autobiography. God be praised, it is at an end. That was the last chapter.”

“But how can you bring your history to an end? For you are still alive, and will live many years yet—many happy years—amongst us, mother. Surely with the birth of my little Frederick, whom I will bring up to adore his grandmamma, a new chapter must be opening for you.”

“You are a good child, dear Rudolf. I should be unthankful if I did not take pride and joy in you; and just as much joy does my—and his—beautiful Sylvia give me. Oh yes! I am reserved for a blessed old age. A quiet evening! But still, the history of the day is over when the sun has set, is it not?”

He concurred with a silent look of compassion.

“Yes, the word ‘Finis’ at the end of my biography is correct. When I made the resolve to write it, I also determined to break off at February 1, 1871. Only in the case of your being torn from me also by war, which might indeed so easily have happened; but by good luck you were not of age for service at the time of the Bosnian campaign—only in that case would I have been forced to prolong my book. Still, even as it is, it was pain enough to write it.”

“And possibly, too, it may be painful to read it,” remarked Rudolf, turning over the leaves of the MS.

“I hope so. If that pain should only awake in a few hearts an energetic hatred against the source of all the misery here described, I shall not have put myself to the torture in vain.”

“Do you not fear one thing? Its purpose may be seen, and people so be put out of humour with it.”

“That can only happen with a purpose which is perceived, but which the author has tried cunningly to conceal. Mine, however, lies exposed to the light—it is announced in plain words at the first glance on the title-page.”

July, 1889. The christening came off yesterday. It was turned into a festival promising twofold happiness: for my daughter Sylvia, the godmother of her little nephew, and his godfather, whom we had long cherished secretly in our hearts—Count Anton Delnitzky—took this opportunity to announce their engagement.

And thus I am surrounded on all hands with happy relations, by means of my children. Rudolf, who has six years since come into possession of the Dotzky estate, and has been for four years married to Beatrix nÉe Griesbach, who had been intended for him since childhood—the most lovely creature that can be imagined—sees now his most ardent wish fulfilled by the birth of an heir. In short, an enviable, brilliant destiny.

The christening guests assembled at a dinner in the summer-house. The glass doors were left open, and the air of the summer noon streamed in, laden with the scent of the roses.

Next me, in our circle, sat Countess Lori Griesbach, Beatrix’s mother. She was now a widow. Her husband fell in the Bosnian expedition. She did not take her loss very deeply to heart. In no case would she wear continual mourning. On the contrary, this time she had put on garnet-red brocade, with brilliant jewels. She had remained just as superficial as she was in her youth. Questions of toilette, one or two fashionable French or English romances, and society chatter—that was always sufficient to fill her horizon. Even coquetting she had not entirely given up. She no longer had designs on young folks, but older personages endowed with high rank or high position were not safe from her appetite for conquest. At this time, as it seemed to me, Minister To-be-sure was her mark. The latter had, besides, changed his name—and so we called him now Minister T’other-side, from his new catch-word.

“I must make a confession to you,” Lori said to me as I clinked my glass with hers to the health of the baby. “On this solemn occasion when we have been christening the grandson of each of us, I must unburden my conscience before you. I was quite seriously in love with your husband.”

“That you have often confessed to me, dear Lori.”

“But he always remained quite indifferent.”

“That, too, I knew.”

“Well, you had a husband true as steel, Martha. I could not say as much for mine. But none the less for that, I was very sorry about Griesbach. Well, he died a glorious death; that is one comfort. A widow’s life is truly a tedious one; especially as one grows older. As long as there are treats, and people to pay court to you, widowhood is not devoid of ... but now I assure you, one is quite melancholy all alone. With you the case is rather different. You live with your son; but I am not at all anxious to live with Beatrix. And she, too, is not anxious for it. The mother-in-law in the house does not do well; for after all one likes to be mistress at home. Servants certainly are a plague—that is very true—still one can at least give them their orders. You will hardly believe me, but I should not feel very much averse to marrying again. A marriage of reason, of course, and with some sedate——”

“Minister, or something of that sort,” I interposed smiling.

“Oh, you sly creature! You have seen through me again! But just look there! Do you not notice how Toni Delnitzky is talking to your Sylvia? It is really quite compromising.”

“Don’t trouble yourself. Godfather and godmother made it up between them on their way from church. Sylvia has confided it to me. To-morrow the young man will come to me to ask her hand.”

“What do you say? Well, you are to be congratulated. The handsome Toni may no doubt have been a little gay from time to time; but they are all that—that cannot be otherwise—and when one thinks what a good match——”

“My Sylvia has never thought of that. She loves him.”

“Well, so much the better; that is a fine addition to a wedding.”

“An addition? It is all in all.”

