by Karel Čapek
“That’s enough,” said Mr. Rejzek.
“Wait a bit; here he talks about the hypertrophy of parties and churches. It is a hereditary Czech disease, he says. ‘Of this there cannot be the slightest doubt, as Dr. Kramář used to say. And therefore, I solemnly adjure you at this twelfth hour, when great and terrible dangers confront us on every hand, to urge our people to band themselves together in a union of the whole nation for the defence of our country. If a religious bond be necessary for this union, then let us be neither Protestants nor Catholics nor Monists nor Abstainers, but let us adopt a single, Slav, powerful, and brotherly Orthodox faith, which will unite us in one great Slav family and will secure for us in these stormy times the protection of a powerful Slav ruler. Those who will not freely and whole-heartedly pay allegiance to this glorious pan-Slav ideal should be forced by Government authority, yea, and by every form of compulsion permissible in these exceptional circumstances, to abandon their partisan and sectarian interests in favour of the union of the whole nation.’ And so on. Signed ‘An Old Patriot.’ What do you say to that?”
“Nothing,” said Mr. Rejzek.
“I think that there’s something in it,” Mr. Keval began; but just then the telephone operator entered and said, “Munich on the ’phone. Some sort of civil or religious war broke out in Germany yesterday. Is it worth putting in the paper?”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE AUGSBURG IMBROGLIO
BY 11 p.m. the following telephonic communications had been received at the office of the People’s Journal:—
CZECH PRESS BUREAU. From Munich, 12th inst.—According to the Wolff Telegraph Agency, the demonstrations in Augsburg yesterday led to bloodshed. Seventy Protestants were killed. The demonstrations are still in progress.
CZECH PRESS BUREAU. From Berlin, 12th inst.—It is officially announced that the number of killed and wounded at Augsburg does not exceed twelve. The police are maintaining order.
SPECIAL MESSAGE. From Lugano, 12th inst.—We learn from a reliable source that the number of victims at Augsburg is over five thousand. Railway communication with the north is suspended. The Bavarian Ministry is in permanent session. The German Emperor has broken off his hunting trip and is returning to Berlin.
CZECH PRESS BUREAU. Reuter, 12th inst.—At 3 a.m. to-day the Bavarian Government declared a Holy War on Prussia.
By the following day Mr. Cyril Keval was already in Bavaria. From his comparatively trustworthy reports we make the following excerpts:—
At 6 p.m. on the 10th instant the Catholic workmen in the Scholler lead-pencil factory at Augsburg gave the Protestant foreman a beating, the provocation being some dispute relating to the worship of the Virgin. Quiet prevailed at night, but at 10 a.m. on the following day the Catholic workmen came out in all departments noisily demanding the discharge of all Protestant employees. Scholler, the owner of the factory, was killed, and two directors were stabbed. The clergy were compelled by force to carry the monstrance at the head of the procession. The Archbishop, Dr. Lenz, who came out to pacify the demonstrators, was thrown into the River Lech. The Social-Democratic leaders attempted to speak, but were forced to take refuge in the synagogue. At 3 p.m. the synagogue was blown up with dynamite. While the looting of Jewish and Protestant shops went on, accompanied by some shooting and numerous conflagrations, the City Council carried unanimously the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, and issued an impassioned appeal to the Catholic nations of the world to take up the sword in defence of the Holy Catholic Faith. Upon the receipt of this news various manifestos were issued in other Bavarian cities. In Munich a Popular Assembly was held at 7 p.m., which amid the wildest enthusiasm passed a resolution for the secession of the Southern States from the German Empire. The Munich Government wired Berlin that it was taking over the administration. The Imperial Chancellor, Dr. Wurm, immediately called on the Minister of War, who ordered ten thousand bayonets to Bavaria from the garrisons of Saxony and the Rhineland. At 1 a.m. these troop trains were blown up on the line at the Bavarian frontier, and machine guns were turned upon the wounded. At 3 a.m. the Munich Government, in alliance with the Alpine provinces, decided to proclaim a Holy War on the Lutherans.
It would seem that hopes of a peaceful solution of the whole misunderstanding have not yet been abandoned in Berlin. At this moment the Emperor is still delivering his speech in Parliament, declaring that he knows neither Catholics nor Protestants, but only Germans. The North German forces are said to be concentrated along the Erfurt-Gotha-Kassel line. The Catholic forces are advancing in the general direction of Zwickau and Rudolfstadt, meeting with no opposition but that of the civilian population. The town of Greiz has been burned down and the citizens either killed or dragged into slavery. The reports of a great battle have not so far been confirmed. Refugees from Bayreuth state that the firing of heavy artillery could be heard from the north. The railway station at Madgeburg is said to have been blown up by the bombs of Bavarian airmen. Weimar is on fire.
Indescribable enthusiasm prevails here in Munich. Attestation commissions are at work in all the schools; crowds of volunteers wait as long as twenty hours in the streets. The heads of twenty decapitated pastors are exposed on the Rathaus. The Catholic clergy have to serve mass day and night in overcrowded churches; the Reverend Father Gross-hube, who was also a member of Parliament, died of exhaustion at the altar. Jews, Monists, Abstinents, and other heretics have barricaded themselves in their houses. Rosenheim, the banker, the oldest member of the Jewish community, was publicly burned at the stake this morning.
The Dutch and Danish ambassadors have asked for their passports. The American representative has lodged a protest against the disturbance of the peace; on the other hand, the Italian Government has assured Bavaria of its particularly benevolent neutrality.
Bands of recruits march through the streets carrying flags with a white cross on a red ground, and shouting “God wills it.” Ladies are entering the nursing service and getting hospitals ready. Business houses are for the most part closed. So is the Stock Exchange.
That was on the 14th of February. On the 15th fairly heavy fighting took place on both banks of the Werre, the Protestant forces yielding a little ground. On the same day the first shots were also fired on the Dutch-Belgian frontier. England ordered the mobilization of the fleet.
On the 16th of February Italy granted free passage to the Spanish army despatched to the aid of the Bavarians. The Tyrolese peasants, armed with scythes, attacked the Helvetian Swiss.
On the 18th of February, the Anti-Pope Martin cabled his blessing to the Bavarian army. An indecisive battle took place at Meiningen. Russia declared war on the Polish Catholics.
February 19th: Ireland declared war on England. An opposition Caliph made his appearance at Broussa, and unfurled the green banner of the Prophet. Mobilization of the Balkan States, and massacres in Macedonia.
February 23rd: The North German front pierced. General revolt in India. Proclamation of a Holy War by the Moslems on the Christians.
February 27th: The Greek-Italian war, and the first encounters on Albanian soil.
March 3rd: The Japanese fleet sailed eastward against the United States of America.
March 15th: The Crusaders (Catholics) took Berlin. Meanwhile the Union of Protestant States was proclaimed at Stettin. The German Emperor, Kaspar I, assumed command in person.
March 16th: A Chinese army, two million strong, poured over the Siberian and Manchurian frontiers. The army of the Anti-Pope Martin took Rome by storm. Pope Urban fled to Portugal.
March 18th: Spain demanded that the Lisbon Government should deliver up Pope Urban; refusal followed ipso facto by war between Spain and Portugal.
March 26th: The South American States presented an ultimatum to the North American Union, demanding the repeal of Prohibition and the abolition of religious liberty.
March 27th: The Japanese fleet landed troops in California and British Columbia.
On April 1st the world situation was
approximately as follows: In Central Europe the great world-conflict between the Catholics and Protestants was running its course. The Protestant Union had forced back the Crusaders out of Berlin, had got a firm hold on Saxony, and had occupied even the neutral territory of Czechoslovakia. The City of Prague was, by a peculiar coincidence, under the command of the Swedish Major-General Wrangel, possibly a descendant of the general of the same name who figured in the Thirty Years’ War. On the other hand, the Crusaders had made themselves masters of Holland, which they had flooded by breaking the dykes and letting in the sea, as well as of Hanover and Holstein as far as Lübeck, whence they were making inroads on Denmark. No quarter was given in the fighting. Cities were razed to the ground, the men killed, and women up to the age of fifty violated. But the first things destroyed in every case were the enemy Karburators. Contemporaries of these inordinately bloody struggles assure us that supernatural powers were fighting on both sides. Often it seemed as though an invisible hand seized hostile aircraft and dashed them to the ground, or intercepted in its flight a fifty-four centimetre projectile weighing a ton and hurled it back upon its own ranks. Particularly horrible were the scenes enacted during the destruction of the Karburators. As soon as the enemy position was occupied, there ensued an invisible but desperate struggle round the local Karburators. At times it was like a cyclone which wrecked and scattered the whole building in which an atomic boiler stood, like someone blowing on a heap of feathers. Bricks, timbers and tiles flew round in wild confusion, and the contest usually ended in a frightful explosion which felled every tree and structure within a radius of twelve kilometres and scooped out a crater over two hundred metres deep. The force of the detonation naturally varied according to the size of the exploding Karburator.
Suffocating gases spread over a radius of three hundred kilometres, utterly blasting all vegetation; however, as these creeping clouds several times turned back upon their own ranks—through the strategical intervention of supernatural powers—this very unreliable method of warfare was abandoned. It was apparent that while the Absolute attacked on one side, it also defended itself on the other. It introduced unheard-of weapons into warfare—earthquakes, cyclones, showers of sulphur, inundations, angels, pestilence, famines, plagues of locusts, etc.—till there was no alternative but to alter the art of military stategy altogether. Mass attacks, permanent entrenchments, open order, strong points, and such-like nonsense, were abandoned; every soldier received a knife, some cartridges, and some bombs, and with these he went off on his own to kill any soldier who wore on his breast a cross of a different colour. It was not a matter of two armies confronting each other. There was simply a particular country which was the battlefield, and there the two armies moved about promiscuously, killing one another off, man for man, until finally it became clear to whom that country now belonged. It was a terribly murderous method, to be sure, but it had ultimately, in the long run, a certain conclusiveness.
Such was the situation in Central Europe. At the beginning of April the Protestant armies were entering Austria and Bavaria by way of Czechoslovakia, while the Catholics were overrunning Denmark and Pomerania. Holland, as already stated, had completely vanished from the map of Europe.
In Italy internal warfare was raging between the parties of Urban and Martin: meanwhile Sicily fell into the hands of the Greek Evzones. The Portuguese occupied Austria and Castile, but lost their own Estramadura; in the South as a whole the war was waged with quite exceptional ferocity.
England had been fighting on Irish soil and then in the colonies. By the beginning of April she held only the coastline of Egypt. The other colonies had been lost, and the settlers killed by the natives. With the aid of the Arabians, Sudanese, and Persian armies the Turks had overwhelmed the entire Balkan region, and had made themselves masters of Hungary, when the schism broke out between the Shiahs and the Sunnis on what was apparently a very important question concerning Ali, the fourth Caliph. Both sects pursued each other from Constantinople to the Carpathians with a zeal and bloodthirstiness which unfortunately also vented itself upon the Christians. And so in this part of Europe things were worse than anywhere else.
Poland vanished, being wiped out of existence by the Russian armies. The Russian hosts then turned to face the Yellow invasion which was sweeping northward and westward. Meanwhile ten Japanese army corps had been landed in North America.
