THE 
 
 JUDGMENT 
 OF PEACE 
 
 ANDREAS LATZKO
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 OF s^s 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 EDWIN CORLE 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 JEAN CORLE
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE
 
 THE JUDGMENT 
 OF PEACE 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREAS LATZKO 
 
 Author of "Men in War" 
 
 TRANSLATED BT LUDWIQ LEWISOHN 
 
 BONI AND LIVERIGHT 
 
 NEW YORK 1919
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1919, 
 BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC. 
 
 Att rights reserved 
 
 Printed in the United Statet of America
 
 TO 
 ROMAIN HOLLAND 
 
 MY GKEAT COMPATRIOT 
 IN THE LOVE OF MAN
 
 vrvos voco 
 
 MORTUOS PLANGO
 
 I 
 
 FIELD GREY
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 i. 
 
 FIELD-GRAY 
 
 Tj^ TILLY equipped to go out, George Gadsky 
 -* sat on his bed, letting his legs swing and 
 staring with sharply compressed lips out into the 
 open. A pallid blue sky curved above the black, 
 snow-splotched fields; the sparrows were noisy 
 in the bare poplars in front of the barracks ; the 
 mild wind that blew into the room through the 
 open window affected every limb with a sweet, 
 languorous weariness as though Spring were at 
 the door and not the festival of fir-trees and 
 snow-covered roofs. 
 
 It was the last Sunday before Christmas, the 
 so-called "golden Sunday" of the shops : the first 
 Christmas-tide of the war period. That mon- 
 strous event had not yet thrown any shadow into 
 the land. No need or .compulsion oppressed 
 those who had stayed at home; only the empty 
 chairs at the family gatherings emphasized a 
 gentle melancholy in the midst of the time. A 
 fever had all Germany in its grip, a frenzy of 
 
 3
 
 THE JUDGMENT OP PEACE 
 
 gratitude. Every one eagerly took advantage of 
 that Christmas as of the first opportunity of 
 sending a word of love to the dear tormented 
 ones out there. Any spectator, wandering 
 through the streets, would have come to the con- 
 clusion that all the treasures of the city were 
 being quickly packed up to be sent out to the 
 field-gray children who had so honestly earned 
 their Christmas treat at the hands of the home- 
 land. 
 
 But this tide of generosity and adoration 
 rolled carelessly past one place the barracks. 
 The recruits saw the crowds surge in front of the 
 little post-office next door; they saw the paste- 
 board boxes of all sizes stream thither and then 
 proceed on in pyramids ; they stood at their win- 
 dows, envious and arguing. Even the most 
 stupid felt dully the contradiction between the 
 stormy impulse of people to honor the defenders 
 of the fatherland, and the treatment that was 
 given them in the barracks. Often when the drill 
 sergeant had been particularly rough with one 
 of them and the drill was over, the bitter jest 
 could be heard in the room : "It's a good thing 
 my old woman can't hear the way I'm dealt with 
 here. There'd be no discipline at home after 
 that !" Then they would laugh and outdo reality 
 by supposing grotesque possibilities; but behind 
 these jests there crouched a secret but mighty 
 anger against the whole fate of the war that had 
 torn mature men from the decent dignity at-
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 tained by hard effort and had placed them in the 
 moral position of their own sons. 
 
 George Gadsky, too, felt crushed, torn out of 
 his real self, degraded to the level of a shabby, 
 beaten sneak. He had just calculated that the 
 iron field-cot on which he sat had now been for 
 exactly nine weeks all that he knew of home, and 
 with a shudder he compared the man who now 
 answered to his name to that other one who had 
 entered the barracks filled with a joyous deter- 
 mination and a proud readiness for sacrifice. 
 What had they made of him? Instead of survey- 
 ing as from a superior station those who still 
 clove to the old, commonplace life as though they 
 were unaware of the great conflict that raged in 
 the field, he looked with a corroding envy upon 
 every civilian who knew the barracks walls only 
 from without. He hated, yes, hated this mill 
 that ground out of one every bit of pride, of will, 
 of the consciousness of one's true self. 
 