One of the guests—an imperial and royal colonel on the retired list—tapped his glass and: “Oh dear, a toast,” most of them probably thought, as they broke off their separate talk, and, sighing, set themselves to listen to the speaker; and it was something to sigh for. The unhappy man stuck in his speech three times, and his choice of a wish to offer to us was not less unfortunate. The infant was congratulated on being born at a time when the country was about soon to employ the services of her sons, and: “May he one day use his sword gloriously, as his maternal great-grandfather and as his paternal grandfather did; and may he himself bring up many sons who in their turn may do honour to their father and their ancestors, and like so many of those who have fallen—their ancestors—ancestors—for the honour of the land of their ancestors—their ancestors and the ancestors of their ancestors—conquer or—— In a word, the health of Frederick Dotzky!”

The glasses clinked, but the speech had not warmed us. That this being, only just come into life, should already be entered on the death-roll of future battles did not make a pleasant impression on us.

To drive away this painful picture, one of those present felt prompted to hazard the comforting remark that present conjunctures guaranteed a long peace—that the triple alliance——

On this the general conversation was luckily brought back to the domain of politics, and Minister T’other-side took the word.

“In reality” (Lori Griesbach was hanging on his words), “it is clear that the defensive power which we have attained is something tremendous, and must deter all peace-breakers. The law of the Landsturm, which binds all citizens fit for service from nineteen to forty-two years of age, and those who have been officers even up to sixty years, to military service, enables us at the first summons to put 4,800,000 soldiers in the field at once. On the other side, it is not to be denied that the increased demands which are contemplated by the war-ministry press heavily on the people, and that the measures necessitated by these demands, to secure the necessary readiness of the country for war, act in the opposite way on the regulation of the finances; but, on the other side, it is exhilarating to see with what joyful, self-sacrificing patriotism the representatives of the people always and in all places vote the increased burdens which the ministry of war demands. They recognise the necessity admitted by all enlightened politicians, and conditioned by the increase in the defensive forces of the neighbouring states, and by the political situation, for subordinating all other considerations to the iron compulsion of military development.”

“A live leading article,” said some one half aloud.

“T’other-side,” however, went on:—

“And all the more, because it is in this way that a security will undoubtedly be taken for the maintenance of peace. For while we, in obedience to traditional patriotism, emulate the steady increase of the defensive power of our neighbours, in order to secure our own borders, we are fulfilling an exalted duty, and are in hopes to banish also far away all the dangers which may threaten us from any side; and therefore I raise my glass in honour of that principle which, as I know, is so dear to the heart of our friend, the Baroness Martha—a principle which the signatories of the League of Peace of Central Europe also prize highly—and I ask you to join with me in drinking: ‘Long live peace! and may its blessings be right long preserved to us!’”

“I will not drink to that,” I said. “An armed peace is no benefit; and war ought to be avoided, not for a long time, but for ever. If one were making a sea voyage, the assurance would not suffice that it would be ‘right long’ before the ship struck on a rock. The honourable captain should aim at this—that the whole voyage shall be got over prosperously.”

Dr. Bresser, who was still our best home friend, came to my aid.

“In reality, your excellence, can you trust to the honest and sincere desire for peace of men who are soldiers from passionate enthusiasm? who will not hear of anything which endangers war—viz., disarmaments, leagues of states, arbitration courts? And could the delight in arsenals and fortresses and manoeuvres and so forth persist, if these things were looked on merely as what they are held out as being—mere scarecrows? So that the whole money expended on their erection is spent only in order that they may never be used? The peoples are to be obliged to give up all their money to make fortifications on their frontiers with a view of kissing hands to each other across those frontiers? The army is thus to be brought down to the level of a mere gendarmerie for the maintenance of peace, and ‘the most exalted War-lord’ is to preside merely over a crowd of perpetual shunners of war? No; behind this mask, the si vis pacem mask, glances of understanding wink at each other, and the deputies who vote every war-budget wink at the same time.”

“The representatives of the people?” broke in the Minister. “Surely the spirit of sacrifice is worthy of nothing but praise, which in threatening seasons they never fail to show, and which finds cheering expression in the unanimous acceptance of the appropriate laws.”

“Forgive me, your excellence. I should like to call out to those unanimous voters, one ofter the other, ‘Your “Yes” will rob that mother of her only child. Yours will put that poor fellow’s eyes out. Yours will set fire to a collection of books which cannot be replaced. Yours will dash out the brains of a poet who would have been the glory of your country. But you have all voted “yes” to this, just in order not to appear cowards, as if the only thing one had to fear in giving assent was what regards oneself. Is then human egotism so great that this is the only motive which can be suggested for opposing war? Well, I grant you egotism is great: for each one of you prefers to hound on a hundred thousand men to destruction rather than that you should expose your dear self even to the suspicion of having ever experienced one single paroxysm of fear.’”

