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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 39588 ***
+
+THE HUMAN SLAUGHTER-HOUSE
+
+_Scenes from the War that is Sure to Come_
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF
+
+WILHELM LAMSZUS
+
+BY
+
+OAKLEY WILLIAMS
+
+
+WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY ALFRED NOYES
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+
+PUBLISHERS
+
+1913
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+_There is one thing that will certainly be said about this book by some
+of its readers. It will certainly be said to exaggerate the horrors of
+modern war; and, just as certainly, that is a thing which this book does
+not do. It is appallingly reticent; and, for every touch of horror in
+its pages, the actual records of recent warfare could supply an obscure
+and blood-stained mass of detail which, if it were once laid before the
+public, would put an end to militarism in a year. It is not the
+opponents of militarism who are given over to "cant" and "hypocrisy" and
+"emotionalism." It is the supporters of militarism who on the eve of a
+great war go about crying for suppression of facts, censorship of the
+facts not only of military plans, but of human suffering. For if there
+is one thing that the military journalist dreads it is the sight and
+smell of blood. "Let us enjoy this pleasant compaign. Let us present our
+readers with a little military music played upon the brass bands of the
+press. But for God's sake do not waft over Europe the smell of iodoform,
+or of the slaughter-house. Man is a fighting animal; let us enjoy the
+fight. And_--pollice verso!"
+
+_Unfortunately for these gentlemen, whose good taste is so impeccable
+that they shrink from the whole truth, man is also a fighting god. 'And
+the next thing we are going to fight is militarism. There is hardly a
+great commander in the history of modern warfare who has not described
+his own profession as "a dirty trade" and war itself as hell. The party
+of "bad taste" which is going to destroy militarism is not likely to
+reject the testimony of Wellington, Grant and Napier in favor of the
+sensational journalist. This book deals chiefly with the physical and
+mental horrors of war. It presents just that one side of the case; but
+it must not be forgotten that there are vast battalions of logic and
+common sense on the same side. From a logical point of view a war
+between civilized peoples is as insane as it is foul and evil. The
+pacificists are fighting the noblest battle of the present day. They are
+not going to win without a struggle; but they will win. And they will
+win because they have on their side the common good of mankind, common
+sense, common justice, and common truth._
+
+ALFRED NOYES.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+INTRODUCTION
+WILHELM LAMSZUS
+LETTER FROM THE CONGRES UNIVERSEL DE LA PAIX
+CHAPTER I MOBILIZATION
+CHAPTER II SOLDIER
+CHAPTER III OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN
+CHAPTER IV THE LAST NIGHT
+CHAPTER V THE DEPARTURE
+CHAPTER VI LIKE THE PROMISE OF MAY
+CHAPTER VII BLOOD AND IRON
+CHAPTER VIII THE SWAMP
+CHAPTER IX THE WHIRLING EARTH
+EPILOGUE--WE POOR DEAD
+
+
+
+
+WILHELM LAMSZUS
+
+
+Few books of its size--one hundred and eleven pages in the original
+edition--can perhaps of recent years claim the striking and
+instantaneous success of Wilhelm Lamszus's "Menschenschlachthaus." In
+appraising this success, I am less concerned with the number of copies
+sold (which now, three months after publication, approximates, I
+believe, one hundred thousand) than with the impression it has left on
+the mind of its readers in Germany and elsewhere on the Continent.
+Within a few days of its publication the author awoke to find himself
+famous--or infamous, according to the point of view adopted--in his own
+country. The fact that his book has been, or is being, translated into
+no less than eight European languages is evidence that its appeal is not
+confined to the conditions of one country, or of a single nationality.
+
+Its appeal is broad-based. It is addressed to the conscience of
+civilized humanity, and as was to have been expected, the conscience of
+the individual has reacted to its stimulus in various ways.
+
+The first evidence the author received of the success of his work was
+drastic. By profession he is a master at one of the great German public
+schools. He was at once "relieved" of his duties, but has now, I
+understand, been reinstated. The schoolmaster in Germany, it must be
+borne in mind, is primarily a state official. His most important
+function is to educate, not only the rising generation of citizens, but
+the future levies of conscripts. For a schoolmaster to write a book
+"with a tendency" to strip the pomp and circumstance of war of its
+traditional glamour--an integral factor in the German educational
+system--must, in the eyes of the orthodox of the "State-conserving"
+parties, have savored of an unholy alliance between blasphemy and high
+treason. The sale of the book was interdicted in the town of its first
+publication--the "free" city of Hamburg. The interdict had the effect
+of stimulating its sale elsewhere. It challenged a hearing. Even the
+"State-conserving" journals were unable to ignore it entirely.
+
+A short time ago, in an open letter addressed to the German press, the
+author replied to the criticisms and strictures of his professional
+reviewers. As may be conceived, these criticisms and strictures lacked
+nothing in virulence or acrimony. "A peril to the public safety," "an
+hysterical neuropath," "a morbid phantasy," "a socialist-anarchic
+revolutionary," "a cowardly weakling," "a landless man," "an imported
+alien draining the marrow of patriotic backbone," may serve as an
+anthology (for which I am mainly indebted to the _Hamburger
+Nachrichten_) of the compliments showered on the author and his work. As
+this reply discloses what was in the author's mind when he wrote his
+book, definitely explains its purport and its purpose, it may be worth
+some consideration. It may serve to differentiate "The Human
+Slaughter-House" from the itch of mere literary sensationalism and
+enable the foreigner to understand the light in which the Commission for
+Instruction, Education, etc., of the nineteenth Universal Peace Congress
+at Geneva regarded it when last year it wrote officially to congratulate
+its author on having placed "a weapon of the greatest importance" in the
+hands of the pacificists.
+
+At all times and at all places, Lamszus points out, patriotism has been
+of two kinds. The one sort takes its stand on the public market-place,
+with its hand on its manly chest, to advertise the public spirit that
+inflates it. In season and out of season, it never fails to invite the
+public gaze to dwell on the integrity of its patriotic sentiments. Its
+main strength lies in the spectacular and oratorical. As such it not
+infrequently deteriorates into the idle sound and fury of Junkerdom,
+Chauvinism and Jingoism.
+
+There is that other type of patriotism that, no less loyal to its own
+country, believes in the dignity and worth of humanity, that believes in
+the patriotism of quiet, unadvertised, productive work and in the virtue
+of a sense of moral responsibility. It is sanguine enough to believe
+that it may yet be the destiny of a great nation to serve the cause of
+humanity by eliminating the hideous necessity for war. It finds its
+highest representative in the patriot of the type of the late Emperor
+Frederick the Noble, who, himself a soldier proven on the stricken
+field, found the courage to say, "I hate the business of blood. You have
+never seen war. If you had ever seen it you would not speak the word
+unmoved. I have seen it, and I tell you it is a man's highest duty to
+avoid war if by any means it can be avoided."
+
+The issue Lamszus raises at the bar of public opinion of the civilized
+world is whether the patriot of this type must necessarily be either a
+"neuropath" or a "landless alien," as compared with him of the other
+sort; whether he be necessarily lacking in civic spirit, virility, and
+even soldierly virtues.
+
+If the matter be of any concern, I gather that the author himself, so
+far from being physically a weakling, is a trained gymnast (of the type
+that our representatives will have to take into account at the next
+Olympic games) given to athletic exercises. He has also had sufficient
+medical training to have passed through a school of comparative anatomy.
+There are, therefore, no grounds for assuming offhand that he is of the
+nerveless type that faints at the first sight of blood; yet he writes of
+war with a shudder that the reader can feel in every line.
+
+Yet--a contradiction his critics have not been slow to underline--this
+same man, who abhors the very thought of war, has written to the praise
+and glorification of war "like a professional panegyrist." While he was
+writing "The Human Slaughter-House," he was also engaged in etching
+some literary silhouettes, embodying the Dutch folk-songs, of the revolt
+of the Netherlands. The contrast is so striking that one or two of these
+"prose poems" may be worth quoting.
+
+
+I
+
+A reign of terror has dawned on the Netherlands. The Netherlands, ever
+proud of their freedom, are henceforward to be Spanish provinces. But
+the Netherlander has no mind for the honor. He cleaves obstinately to
+his chartered rights and to his nationality.
+
+Then the Duke of Alva has come into the country in the Emperor's stead.
+He has brought in his train an army of Spanish soldiers, the gallows,
+and the executioner's axe. He has turned the country into a cemetery. A
+graveyard stillness reigns over it. For where three men foregather in
+the streets they smell out conspiracy in their midst. An ill-considered
+word, and the gallows, lowering in the background, silences the foolish
+mouth.
+
+Setting their teeth, the Netherlander have to suffer it. The Spanish
+sword reaches the remotest village. Only in secret do they dare clench
+their fists. For the hangman's rack has a way of smoothing out clenched
+fists.
+
+Terror lies on its chain like a wild beast. Only when it believes itself
+to be unobserved does it rise and sees the people lying on their knees,
+and hears a tortured country crying up to Heaven.
+
+
+II
+
+A star has risen against the sky of despair. The saviour of the
+Fatherland has been found. Egmont and Hoorn, the darlings of the people,
+have walked into the trap and have been beheaded in the market-place.
+But Orange has escaped. He has taken flight to Germany.
+
+Orange, a clever brain! More clever than Spanish guile.
+
+Orange, a brave heart! Braver than Spanish death and swords.
+
+How calm was his countenance! How confident his speech! He is not the
+man to rush anything, to spoil anything. He will return in his own time.
+They are already whispering it stealthily in one another's ear. The
+whisper is already passing from ear to ear, increasing to joyous
+certainty:
+
+He is already in our midst. As yet he is in hiding. But on the morrow
+his call will ring out, and his confidence glow through every man's
+heart.
+
+William of Orange!
+
+
+III
+
+The call has come. They are flocking in on every road. Groups of
+peasants and artisans. Masters, and apprentices among them. And the
+greybeards have taken their old weapons from the wall.
+
+Halberds flash in the sunlight. Old-fashioned furniture of war. But
+still more ardently do their eyes flash. All are of one mind. All driven
+on irresistibly by one single impulse.
+
+So they pass singing along the highroads. They had almost forgotten how
+to sing. But now it breaks out the more joyously in the sunlight--the
+solemn chant.
+
+Dumfounded, the Spanish outpost, under cover of a hedge, gapes after
+them. Let them run, the spies. The spell is broken. Let them hear of it
+till their ears ring again.
+
+The morning sun is shining. But we are marching to death and singing:
+
+"Happy is he who knows how to die for God and his dear Fatherland."
+
+
+IV
+
+A pleasant farm hidden away in a garden. It is springtide. The garden is
+a blaze of white. Apple-trees in blossom. Beneath their boughs a man and
+a girl are standing close intertwined.
+
+Beyond, on the other side of the hedge, they are passing along the
+village street. Their friends of the village. Their hour has come.
+
+The girl's head is resting heavily on his breast, and her arm trembling
+round his neck. "Stay with me, only stay one day more. The wedding was
+to have been tomorrow. You will never come back! And we are so young--so
+very young. Look, how the blossom is falling. You, too, will lie on the
+ground like that, so dead and white. And I shall waste away and fade."
+
+Then he looks into her eyes--sad unto death and fearful. "So you wish
+me to stay behind, and the others to go and die for us?"
+
+She shakes her head without a word, and looks up at him with a smile
+amid her tears. Then he kisses her, and clasps her hand in farewell.
+
+
+V
+
+The groups have assembled. They have grown from day to day, and drawn
+nearer and nearer to the enemy.
+
+And now the two armies are arrayed against each other--eye to eye. On
+the plain yonder you can see them--the Spanish troops flashing in
+steel--so close that you can distinguish their yellow faces in the
+sunlight.
+
+What is their quest here on foreign soil? They are selling their blood
+for a hireling's wage, and turning themselves into hangmen to lay a free
+people in chains.
+
+A distant glow is still glowering to the heavens. The last villages
+through which the Spanish dogs passed. They have left smoke and ruin
+behind them. Mangled corpses, the wailing of children. What do the
+strangers care? They have come into the country for loot.
+
+There they stand, the destroyers! Splendidly harnessed, practised in
+war, and used to victory. Callously, as if at their handicraft, without
+much shouting, or much running about and movement, the array over there
+falls into line. A dangerous foe in its uncanny quiet.
+
+Over against them the Netherlanders are a people assembled at haste.
+They are ignorant of drill, are ignorant how they ought to fight in
+ranks, and on horseback. But on the issue they are staking hearts filled
+with indomitable hate, filled full with undying love of country.
+
+Beggars, the Spaniards once called them. And the Beggars are mindful of
+their nakedness. Their fists clench. Their teeth are set. And their lips
+are mumbling curses and hot prayers.
+
+
+VI
+
+It came to fighting. It came to murder. Death leaped up, and raced
+neighing across the battlefield, until it dripped blood--until at even,
+blinded with blood, it fled away into the darkness.
+
+The battle is over now. The daylight is dying behind Bergen's towers.
+The shadows of night are blending with the shadow of Death.
+
+It was a glorious fight. The wrath of a people is mightier than all the
+guile and strategy on earth.
+
+But the victors are exhausted. Watch fires are ablaze. They all crowd
+round them to comfort themselves in their warmth.
+
+Dark figures are whispering in groups. "Ha! How they ran! Whoever was
+overtaken was cut down--without mercy. They will remember the day. Will
+they come on again? How will the sinister Emperor take it? How far does
+his power reach? They will come on again. A bigger army! A bigger
+fleet!"
+
+Look how the stars are gleaming. The air is clear. Even now you can see
+the heavens opening. And the Milky Way is glimmering down to meet you.
+
+The sound of singing rises in the distance. An old hymn. A prayer of
+thanks of the days of our fathers. Those nearest by take it up. The
+chant leaps from fire to fire. The darkling field is singing. The night
+is singing. A choir raising their hands to Heaven, their voices to the
+stars.
+
+Lord! Grant us freedom!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Where then lies the truth? In these "prose poems" aglow with martial
+enthusiasm, and ringing with the soldier's spirit, or in the relentless
+anatomical realism of "The Human Slaughter-House"? Or are both
+lies--"both deliberate conscious untruths, written under the inspiration
+of a social democratic lawyer?"
+
+The explanation, as Lamszus see it, lies in the condition of the times.
+No one, he claims, could write of the revolt of the Dutch Republics
+otherwise than in the brave setting of flashing eyes, glittering steel,
+and the stirring clash of men-at-arms. But it is equally untrue to tell
+of modern warfare waged with picric acid and electric wires in the same
+spirit. The romance and glamour of warfare in the past are grinning lies
+when transferred to latter-day warfare, where long-drawn fronts of flesh
+and blood are opposed to machines of precision and the triumphs of the
+chemical laboratory. The anachronism becomes nothing less than the
+deliberate falsification of history. Dynamite and machine-guns, not the
+writer, have turned the "Field of Honor" into a "Human Slaughter-House,"
+where regiments are wiped out by pressing an electric button.
+
+In the hideousness of these scenes of future warfare the charge of
+exaggeration, of painting carnage red, is easy to raise, and difficult
+to rebut. Lamszus does not shirk it.
+
+"What I have written was worked out empirically. It is a sum that is,
+mathematically, so incontestable that no one has hitherto ventured to
+dispute it. For the second factor in this sum is the albuminous
+substance of human brain and marrow. And when we hear that in the
+Russo-Japanese war thousands went mad, who would care to maintain that
+the nervous system of the civilized mid-European is hardier and tougher
+than that of Asiatics and semi-civilized Russians? 'The material has
+become softer,' says the authority of the staff-general. What now, when
+the sum total of acoustic and visual stimuli, of physical and psychic
+shocks, to which this 'softer material' is exposed, has, with every new
+invention, become more destructive in quality and quantity? To find the
+answer to such a simple problem did not assuredly call for a
+mathematical genius."
+
+With the answer before us, the question rises whether it is more
+patriotic to blink it, to go on pretending that war is what it used to
+be--a soldier's death on the field of honor, or senseless automatic
+slaughter by machinery. It is against this latter mechanical aspect of
+war that the instinct of humanity, to which Lamszus has given voice in
+vivid words, revolts. Does it become a man better to look, with the full
+sense of his moral and ethical responsibility, the hideous fact in its
+face, or to continue to disguise it under a veil of romance woven round
+the pomp and circumstance of glorious war? In this sense "The Human
+Slaughter-House" of Lamszus' invention stands, as the Universal Peace
+Congress read it, for the revolt of the spirit of humanity, the spirit
+of progress and evolution, against the cumulative horror of the
+mechanics of modern warfare.
+
+"For just as there is no room for the uncouth monsters of primeval
+times, for Mastodon and Brontosaurus, on the green earth today, so
+little will a nation of Krupp's steel plates be able to continue to live
+in the community of civilized nations."
+
+None the less, a nation of men of virile breed will, he believes, be no
+less prompt to take up arms in defence of its heritage of culture than
+Prussia was in 1813, and to fight in its defence to the last gasp. For
+in the War of Liberation it was not drill, but the spirit of the people
+that saved the country.
+
+"Thus the people in which we have belief will be irresistible in the
+council of nations, and be destined before every other to lead the
+nations to the work for which Nature has fashioned them.... Worthless
+indeed is the nation that would not stake its all for its honor. The
+only question that remains is what the spirit of this honor be; whether
+the appetite of savages and barbarians, hungry for spoils, impels me, or
+whether moral honor, the blood-stained desecrated face of God, inspires
+me."
+
+With these bold words Lamszus concludes his apologia for the brutality
+of "The Human Slaughter-House."
+
+OAKLEY WILLIAMS.
+
+
+
+
+[_Translation_.]
+
+To HERR LAMSZUS.
+
+_XIXme Congres Universel de la Paix a Geneve_.
+
+_Geneve_,1912.
+
+
+DEAR SIR,
+
+I have great pleasure in acquitting myself of the duty of expressing to
+you, in the name of "The Commission for Education, Instruction, etc.,"
+composed of delegates of the most varied nations assembled at the
+World's Peace Congress, and, further, in the name of all Pacificists,
+our thanks for the distinguished word-picture of rare artistic
+originality and of gripping effectiveness of the wholesale murders of
+the future in "The Human Slaughter-House," _for having furnished the
+cause of peace with a weapon of considerable importance_, and for having
+more especially made a very valuable gift to the cause of every
+Pacificist.
+
+May the blessing of its work be great!
+
+On behalf of the Congress Commission for Education, Instruction, etc.
+
+DR. A. WESTPHAL, _Secretary_.
+
+
+
+
+THE HUMAN SLAUGHTER-HOUSE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+MOBILIZATION
+
+
+War! War is declared! So the news speeds hollow-eyed through the
+streets. We are at war. It's the real thing this time.
+
+Mobilization!
+
+The ominous word dominates the placards on the hoardings. The newspapers
+reproduce the proclamations in their heaviest type, and rumors and
+dispatches flutter like a ruffled dovecote round this day of Blood and
+Iron.
+
+It is deadly earnest now. And this sense of the seriousness of it has
+numbed the State like a stroke of paralysis. But then a jar, as of a
+lever thrown over, goes through the vast iron fabric. And every one has
+got to yield to this jar. The time for anxiety and hesitation is over,
+for doubts and oscillation. The moment has now come when we cease to be
+citizens, from henceforward we are only soldiers--soldiers who have no
+time to think, who only have time to die.
+
+So they come flocking in from the work-shops, from the factories, from
+behind the counters, from business offices, and the open country--they
+come flocking into the town, and every man falls in to stand by his
+native land.
+
+"Four days from date" was the order on my summons. Well, the fourth
+morning has come, and I have said good-by to my wife and my two
+children. Thank God, the fourth morning has come, for the parting was
+not easy, and my heart aches when I think of them "at home."
+
+"Where are you going, Daddy?" asked Baby, as I kissed her for the last
+time with my portmanteau in my hand.
+
+"Daddy's going on a journey," said her mother, and looked at me with a
+smile amid her tears. "Yes, he's going on a journey, girlie, and you,
+little chap, you've got to be good, and do as Mummy tells you."
+
+And then we got the parting over quickly, for Dora kept up her pluck
+until the last moment....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now we are drawn up in the barrack-yard with bag and baggage--we of the
+rank and file--we reservists and militiamen, every man at his place by
+the table.
+
+How serious their faces are. They reveal no trace of youthful high
+spirits or martial exuberance. Their expressions rather betoken deep
+thought.
+
+"The war that in the end was bound to come"--so we heard and so we read
+in the papers. "That is bound to be so, that is a law of Nature. The
+nations are snatching the bread from one another's mouths; they are
+depriving each other of the air to breathe. That is a thing which in
+the end can only be settled by Force. And if it has to be, better it
+should be today than tomorrow."
+
+We are mercenaries no longer--those hirelings for murder, who once sold
+their blood for money down to all and sundry. We are gladiators no
+longer--slaves who enact the drama of dying as an exciting spectacle for
+the entertainment of the rich, and for the lust of their eyes. It is to
+our native land we took our oath. And if it must be, we are resolved to
+die as citizens, to die in the full consciousness and full
+responsibility for our acts.
+
+What will the next few days have in store for us?
+
+Not one of us has probably ever, with his own eyes, seen a field of
+battle. But we have heard about it from others, and we have read in
+books of other men what a battlefield looked like in 1870-71, and, as
+though with our own eyes, we have watched the shells shattering human
+bodies. And another thing we know is that forty years ago in spite of
+inferior guns and rifles, over a hundred and twenty thousand dead stayed
+behind on the field of honor. What percentage of the living will modern
+warfare claim? Armies are being marshalled vaster than the world has
+ever seen. Germany alone can put six million soldiers in the field;
+France as many. Then the war of '70-'71 was nothing more than a
+long-drawn affair of outposts! My brain reels when I try to visualize
+these masses--starting to march against one another; I seem to choke for
+breath.
+
+Then are we a breed of men other than our fathers?
+
+Is the reason because we only have one life to lose? And do we cling so
+passionately to this life? Isn't our native land worth more than this
+scrap of life?
+
+There probably won't be many among us who believe in the Resurrection,
+who believe that our mangled bodies will rise again in new splendor.
+Nor do we believe that our Father in Heaven will have pleasure in our
+murderous doings, that in that better world He will regard us other than
+as our brothers' murderers. But we bend our heads before iron Necessity.
+The Fatherland has called us, and we, as loyal sons, obey the command
+there is no evading, submissively.... From today onward we belong to our
+native land, so the Major shouted a minute ago as he read out the
+articles of war.
+
+And it's going to be the real thing this time.
+
+The Sergeant-Major has already read the roll and checked it. We are
+already told off in fours. Now, in a long column, we are marching across
+the barrack-yard, for this very day we are ordered to doff our civilian
+dress, and don our new kit. This very day we have got to become
+soldiers.
+
+Things are moving apace with us now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SOLDIER
+
+
+On the afternoon of the following day, the company is detailed for
+barrack drill. We are lying on our stomachs in the barrack-yard, and are
+being drilled in taking aim and firing lying down.
+
+I have just been sighting.
+
+In front of me on the barrack wall over there they have painted targets.
+Ring targets, head targets, chest targets. Three hundred yards. I take
+pointblank aim, and press the trigger. "Square in the chest." That ought
+to count as a bull's-eye.
+
+Wonder how many clips of cartridges am I going to get through?
+
+Wonder if there will be a bull's-eye among them?
+
+If every man of those millions they are putting into the field against
+the enemy fires about a hundred cartridges, and there is one bull's-eye
+in every hundred, that works out at ... that amounts to ... and I can't
+help smiling at this neat sum in arithmetic ... then the answer is no
+one at all. That is a merry sum.
+
+Snick!
+
+The fifth cartridge tumbles out.
+
+I ram in another clip of dummy cartridges.
+
+How quickly and smoothly that's done. One--two seconds, and five
+cartridges are set in your magazine. Every one of them, if need be, can
+penetrate six men; it can penetrate palisades and trees; it can
+penetrate earthworks and stone walls. There is practically no cover left
+against this dainty little missile, against this little pointed cone.
+
+And what a wonderful bit of mechanism this Mauser rifle is. How
+wretchedly badly off they were in 1870-71 with their rattletrap needle
+guns. A single feeble bullet at a time, and after you had fired it came
+the long, complicated business of reloading.
+
+And yet the war accounted for well over a hundred thousand French and
+German dead.
+
+I wonder how many dead this war will ac count for? If only every fifth
+man is left on the field, and if another fifth comes home invalided ...
+what will its harvest amount to then?
+
+The whole of both countrysides are at this moment covered with soldiers
+lying flat, and all of them with their rifles at the ready, and all of
+them pointing the death-bearing barrels at one another, are perfecting
+themselves in the art of hitting the heart.
+
+But behind them the guns are swinging up. The gunners are jumping down
+and dragging the trail round. They are already aligned, and a thousand
+black mouths are gaping uncannily toward the heavens.
+
+We were once standing--we were in camp for musketry training at the
+time--and watching a battery firing with live ammunition. They had
+unlimbered and were ready to fire. The officers were peering into the
+distance through their field-glasses. The targets were not as yet in
+sight. We were all gazing intently toward the firing zone, where at any
+moment something might come into view.... There! Away over there. In the
+distance. Something is moving!
+
+A shout of command.
+
+The subaltern points to the moving target with his right hand. He shouts
+out the range. The gunners take aim, and:
+
+"Ready! No. I gun. Fire!"
+
+The missile is already a-wing, and for the space of a moment we feel the
+iron messenger flitting past. The air is a-hum. Boom--and a thousand
+yards in front of us the shell has exploded above the cavalry riding to
+the attack, and has spattered its rain of lead over the blue targets.
+And then Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
+
+The next target was about a mile away, and the new range quickly found.
+Again the strange missile sped away and covered its measured course. It
+was a thing to marvel at, to see how it checked in the air of its own
+volition and burst. It seemed as though each one of these iron cylinders
+had a brain--as if it were endowed with life and consciousness--so
+certainly did it find its billet.
+
+And when the battery had ceased firing and had limbered up, and the
+danger cone had been pulled down, we went out into the field of fire.
+There the linked targets under fire were lying. They had been struck
+down by the shrapnel--all, the whole line. Head, body, limbs;--we did
+not find a single figure there that had not been drilled through and
+through. We stood and marvelled at the accuracy of it, and with a silent
+shudder thought of targets other than contraptions of laths and canvas.
+
+Wonder whether they have engines of such perfect precision on the other
+side?
+
+How the experts have, day in, day out, been inventing and constructing
+new marvels of mechanism. The mechanical side of war has been raised to
+a high standard of genius and a fine art. Two hundred and forty bullets
+and more to the minute! What a marvel of mechanism one of those
+machine-guns is. You set it buzzing, and it spurts out bullets thicker
+than rain can fall. And the automaton licks its lips hungrily and sweeps
+from right to left. It is pointed on the middle of the body, and sprays
+the whole firing-line with one sweep. It is as though Death had scrapped
+his scythe for old iron; as if nowadays he had graduated as expert
+mechanic. They have ceased to mow corn by hand nowadays. By this time of
+day even the sheaves are gathered up by machinery. And so they will have
+to shovel our millions of bodies underground with burying machines.
+
+Curse! I cannot get rid of this hideous; thought. It is always cropping
+up again. We have passed on from retail to wholesale methods of
+business. In place of the loom at which you sat working with your own
+hands, they have now set the great power-looms in motion. Once it was a
+knightly death, an honorable soldier's death; now it is death by
+machinery.
+
+That is what is sticking in my gullet. We are being hustled from life to
+death by experts--by mechanicians. And just as they turn out buttons
+and pins by wholesale methods of production, so they are now turning out
+the crippled and the dead by machinery. Why do I, all of a sudden, begin
+to shudder? I feel as if it had suddenly become clear as daylight that
+this is madness--blood-red madness lowering for us there.
+
+Curse! I must not go on brooding over it any longer, or it will drive me
+mad. Your rifle at the ready! The enemy is facing you! Has that ceased
+to be a case of man to man? What does it matter even if the bullet finds
+its billet more surely? Aim steadily--straight for the chest.... Who is
+it really facing me? The man I am now going to shoot dead! An enemy?
+What is an enemy?
+
+And again I see myself on that glorious morning of my holidays, at a
+French railway station, and again I am gazing curiously out of the
+window. A foreign country and a stranger-people. The moment for
+departure has come. The station-master is just giving the signal. Then a
+little old woman extends her trembling hand to the window, and a fine
+young fellow in our carriage takes the wrinkled hand and strokes it,
+until the old woman's tears course down her motherly cheeks. Not a word
+does she speak. She only looks at her boy, and the lad gazes down on his
+mother. Then it flashes upon me like a revelation. Foreigners can shed
+tears. Why, that is just the same thing it is with us. They weep when
+they take leave of one another. They love one another and feel grief....
+And as the train rolled out of the station, I kept on looking out of the
+window and seeing the old woman standing on the platform so desolately,
+and gazing after the train without stirring. I could not help thinking
+of my own mother. It was I myself who was saying good-by there, and on
+the platform yonder my poor old mother was in tears.
+Pocket-handkerchiefs were floating in the breeze. They were waving their
+hands, and I waved mine too; for I, too, was one who belonged to her....
+
+And again I put my rifle to my shoulder, and take aim for the centre of
+the target.
+
+I will not go on torturing myself with these thoughts.
+
+The target seems to have been moved nearer to me.
+
+Of a sudden it seems to me as if the blue-painted figure had stepped out
+of its white square. I gape at it. I distinctly see a face in front of
+me. I have got my finger on the trigger, and feel the tension of the
+pressure. Why don't I pull it through? My finger is trembling.... Now,
+now, I recognize the face. That is the young fellow at Nancy who was
+saying good-by to his mother....
+
+Then the spring gives, and the great horror masters me, for I have fired
+straight into a living face. Murderer! Murderer! You have shot the only
+son of his mother dead. Thou art thy brother's murderer....
+
+I take a hold on myself. I pull myself together. A murderer?
+
+Folly! A spook!
+
+You are a soldier.
+
+Soldiers cease to be human beings. The Fatherland is at stake.
+
+And without turning a hair I take aim at the enemy. If you miss him he
+will get you.
+
+"Got him! In the middle of the chest."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN
+
+
+We rejoined the Colors on Friday. On Monday we are to move out. Today,
+being Sunday, is full-dress Church Parade.
+
+I slept badly last night, and am feeling uneasy and limp.
+
+And now we are sitting close-packed in church.
+
+The organ is playing a voluntary.
+
+I am leaning back and straining my ears for the sounds in the dim
+twilight of the building. Childhood's days rise before my eyes again. I
+am watching a little solemn-faced boy sitting crouched in a corner and
+listening to the divine service. The priest is standing in front of the
+altar, and is intoning the Exhortation devoutly. The choir in the
+gallery is chanting the responses. The organ thunders out and floods
+through the building majestically. I am rapt in an ecstasy of sweet
+terror, for the Lord God is coming down upon us. He is standing before
+me and touching my body, so that I have to close my eyes in a terror of
+shuddering ecstasy....
+
+That is long, long ago, and is all past and done with, as youth itself
+is past and done with....
+
+Strange! After all these years of doubt and unbelief, at this moment of
+lucid consciousness, the atmosphere of devoutness, long since dead,
+possesses me, and thrills me so passionately that I can hardly resist
+it. This is the same heavy twilight--these are the same yearning angel
+voices--the same fearful sense of rapture----
+
+I pull myself together, and sit bolt upright on the hard wooden pew.
+
+In the main and the side aisles below, and in the galleries above,
+nothing but soldiers in uniform, and all, with level faces, turned
+toward the altar, toward that pale man in his long dignified black
+gown, toward that sonorous, unctuous mouth, from whose lips flows the
+name of God.
+
+Look! He is now stretching forth his hands. We incline our heads. He is
+pronouncing the Benediction over us in a voice that echoes from the
+tomb. He is blessing us in the name of God, the Merciful. He is blessing
+our rifles that they may not fail us; he is blessing the wire-drawn guns
+on their patent recoilless carriages; he is blessing every precious
+cartridge, lest a single bullet be wasted, lest any pass idly through
+the air; that each one may account for a hundred human beings, may
+shatter a hundred human beings simultaneously.
+
+Father in Heaven! Thou art gazing down at us in such terrible silence.
+Dost Thou shudder at these sons of men? Thou poor and slight God! Thou
+couldst only rain Thy paltry pitch and sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah.
+But we, Thy children, whom Thou hast created, we are going to
+exterminate them by high-pressure machinery, and butcher whole cities in
+factories. Here we stand, and while we stretch our hands to Thy Son in
+prayer, and cry Hosannah! we are hurling shells and shrapnel in the face
+of Thy Image, and shooting the Son of Man down from His Cross like a
+target at the rifle-butts.
+
+And now the Holy Communion is being celebrated. The organ is playing
+mysteriously from afar off, and the flesh and blood of the Redeemer is
+mingling with our flesh and blood.
+
+There He is hanging on the Cross above me, and gazing down upon me.
+
+How pale these cheeks look! And these eyes are the eyes as of one dead!
+Who was this Christ Who is to aid us, and Whose blood we drink? What was
+it they once taught us at school? Didst Thou not love mankind? And didst
+Thou not die for the whole human race? Stretch out Thine arms toward me.
+There is something I would fain ask of Thee.... Ah! they have nailed
+Thy arms to the Cross, so that Thou canst not stretch out a finger
+toward us.
+
+Shuddering, I fix my eyes on the corpse-like face and see that He has
+died long ago, that He is nothing more than wood, nothing other than a
+puppet. Christ, it is no longer Thee to whom we pray. Look there! Look
+there! It is he. The new patron saint of a Christian State! Look there!
+It is he, the great Djengis Khan. Of him we know that he swept through
+the history of the world with fire and sword, and piled up pyramids of
+skulls. Yes, that is he. Let us heap up mountains of human heads, and
+pile up heaps of human entrails. Great Djengis Khan! Thou, our patron
+saint! Do thou bless us! Pray to thy blood-drenched father seated above
+the skies of Asia, that he may sweep with us through the clouds; that he
+may strike down that accursed nation till it writhes in its blood, till
+it never can rise again. A red mist swims before my eyes. Of a sudden I
+see nothing but blood before me. The heavens have opened, and the red
+flood pours in through the windows. Blood wells up on the altar. The
+walls run blood from the ceiling to the floor, and--God the Father steps
+out of the blood. Every scale of his skin stands erect, his beard and
+hair drip blood. A giant of blood stands before me. He seats himself
+backward on the altar, and is laughing from thick, coarse lips--there
+sits the King of Dahomey and butchers his slaves. The black executioner
+raises his sword and whirls it above my head. Another moment and my head
+will roll down on the floor--another moment and the red jet will spurt
+from my neck ... Murderers, Murderers! None other than Murderers! Lord
+God in Heaven!
+
+Then--
+
+the creaking--
+
+Light, air, the blue of heaven, burst in.
+
+I draw a breath of relief. We have risen to our feet, and at length
+pass out of the twilight into the open air.
+
+My knees are still trembling under me.
+
+We fall into line, and in our hob-nailed boots tramp in step down the
+street toward the barracks. When I see my mates marching beside me in
+their matter-of-fact and stolid way, I feel ashamed, and call myself a
+wretched coward. What a weak-nerved, hysterical breed, that can no
+longer look at blood without fainting! You neurasthenic offspring of
+your sturdy peasant forbears, who shouted for joy when they went out to
+fight!
+
+I pull myself together and throw my head back.
+
+I never was a coward, and eye for eye I have always looked my man in the
+face, and will do so this time, too, happen what may.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LAST NIGHT
+
+
+I am lying in bed, and counting a hundred slowly. It must be close on
+midnight now, and I am still unable to get to sleep.
+
+The room resounds to the noise of snoring. They are lying to the right
+and left of me, and if I turn over on my back, I am staring up at the
+wooden planking of a bed. For the cots extend all along the wall from
+door to window, one above the other, and in every cot a soldier is lying
+asleep.
+
+Now and again one or other tosses about, and rolls heavily over to the
+other side.
+
+Further away, near the window, some one is mumbling in his sleep.
+Suddenly he shouts out aloud: "And that wasn't me. I ain't touched a bit
+of the wire. D'you take me for a thief?"
+
+It sounds exactly as if he were wide-awake. I am on the point of
+speaking to him. Then all is silence again, and I lie listening
+intently for what is going to happen next. But he keeps quiet, and goes
+on dreaming. He is still in the midst of his workshop; yet tomorrow he
+is going to be carted out to war.
+
+And nothing but sleeping and snoring men all round me.
+
+Wonder if any one else in barracks is lying wide-eyed and staring into
+the future?
+
+My thoughts flit homeward. Wonder whether she slept well to-night?
+Wonder if she has chanced to be thinking of me? Wonder how the little
+chap is getting on? His teeth were giving him trouble.... It is not good
+to marry so young; the unmarried men who are called out now are better
+off. Wonder whether the war will last long? We have put by a little
+nest-egg. But what's the good of that in these times of famine prices?
+The allowance for wife and children is so small that it won't even cover
+rent. Where's she to turn for money when the post-office savings book
+is finished? She will have to go out sewing. But what's to happen when
+hundreds of thousands of others have to go out sewing too? Well, then
+she will have to start a little business, open a greengrocer's shop. But
+what's to happen when hundreds of thousands of others have to start a
+shop?
+
+The State is taking charge of your wives and children, that's what it
+said in the regimental orders yesterday. Well, there is no use in
+imagining the very worst at the start. The war may be over quickly.
+Perhaps it will never get as far as big battles. Perhaps they will think
+better of it, and give way yet.
+
+And then my mind feels at ease again. In spirit I see myself back again
+at my office-desk and writing invoices. A glance at the clock--it's
+close on the hour--only a few more strokes of the pen. So let's finish
+up quickly. Let's hang up our office coat on the nail and slip into
+another. And then get out into the street, for Dora must be waiting
+supper.
+
+By this time we have already reached the bridge by the Town Hall, with
+the two big triple lamps.... Who is standing there by the railing of the
+bridge, and gazing down into the canal so motionlessly? It's a woman.
+She must have run straight out of the kitchen, for her apron-strings are
+hanging to the ground behind her anyhow. And all of a sudden her
+red-striped skirt strikes me as so familiar, and as I pass behind her
+she turns round without a word, and looks at me wild-eyed.
+
+"Dora, is that you?"
+
+Then she bows her face, streaming with tears, and says dully to herself:
+
+"They have shot my husband dead."
+
+"But, Dora," I shout to her anxiously--for it suddenly flashes upon me
+that she is ill--"why, here I am! Don't you know me any more?"
+
+But she shakes her head, and turns away from me comfortless, and passes
+me by like a stranger.
+
+"Dora!" I shout aloud, "Dora!" and stretch out my arms toward the
+vanishing figure. A sob chokes my throat....
+
+Then I start, and am sitting up in bed, resting on my elbow. Through the
+window sounds the long-drawn reveille. Dawn is peeping through the
+panes.
+
+So I did nod off after all, and I did not have a pleasant dream. But I
+have no time to be grumpy over it, for footsteps are ringing along the
+corridor. Hobnail boots clatter across the floor. The door is flung
+open.
+
+"Turn out!" a cheery voice shouts in.
+
+It is the sergeant on duty. By this time he has already reached the next
+door. And sleepy figures are rising from their cots, yawning and
+stretching their arms; are turning out and slipping, shivering with
+cold, into their clothes. Yawning, they stretch their limbs and flap
+their arms until the second more welcome morning signal, "Breakfast
+rations," lends life and animation to fasting men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE DEPARTURE
+
+
+We are already drawn up in the barrack-yard in service kit. We have
+stacked our rifles and have fallen out. No one thinks of kit inspection
+or anything of that kind today. Everything is now being pushed on at
+racing pace.
+
+"Fall in!"
+
+"Stand by your packs!"
+
+How heavy the full knapsack weighs in one's hands, and yet as soon as it
+is settled in the small of your back you do not notice it so very much.
+
+"Stand by arms!"
+
+"Slope arms!"
+
+As if we were marching out for parade, the Captain's orders sound as
+crisp as that. We shoulder arms as smartly as if we were moving out on
+parade.
+
+"Form sections! Right about turn! Quick march!"
+
+And we swing round smartly in four at the command.
+
+"Fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth company!" shouts the Major, who has
+pulled up in the middle of the yard.
+
+We are the eighth company, and are following on the heels of the
+seventh. The gates of the barrack-yard are open. We are marching out.
+Our legs mark time on the pavement of the street in the goose-step of
+grand parade.
+
+"March at ease!"
+
+And the muscles of our legs relax and advance at more natural gait.
+
+The streets are full of people. They are lining the pavement on both
+sides and watching us march past. Though it is still quite an early hour
+of the morning, yet the whole town is up and about. They weren't able to
+stay abed. They wanted to see the soldiers march out.
+
+And they welcome us with their eyes and wave their hands to us.
+
+A fifteen-year-old lad is running along beside us. His brother is
+marching in our file.
+
+"Mother sends you her love; she says she is feeling better again--but
+she wasn't well enough to get up yet, else she'd have come with me this
+morning--but I was to give you this from her."
+
+And the lad stretches his open hand out to his brother, and tries to
+hand him something wrapped up in paper--money! But the elder brother
+waves it aside.
+
+"Put it away. Tell her I said she was to spend it on herself, and to
+look after herself properly, and be well and fit when we come back
+again."
+
+Reluctantly the lad puts the money in his pocket.
+
+A little ahead of us a young woman is tripping alongside. We have set a
+pretty smart pace, and she has to break into a run to keep up. But
+though her feet may stumble over the uneven pavement she never turns her
+eyes from her husband. What they may have to say to each other at the
+very last moment we can't catch. But we catch the expression of her
+face, and her comically touching devotion.
+
+And now the crowds accompanying their soldiers through the streets
+become denser and denser. A few folk who are seeing members of their
+family off are running beside every section. White-haired fathers and
+mothers, with anxious looks, sisters, sweethearts, wives.
+
+There is one among them of whom you can tell at a glance that she is
+about to become a mother. Well, she will be brought to bed lonely and
+desolate.
+
+The man marching on my right, a taciturn yokel, who until now has been
+staring gloomily straight ahead of him, half turns to me.
+
+"How many kids are there under way that'll never come to see their
+dads?"
+
+And then he thaws, and begins to talk about his brother, who had to
+leave with the Army Service Corps two days before, and he was called on
+the Colors the very same day his wife was brought to bed, so that he had
+to leave her before she was out of the wood.
+
+"Almost make you think us wasn't human beings."
+
+The drums and fifes strike up briskly, and play a merry march.
+
+Some one or other, somewhere in the crowd, sets up a loud, crowing sort
+of cheer.
+
+"Hip! hip! hooray!"
+
+And the others join in. It spreads all down the whole length of the
+street, and does not die down again. But it leaves my yokel unmoved.
+
+"What's the good of that how-d'ye-do? Folks are fair crazed. There is no
+sense in it."
+
+I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He is impenetrably rapt in
+his own gloomy reflections. Then he begins again.
+
+"Ah've left a wife and three kids to home. They're to get a few pence a
+day, the lot, and nought more. And that's what four people have got to
+live on."
+
+Some one tries to cheer him up.
+
+"Then some one else'll turn up who'll look after 'em!"
+
+"What others?" comes the answer in a deep growl. "They'll have their
+hands full looking after theirselves. By the time I get home they'll
+have kicked the bucket, the whole lot of 'em. The best thing'd be never
+to come home no more."
+
+Then the big drum breaks into his com-plaint. A dull reverberating
+throb. It is to usher in the regimental band, and orders the drums and
+the fifes to desist.
+
+And then again, deep and monitory.
+
+Boom!
+
+The pipers begin to play the regimental march.
+
+And now--the regimental band strikes up. You may kick against it as you
+will. The martial strain infects the excited streets, trumpets back from
+a wall of houses, stirs the blood so joyously, and exorcises the
+spectres of the night from your brain. Your muscles stiffen, you throw
+your head up, and your legs strut along proudly to keep step and time.
+And the rhythm of step and time infects the whole crowd. The effect on
+the crowd is electric. They are waving their hands from the pavements;
+they are waving their hands from the windows; they are waving their
+hands from the balconies. The air is white with pocket-handkerchiefs.
+And now some one in front begins to sing. They are shouting and singing
+against one another. The tune gains strength until it has fought its way
+through, and swirls above our heads like the wind before a storm.
+
+The National Anthem!
+
+The whole street is taking it up.
+
+The regimental band has capitulated to the song that carries every one
+away with it. And then it solemnly joins in.
+
+The crowds bare their heads. We can see nothing except glowing faces,
+figures marching under a spell, a nation afire and kindled to
+enthusiasm.
+
+We march through the town singing ecstatically until we reach the
+station, until we at length come to a standstill on the platform
+reserved for us. The train is already standing there.
+
+The bridge, beyond, leading over the rails is black with people shouting
+and waving down to us.
+
+We are already told off.
+
+Eight men to the compartment.
+
+"Tara, tata!" The bugle calls us to entrain, and the doors are thrown
+open. We have scarcely stacked our packs and rifles, and donned our caps
+when the engine starts, and amid thunderous cheers we slide out of the
+station, and leave behind us a distant, fading roar, a dying hum--the
+town shouting her last farewell to her soldiers.
+
+We make ourselves comfortable. We are sitting and smoking our pipes.
+Three, unable to change all at once, have already started a game of
+cards. Two more are sitting in the corner and putting their heads
+together. The yokel is by himself, and shows no interest in anything.
+
+I am looking out of the window, watching the landscape fly past my eyes.
+The rejoicings are still hot in my blood. I have lived to see a great
+day. Wherever the bulk of the people rises above the dust of every day
+it becomes irresistible, and carries away with it even the man who would
+fain stand aloof, and keep his head cool.
+
+And we hurry past forests and rivers, past meadows whose extent I cannot
+see, past hills that fade away into the blue of distance, past an
+immeasurably rich country that stands golden in its ears of corn.
+
+And over it all shines the sun of one's native land.
+
+And I would fain spread out my arms.
+
+Yes, our native land is fair and great, and worthy that a man should
+shed his blood for it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+LIKE THE PROMISE OF MAY
+
+
+We have turned off the main road, and have to march over a field of
+stubble. A battle was fought here yesterday, for the field is sown with
+dead bodies. They have picked up the wounded. But as yet they have had
+no time to bury those who died where they fell.
+
+The first dead man we saw struck us dumb. At first we hardly realized
+what it meant--this lifeless new uniform spread out there--from the way
+he was lying you could hardly believe he was really dead. It gave you a
+prickly feeling on the tongue. It seemed as if you were on manoeuvres,
+and the fellow lying there in a ditch had got a touch of the sun. A
+rough soldierly jest, a cheery shout was all that was wanted to raise
+him to his ramshackle legs.
+
+"Hullo, you! Got a head? Keep a stiff neck."
+
+But the words froze in our throat, for an icy breath was wafted to us
+from the dead man, and a chill hand clutched at our terror-stricken
+hearts.
+
+So that was Death! We knew all about it now. That is what it looks like,
+and we turned our heads back and shuddered.
+
+But then there came more and more of them.
+
+And by this time we have become accustomed to them.
+
+Strange! I gaze at these silent faces that seem to laugh at us, at these
+wounds that seem to mouth at us fantastically, as if they had I nothing
+to do with me. It strikes me all as so remote, so indifferent. As if all
+these dead bodies were lying in glass cases, as if I were in an
+anatomical museum, and were staring with dispassionately curious eyes at
+some scientific exhibits.
+
+Sometimes no wounds at all are visible. The bullets have passed through
+the uniforms somewhere, and have gone clean through the softer parts of
+the bodies.
+
+They have grown rigid in death in grotesque postures as if Death had
+been trying to pose figures here. There are certain schemes of Death
+that are always recurring. Hands out-stretched--fingers clawing the
+grass--fallen forward on to the face--that fellow over there lying on
+his back is holding his hand pressed tight against his abdomen, as if he
+were trying to staunch the wound.
+
+In the country I was once watching them killing sheep. There a beast
+lay, and was waiting for the butcher, and as the short knife cut through
+its windpipe and jugular vein, and the blood leaped hot from its neck, I
+could see nothing but the big eye, how it enlarged in its head to a
+fearsome stare, until at last it turned to a dull glass.
+
+All the bodies lying about here, as if bleating up to heaven, have got
+these glazed eyes, they are lying as if they were outstretched in the
+abattoir. Well, to be hit and to fall down dead, there's nothing to make
+a fuss about that! But to be shot through the chest, to be shot through
+the belly, to burn for hours in the fever of your wounds, to cool your
+mangled body in the wet grass, and to stare up into the pitiless blue
+heavens because your accursed eyes go on refusing to glaze over yet----
+
+I turn away from them. I force myself to look past these mocking,
+grotesque _posés plastiques_ of Death.
+
+And I am already spirited far away, and am sitting in my little study at
+home. My coffee cup is standing snugly to my hand. My book-case is
+beaming down on me. My well-loved books invite me, and in front of me my
+book of books, "Faust," lies open. And so I read, and feel the wonderful
+relaxation that comes after work stealing through my longing blood.
+
+The door opens. A little girl, and a boy who has just learned the use of
+his legs, put their noses in at the door.
+
+"Daddy, may we?"
+
+I nod consent. Then they spread out their little arms, and rush at me.
+
+"Daddy!"
+
+They are climbing on to my knees now, and I give them a ride--"this is
+how we ride to war."
+
+But they twine their soft arms round my neck until at length I put them
+down on the floor: "Now go to Mummy--"
+
+And now----
+
+A new picture. How very plainly I see it. We have gone out of a Sunday
+afternoon beyond the suburbs, gone out with bag and baggage. I see the
+green fields bright and fair, and see the two kiddies bright and fair.
+They are rolling about in the grass and chasing the butterflies, and
+laughing up at me, and crowing with delight as they run after the ball I
+have thrown down for them to play with. And the sky stretches above us
+in its Sabbath blue, and so confidently as if it all could never come to
+an end. And Dora smiles at me with quiet eyes.
+
+Then I come back with a start--I feel my knapsack chafing my back--I
+feel my rifle--I see the dead at my feet again--
+
+My God! how can these things be? How can these two worlds be so terribly
+close to each other?...
+
+And we pass on through this first spring crop of dead bodies. No one
+says a word. No one has a joke. How surreptitiously the others glance
+aside when some corpse, all too grotesquely mangled, meets their eyes.
+
+I wonder what is passing through their brains?
+
+Working men, tradesmen, artisans, and agricultural laborers, that's what
+they are for the most part. They themselves have as yet never smelled
+powder, nor ever been under fire. That, I suppose, is the reason why
+they have suddenly become so dumb.
+
+Then a voice beside me says something abruptly, and it seems as if the
+voice rebounded hollow from the silence.
+
+"The stuff is laying about here same as muck."
+
+That was my yokel beside me. Then he, too, relapses into silence, and I
+feel as if I could read behind their shy eyes, as if all that is going
+on in these dull brains had suddenly become clear as daylight.
+
+They're all drawn from that other world, where Life kissed us and
+cozened caressingly round our bodies. You have brought us up as human
+beings. That we have been human no longer counts. Life and love no
+longer count; flesh and blood no longer count; only gore and corpses
+count for anything now. How we used to tremble in that other world, when
+a naked human life was even in danger. How we rushed into the burning
+house to drive away the death for which some poor old paralyzed woman
+craved. How we plunged into the wintry river to snatch a starved beggar
+brat from the quiet waters. We would not even suffer a man to creep away
+out of Life by stealth while we looked on. We cut down suicides at
+their last sob, and hustled them back into life. Of our mercy we set up
+half-rotted wastrels with new bodies; with pills, elixirs and medicines,
+with herbalists, professors and surgeons, with cauteries, amputations
+and electrotherapy, we fanned the flickering life and fed the sunken
+flame with oxygen and radium and all the elements. There was nothing
+greater, nothing more sacred than Life. Life was everything to us, was
+for us the most precious possession on earth.
+
+And here lies that most precious of possessions--here it is lying wasted
+and used up--spurned as the dust by the roadside--and we are marching
+along over it as over dust and stones.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+BLOOD AND IRON
+
+
+The whole of that morning we had been marching in the eye of the sun
+without coming across a drop of water, for the country was not well
+watered, and there had been no rain for weeks. Our tongues were parched;
+our throats were burning. When about midday we passed through a
+farmyard, where we found a last remaining drop of dirty liquid, it
+seemed as if the water evaporated on the tongue before it ever reached
+our throats. Then we had been marched on interminably, so that it was
+almost with a sense of relief that we heard the first sound of the guns
+rolling up to meet us.
+
+The firing grew hotter, and we soon left the main road and turned down a
+lane. We were pushed on at a smart pace. Our faces were glowing from
+thirst and heat. The column was enveloped in a thick cloud of dust. The
+taste of dust instead of water was on our tongues. The dust was lying
+thick as a layer of flour on our cheeks.
+
+And we hurried on without a word. A quickset hedge barred the view on
+either side. Nothing but heavy footfalls, walking packs, black,
+clattering pannikins, rifles at the slope--hustle and dust.... Then
+some one blundered over a stone in his way, and looked as if he were
+going to fall into the back of the man in front of him ... but no shout
+of laughter greets it--we are pushing on almost at the double--at times,
+when a gap in the hedge slips past, we can catch glimpses of the line of
+skirmishers advancing over open country--now at length comes a check....
+Halt! Order arms! ... and I am scrambling through a gap in the hedge on
+to the open fields ... open order at five paces distance.... The
+long-drawn line of skirmishers advances, rifles at the ready ... in
+front of us nothing but green fields in sight. In the heart of them
+gleams the crude yellow of a field of mustard. Ahead of us, just
+opposite our front, a dark wood ... not a trace of the enemy in sight.
+On our right they have already pushed on the advance line. On our left
+the skirmishers are just breaking through the hedge and opening out to
+extend our line of attack.
+
+The heavy noise in the air is incessant.
+
+I can't see where they are firing, and I can't see what they are firing
+at. The air is heavy with iron thunder. It closes like a ring round my
+chest. I am distinctly conscious that my chest is reverberating like a
+tense sounding-board----
+
+What on earth is that?
+
+A sound like the cracking of whips from somewhere or other ... the sound
+is so sharp, so distant, so intermittent, as if it were coming from the
+rifle-range....
+
+Then--by my side a man falls down, falls on his rifle, and lies still,
+never stirs again ... shot through the head, clean through the brain
+... that's what the cracking of whips means; it's coming from over
+there, out of the wood. Somewhere over there the enemy's sharpshooters
+are lying and lining its edge and opening fire on us.
+
+What's the next thing?
+
+Lie down--Mark distance--Cover!
+
+But no order comes. We push on toward the wood undeterred, as if these
+bullets did not concern us in any way. The sharpshooters' fire is not
+hot enough as yet; we have not, so far, got into sufficiently close
+touch with the enemy.
+
+It is an uncomfortable sensation to feel that over there muzzles are
+pointing straight at us. We are advancing almost as hurriedly and
+clumsily as 'rookies at their first field day.
+
+As I move forward, I turn my head and look back. Behind me I sec new
+lines of skirmishers advancing one behind the other--supports to be
+pushed forward later.
+
+What is that crawling along the ground behind our line?... there is one
+here, another over there--it looks so novel and so odd. They are
+crawling back out of the firing-line. And I see how one of them suddenly
+tries to rise, clutches his rifle with both hands, and hauls himself to
+his feet by his gun. And now he is spreading his arms out, tumbling over
+backwards, and flinging his hands away from him, far apart ... his hands
+are still flapping up and down on the grass. I am looking back as if
+fascinated while my legs keep on advancing.
+
+But suddenly something begins to set up a rattle over there in the wood
+and buzzes like huge alarum-clocks running down.
+
+"Lie down."
+
+And there we are lying down, flat on our stomachs, as if we had already
+been mown down, for every man of us knows what that was. They have
+masked machine-guns in the wood over there; they are opening fire on us.
+I feel how my heart is thumping against my ribs. A machine-gun is
+equivalent to a company, the Old Man once explained to us, after we had
+been shot down in heaps to the last man by the machine-guns in the
+autumn manoeuvres.
+
+What's the next thing?
+
+Cautiously, without raising it, I turn my head. Behind us, too, the
+lines of skirmishers, close up to us, have disappeared from the face of
+the earth; they too, have gone to cover in the grass. Only outside the
+firing zone are they still being pushed forward.
+
+Shall we have to retreat? Are we going to attack?
+
+Then the order to fire rings out, and is zealously passed on from unit
+to unit.
+
+"Rapid fire! Into the wood!"
+
+Yes, but what are we to fire at? Lying down, there is nothing to be seen
+of the sharpshooters. They won't do us any harm; in another minute they
+will have disappeared among the trees. But the machines--they have
+hidden them away among the foliage to good purpose.
+
+Our subaltern, lying a bare five paces away from me in the grass, raises
+himself on his elbows, and gazes intently through his field-glasses. I
+know what is vexing his soul. He is a handsome, splendid lad, for whom
+even we grizzled old-timers would go through fire and water, for he
+meets you as man to man, without sniffing or swagger, as it becomes a
+youngster. And the other day, when I was marching with the rear guard,
+we discussed Lilliencron's novels. Since then he has always appealed to
+me as if he had stepped straight out of one of these romances of war. He
+is all ablaze to glean his first laurels. But however much he may
+twiddle the focus of his glasses up and down and crane his neck, he
+cannot discover a trace of the enemy, and we blaze away foolishly at the
+wood, and may, for all I know, be bringing down leaves or birds from the
+trees there.
+
+"Close to the big oak. To the right in the undergrowth," some one of the
+rank and file sings out.
+
+I strain my eyes to the spot, and fail to see anything.
+
+And again I hear the guns growling all round us. But somewhere out of
+the far distance a clear, long-drawn bugle-call rings out amid the iron
+bass. It thrills like nerve and brain against an iron wall.
+
+Behind there, to the right--they are on the run there! And from afar the
+rifle fire rattles like mad.
+
+"My men! Up with you! At the double!"
+
+That came from our lot ... our subaltern is racing on with his drawn
+sword in his hand.... I am still prone, and have, almost automatically,
+drawn my right knee close up under my body ... they are rising to their
+feet to the left and right of me, and dashing on after him ... a wrench!
+and my knapsack slides lop-sided up the back of my neck ... then I jump
+up with my rifle in my right hand, and am running for all my legs are
+worth.
+
+But as we rise to our feet the machine-guns in the woods begin to buzz,
+and to rain lead into our ranks, until right and left of me men yelp and
+drop twisted and tumbled to the ground.
+
+"Down! Rapid fire!"
+
+The line is prone and again we are blazing desperately into the wood,
+and can catch no glimpse of our enemy. Never a single arm raised against
+us, never the eye of a single man to challenge us. The wood, the green
+wood, is murdering us from afar, before a single human face comes in
+view.
+
+And while to the right and left of me the rifle fire chatters
+incessantly, the grim mockery of it maddens my blood, and makes me see
+red before my eyes. I see scale-armor and visors ... high in their
+stirrups the knights burst blazing out of the wood, and I, a reckless
+horseman of the past, I leap into the saddle--my broad sword flashes
+clear and kisses the morning breeze--and now up and at them like a
+thunderbolt. Then eyes are flashing into mine and hands are raised for
+the _mêlée_--and stroke for stroke, breast to breast, the pride of
+youthful, virile strength.... Ha-ha-ha-ha! What has happened? Where have
+horse and rider vanished? Where is my sword? We are not even charging
+men. Machines are trained on us. Why, we are only charging machines. And
+the machine triumphs deep into our very flesh. And the machine is
+draining the life-blood from our veins, and lapping it up in bucketsful.
+Those who have been hit are already lying mown down in swathes behind us
+and are writhing on their wounds. And yet they are racing up behind us
+in their hundreds--young, healthy human flesh for the machines to
+butcher.
+
+"Up! Get on! At the double!"
+
+The gallant young subaltern dashes on ... he is waving his sword above
+his head recklessly ... a picture for a painter. I am rushing after him
+... his cheer in my ears ... then the gallant vision begins to sway ...
+the sword flies from his grasp--the subaltern stumbles and falls face
+forward in the short, stiff stubble ... then I race past him ... I can
+hear nothing except the uncanny buzz coming out of the wood ... I
+literally feel how the lead is splashing into our ranks, how men are
+breaking down to the right and left of me.... "Down! Rapid fire!" ... I
+throw myself on my face, my rifle at the ready.... Why does the order
+fail to reach us? No shout comes from the subaltern, none from the non
+corns.... the nearest man a good twenty paces away ... and then one
+other ... only we three....
+
+The first line is lying shot down in the stubble ... what's the next
+thing? The ground becomes alive behind us ... and clattering, panting
+and shouting ... and again the wood rumbles sullenly ... there they
+are, lying flat, breathing hard ... never a word ... rifle to the ready
+... and shot after shot ... those are the sixth and seventh companies
+... they have filled up our gaps.
+
+"Up, up! At the double!"
+
+The head is plunging on, the body after it, into the zone of bullets,
+and dashing forward with eyes fixed greedily on the ground to spy out
+the nearest molehill when we fling ourselves down. And when the excited
+"Down!" o'erleaps itself, we too tumble down as if we had been swept
+away. And look, it is advancing to meet us, that murderous wood.... "Up!
+At the double!" ... who can tell whether he has been hit or not?...
+behind there, out of the undergrowth--that's where it came from ...
+that's where the streak of bullets flashed ... there between the white
+larch trunks the beam of lead leaped out to meet us ... over there,
+behind that green wall, that's where Murder is sitting, and shooting our
+arms and legs away from our trunks. Slay her as she has slain us. Rend
+her to pieces, as she has rent us.
+
+"Up! At the double!"
+
+The body rages on in the whirl of the tempest--the wood, the wood!...
+the last muscle is still straining for the wood ... as if the soul had
+leaped free of the body, so the body chases after it--toward the wood
+... lungs perforated by shot are running still; entrails riddled by
+bullets are still pressing on toward it ... and if you are not hit in
+the head, you are still jumping up once more; and if you fall, you are
+crawling on all fours--toward the wood....
+
+What's happened?
+
+Of a sudden a deep stillness falls....
+
+The machines are silenced!
+
+Not a single shot, not a single spurt of flame ... there--a rustling
+rising amid the undergrowth ... the branches overhead are swaying
+frantically against each other. Look! something is scurrying among the
+trees, and pushing and hauling--now, to crown it all, they are trying
+to save their precious machines from us.
+
+Yah! yah! The earth reverberates dully and trembles under our tread ...
+a roar of cheers, clubbed rifles, that's how they are coming up behind
+us ... our reserves are driving the last assault home ... they are
+charging in dense mobs--sappers, sharpshooters, rifle-men ... a tall
+sapper jumps clean over me--I see how his eyes are flashing as he
+passes.... Up, after them ... there is the heather ... there is the
+entrenchment ... down with you into the trench and scramble up on hands
+and feet ... where are they? Where?--where?... there, by that belt of
+firs ... they will have disappeared in another minute--past thick,
+silvery tree-trunks, through the green beech leaves, with the sun
+laughing in them, the lust of blood charges red and naked ... headlong
+through the undergrowth--and now--there is something wriggling away so
+comically before our eyes, and twisting with sinuous dexterity in and
+out among the trees and the undergrowth ... there is something clinging
+to the machine as if it were ingrown into the iron.... Ha, ha!--in the
+clearing yonder the horses are waiting....
+
+"Let go! Run for what you are worth--let go!"
+
+But they won't let go ... for their horses are already ploughing through
+the undergrowth ... the wagon is straining to the traces ... in another
+minute they will have thrown their guns into the wagon ... and then
+so-long ... I am done--the trees are dancing round and round before my
+eyes ... I catch my foot in the root of a tree.... Lay on! Lay on! They
+are "ours" who have come up, and are laying on blindly on heads, and
+bayoneting bent backs and bared necks, till the whole tangle disperses
+squealing.... I drag myself to my feet. A lad, a mere boy, is sprawling
+over and clutching his abandoned gun ... with an oath some one dashes
+at him--it is my yokel bareheaded, his face distorted by rage ... the
+boy stretches out his mangled hand to ward him off, his lower jaw is
+waggling, but his mouth remains voiceless.... The next moment the fixed
+bayonet plunges into his chest ... first his right, then his shattered
+left hand seizes the blade as if in his death throes he were trying to
+pluck it out of his heart; so he clings tightly to the bayonet ... a
+thrust! a recovery!... a bright, leaping jet follows the steel ... and
+heart and breath gasp their last among the dead leaves....
+
+All round men are lying slain on the brown carpet of the woods....
+
+But the machines are still alive, and rage against the machines fires
+the blood, and consumes the flesh.... Up with the trenching tools!...
+with axes upraised they rush at the machines, and hail blows upon the
+barrels. The retorts wherein Death has brewed his potion shriek as
+though wounded ... the jackets burst ... the water flows out ... and the
+carriage leaps splintered into the air ... twisted metal, the spokes of
+wheels and cartridge-belts litter the ground all round, but we are
+battering and smashing everything underfoot until our hot blood has
+cooled its rage on the metal....
+
+And now amid joyous cheers raise the thunderous shout of Victory. Let
+the pipes and the bugles ring out. This is Death on the stricken field!
+This is a soldier's frenzy and the joy of battle: to charge with bared
+breast against planted steel--to dash cheering with soft, uncased brain
+against a wall of steel. In such wholesale, callous, purposeful fashion
+vermin only are exterminated. We count for nothing more than vermin in
+this war.
+
+And dazed and sick, we gaze at the machines, and the steel and iron
+littering the ground blink up at us full of guile.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SWAMP
+
+
+For the whole of the forenoon we had heard firing in the distance, the
+thunder of cannon and the rattle of musketry. Our regiment had been
+marched hither and thither. The fight had drawn nearer and nearer. We
+were expecting to be under fire at any moment, and then we had to fall
+back again, and look for a new place to develop our attack. It seemed as
+if the orders that came through were contradictory, and this tension of
+uncertainty fell like a blight on our spirits, and got on the nerves
+both of officers and men. At length we had wound through a defile, the
+steep slopes of which, left and right, were thickly grown with trees.
+Things had got into a bit of a mess. We had had to force our way through
+undergrowth soaked with rain, through brambles and clumps of tall broom
+on which the green pods were still pendent. At times there was nothing
+in sight except the roof and wall of greenery.
+
+We breathed more freely when at last the sky spread clear overhead
+again.
+
+So now we have reached a green meadow, and are marching straight across
+it, but are still unable to see anything of the enemy's forces yet. Even
+the firing has died down, and has become more distant than before. It
+seemed as if we had come into another, remoter world, and--so we have;
+for soon we notice how soft the ground has become under our feet, how
+water is oozing up at every step. We shall, if we go on, be right in the
+middle of a swamp.
+
+That is the reason of the solitude reigning all around us.
+
+The terrain is impracticable.
+
+To the right and left of us, and all about us, nothing but swamp,
+running out into a broad sheet of open water, the depths of which no
+one can guess, or tell whether it be fordable.
+
+The head of the column is already swinging round and we are retracing
+our steps toward the defile to get out of the rat-trap.
+
+And in the middle of the meadow:
+
+"Halt! Form sections!"
+
+The companies have fallen in. The officers have assembled, and are
+pow-wowing. We seem to have lost touch. The sergeant beside me is
+swearing up his sleeve, and is cursing at something about lunacy and
+blindman's buff. I am gazing up meditatively at the heights, overgrown
+with trees and undergrowth, and am thinking what fun it would be if we
+were to have to make our way back to the defile now, and in the thick of
+it the enemy were to break in on us right and left--no man would come
+out of it alive--the battle of the Teutoburger Forest recurs to me--I am
+trying to, make out if they are oaks or beeches over there----Of a
+sudden there is a flash of lightning from the undergrowth; the very
+firmament cracks and sways as if it were going to fall in on us....
+
+"Lie down!" Horror screams somewhere or other.
+
+And trembling, we lie down ... and over our heads rushes something that
+howls for our flesh.... What's the next thing? Up and at them now! Rush
+straight at the guns. Suffocate their fiery mouths with our flesh and
+bones.
+
+"Up! Get up!"
+
+The captain comes up to us at a run. The breath of the iron holds us
+tight pressed to the ground as if in a vice....
+
+Turn your head away.
+
+Now!
+
+Now!
+
+Then--A-a-h!
+
+The vault of Heaven has cracked above us, and has spurted down on to the
+sand from above. Life is lying there, wriggling on the earth, and the
+hands that were clawing the ground are now clutching idly at the
+shattered air. I rise to my feet again.... I have not been hit. But the
+man who leaped up beside me--he is lying flat in the sand and screaming
+in a broken voice. He is lying as if he had been nailed firmly through
+his stomach to the earth, and as if he could not get free again. The
+body itself is dead, only the arms and legs are still alive. And arms
+and legs are working wildly through the air.
+
+"Up! Get up! Quick march!" a voice yells in our ears. We no longer know
+who it is shouting to us, and we don't know from what quarter they have
+called us.... We leap to our feet. We leave the captain and the wounded
+in their blood; we start up and run away, and are running a race with
+the shells, for we are running for our bare, naked life. But the shells
+have the legs of us. They catch us up from behind in our backs, and
+wherever the invisible sheaf plunges hissing down, men are falling with
+it and rolling, helter-skelter in their blood. But we speed away over
+twitching and dismembered bodies, and over bodies turning somersaults,
+and look neither to the right nor to the left. We are on the run, and
+shrink into ourselves as we run. We draw our necks deep between our
+shoulders, for every man feels that the next moment his head will be
+leaping out from between his shoulder-blades from behind.
+
+And eyes of iron are glaring at us from behind. The swamp! The swamp!
+The thought suddenly uprears its head in me. We are running blindly
+straight into the swamp. Only another twenty paces now--already the
+foremost have reached it, and, senseless in their terror, jump into
+it--the water spurts up high--and now--what has happened now? Their
+feet are stuck fast--they tilt over forwards--they claw for something to
+hold on to--the rifle flies out of their hand--and face forward they
+plunge into the water--and close on our heels they come stamping
+up--the tight-packed, maddened mob....
+
+"Back! Get back!"
+
+But every one has ceased to be conscious of what he is doing. And though
+our eyes start out of our head at the terror we see in front of us,
+Death is breathing its cold breath into the back of our neck.
+
+And into the gurgling water, wriggling with bodies and alive with lungs,
+over human bodies writhing beneath the water, Death tramples us to the
+other bank. Any man who goes down is lost, for they are pressing on
+behind us past all holding. The water is already up to our armpits. But
+there is a firm bottom beneath our feet. True, the bottom may clutch at
+us, and cling round our feet. True, the water may bite savagely at our
+flesh with teeth and with nails. But whatever may be trying to draw us
+down to itself from below, we trample underfoot. The shoulders of a form
+emerge; they plunge down again, and disappear. The faces of drowning
+men emerge and cleave to the light, and sink gurgling into the depths.
+Lost arms wave about in the air and try to find support on the surface
+of the water. We dodge these arms, for whomever they may seize they draw
+down with them to Death.
+
+And in the thick of this hurly-burly of Death, amid these whistling
+lungs, amid these panting, red, panic-stricken faces, the cloud of
+shells strikes home, and hurls its hail of iron overhead. The water
+spurts up in jets.
+
+And again!
+
+Explosions and screams, and the hissing of lead, and the shrieks of men,
+and blood and water foam up, till no one knows whether he has been hit
+or is still alive; for in front of me--so close that I could clutch
+it--I see a jugular vein, ripped through, spurting in an arch like a
+fountain--and in his blood the fellow hit staggers back, and blood and
+howls surfeit the black flood, until it is at length reddened with human
+blood--Get on! get on! Don't look round! There--the other bank over
+there! There Life is standing and spreading out his arms toward us. Get
+on! Before they have murdered all of us in this swamp! Get up! Get up!
+Thank God! The water's falling! Only up to the hips now--only up to the
+knees.
+
+And now----
+
+Our feet leap on to the dry, blessed land and strike forward beyond all
+control, and race over the field. They refuse to obey any orders. They
+are racing--racing toward the protection of the forest beckoning us of
+its mercy.
+
+There! Headlong in among the trees, and into the bushes, into the
+thorns. There they are falling lifeless to the ground, their faces
+buried in the soil, and they are squeezing their eyes tight, to shut out
+the sight of the accursed blue of heaven that spat down on us so
+treacherously--You dogs! You beasts! To shoot us down from behind--it is
+nothing more nor less than cowardly assassination.
+
+And slowly breath and consciousness return to us again, and when we have
+come to our senses we look at one another with dumb eyes, and these eyes
+presage nought that is good.
+
+A great, unspeakable Horror that will never be allayed again has risen
+in these eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE WHIRLING EARTH
+
+
+Half-way on the march some one fell down beside me, flung out his arms,
+clawed himself tightly to the earth, and screamed and gasped against the
+soil. Barely half an hour later we saw another who had fallen into
+convulsions. And when we were lying in a damp ditch waiting for the
+enemy, a man suddenly jumped up, and shrieked, and ran away. He laughed
+back at us from afar until he vanished from our sight in the rain. The
+shrieking and running away had infected us all. 'Twon't be long before
+it will be your turn.
+
+One night when we were lying in our trenches, and had fallen asleep to
+the thunder of the guns, I suddenly started up--confused--dazed; and
+lo, the stars were standing bright in the dark, rainless sky, and shone
+down solemnly, ah God! how solemnly, on the turmoil, as if nothing in
+this world mattered. Yet there--in front of me, before my very eyes
+--glimmered a red reflection--that surely must be a pool of blood, for
+the stars are mirrored in it so redly--and suddenly a blind rage
+overtook me to howl aloud and clench my fists, and to scream in the very
+face of the great Master up above there--But I had neither time to howl
+nor to run. For in this self-same night it so happened that an uncanny
+whirr fell on our ears from out the distance. That was Death flying
+toward us on propellers. The spectres of the night whirred above us; we
+shot blindly into the air--for every moment the storm was bound to break
+over us.... Torpedo tubes above us ... they'll spurt in a minute ...
+they're going to fling down dynamite ... and then the magnesium bombs
+blazed out ... cries and crashes rose wherever we looked ... then they
+are gone again ... but we had to retire from our trenches ...
+senselessly, like automata, we marched for the whole of that day. I felt
+the goose-flesh creeping over my skin; my nerves ached, and if the
+bayonet were not at the small of my back I should chuck my rifle away,
+and roll sprawling in the damp sand.
+
+And yet four days afterward they have contrived to get us to make a
+stand again. For in our rear, on the other bank of the river, our
+regiments have crossed, and are groping for new positions. But we have
+to cover their passage at any cost.
+
+We were now drawing on our last reserve. We were still standing with our
+spades in our hands, and throwing, with aching backs and arms, more soil
+on the works, when in front of us we saw figures passing up and down on
+the grey, twilight field. They were grubbing the soil up busily, and
+were putting something we could not see into holes, and covering it in
+again. They went about their work noiselessly--no incautious step and
+no unguarded movement--and when they came back again and passed us, and
+marched on, their faces were livid and their lips dumb. They proved
+themselves to be first-class moles. They had done a good bit of work.
+They had undermined the earth. They had stuffed the ground with
+explosives, and if the enemy comes to-night we shall repay the gifts
+they lavished upon us from the sky the other day with interest. They
+have arranged it all like a rat-trap.
+
+Over there, beyond the mined field even, two companies are lying in
+extended order. And midway between them, without a vestige of cover,
+stands our battery on the open field. It is planted there as if it were
+doomed to be delivered into the enemy's hands.
+
+And now we are lying in our long trenches, and are peering out into the
+field, with our eyes glued to the sharply outlined silhouettes of the
+guns. The sun has set some time ago.
+
+From the far distance the thin rattle of musketry reaches us clearly.
+
+Wonder if it'll last much longer?
+
+Our orders are to remain under arms.
+
+We have put on our overcoats. The night is chilly, and lowering, I gaze
+out over the field of death--nothing makes any difference to me now--if
+only it were over quickly.
+
+A scout has come in, and delivers his report in a whisper.
+
+Our instructions are not to fire before the order to fire is given,
+and--then to fire into the air.
+
+In the background, far on the horizon, the ground rises, and the gray
+skyline stands out against the cloudy sky. The musketry fire has become
+hotter from minute to minute, and has increased to a threatening rattle.
+To the right and left of us fighting is in full swing. In front of us
+the mined field lies silent, and the two companies too, are lying silent
+in their rifle-pits.
+
+I am conscious that I am terribly tired--I can no longer keep myself on
+my feet--my head sinks down on my rifle--my eyes close--but the
+overstrained nerves are still alert.
+
+And now----
+
+The earth reverberates sullenly.
+
+That's our battery! It is firing straight into the darkness. So our turn
+is coming now.
+
+We hear how "ours" over there are opening fire, and how it suddenly
+increases, and dies down, and then again swells to a maddening rattle.
+That is an attack by sharpshooters in overwhelming strength ... they
+cannot be very far from one another now ... and yet the battery goes on
+bellowing, and luring the enemy to assault....
+
+And now a martial symphony rises over the dark country ... bugles shrill
+through the darkness, and drums are rolling sullenly ... that means a
+general assault ... there rises a sound of shouting and tramping ... a
+thunderous roar of triumph rises to the dark sky ... that is the shout
+of victory from a thousand throats ... in their thousands they have
+charged "ours" over there, and have crushed them by assault.... Ha, ha!
+they have taken a battery by storm....
+
+Why, of a sudden, has silence fallen ... what is the object of it ...
+now it's our turn....
+
+"Into the air! Rapid fire!" And the volley, crashes. And look there ...
+over there the cheer rings out again ... the signals for assault sound,
+and thousands of voices are shouting it simultaneously ... there they
+are foaming up ... they are charging on, drunk with victory, in closed
+ranks ... they are rolling with a roar over the mined field ... they are
+trampling the earth, as if with horses' hoofs ... that means Death ... I
+am lying rigid ... now it must break, now ... I open my mouth wide ...
+my rifle is trembling in my grasp....
+
+And then--
+
+The Earth has opened her mouth ... lightnings, crashes and thunderings,
+and the Heaven splits in twain and falls down in flame--the earth
+whirls upwards in shreds ... men and the earth blaze and hurtle through
+the air like Catharine wheels ... and then ... a crash, a maddening
+uproar, strikes us full in the chest, so that we reel backward to the
+ground, and half-consciously struggle for breath in the sand ... and now
+... the storm is over ... the pressure of the atmosphere relaxes off our
+chest ... we breathe deep ... only scattered, dancing flames now and
+squibs ... fireworks....
+
+But what on earth has happened?----
+
+We peer out fearfully over our earthworks.
+
+Has red Hell opened its mouth:
+
+There rises a noise of screams and yells, an uproar so unnaturally wild
+and unrestrained that we cringe up closer to one another ... and,
+trembling, we see that our faces, our uniforms, have red, wet stains,
+and distinctly recognize shreds of flesh on the cloth. And among our
+feet something is lying that was not lying there before--it gleams white
+from the dark sand and uncurls ... a strange dismembered hand ... and
+there ... and there ... fragments of flesh with the uniform still
+adhering to them--then we realize it, and horror overwhelms us.
+
+Outside there are lying arms, legs, heads, trunks ... they are howling
+into the night; the whole regiment is lying mangled on the ground there,
+a lump of humanity crying to Heaven....
+
+Clouds are arising from the earth ... they are rising crying aloud in
+the air ... they pass over us in thick drifts, so that we can see the
+wounds steaming, and can taste blood and bones upon our tongues....
+
+And then a spectral vision rises before my eyes ... I see red Death
+standing outside there on the plain ... the clouds reveal a face
+grinning down on the symphony ... and suddenly a clear note detaches
+itself from the darkness--a tune which enraptured Death is playing to
+himself till his fiddle splits ... is that a human being coming up,
+running, here?... he is coming with a rush ... he will leap upon our
+backs ... halt! halt! halt! He stumbles upright into the trenches, and
+tumbles sobbing and howling, among our rifles. He strikes out at us with
+hands and feet ... he is crying and struggling like a child, and yet no
+man dares go up to him ... for now he is rising on his knee ... and then
+we see! Half his face has been torn away ... one eye gone ... the
+twitching muscle of the cheek is hanging down ... he is kneeling, and
+opening and closing his hands, and is howling to us for mercy.
+
+We gaze at him horror-stricken and are paralyzed ... then at length the
+yokel--and our eyes thank him for it--raises the butt of his rifle and
+places the muzzle against the sound temple ... bang!... and the maimed
+wreckage falls over backward and lies still in his blood....
+
+And again the darkness casts up shapes ... they run up and reel about
+like drunken men ... they fall over and pick themselves up anew ... they
+race forward through the night in zigzags, until they at last collapse
+exhausted, and lie still under our very eyes and make an end of it....
+
+And at length some one comes crawling toward us ... he is crawling up on
+all fours ... he is dragging something behind him with his body, and all
+the time he is whining like a sick dog, and is howling shrilly in
+long-drawn tones ... he is still crawling along I fast--and when he has
+reached us we see--I and the blood stands still in our hearts--they are
+his entrails hanging out of his body ... his belly has been ripped up
+from below ... he is crawling, he is crawling up on his entrails ... he
+is coming ... the entrails are coming ... horror breaks out from every
+pore ... for hardly three paces away from me he lies still ... and then
+... May God forgive me!... he raises himself slowly on his hands ... he
+succeeds for a moment ... and looks ... Merciful God!... he looks at me,
+and refuses to let my eyes go again ... I can see nothing except these
+great, death-stricken eyes.... Merciful God! ... his eyes, those eyes!
+Those are a mother's eyes looking down on me unspeakably ... that is a
+son of his mother lying there before us butchered.... I will break out
+of my fastness.... I will throw myself on him, sobbing, and kiss his
+face, and bathe his anguish away in my tears.... I will do it! I will!
+... and cannot stir myself from my rigid tension.... Then the monstrous
+strain relaxes--his arms give way ... he falls forward on his face and
+sinks down on his tortured body. His hands twitch once more ... then he
+lies still and kisses Mother Earth, who has slain her children so
+horribly....
+
+I am done ... my hands are trembling.... Then all of a sudden, a voice
+behind us begins to sing ... solemnly--long-drawn.... "Now thank we all
+our God" ... that is Madness singing there ... we are all next door to
+madness.... I look round, and see gray, distorted faces, and blazing,
+startled eye-balls.... And suddenly the singing voice changes to a loud,
+impudent burst of laughter....
+
+"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" The laugh is full of horror, and mingles with the
+dying whine beyond.... The laugh grows ever louder, and ever wilder, and
+laughs in triumph at the naked, pitiful dying, littering the ground.
+
+"Drummers! Strike up!" shouts the voice.
+
+"Uncover for prayer!"
+
+We recognize him; he is a reservist belonging to some pious sect. A
+sergeant has seized him, and tries to hold him ... the captain has run
+up, but the madman tears himself away and runs ahead of them to a
+rifle-pit ... he stands aloft, a black, wild silhouette against the pale
+sky, and spreads out his arms in blessing over the sick night ... he
+stands there like a rapt priest, and raves, and is blessing the mangled
+darkness. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
+Ghost."
+
+Then arms seize him from behind and pull him down ... they drag him to
+the ground.... "Our Father" he howls aloud, and strikes and kicks out
+all round him, and goes on praying from his raging body until at length
+breath fails him ... they have tied him hand and foot, and have gagged
+him....
+
+But now the Thing-that-Couldn't happens--that none the less was bound
+to happen.
+
+And when the voice calls out it comes over me as if I had lived it all
+once before....
+
+"Captain!" shouts the hard, naked, impudent voice we all know. "Haven't
+you got any cotton wool for us to plug our ears with?"
+
+We have all turned round as if at the word of command. It is the
+militia-man, the yokel, standing facing the captain and gesticulating at
+him. "I only wanted to ask if those are wild beasts, or if they're what
+are called human beings you've torn to pieces there?"
+
+But curt and sharp, as we knew it, the rasping note of command responds:
+
+"What the devil's the matter with you? Pull yourself together. Can't you
+hear? Get back to your place at once."
+
+But then it bursts out, the voice of Nature, and resounds so harshly,
+and tears down all barriers.
+
+"Murderers!" roars a blasphemous mouth. "Murderers of men! We shall have
+to knock them all on the head like dogs."
+
+We all start as if under an electric shock ... that was what was on the
+tip of the tongues of all of us ... that was the climax that was bound
+to come ... we cannot endure to go on lying in this charnel-house any
+longer....
+
+"You mind what you're about." The other's wrath breaks out once more ...
+and then we know it for certain, the captain is a fool ... he has lost
+the game from the very start ... and now ... it is like a shadow play
+before my eyes ... like a ghostly kinematograph.... I see that the
+militia-man has drawn his bayonet ... the captain is standing facing him
+with his revolver in his hand, and gives him an order ... he promptly
+gets a blow with the butt end of the rifle on his head that fells him to
+the ground without a sound ... and they leap up from all the
+trenches.... "Murderers!" they cry. "Murderers! Kill them!"
+
+There is no stopping it now.... I feel I have gone mad.... I do not know
+where I am.... I see wild beasts all round me distorted unnaturally in a
+life-and-death grapple ... with bloodshot eyes, with foaming, gnashing
+mouths, they attack and kill one another, and try to mangle one
+another.... I leap to my feet.... I must get away, to escape from
+myself, or in another minute I shall be in the thick of this maddened,
+death-doomed mob.... I stumble over the rifle-pits.... I race out into
+the night, and tread on quaking flesh ... step on hard heads, and
+stumble over weapons and helmets ... something is clutching at my feet
+like hands, so that I race away like a hunted deer with the hounds at
+its heels ... and ever more bodies--breathless--out of one field into
+another.... Horror is crooning over my head ... horror is crooning
+beneath my feet ... and nothing but dying, mangled flesh....
+
+Has the whole earth exploded then?... Are there nothing but dead abroad
+this night?... Has every human being been fusilladed?
+
+How long have I been running?... I hear how my lungs are whistling ...
+and hear how my temples are beating ... my breath is choked.... I am
+done.... I stagger backwards ... am falling dead to the ground ... no! I
+am sinking back on something soft, and sit still motionless, and listen
+intently to the night.... I can hear nothing except the blood in my
+ears ... all of a sudden there is a light in my eyes like bright, clean
+daylight ... the sun is shining ... then I realize it, it is my own head
+... visions are teeming in my brain, and are teeming out of my head, one
+unwearyingly on the heels of the other.... I see the regiments marching
+out ... they are passing by in the bright sunshine ... the Blues from
+over there, the Reds from over here; they are marching against each
+other in long array.... Now they halt, and are standing drawn up against
+each other on a huge front ... ready for the fray ... then our captain's
+voice on this side rings out.... "Ready?" ... and the rifles on both
+sides are raised. I see the black mass of the muzzles ... they are
+scarcely ten paces apart ... they are aiming straight for the chest....
+"Stop!" I am trying to cry out, "Stop! You ought to attack in open order
+with seven paces intervals." ...
+
+Then our captain's voice rings out again, "Fire!" ... the volley
+crashes, and behold! not a man is hit ... they all are standing there
+unscathed ... they have fired into the air ... and with shouts of joy
+the ranks dissolve ... they rush toward one another ... the rifles fall
+to the ground ... but they rush into one another's arms, and fondle one
+another, and laugh aloud as children laugh ... then they fall back into
+line ... they shoulder their rifles ... right about turn!... the bands
+strike up a joyous march, they march off with bands playing--every
+regiment to its own home....
+
+And now I catch myself singing an accompaniment to it aloud.... I am
+beating time with my right hand, and supporting myself on my seat with
+my left ... and something trickles oddly across my hand--something like
+warm water.... I raise my hand to my eyes ... it is red and moist ...
+blood is flowing over my white hand ... then I realize it, the white
+thing under me is not a heap of sand.... I have been sitting on a corpse
+... horror-stricken, I rush about ... and one is lying over there, too
+... and there, and there!... Merciful God! I see it plainly now; there
+are only dead to-night ... the human race died out this very night ... I
+am the last survivor ... the fields are dead--the woods dead--the
+villages dead--the cities dead--the Earth is dead--the Earth was
+butchered to-night, and I, only I have escaped the slaughter-house.
+
+And it comes over me as a great thing, a pathetically great thing--now I
+know what my destiny is--lowering, I watch my own actions, and wait to
+see how I shall accomplish it--I mark how I am slowly putting my hand
+into my pocket--before I left home I took my pocket-pistol with me. I am
+holding the toy in my hand--the steel is looking up at me and blinking
+at me--I am gazing with a smile into its black, confiding muzzle--I am
+holding it against my temples--I pull the trigger, and fall over
+backward--the last of mankind on this dead earth!
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+WE POOR DEAD
+
+
+They have now covered up our hot breath with earth. Why are you blinking
+at me with your bleared eyes, my brother? Are you not glad? Don't they
+envy us our sweet death? They have laid us out in a picturesque row, and
+you need only turn your head to rub against human flesh at once, and if
+you turn your yellow eyeball, you can see nothing but corpses in the
+twilight. One beside the other, that is how they are sleeping. And
+corpse upon corpse, ever more of them, through the whole length of the
+loose soil of the potato-field, and we even fill the whole adjoining
+field of roots.
+
+Wonder whether the sun still goes on shining above us?--whether they
+still know how to laugh in the towns as we used to in our time? Wonder
+whether my wife still goes on remembering her dead husband--and my two
+kiddies--whether they have already forgotten their father? They were so
+tiny at the time--another man'll come along--they will call another
+fellow father--and my wife is still so young and fair.
+
+We poor dead heroes! So do not disturb our last sleep any longer. We had
+to die to enable the others to live. We died for our native land in its
+straits. We are victorious now, and have won land and fame, land enough
+for millions of our brothers. Our wives have land, our children, our
+mothers, our fathers have land. And now our poor native land has air to
+breathe. It need no longer be stifled. They have cleared the air of us.
+They have got rid of us, of us who were far too many. We are no longer
+eating the bread away from other folks' mouths. We are so full-fed, so
+full-fed and quiet. But they have got land! Fertile land! And ore! Iron
+mines! Gold! Spices! And Bread!
+
+Come, brother philosopher, let us turn our faces to the earth. Let us
+sleep upon our laurels, and let us dream of nothing but our Country's
+Future.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Human Slaughter-House, by Wilhelm Lamszus
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 39588 ***