 He arose with a groan and listened to the sol- 
 emn stillness that filled the house. The evening 
 before the men who had been granted leave of 
 absence had marched off in columns to the sta- 
 tion; only the "city-fellows," who had neither 
 field nor family, had remained even during the 
 holidays tied to the post like rebellious foals. 
 He had been envious even of these peasants ! He 
 would have been glad to change places with any 
 one of them, only to escape for a few days to a 
 
 5
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 place beyond the reach of the drill-sergeant's 
 voice. . . . 
 
 With slothful, dragging steps he wandered 
 through the room, wretchedly depressed, pro- 
 foundly disgusted, his hands involuntarily held 
 away from him as though he were afraid of 
 touching his own body. The Prussian mason, 
 who had the bed to the right of him, had infected 
 him with his horrible comparison. "Wipes his 
 nose on us!" the man would say whenever Ser- 
 geant Stuff poured out over the battalion the 
 vials of his wrath. And it seemed to Gadsky as 
 though this image had penetrated him with an 
 insufferable feeling of inner uncleanliness and 
 violation. He was forced to think of the dirty 
 towels that every one in passing could use. God 
 knows, his soul, too, bore the finger-prints of all 
 his superiors. ... In all the thirty-three years 
 of his life his sensitive personal dignity had not 
 been so wounded as in these nine weeks. And 
 why? Because of his own free resolve he had 
 assumed the heavy burden and had volunteered 
 for military service. That was the reason for 
 which he was now forced to see himself af- 
 fronted, degraded, shamed, held in contempt by 
 common, narrow-minded creatures. What an act 
 of madness had he been guilty of! 
 
 Full of grim rage he sat farther back on his 
 bed am* dug at his wounds. What had impelled 
 him toward the fateful step? On all sides he 
 had been advised against it ; to the last moment
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 influential friends had offered to liberate him 
 from the obligation he had assumed ; stubbornly 
 he had held fast to his resolve. How could he 
 suspect that things would come about thus? . . . 
 The mad, seething indignation arose in him again 
 at the memory of his introduction to the bar- 
 racks when at once, as though to enlighten him 
 as to his position, the arrogant voice of the ser- 
 geant fell on his ears and he, George Gadsky, 
 but a few moments ago the famous pianist whom 
 reigning sovereigns invited to their board, stood 
 as if he had been struck in the presence of those 
 innumerable servile grins. Instead of the re- 
 spect which was due to his determination, he met 
 venomous scorn; as though he needed to be 
 v doubly humiliated for the greatness of his renun- 
 ciation, for his ability, for the position in life 
 that he had conquered. His colleagues, however, 
 who were "kind enough" to play a few pieces for 
 the benefit of some war charity, reaped a harvest 
 of warm gratitude for their sacrifices in all the 
 papers. 
 
 Outraging all rules and regulations he threw 
 himself fully on the hard cot and closed his eyes. 
 
 Didn't Mathilde share his guilt just a little, 
 after all? Although she denied it, she had, dur- 
 ing those first days, become again wholly the 
 daughter of her Prussian officer father; she had 
 hastened to the window with glowing eyes when- 
 ever troops passed by ; she had waited for hours 
 for telegrams in front of the newspaper bulletin 
 
 7
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 boards. Everything went too slowly for her, 
 every one was too lukewarm, too indifferent. The 
 whole South German atmosphere made her ner- 
 vous. She would have preferred to hasten to 
 Berlin at once, so estranged did she suddenly 
 feel herself from the city she had loved so deeply. 
 Externally, of course, everything went in its 
 wonted groove; he escorted her to the theater 
 and called for her later when the rehearsal was 
 over and she offered her lips for his kiss. But it 
 was like a passion embalmed, like a receipt given 
 for a happiness once enjoyed. The artist in her 
 who had transcended all prejudices, had broken 
 for the love of him with all her noble kinsmen 
 she had vanished. There remained the Baroness 
 von Moellnitz! What could the virtuoso Gad- 
 sky, what could his strumming mean to her? In- 
 fected by the blind exaltation of those days she 
 confused war with the pageantry of the victor, 
 and saw only banners and arches of triumph 
 where reality marked the path with graves and 
 hills of mangled men? . . . 
 
 Now to be sure she averted her face from the 
 unheard-of butchery ! Now she, too, declared it 
 to be a crime that he should waste his hands 
 his "incomparable" hands, as she used to say 
 on a rifle that any one else could fire as well. 
 To-day she acknowledged again the rights of art 
 as well as of war. Should he have waited pa- 
 tiently until she found her way back to him? 
 Should he have insisted shamelessly upon his 
 8
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 due, like a creditor? . . . Was it strange that he 
 should have caught the intoxication of her mood? 
 
 With a sudden start he sprang up, smoothed 
 the bed quickly and resumed his wandering about 
 the room. No! By heaven, no! Had he sunk 
 so low as to take moral refuge behind a woman? 
 Was he to roll off the responsibility for his deeds 
 upon his beloved? . . . God knows, these were 
 queer results of this institution for the training 
 of men! It taught its pupils trembling and 
 dread in the matter of buttons and chevrons and 
 insignia to prepare them for an heroic mood! 
 
 He drew himself up proudly and hurled the 
 mean suspicion far from him. He himself was 
 guilty and he alone. It was his insane ambition, 
 his arrogance, his passion for always playing for 
 the highest stakes that had driven him into this 
 adventure. Had the war come a year earlier or 
 a year later he would have reconsidered this step 
 many times. Only in this special year, at this 
 fatal moment, the temptation should not have 
 come to him! 
 
 He had just come home. He lay in the har- 
 bor, slothful and without desires, with all sails 
 slackened. He had brought with him a wealth of 
 shining memories and had nothing to ask of the 
 future. No dream could equal the reality of his 
 immediate past. Three incomparably successful 
 concert tours had filled the past three years. A 
 triumphal progress through America, an exten- 
 sive trip through Russia had loaded him down 
 
 9
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 with such a mass of roubles and dollars that tie 
 sometimes suspected it to be impossible that so 
 much money could be honestly gained! . . . He 
 made himself a home that realized the fulfill- 
 ment of his wishes to the smallest detail. The 
 books that he had gathered from the ends of the 
 earth were clothed in precious bindings and 
 framed his daily life. . . . Only one worm 
 gnawed at the core of his happiness. He had 
 lately lost his mother and there was no one with 
 whom he could share his marvelous fortune. 
 Then quite by chance, in Paris, where they 
 treated him like an uncrowned king he met 
 Mathilde. And before they had attained a full 
 awareness of it, they were caught in each other's 
 web of life. She gave herself to him, careless of 
 her repute and name as though these were the 
 merest trash. For in her there stormed the 
 heavy, stubborn passion of women who are late 
 to awaken. She wanted no support but that of 
 his arms. He was shamed by the greatness of 
 her sacrifice. He set all possible influences in 
 motion and did not rest until, with a radiant and 
 protecting delight, he could go to her with her 
 appointment at the Court Theater in his hands. 
 
 Thus Spring found them ifnder one roof, sep- 
 arated only by decent concessions to conven- 
 tionality, and their days flowed on like a river 
 that digs its bed deeper from day to day but 
 also flows on ever more broadly and slowly. 
 
 And thus there lay behind him as a height 
 that he had truly conquered all that he had set 
 10
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 himself as his farthest aim of fairy-like and un- 
 imaginable splendor he, the station master's 
 son in the grimy mining village. 
 
 So at the age of thirty-three he was satiated 
 with life. The years promised only the collec- 
 tion of more money for more concerts. 
 
 Then came the war! 
 
 Before him there stretched suddenly a new 
 way, the unhoped for possibility of beginning 
 over again. It was that which had been so se- 
 ductive that only ! To stake his whole self with 
 all he had attained on the hazard of war, to hurl 
 himself into this ocean of field-gray drops that 
 devoured every one who was not strong and 
 brave and manly enough to work himself up 
 how could he have withstood this temptation of 
 proving himself and conquering life anew? 
 
 A dream had been his fate the dream of re- 
 turning to Mathilde a hero, an officer glittering 
 with decorations, a man who had twice con- 
 quered the world ! . . . He had run into destruc- 
 tion as blindly and as rawly as a foolish boy who 
 has read "Robinson Crusoe" and sneaks away 
 from his father's house by night. Now he was 
 in the trap, the thongs held fast, and he stared 
 back to the freedom he had so rashly thrown 
 aside ! 
 
 Burning with rage he stopped in the middle 
 of the room. He glanced over at the two others. 
 They, at least, had no reason to torment them- 
 selves with self-reproach. They had obeyed a 
 command and an iron compulsion. Full of ha- 
 ll
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 tred he observed Frobel, who was just packing 
 up his razors and humming a song and who now 
 slipped on his gray military coat If only a 
 kindly fairy had shown him this obliging, intimi- 
 dated little common school teacher. He would 
 have been saved. Of course, he would have 
 laughed any common mortal to scorn who would 
 have come to him with the impossible prophecy 
 that this poverty-stricken, cowardly creature 
 would get the better of him in the army. In the 
 army! In an organization which, according to 
 his mistaken notions, demanded above all an in- 
 dependent spirit, proud self-confidence, stubborn- 
 ness and endurance of mind and could have no 
 patience with flatterers and lick-spittles. 
 
 With clenched fists he turned away and ap- 
 proached Weiler, who sat on a trunk in front of 
 the second window, bent over the proof -sheets of 
 his second volume. Wasn't it curious that pre- 
 cisely these two men to whom he had spoken the 
 very first day, when they were still awaiting ad- 
 mittance at the gate of the barracks, should con- 
 stitute his whole society? ... He recalled that 
 cold, foggy morning, the shivering figures with 
 their hostile eyes, his own terror at the sight of 
 these men who were to be his daily companions. 
 Blunted and abused by life, they stood there as 
 though they were dragging heavy weights, neg- 
 lected in soul and body. And from the midst of 
 this somber crowd there had arisen an odor as 
 though one had just opened a cellar door. . . . 
 The envious glances that had met his elegant gar-
 
 THE JUDGMENT OP PEACE 
 
 ments had made him feel naked; his eyes had 
 yearningly sought in that mass for some kindred 
 soul from his own world. 
 
 Thus he had found Weiler, nervously huddled 
 against a pillar. He had taken him to be a hum- 
 ble, good-natured bank-clerk. And there had 
 arisen in him a great cry of joy when he had 
 found in him the exquisite, self-willed poet whom 
 he had so often defended against the judgment 
 of the uncomprehending. At once a magic circle 
 had been drawn about them ; they stood as upon 
 an island, in the protection of their common in- 
 terests. Their isolation had allured Frobel, 
 whose girlish timidity had made him the butt of 
 coarse jesters. He had remained faithful to 
 them in spite of the shadow which their unpopu- 
 larity with the officers cast upon his unblemished 
 conduct. And this devotion forced Gadsky to 
 a more charitable view of the man's weaknesses. 
 
 "Are you going already?" he called out to him, 
 astonished, as he saw him going toward the door 
 in his cap, coat and side-arm. 
 
 "To be sure !" Frobel answered happily. "Ser- 
 geant Stuff has kindly permitted me to go with- 
 out reporting to him first." 
 
 Gadsky lowered his head to hide the bitter 
 smile that stole into his face. By God, that was 
 the right man for these people. Not even in the 
 great man's absence did he dare to omit the 
 formulas of respect in uttering his name. His 
 bearded face was radiant over the gracious per- 
 mission accorded him as if he were a pupil in 
 
 13
 
 THE JUDGMENT OP PEACE 
 
 his own school and not a teacher and the father 
 of a family. 
 
 "A non-com in the making! Do you realize 
 that?" Gadsky called out jeeringly to Weiler and 
 pointed to the door which had just closed be- 
 hind Frobel. "The only one who is being found 
 worthy. It is probably assumed that a man ac- 
 customed to wield the ferule will strike the right 
 note in dealing with us recruits. Would you 
 have dreamed that precisely his qualities are sup- 
 posed to adorn the warrior?" 
 
 Nervously he paced the room and then added, 
 with a wave of anger : "It's a disgrace that they 
 promote a fellow whose eyes water at the mere 
 notion of going into the field, the worst coward 
 in the whole battalion, simply because . . . 
 
 Weiler had folded up his manuscript and 
 gazed with astonishment into Gadsky's bitter 
 face. 
 
 "Why do you use that ugly word?" he inter- 
 rupted him quietly. "What's the meaning of 
 that word coward? When poor Frobel hears 
 people talk about an attack or about grenades 
 he simply can't help seeing his own body dead 
 or dreadfully mutilated. His imagination sum- 
 mons up these repulsive visions. He can't help 
 that. Were he able to see himself coming safe 
 through every hail of bullets and returning home 
 as a hero and decorated why, he wouldn't be 
 a coward any longer. It's a matter of tempera- 
 ment. Even the old artillery Colonel Bonaparte 
 grew pale when the grenades came up near him
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 the first time, and when an old ruffian of a gen- 
 eral asked him ironically whether he was scared, 
 he gave the immensely superior answer: 'If you 
 were half as scared as I, General, you would have 
 taken to your heels long ago.' " 
 
 Gadsky shook his head. "The comparison be- 
 tween Napoleon and Frobel strikes me as rather 
 bold." He was irritated. "It depends, after all, 
 on what one has to lose the crown of France or 
 Frobel's two-room apartment. I don't, of course, 
 mean to compare myself to Napoleon, but I do 
 risk somewhat higher stakes than Frobel. For 
 ten long years they jeered at me and beat me 
 around at home to get what they called foolish 
 notions out of me. Then, for ten more years I 
 was as pitiless to myself as an animal trainer 
 to his beasts, driving myself back to the piano 
 again and again. And then, at last, the goal I 
 had dreamed of was reached. Then one day 
 George Gadsky himself sat as a passenger in the 
 Orient express that he had seen flitting by the 
 little station daily, and himself flitted by the 
 scenes of his torment, the walls and bushes that 
 had seen him weep and grind his teeth! Meas- 
 ure my loss! Consider what it means to have 
 conquered, to have become oneself a sort of ex- 
 press train that rushes past saluting masses of 
 men on tracks cleared for its coming. . . ." 
 
 "Do you believe that, to him, poor Frobel's 
 life means less. . . ?" Weiler did not continue. 
 The speech seemed suddenly to snap off. Gad- 
 sky followed his friend's eyes and became petri- 
 
 15
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 fied in the attitude of "attention" at the sight 
 of the sergeant who had just noisily pushed 
 open the door and entered. At once the room 
 was filled with a breathless silence as though an 
 extraordinary tension proceeded from the stocky, 
 broad-shouldered man a tension that might 
 snap at any moment. His little, suspicious eyes 
 hunted flickeringly in all corners, glided over 
 the beds and shelves, seeking some infraction of 
 regulations. Then Sergeant Stuff, snorting 
 softly, came very close up to Gadsky and re- 
 mained standing there. Instinctively he felt the 
 hatred that met him and his own hostility was 
 thus kindled at once. Up to the very door he had 
 been in the best of humors and had firmly deter- 
 mined to be gracious and, as an exception, to 
 make no difficulties for the two black sheep. 
 Christmas was at hand, most of the recruits were 
 absent on leave, there was little work in the 
 empty house, and this in itself softened him. 
 Also, he had won at cards in the morning, had 
 been invited to a birthday party for the rest of 
 the day in short, he hadn't any taste for play- 
 ing the ogre. But the mere sight of Gadsky, 
 the aloof and determined carriage of the man's 
 head, unchained his anger anew and all his round 
 body seemed to contract as though to overwhelm 
 the opposition that arose in such silence before 
 him. 
 
 Sergeant Stuff was nothing less than a tor- 
 mentor of his men. He considered himself rather 
 kindly and charitable so far as it was consonant 
 16
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 with his own dignity and the difficult task of 
 drilling some discipline into the annual hordes 
 of raw recruits. He nourished, in fact, a sort of 
 inner ambition to be known as a "fatherly" offi- 
 cer and the aggressive pride of this damned 
 strummer enraged him utterly. He was accus- 
 tomed to forbid the man as punishment to go 
 out, to let mercy prevail at the last moment, 
 and in that case to get his proper due in the 
 form of a humble and grateful glance, at least. 
 That the war had brought him so many recruits 
 who were bundles of old bones was repulsive to 
 himself; it would not persuade him to alter his 
 system. Gadsky's consciousness of personality, 
 his silent refusal to adopt an attitude of adora- 
 tion toward "his sergeant" this whole negative 
 attitude composed of pride and malicious con- 
 scientiousness in matters of duty would have to 
 be conquered. A recruit who refused to be 
 treated by his sergeant with condescension and 
 indulgence, who received every familiarity and 
 every jest with an icy seriousness, was a stub- 
 born dog who had to be hustled about until he 
 would eat out of your hand. What right had 
 the rascal to stare with eyes full of gall and ha- 
 tred, as though he saw the fiend incarnate, at the 
 excellent Papa Stuff whom all his soldiers loved? 
 "I'll manage to show you !" he hissed, without 
 any introduction, fairly into his face. And his 
 forehead grew positively scarlet as Gadsky re- 
 mained faultlessly standing there without a trace 
 of pallor, but on the contrary with a malicious, 
 
