Sadly, the philosophers considered the devastated garden.
“If you had seen my farm before!” Candide said, simply. He sighed. He had tears in his eyes.
“Let’s all stay here,” said Don Quixote, generously, to repair the disaster.”
“To work!” cried Mr. Pickwick.
They went down the steps of the perron, energetic and full of ardor, in quest of a spade and a rake.
“The field remains,” Vaissette affirmed, “even though the crops have been scythed down. We’ll give birth to other harvests.”
“And we’ll strive to protect them against further tempests,” affirmed Dr. Faust.
Achilles, full of good will, was already disturbing the soil alongside Mr. Pickwick.
“I’ll be able to plant and prune the rose-bushes and the vines,” said Abbé Coignard.
They all went down into the garden.
“Oh, the harvests of tomorrow!” murmured Vaissette.
His soul appeased, Candide added: “Let’s get to work!”
Louis Baudry de Saunier: How Paris was destroyed in six hours on Easter Sunday, 20 April 1924
A Translation of an Issue of
the German daily newspaper Berliner Tageblatt,
25 June 1924
HOW PARIS WAS DESTROYED IN SIX HOURS
ON 20 APRIL 1924
The detailed account and the complete story
of the incredible event, related yesterday
IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS MAJESTY
THE EMPEROR AND KING
WILHELM II
in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles
As reported by the celebrated Otto Walter
FINALLY WE HAVE HER!
FRANCE IS OUR PROPERTY!
Since the immortal night of 20 April 1924, which gave the Chosen Race the dominion of the entire world, our readers have found every morning, in their Berliner Tageblatt, that cry of glory: “Finally we have her! France is our property!” From daybreak to sunset, let all Germany repeat it until the voice gives out. Let that cry become our national gargle!46
Finally, we have her! France is our property! Today, while she is writhing under our invincible boot, let us sing in the face of the world that she is the most beautiful of beauties, that no soil richer, no climate milder and no prey tastier than Gaul can ever fall to patient and tenacious Germany!
Finally, we have her! But let us calm the lyricism of our joy! Let us not leave any longer unappeased the hunger for the story of the glorious events that all our readers are feeling. Let us pass on quickly to the splendid reality of yesterday’s event; here it is:
Three days ago, our hero of genius, His Excellency General Hans von Stick, was informed of the desire that the Emperor had just manifested to learn from his own moth the details of German prowess, forever memorable in the succession of the centuries, that crushed Paris in a single night and caused France to fall into our helmet.
His majesty intended that the Lecture should be solemn, but limited to a hundred selected guests. He deigned to order that the reading, every line of which will make the heart of even the humblest of our peasants beat faster, should be given in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.
To that memorable room was owed, the Emperor said, aloud, both honor, since it was in the Hall of Mirrors in 1871 that the German Empire had been proclaimed, and disinfection, since the petty piece of paper known as the Treaty of Versailles had been signed there on 28 June 1919.
Three days after the imperial desire was manifested, the Hall of Mirrors was ready. The slide-projection apparatus that was to illuminate the lecture of our hero of genius, Hans von Stick, stood on the marquetry-work parquet of the Sun King. And the entire court, swollen with gladness, awaited the arrival of His Majesty.
By permission of His Excellency the High Chamberlain W. von Schmitterdorff, the very humble representative of the Berliner Tageblatt was authorized to witness the grandiose lecture with two stenographers. That signal generosity permits us to give our readers a complete account of that incomparable ceremony. We are convinced that more than one of them will pin it up on his bedroom wall.
AN INFORMAL MAJESTY
His Majesty the Emperor had deigned to order that yesterday’s ceremony would commence at two o’clock.
At five minutes to two the first horseman of the escort preceding the imperial automobile emerged on to the esplanade of Louis XIV’s château. The great fountains were playing, the mirrors of the basins reflected the sun, and the air was embalmed with joy.
With the charming simplicity that heightens his August Character and Lucid Intelligence, and the affability that befits a Democratic Emperor, His Majesty came into the Hall of Mirrors, sat down in the midst of his court on a throne with golden feet, and soon permitted the members of the audience to raise their heads, which they had bowed down before him since he came in.
Our hero of genius, standing next to the slide projector, bowed profoundly in his turn. Immediately, however, a chamberlain approach him and, breaking the solemn silence, proclaimed that His Majesty deigned to order the glorious Destroyer of Paris to speak in his presence.
A little pale to begin with, but quickly overcoming his emotion, His Excellency General von Stick expressed himself as follows:
THE STORY OF AN IMMORTAL HERO
Your Majesty,
The story of the immortal exploits that German genius accomplished on the ever-memorable night of 20 April 1924 ought to emerge from a mouth more eloquent than mine. I am a soldier and an engineer. I am neither a Pindar nor a Dante—those incontestable Germans of old—to sing your glory as it merits. I am scarcely a Leonardo da Vinci—another of our illustrious ancestors—and I apologize for the scientific dryness of my report.
In order better to comprehend, from deduction to deduction, the events of 20 April 1924, it is necessary to go back six years, to 1918.
In the month of November of that year, the Allies thought that they had defeated Germany! Their eyes were truly closed by nutshells, for they ought to have seen, inscribed in the history of the world in red letters, these words: Germany is never defeated!
In reality, when the armistice of 1918 was signed, Germany was performing an action of both great humanity and great strategy. She was imposing on the Allies the cessation of the war that they had declared against her. She was weary of the torrents of blood that they had unleashed. She finally forced them to take pity on humankind. Thus she demonstrated once more to Neutrals who judged without prejudice her mildness and her bounty. Enough tears, she said, thereby. Enough deaths! Enough windows! Enough poor little orphans!
But at the same time, the armistice permitted Germany to collect herself, to seek to discover by what rapid course, by what sudden realization, which would fill the World with amazement and admiration, she would be able to reclaim from events her due—which is to say, the empire of the entire Earth.
For our Race must, no matter what the cost, pursue the supreme goals that Destiny has imposed upon it. Being the Salt of the Earth, it is necessary for us to cover the Earth with Salt!
THE COUNCIL OF SEVEN
Majesty,
I shall merely remind you that an imperial decree, made from Holland in 1919, to which you had had the sublime wisdom to withdraw, in order better to judge the chessboard from a distance, had instituted an Imperial Council of seven individuals charged with examining the means by which Germany would finally obtain recognition from the entire world of her divine mission. Your Majesty was kind enough to take into consideration the doggedness with which I had always done my duty as an engineer at the Krupp factories before the war, and the good fortune, of which my humble talent is scarcely worthy, of constituting on the Champagne front the squadron of aviators that compiled the most impressive lists of kills throughout the war. Your Majesty deigned to order me to join that committee.
Germany has neither both hands in the same glove nor both feet in the same boot. When she has decided, she realizes immediately, while her adversaries
are still searching for an appearance of reason not to realize tomorrow what a hundred good reasons commanded them to realize yesterday.
Five days after the signature of the decree, the seven members of the Imperial Committee met in Stuttgart, under the pretext of studying the requisition of eight hundred thousand dairy cows that France was still claiming from us last spring, as you will recall, two months before her death.
The three senior military personnel and the three eminent diplomats that constituted that Imperial Committee, and myself, were soon in accord in ridding the problem of all the parasitic ideas by which people then had the custom of obscuring it. We gradually made it appear in all is nudity, in its skeleton, and we soon came to this conclusion:
In order imminently to possess the entire world, what must Germany do? Possess France!
In fact, confronted with France, suddenly vanquished, what would England do? England has Ireland attached to her flank, like a jaguar, with its fangs in her flesh; she senses that her wealth is in grave peril in India, that her social health is battling with fever. How would she dare even to dispute our victory when, with her troops unmobilized and her fleets scattered over all the seas, she saw us suddenly installed everywhere along the French coasts of the Channel, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean?
As for Italy, she has never detested us very much. Spain is our friend. Bulgaria would like nothing better than to love us. Turkey is submissive. Holland, Finland and Sweden are still drunk on our breath. Russia will swallow Poland tomorrow and come to place her lips on our mouth!
Who, then, in Europe, would permit themselves not to cry “Bravo!” if we were suddenly to crush France?
Who, then, in America, in Asia, would put a sword across our path? The United States has declared with reason that God has not given men the blessed hours of the day and the night to cut one another’s throats, but to sell one another a great deal of cotton and a great deal of lard. From one end of the planet to the other the cry would ring out: “Enough war! Enough war!” And Japan, a fatalistic as Arabia, would say to a Germany that was mistress of Europe: “The gods have been good to you, doubtless because you deserve it!”
(The emotion is so great that one expects the singing of “Deutchscland über alles” to burst forth somewhere in the room, but His Majesty keeps his eyes fixed on the lecturer like two blades, and his great face imposes silence on everyone.)
Such was the first stage of the reasoning of the Imperial Committee. To take France today is to take the world tomorrow.
The second stage was this: It is necessary to take France swiftly, or our entire future will crumble. In fact, if attacked, she will defend herself, and we have seen how she is able to defend herself. Attacked, she will be supported by obliging allies; then there is a recommencement of the interminable war; that is the destruction of our ideal of human war, or extremely brief war.
In consequence, we decided that if we were ever to see France in the bottom of our helmet, it was necessary—please forgive me, Your Majesty—to win the game in a single hand: quickly, ultra-quickly, or everything would be spoiled! So, only a surprise coup, only a lightning strike, one of those manifestations of extravagant audacity that only a German brain can conceive, only a few hours of cold and reasoned madness, would permit us to gamble “all or nothing” for France!
But the third stage of our reasoning immediately ran into an evident obstacle: France could not, in her entirety, be captured by Germany in a matter of hours. Let us not emerge from the domains of the practical and the realizable. Let us not allow the breath of patriotism to blow us beyond common sense.
What could we do?
