Good-bye darling mother. Saturday is nearly over now. By this time the time limit for Servia has expired. I wonder what has happened. I wonder what you in Switzerland are feeling about it. You know, my dearest one, I’ll interrupt my lessons and come to Switzerland if you have the least shred of a wish that I should; and perhaps if Bernd really had to go away — supposing the unlikely were to happen after all and there were war — I’d want to come creeping back close to you till he is safe again. And yet I don’t know. Surely the right thing would be to go on, whatever happens, quietly working with Kloster till October as we had planned. But you’ve only got to lift your little finger, and I’ll come. I mean, if you get thinking things and feeling worried.
Your Chris.
Koseritz, Sunday evening, July 26th.
Beloved mother,
I’ve packed, and I’m ready. We start early tomorrow. The newspapers, for some reason, perhaps excitement and disorganization, didn’t come today, but the Graf telephoned from Berlin about the Austro-Hungarian minister having asked the Servian government for his passports and left Belgrade. You’ll know about this today too. The Grafin, still placid, says Austria will now very properly punish Servia, both for the murder and for the insolence of refusing her, Austria’s, just demands. The Graf merely telephoned that Servia had refused. It did seem incredible. I did think Servia would deserve her punishing. Yesterday’s papers said the demands were most reasonable considering what had been done. I hadn’t read the Austrian note, because of the confusion of Bernd’s sudden going away, and I was full of indignation at Servia’s behaviour, piling insult on injury in this way and risking setting Europe by the ears, but was pulled up short and set thinking by the Grafin’s looking pleased at my expressions of indignation, and her coming over to me to pat my cheek and say, “This child will make an excellent little German.”
Then I thought I’d better wait and know more before sweeping Servia out of my disgusted sight. There are probably lots of other things to know. Kloster will tell me. I find I have a profound distrust really of these people. I don’t mean of particular people, like the Koseritzes and the Klosters and their friends, but of Germans in the mass. It is a sort of deep-down discomfort of spirit, the discomfort of disagreement in fundamentals.
“Then there’ll be war?” I said to the Grafin, staring at her placid face, and not a bit pleased about being going to be an excellent little German.
“Oh, a punitive expedition only,” she said.
“Bernd thought it would mean Russia and France and you as well,” I said.
“Oh, Bernd — he is in love,” said the Grafin, smiling.
“I don’t quite see—” I began.
“Lovers always exaggerate,” she said. “Russia and France will not interfere in so just a punishment.”
“But is it just?” I asked.
She gazed at me critically at this. It was not, she evidently considered, a suitable remark for one whose business it was to turn into an excellent little German. “Dear child,” she said, “you cannot suppose that our ally, the Kaiser’s ally, would make demands that are not just?”
“Do you think Friday’s papers are still anywhere about?” was my answer. “I’d like to read the Austrian note, and think it over for myself. I haven’t yet.”
The Grafin smiled at this, and rang the bell. “I expect Dorner” — Dorner is the butler— “has them,” she said. “But do not worry your little head this hot weather too much.”
“It won’t melt,” I said, resenting that my head should be regarded as so very small and also made of sugar, — she said something like this the other day, and I resented that too.
“There are people whose business it is to think these high matters out for us,” she said, “and in their hands we can safely leave them.”
“As if they were God,” I remarked.
She looked at me critically again. “Precisely,” she said. “Loyal subjects, true Christians, are alike in their unquestioning trust and obedience to authority.”
I came upstairs then, in case I shouldn’t be able to keep from saying something truthful and rude.
What a misfortune it is that truth always is so rude. So that a person who, like myself, for reasons that I can’t help thinking are on the whole base, is anxious to hang on to being what servants call a real lady, is accordingly constantly forced into a regrettable want of candour. I wish Bernd weren’t a Junker. It is a great blot on his perfection. I’d much rather he were a navvy, a stark, swearing navvy, and we could go in for stark, swearing candour, and I needn’t be a lady any more. It’s so middle-class being a lady. These German aristocrats are hopelessly middle-class.
I know when I get to Berlin, and only want to keep abreast of the real things that may be going to happen, which will take me all my time, for I haven’t been used to big events, it will be very annoying to be caught and delayed at every turn by small nets of politenesses and phrases and considerations, by having to remember every blessed one of the manners they go in for so terribly here. I’ve never met so much manners as in Germany. The protestations you have to make! The elaborateness and length of every acceptance or refusal! And it’s all so much fluff and wind, signifying nothing, nothing at all unless it’s fear; fear, again, their everlasting haunting spectre; fear of the other person’s being offended if he is stronger than you, higher up, — because then he’ll hurt you, punish you somehow; ten to one, if you’re a man, he’ll fight you.
I’ve read the Austrian Note. I don’t wonder very much at Servia’s refusing to accept it, and yet surely it would have been wiser if she had accepted it, anyhow as much of it as she possibly could.