“I hope, my good doctor,” said the colonel dryly, “that you may never become a deputy; the whole house would hiss you down.”

“Well, to expose myself to the risk of that would suffice for a proof that I am not a coward. It is swimming against the stream which requires the strength of steel.”

“But suppose the moment of danger should come, and we should be found unprepared?”

“Let such a condition of justice be instituted as would make the occurrence of ‘the moment of danger’ an impossibility. For what such a moment might be, colonel, no one can at present form any clear conception. With the dreadfulness of the science of warlike implements which we have already attained, and which is constantly advancing, with the enormous proportions of the powers engaged in the contest, the next war will in reality be no mere ‘moment of danger’. But there is really no word for it. A time of gigantic misery—aid and nursing out of the question—sanitary reforms and the arrangements for provisioning will appear as mere irony in face of the demands upon them. The next war, about which people talk so glibly and so indifferently, will not be a gain for one side and loss for the other, but ruin for all. Who amongst us here votes for this ‘moment of danger’?”

“Not I, to be sure,” said the Minister, “and not you either, dear doctor; but men in general, and not our Government—I will be surety for them—but the other states.”

“What right have you to think other men worse and more unreasonable than you or I? Now I will tell you a little story:—

“Before the closed gate of a beautiful garden stood a crowd of men, one thousand and one in number, looking in very longingly. The gatekeeper had orders to let the people in, in case the majority among them wished for admission. He called one of them to him, ‘Tell me—only speak honestly—do you wish to come in?’ ‘Oh yes, to be sure I do; but the other thousand, I am certain, do not.’ The careful gatekeeper wrote this answer in his notebook. Then he called up a second. He said the same. Again the other entered in the ‘Yes’ column the number 1, and in the ‘No’ column the number 1000. And so it went on up to the last man. Then he added up the figures. The result was—one thousand and one ‘Yes’; over a million ‘No’. So the gate remained shut, for the ‘Noes’ had a crushing majority; and that proceeded from the fact that every one considered himself obliged to answer for the others too, instead of for himself only.”

“To be sure,” began the Minister thoughtfully; and again Lori Griesbach turned her eyes on him with admiration. “To be sure, it would be a fine thing if a unanimous vote in favour of laying down one’s arms could be brought about; but, on the other side, what Government would dare to make the beginning? To be sure, there is nothing so desirable as concord; but, on the other side, how can lasting concord be thought possible so long as human passions, separate interests, and so forth, still continue?”

“I beg your pardon,” said my son Rudolf, now taking the word. “Forty millions of inhabitants in a state form one whole. Then why not several hundred millions? Can this be susceptible of logical and mathematical proof, that so long as human passions, separate interests, and so forth, still continue, it is indeed possible for forty millions of people to renounce the right to go to war with each other about them; nay, three states, like the present triple alliance, may ally themselves together, and form a ‘League of Peace’; but five states cannot do it, and must not do it. Truly, truly, our world of to-day gives itself out as wondrous wise, and laughs at the savages; and yet in many things we also cannot count up to five.”

Some voices made themselves heard: “What?” “Savages?” “That about us, with our over-refined culture?” “At the end of the nineteenth century?”

Rudolf stood up.

“Yes; savages. I will not recall the word. And so long as we cling to the past we shall remain savages. But we are already standing at the gate of a new period. Glances are directed forwards. All are pressing on strongly towards another, a higher form. Savagery, with its idols and its weapons—there are many who are already edging away gradually from it. If even we may be nearer to barbarism than most people believe, we are also perhaps nearer to our ennoblement than most people hope. The prince or statesman is perhaps already alive who is to bring to perfection the exploit which will live in all future history as the most glorious and most enlightened of all exploits—that which will carry universal disarmament. We have placed our feet already on the threshold of an age in which manhood is to raise itself into humanity—to the nobility of humanity, as Frederick Tilling used to say. Mother, I drink this glass now to the memory of your unforgotten, loved, and trusted one, to whom I too owe everything, all I think and all I am; and from that glass (and he threw it against the wall, where it shattered to pieces) shall no other drop ever be drunk again; and to-day, at my new-born child’s christening, shall no other toast be proposed than this—‘Hail to the future!’ To fulfil its tasks shall we clothe ourselves in steel? No. Shall we endeavour to show ourselves worthy of our fathers’ fathers, as the old phrase goes? No. But of our grandsons’ grandsons. Mother,” said he, breaking off, “you are weeping. What is the matter with you? What do you see there?”

My gaze had been directed to the open glass door. The rays of the setting sun had thrown a halo of tremulous gold round a rose-bush, and from this, rising up in life-like clearness, was my dream-picture. I saw the garden-shears glitter, the white hair shine. He smiled at me as he said, “Are we not a happy old couple?”

Ah, woe is me!

Finis

FOOTNOTES: