It Cannot be Stormed

by Ernst von Salomon

  As a completely useless member of human society, more or less forced to stand outside the processes of production, he was not able, it is true, to derive his knowledge from his own experience. Still, by making personal contacts with all sorts of people, he managed to get all the information he wanted. All over the town there were discussion circles, whose pleasant task appeared to be to act as an outlet for the energies released after the strain of the day’s work. For since family life had become discredited by the almost complete destruction of individualism, some social substitute was needed, and this was provided by these unofficial gatherings of those who had interests in common. A circle which Ive found particularly instructive was that of Dr. Schaffer. This was a formal gathering, but by no means exclusive. Every member of it could have delivered a lecture on some learned subject, and the general effect was rather like having access to a living encyclopaedia.

  Dr. Schaffer was a man of about the same age as Ive. On the completion of his economic studies—the subject of his thesis had been The Tin-mining Industry in Southern Siam—he had had the exceptional good fortune to find a post as assistant-wharfinger in the Hamburg docks, and Ive had got to know him slightly when he himself was working in the wool-combing factory. Inspired by an indomitable ambition, Schaffer had succeeded in rising gradually to the position of assistant-correspondent in the office of the firm of shippers which employed him. On the strength of this position he got married immediately, and by thrift and ingenuity managed to furnish a home with a remarkable collection of objects picked up in the Hamburg market. In his spare time, amongst other things, he drew up a plan for the formation of the Orient-Trust, a project of great mercantile importance, which caused a considerable sensation in interested circles. But the interested parties; cool, calculating merchants, feared the risk of Schaffer’s bold plan, and preferred to carry out the project according to their own ideas. The Orient-Trust went bankrupt soon after its formation, an event which gave Dr. Schaffer, who meanwhile had lost his post in the office, no small amount of malicious satisfaction. The young man had, as he used to say himself, a happy fund of ideas. He tried his hand as a reporter for a domestic-economy journal, which soon ceased publication; as advertisement manager for a motor firm, which was swallowed up in an amalgamation scheme; as sales manager of a radio firm, whose patents were prohibited by America—in fact, he tried everything that came his way, and if he did not succeed in striking luck he never lost heart. One day, once more out of work, he took the advice of his friends and wrote down the fairy tales he used to invent and tell to his little daughter every evening. They were simple stories, gay and fanciful, which delighted the child. It was, in fact, the child who led him to the ingenious idea which was to be the foundation of his success.

  Since the little girl’s birthday was very near Christmas, she felt the injustice of getting fewer presents during the year than other children. She would much rather have had her birthday in the middle of the year. In fact, meditated Schaffer, the curse of the toy industry is that it has a seasonal trade. There is far too long a period without festivals between Easter and Christmas. On this particular evening he was telling his little daughter the story of the little goblin which came out of the woods on St. John’s Day (24th June) to reward good children. Presently he drew a picture of the goblin on a piece of paper, a tiny dwarf with a long flowing beard, and a lovely golden crown of corn ears, a gnarled stick in his hand, and a big sack on his back.

  He did no more work on the fairy-tale book. He was engaged in important business. One day a crusade began for the celebration of St. John’s Day, the Children’s Feast (24th June). ‘Make the children happy,’ wrote the newspapers, and in the feuilletons there were nice articles about the old German custom which had taken on a new significance. In the trade supplements Councillor X spread himself on the economic and social effects of the toy industry of Central Germany. In the Children’s Hour Aunt Molly told charming stories about St. John’s Day. In the stores and toyshops hung placards emblazoned with the words, ‘Make the children happy,’ around a picture of the St. John’s goblin, a tiny dwarf with a long flowing beard, and a lovely golden crown of corn ears, a gnarled stick in his hand and a big sack on his back.

  But Dr. Schaffer sat quietly in his office, the headquarters of the Syndicate of German Toy Manufacturers, which was amalgamated with the Co-operative Society of the Chocolate, Sweetmeat and Gift Industries of Germany and the National Federation of United German Gift-Card Designers to form the central organisation of the National Federation of German Toy, Chocolate and Card Manufacturers, known as the N.F.T.C.C.

  Dr. Schaffer sat quietly in his office—his little daughter was not allowed to talk about the St. John’s goblin any more—and worked seriously, conscientiously and industriously at extensive and far-reaching plans, a personage so highly esteemed that no voice could be raised against his being elected to the National Economic Council.