“Much wiser,” said the Grafin, smiling gently when I said this at dinner tonight. “At least, wiser for Servia. But it is well so.” And she smiled again.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the Grafin too wants war, — a big European war, so that Germany, who is so longing to get that tiresome rattling sword of hers out of the scabbard, can seize the excuse and rush in. One only has to have stayed here, lived among them and heard them talk, to know that they’re all on tiptoe for an excuse to start their attacking. They’ve been working for years for the moment when they can safely attack. It has been the Kaiser’s one idea, Kloster says, during the whole of his reign. Of course it’s true it has been a peaceful reign, — they’re always pointing that out here when endeavouring to convince a foreigner that the last thing their immense preparations mean is war; of course a reign is peaceful up to the moment when it isn’t. They’ve edged away carefully up to now from any possible quarrel, because they weren’t ready for the almighty smash they mean to have when they are ready. They’ve prepared to the smallest detail. Bernd told me that the men who can’t fight, the old and unfit, each have received instructions for years and years past every autumn, secret exact instructions, as to what they are to do, when war is declared, to help in the successful killing of their brothers, — their brothers, little mother, for whom, too, Christ died. Each of these aged or more or less diseased Germans, the left-overs who really can’t possibly fight, has his place allotted to him in these secret orders in the nearest town to where he lives, a place supervising the stores or doing organizing work. Every other man, except those who have the luck to be idiots or dying — what a world to have to live in, when this is luck — will fight. The women, and the thousands of imported Russians and Poles, will look after the farms for the short time the men will be away, for it is to be a short war, a few weeks only, as short as the triumphant war of 1870. Did you ever know anything so horrifying, so evil, as this minute concentration, year in year out, for decades, on killing — on successful, triumphant killing, just so that you can grab something that doesn’t belong to you. It is no use dressing it up in big windy words like Deutschthum and the rest of the stuff the authorities find it convenient to fool their slaves with, — it comes to exactly that. I always, you see, think of Germany as the grabber, the attacker. Anything else, now that I’ve lived he
re, is simply inconceivable. A defensive war in which she should have to defend her homes from wanton attack is inconceivable. There is no wantonness now in the civilized nations. We have outgrown the blood stage. We are sober peoples, sober and civilian, — grown up, in fact. And the semi-civilized peoples would be afraid to attack a nation so strong as Germany. She is training and living, and has been training and living for years and years, simply to attack. What is the use of their protesting? One has only to listen to their points of view to brush aside the perfunctory protestations they put in every now and then, as if by order, whenever they remember not to be natural. Oh, I know this is very different from what I was writing and feeling two or three days ago, but I’ve been let down with a jerk, I’m being reminded of the impressions I got in Berlin, they’ve come up sharply again, and I’m not so confident that what was the matter with the people there was only heat and overwork. There was an eagerness about them, a kind of fever to begin their grabbing. I told you, I think, how Berlin made me think when first I got there of something seething.
Darling mother, forgive me if I’m shrill. I wouldn’t be shrill, I’m certain I wouldn’t, if I could believe in the necessity, the justice of such a war, if Germany weren’t going to war but war were coming to Germany. And I’m afraid, — afraid because of Bernd. Suppose he — Well, perhaps by the time we get to Berlin things will have calmed down, and the Grafin will be able to come back straight here, which God grant, and I shall go back to Frau Berg and my flies. I shall regard those flies now with the utmost friendliness. I shan’t mind anything they do.
Good night blessed mother. I’m so thankful these two days are over.
Your Chris.
It is this silence here, this absurd peaceful sunshine, and the placid Grafin, and the bland unconsciousness of nature that I find hard to bear.
Berlin, Wednesday, July 29th.
My own little mother,
It is six o’clock in the morning, and I’m in my dressing-gown writing to you, because if I don’t do it now I shall be swamped with people and things, as I was all yesterday and the day before, and not get a moment’s quiet. You see, there is going to be war, almost to a dead certainty, and the Germans have gone mad. The effect even on this house is feverish, so that getting up very early will be my only chance of writing to you.
You never saw anything like the streets yesterday. They seemed full of drunken people, shouting up and down with red faces all swollen with excitement. It is of course intensely interesting and new to me, who have never been closer to such a thing as war than history lessons at school, but what do they all think they’re going to get, what do they all think it’s really for, these poor creatures bellowing and strutting, and waving their hats and handkerchiefs, and even their babies, high over their heads whenever a konigliche Hoheit dashes past in a motor, which happens every five minutes because there are such a lot of them. Our drive from Koseritz to Stettin on Monday, which now seems so remote that it is as if it was another life, was the last beautiful ordinary thing that happened. Since then it has been one great noise and ugliness. I can’t forget the look of the country as we passed through it on Monday, so lovely in its summer peacefulness, the first rye being cut in the fields, the hedges full of Traveler’s Joy. I didn’t notice how beautiful it was at the time, I only wanted to get on, to get away, to get the news; but now I’m here I remember it as something curiously innocent, and I’m so glad we had a puncture that made us stop for ten minutes in a bit of the road where there were great cornfields as far as one could see, and a great stretch of sky with peaceful little white clouds that hardly moved, and only the sound of poplars by the roadside rustling their leaves with that lovely liquid sound they make, and larks singing. It comforts me to call this up again, to hide in it for a minute away from the shouting of Deutschland uber Alles, and the hochs and yellings. Then we got to Stettin; and since then I have lived in ugliness.
The Kaiser came back on Monday. He had arrived in Berlin by the time we got here, and the Grafin’s triumphant calm visibly increased when the footman who met us at the station eagerly told her the news. For this, as the papers said that evening, hardly able to conceal their joy beneath their pious hopes that the horrors of war may even yet be spared the world, reveals the full seriousness of the situation. I like the “even yet,” don’t you? Bernd was at the station, and drove with us to the Sommerstrasse. We went along the Dorotheenstrasse, at the back of Unter den Linden, as the Lindens were choked with people. It was impossible to get through them. They were a living wedge of people, with frantic mounted policemen trying to get them to go somewhere else.
Bernd was so dear, and oh it was such a blessing to be near him again! But he was solemn, and didn’t smile at all except when he looked at me. Then that dear smile that is so full of goodness changed his whole face. “Oh Bernd, I do love you so much,” I couldn’t help whispering, leaning forward to do it regardless of Helena who sat next to him; and seeing by Helena’s stare that she had heard, and feeling recklessly cheerful at having got back to him, I turned on her and said, “Well, he shouldn’t smile at me in that darling way.”
The Grafin laughed gently, so I knew she thought my manners bad. I’ve learned that when she laughs gently she disapproves, just as I’ve learned that when she says with a placid sigh that war is terrible and must be avoided, all her hopes are bound up in its not being avoided. Her only son is in the Cuirassiers, and is, Kloster says, a naturally unsuccessful person. War is his chance of promotion, of making a career. It is also his chance of death or maiming, as I said to Helena on Sunday at Koseritz when she was talking about her brother and his chances if there is war to the pastor, who was calling hat in hand and very full of bows.
She stared at me, and so did the pastor. I’m afraid I plumped into the conversation impetuously.
“I had sooner,” said Helena, “that Werner were dead or maimed for life than that he should not make a career. One’s brother must not, cannot be a failure.”
And the pastor bowed and exclaimed, “That is well and finely said. That is full of pride, of the true German patrician pride.”
Helena, you see, forgot, as Germans sometimes do, not to be natural. She said straight but it was a career she wanted for her brother. She forgot the usual talk of patriotism and the glory of being mangled on behalf of Hohenzollerns.
Yesterday the menservants disappeared, and women waited on us. There was no jolt in the machinery. It went on as smoothly as though the change had been weeks ago. Even the butler, who certainly is too old to fight, vanished.
Bernd comes in whenever he can. Luckily we’re quite close to the General Staff Headquarters here, and he has his meals with us. He persists that the war will be kept rigidly to Austria and Servia, and therefore will be over in a week or two. He says Sir Edward Grey has soothed bellicose governments before now, and will be able to do so again. He talks of the madness of war, and of how no Government nowadays would commit such a sheer stupidity as starting it. I listen to him, and am convinced and comforted; then I go back to the others, and my comfort slips away again. For the others are so sure. There’s no question for them, no doubt. They don’t say so, any of them, neither the Graf, nor the Grafin, nor the son Werner who was here yesterday nor Bernd’s Colonel who dined here last night, nor any of the other people. Government officials who come to see the Graf, and women friends who come to see the Grafin. They don’t say war is certain, but each one of them has the look of satisfaction and relief people have when they get something they’ve wanted very much for a very long time and sigh out “At last!” Some of them let out their satisfaction more than others, — Bernd’s Colonel, for instance, who seems particularly hilarious. He was very hilarious last night, though not ostensibly about war. If the possibility of war is mentioned, as of course it constantly is, they at once all shake their heads as if to order, and look serious, and say God grant it may even now be avoided, or something like that; just as the newspapers do. And last night at dinner somebod
y added a hope, expressed with a very grave face, that the people of Germany wouldn’t get out of hand and force war upon the Government against its judgment.
I thought that rather funny. Especially after two hours in the morning with Kloster, who explained that the Government is arranging everything that is happening, managing public opinion, creating the exact amount of enthusiasm and aggressiveness it wishes to have behind it, just as it did in 1870 when it wanted to bring about the war with France. I know it isn’t proper for a junges Madchen to talk at dinner unless she is asked a question, and I know she mustn’t have an opinion about anything except bonbons and flowers, and I also know that a junges Madchen who is betrothed is expected to show on all occasions such extreme modesty, such a continuous downcast eye, that it almost amounts to being ashamed of herself; yet I couldn’t resist leaning across the table to the man who said that, a high official in the Ministerium des Innern, and saying “But your public is so disciplined and your Government so almighty—” and was going on to ask him what grounds he had for his fears that a public in that condition would force the Government’s hand, for I was interested and wanted dreadfully to hear what he would say, when the Grafin slipped in, smiling gently.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 185