You will notice that no mention has yet been made of France, the chronicler having reserved that country for Chapter XXIV.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE NAPOLEON OF THE MOUNTAIN BRIGADE
BOBINET, if you please, Toni Bobinet, the twenty-two-year-old lieutenant of mountain artillery, attached to the garrison of Annecy (Haute Savoie), but at present on six weeks’ manoeuvres on the Needles (Les Aiguilles), from which on a clear day one can see in the west the lakes of Annecy and Geneva, and in the east the blunted ridge of the Bonne Montagne and the peaks of Mont Blanc—do you know your way about now? Well, then, Lieutenant Toni Bobinet sat on a boulder and tugged at his tiny moustache, first because he was bored, and secondly because he had read a newspaper two weeks old right through for the fifth time, and was now thinking things over.
At this point the chronicler ought to follow the meditations of the prospective Napoleon, but in the meantime his glance (the chronicler’s, that is) had slid along the snow-covered slopes to the gorge of the Arly, where the thaw had already set in, and where his eye is caught and held by the tiny little towns of Mégève, Flumet, and Ugines, with their pointed churches looking like toys. Ah, the memories of long-vanished childhood! The castles in the air one reared with one’s box of bricks!
Meanwhile Lieutenant Bobinet . . . but no. Let us abandon any attempt to psychologize great men, to express the titanic idea in the germ from which it sprang. We are not equal to the task, and if we were, we should perhaps be disappointed. Just picture to yourself this little Lieutenant Bobinet sitting on Les Aiguilles with Europe falling into ruin all about him—a battery of mountain guns in front of him, and below him a miniature world which could easily be shot to pieces from where he sat. Imagine that he has just read in an old copy of the Annecy Moniteur the leading article in which some M. Babillard calls for the strong hand of a helmsman who will steer the good ship France out of the raging storm toward new power and glory; and that up there, at a height of over two thousand metres, the air is pure and free from the Absolute, so that one can think clearly and freely. Picture all this, and you will understand how it was that Lieutenant Bobinet, sitting there on his rock, first grew very thoughtful and then wrote his venerable, wrinkled, white-haired mother a somewhat confused letter, assuring her that “she would soon be hearing of her Toni,” and that Toni had “a magnificent idea.” After that he saw to one thing and another, had a good night’s sleep, and in the morning assembled all the soldiers of his battery, deposed the incompetent old captain, took possession of the military post at Sallanches, declared war on the Absolute with Napoleonic brevity, and went to sleep again. The following day he shot to pieces the Karburator in the bakery at Thônes, occupied the railway station of Bonneville, and seized the command at Annecy, having by this time three thousand men under him. Within a week he had destroyed over two hundred Karburators and was leading fifteen thousand bayonets and sabres against Grenoble. He was proclaimed commandant of Grenoble, and now had a small army of forty thousand men at his back, with which he descended into the valley of the Rhone and busied himself in painstakingly clearing the surrounding territory of all atomic motors by means of his long-range guns. On the road to Chambéry he captured the Minister for War, who was hurrying in his motor-car to put Bobinet back in his place. The Minister for War was so captivated and convinced by Bobinet’s plans that he made him a General on the following day. On April 1st the city of Lyons was completely cleansed of every trace of the Absolute.
Up to this point Bobinet’s triumphant progress had not been attended by bloodshed. He met with his first opposition from arden
t Catholics beyond the Loire, and sanguinary engagements took place. Fortunately for Bobinet, many Frenchmen had remained sceptics, even in communities completely saturated with the Absolute, and indeed showed themselves wildly fanatical in their unbelief and rationalism. After cruel massacres and new St. Bartholomew’s Eves “les Bobinets” were welcomed everywhere as liberators, and everywhere they went they succeeded in pacifying the populace after destroying all the Karburators.
And so it befell that as early as July, Parliament proclaimed that Toni Bobinet had deserved well of his country and raised him to the dignity of First Consul with the title of Marshal. France was consolidated. Bobinet introduced State atheism; any sort of religious demonstration was punishable by court-martial with death.
We cannot refrain from mentioning a few episodes in the great man’s career.