  But one evening in the week a group of men met together, whose only common interest was their desire to expound and exchange their opinions, views and experiences in open discussions which, under the direction and control of Dr. Schaffer’s incomparable controversial gifts, touched on practically every subject worth mentioning. Ive had first come across Dr. Schaffer again at a lecture (‘Give us back our Colonies,’ delivered by a Social-Democratic member of the Reichstag. What next! thought Ive), and had gladly accepted his invitation to spend an evening with the Circle, of which he had already heard.

  On the fourth floor of a new block on the West side of the town he found about fifteen gentlemen sitting round an oval table in a sparsely and simply furnished little room, low-ceilinged, with pale blue walls, and lamps with yellow silk shades. When he entered no one took any notice of him. His host merely beckoned him to his side and, without pausing, finished his sentence, which consisted of a considerable number of intricate and involved periods.

  As far as Ive could gather the subject under discussion was the latest increase of the goods tariffs on the National Railways and the effect of this on German home trade, with particular reference to traffic conditions in the Rhineland-Westphalian industrial district where, on this account, a project had been formulated for the establishment of a canal system, whose course could not be finally settled owing to the competitive feud between the crude steel combine and the iron-working industry on the one hand and the Hamburg-Amerika and North-German-Lloyd lines on the other. These interests had embarked on a fierce battle arising out of the necessity for opening new markets, which, owing mainly to the unrest in China and India, involved the Far East, where, on account of the continual curtailment of German capital support, no business could be put on a sound financial basis without the help of the leading English banks. But these banks, owing probably to the disturbing influence of the Russian Five Year Plan, were forced to concentrate their interests on the aforementioned markets. Thus at last the intervention and assistance of State Commissions and of the Reich were found to be indispensable. This, of course, represented a decisive step in economic planning, which gave rise to by no means unimportant differences of opinion between the parties concerned as to its socialistic or state-capitalistic significance, and every effort had to be directed towards preventing the ground gained from being critically assailed by private-capitalistic influences, involving a danger for the whole future. This proved that the increase on tariffs on the National Railways could not be the right measure, if only in consideration of the probable extension of motor goods-traffic, which, owing to the monopoly dispute between the National Postal Service and the National (though under foreign control) Railways, was becoming more and more dependent for its economic existence upon the initiative of private enterprise.

  Ive felt very small and unimportant. He leaned back in his chair and watched the men who were debating with such liveliness and intense earnestness these problems, of whose importance and difficulty he had some faint inkling—he had too, a faint inkling of the trend of the discussion—without
in the least understanding the underlying facts.

  Nobody there was probably over forty years of age, and, although Ive knew that they belonged to the most varied and opposed political parties and social circles, it was impossible to observe anything but a most extraordinary unanimity as to the essential point, the final inference from which might be summed up in the sentence: Everything must be changed. This delighted Ive.

  The only unknown quantity in this group was a young fellow, probably the youngest present, who perpetually interrupted the pleasantly rolling flow of the discussion, unmercifully seized on every statement, insisted on its being further examined, and with his almost academic pedantry acted as the disturbing and at the same time enlivening factor of the argument. Ive, who was obliged to limit himself to studying the manner in which the opinions were set forth rather than their actual validity, and to tracing the points of contact which they indicated, was deeply interested in this young man. He had plenty of leisure to observe him. The young man was sitting in a corner, formed by two couches which had been pushed together at right angles to one another, the most uncomfortable spot in the whole room. He sat in a humped-up position, his legs crossed so that Ive could see his thick worn-down shoes, with a large hole in one of the soles, and his grey washed-out socks hanging in untidy wrinkles round his ankles. One hand lay on his knee, a broad, rough hand, with square-cut, not over-clean fingernails—a scarred horny hand which doubtless was capable of hard work; when he raised it once to crack a nut between his fingers, Ive saw that he had only placed it on his knee to hide a hole in his trousers which had been clumsily darned with wool of a different colour. When he spoke the impression of tremendous strength was increased. He spoke slowly and very softly, the words forming themselves with difficulty between his thick lips which covered a mouthful of sound teeth. His whole firm-chinned face seemed to work when he spoke, particularly the low bumpy forehead, and under his heavy brows his small deep-set grey eyes were placed very closely together. He was not pleasant to look at, with his greyish pale skin, beneath which the movements of his jaw muscles could be seen; his thick, unkempt, light-brown, rather greasy hair, the ends of which hung over his dusty coat collar; his ill-fitting suit, shabby shirt and dirty, frayed collar. But the directness of his personality immediately appealed to Ive, showing him to have the only type of mind worth tackling. The only thing Ive wished was that he would free himself from his one remaining atavism, and remove his hand from his knee. Ive had formed the habit, whenever he made a new acquaintance, of asking himself whether he would wish to have such a man as a battle-comrade. In this case he thought at once: Most certainly. It was not only that everything he had to say had a sting in it, his manner of speaking, too, was remarkable. It was noticeable that as soon as he began to speak, he always received the closest attention even from men who had just holding forth with astonishing objectivity and with a wealth of impressive statistics and technical knowledge concerning interesting economic facts. For it was evident that, however far from the point and contradictory his casual interruptions might seem, sooner or later what he had to say proved to have a direct connection with the argument on foot, illuminating it, as it were, from a completely new angle. Ive who, with the rapid growth of his sympathy, had feared that the young man might not be at home in the realm of complicated economic problems, soon had an opportunity of realising that he was nonplussing those present by his exact knowledge, for example, of certain financial transactions of the Canadian Electrical Industry. That was it: from his whole attitude towards these things it was obvious that for him, the actual facts which he mentioned were not so important as something quite different, quite impalpable, and in relation to this the irreproachable statistics which he could produce had significance for himself alone. Ive realised at once that his theories were based on a phenomenon which had its roots in a quite different soil from that in which the normal deliberations of the economic intellect usually flourish. What this was Ive was no more able than the others to discover from the abrupt, obscure hints given by the young man, yet even these disclosed dazzling prospects which could be extended and developed according to individual fancy or temperament. At all events the actual significance of these transactions which were being exposed with such indisputable clarity, lay in the fact that, now that they were no longer seen from the customary point of view and justified by the usual explanations, they seemed to be no longer entirely subject to the laws of causality. They displayed themselves in all their nakedness; and viewed thus they might have been described as the mad or self-destroying caperings of an over-stimulated imperialistic will, but most certainly not—and that was the obvious point—as the result of calculations, however mistaken or far-fetched, based on any prosperity-theorem. If one tried, despite all, to get at their meaning, they revealed themselves as a terrifying example of complete barbarity, with the emphasis on ‘complete’ rather than on ‘barbarity,’ unconsciously making use of the subtlest resources which a highly developed order could afford it in order to call into question the basis of this very order. The young man saw very turbulent forces at work here, even in this dry and unimaginative setting, and it was apparent that he viewed these forces with a definite and friendly interest. Naturally this attitude was extremely disquieting. True a few voices were raised immediately to call attention to the inevitable results of the Canadian event—a violent upheaval of the market—but the whole basis of the discussion had suddenly been shifted. For, from the moment that the question of meaning appeared on the horizon of the discussion, it seemed as though almost every member of this heterogeneous circle suddenly felt prompted to descend into deeper mines of knowledge, and from thence once more to explain his point of view, which after all was quite clear, a proceeding which had an unpleasant savour of justification. Each one of these men, who but a moment ago had been so sure of themselves, and for whose experience and knowledge Ive could not help having the strongest respect, could not but realise that it was not sufficient to establish facts, but that it was equally important to examine and understand their causes and their origins, and, using the greater power of discrimination thus obtained, to incorporate them in the present-day conception of the world. But as more and more individuals thrust themselves into the embittered argument, stranger and stranger groups were formed, only to fall asunder again as the next controversial point arose and to re-group themselves in surprising new formations. In the hot, acrid atmosphere of the little room the faces seemed suddenly to cast off their dull pallid masks, to thrust themselves through the blue smoke and stare into each other’s eyes as though driven by a secret fear, which said plainly enough that now things were being discussed which must be taken seriously.

  Men who a minute since had been riding the hobby-horses of their economic convictions in harmonious companionship were now crossing swords in enmity. Worthy business men, with bitter experience behind them, were wrestling on the quaking ground of metaphysics, were steering themselves despairingly through clouds of mysticism, mounting with every statement to more and more dangerous heights, until one of them, a temperamental gentleman in the motor trade, craftily lured on by the young man, reached the climax and shot out suddenly, ‘In the beginning there was Chaos.’

  VII

  It was late when they broke up. As soon as they stepped out of the house into the dark street, the cold night air struck their faces sharply. The picture of the room they had just left faded—the little pale blue room where the clouds of smoke had given a ghostly unreality to faces and thoughts. All the excitement released in the debate was now concentrated in the single desire to find their way out of the labyrinthine passages of discussion on the safe leading-string of natural speech.