Certain insects—the cockchafer, for example—in order to make sure of a prey, do not risk themselves in combat; they throw themselves on it suddenly, sink their sting into a nerve-center that they know well, and it is all over! The prey is paralyzed! They butcher it thereafter without danger, in their own time, as it pleases them to digest it.
In the same way, the toreador who wishes to fell a bull does not bother to declare war on it, to cry out to it: “Pay attention! I’m drawing my weapon; prepare your horns!” Nothing so stupid! He seems to play with the beast, deceives it, and then plunges his sword straight into the spinal cord. The bull is dead, and the mules drag him away.
Well, we thought, does not France too, have a nerve center, which it is sufficient to crush in one night in order that the next day she will be paralyzed and dead? Let us consult a map! Here are the arteries and the veins, here are all the canals, all the roads, all the telegraph wires, which come together at the same point: Paris! Let us open a history book! Paris is taken, the entire nineteenth century demonstrates, and France is taken!
Certainly, if Paris is taken, a few groups of stubborn soldiers will try to form up behind the Loire. A fortnight later those bands will have disappeared; on that miserable little army it will be sufficient for us to sneeze.
(The Emperor smiles. The court laughs.)
There was the solution, grandiose and devastating! Paris, the nerve center, the heart, the alimentary center of France, seems to have been placed close to our frontier by God in order that Germany might one day annihilate it with ease. The inexplicable shame of General von Kluck, in August 1914, was to fail to take Paris, to have put off for ten years the glorious idea of a fresh and joyful war, in sacrifice to I don’t know what Napoleonic principle!
(The Emperor moves his fingers feverishly. The court stamps its feet.)
The first meeting of the Imperial Committee ended, therefore, with this conclusion:
To conquer the world, it is necessary to take France. To take France, it is necessary to pulverize Paris. To pulverize Paris, it is necessary to bring off a coup of almost insane audacity, in a matter of hours, before the French have time even to try to defend themselves, before anyone can come to their aid.
After which, we could say to the other powers: “What have you to add, Ladies? Come on! Give us your reverence.”
OUR FUTURE IS IN THE AIR
As it is not in the German character to wait for porcelain fruits to ripen, the second meeting of the Imperial Committee took place two days later, this time in Mannheim. We had judged it politic not to hold two meetings in the same city on the matter of the eight hundred thousand cows; a wise German never forgets that there might always be a pair of eyes in the wall, looking to see how he makes his sauerkraut...
Each of the committee members revealed his idea. My colleagues held on to the old methods of surprise by the main army, but they admitted themselves that they did not even merit being attempted. Certainly, in spite of the appearance of disarmament that we had accepted to put on at the behest of the Allies, we secretly possessed a considerable army, fully imbibed with the spirit of revenge. Without that, what would we have done the day after the glorious night of Easter, when, Paris having been annihilated, it was sufficient for our battalions to advance across the plains of France with weapons holstered and a flower in the mouth to conquer all of Europe? I need not tell the eminent men of war who are honoring me with their attention about the sacred hiding places from which we could bring forth instantaneously, over the entire territory of the Reich, cannons, shells, rifles, machine-guns, grenades, tanks and floods of gas and flames!
But to discuss such proposals, to recommence a war on land, of blockades and trenches, was to misunderstand the very spirit of the decision of the first meeting of the Imperial Council: to act in a matter of hours.
It was then—and Your Majesty will absolve me is I seem to be glorifying my feeble person here, although my praises are addressed to our good God who inspired my brain—that that I asked my colleagues to huddle around me next to the table...
In a low voice, fearing that too loud a tone might compromise the future of the Fatherland, I sketched out in broad lines the project that was shining in my head like an incandescent filament in a glass bulb.
“Aviation,” I explained to them, “will makes masters of the entire world
the first people who are able to see everything, absolutely everything, of what it carries beneath its wings: the end of wars on land; the end of wars at sea; the end of war itself! For the day will come when via the air, death will come so terribly, so sure of its hecatombs, that humans, if any remain, will reach accord in order never to summon it again. Before that definitive progress is achieved, before science has killed Holy War, let us profit from the miracles of aeronautics; let us, thanks to them, claim the world!
“France is tergiversating, understanding one day, and then seeming not to understand the next. She would like a formidable army of the air, because she knows, deep down, that salvation is there in its entirety, that it is henceforth nowhere else but there; but she jibs at paying the necessary price and making the effort of will that it imposes.
“Let us take advantage of her stupid faith in a future that will work out of its own accord. In four for five years, let us gain over our enemies and advantage in air power that will discourage them from ever catching up with us! Let us possess an unmatchable fleet! Let all of Germany have no hope in anything but aeronautics! And if people in high places will listen to my experience, one night, Paris will disappear from reality. The following day, the horrified and dazzled world will say: “What! Is it possible? Babylon is no more? What supernatural power, then, does the Vanquished of 1918 have, which, in a few hours, has been able to vanquish the Earth?”
I sensed my colleagues trembling beneath my arguments. The Holy Spirit of Revenge descended into them.
The Engineer Von Satanas Page 27