 17
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 cold contempt in his eyes. "You'll find out who 
 of us is the stronger !" the sergeant completed his 
 threat and went over to Weiler to gain time. For 
 a moment Stuff felt tempted to be serious for 
 once and spoil this pig-headed fellow's holidays 
 for him thoroughly. Only his instinctive feeling 
 that it was easier to break this man's bones than 
 his will, caused him to dismiss the plan again. 
 He inspected Weiler quite superficially, pulled 
 his coat straight, informed him that he desired 
 his shoes to shine more brilliantly in future, and 
 waddled back to Gadsky with a divided mind. 
 
 Again it became so silent in the room that each 
 man could hear his pulses beat. In that interval 
 Stuff had decided upon merely a small repri- 
 mand. After brief consideration he put his hand 
 on the middle button on Gadsky's chest. "Why 
 hasn't this button been polished?" he roared. 
 
 Gadsky remained silent. 
 
 "Are you deaf?" Stuff's voice made the very 
 windows rattle. "Why didn't you polish your 
 buttons properly?" 
 
 "I beg to report that I have polished them," 
 Gadsky answered with icy calm. 
 
 The sergeant foamed. The practice of long 
 years had enabled him to feel that a button which 
 he didn't desire to be polished was dirty, even 
 if his eyes discovered no evidence of the fact, 
 "Polished? You call that polished? If you don't 
 report to me in fifteen minutes, downstairs in 
 front of the sentries, with shining buttons, you'll 
 18
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 stay in the barracks to-day and on the two 
 Christmas holidays. Understand me?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 He heard the words as he slammed the door 
 thunderously behind him and, sweating with ex- 
 citement, went down the stairs to his wife, who 
 was awaiting him at the gate. With a wild grunt 
 he informed her that she would have to wait a 
 few minutes and ungraciously turned his back 
 to her. 
 
 He was dissatisfied with himself. Why had 
 he been betrayed into making a scene again? 
 What sense was there in it? Such ways made 
 the fellow only more stubborn. Either one must 
 go at him thoroughly, or not at all ! Either let 
 him dangle till he crashed down, or ... He 
 considered thoughtfully all the methods at his 
 command and threw murderous glances at his 
 wife as often as she passed him. The whole 
 nasty mess was her fault. It had been her idea 
 to order the newly arrived strummer to report 
 in their dwelling to play something for their 
 guests, two cavalry non-coms, and their wives. 
 When, thereupon, the fellow had the impudence 
 to declare that the piano was too out of tune for 
 him to play on it it had cost six hundred marks ! 
 and also to pretend that he, a famous virtuoso, 
 didn't even know the song: "Baby, you are my 
 eyes' delight," which his guests had wanted to 
 hear well, nothing had been left but to let him 
 go his ways. They had been made to look like 
 fools before the cavalry men, who hadn't spared 
 
 19
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 them some pointed remarks. What could one 
 do against a man who refused a favor to his ser- 
 geant instead of being honored by the chance? 
 He had no right to force him in this matter which 
 was strictly beyond the jurisdiction of the serv- 
 ice. But the man would have to learn what it 
 meant to behave arrogantly toward one's imme- 
 diate superior ! . . . And from that time on there 
 was no halting the matter, which grew worse 
 from day to day. The fool carried himself more 
 haughtily the more one tried to humiliate him: 
 he wouldn't yield, and yet he would have to be 
 taught some sense of inferiority. It would have 
 to be done. Stuff clenched his fist and assured 
 himself that there was no other way out 
 none! 
 
 "Is it that there Gadsky again?" his wife 
 lisped, full of curiosity and of pity for her poor, 
 plagued husband who couldn't even enjoy his 
 Sundays in peace. But the answer that hurtled 
 over her made her consider it more advisable to 
 withdraw. And so she awaited the possible ful- 
 fillment of her hopes at a short distance. 
 
 Before her husband had led her from the 
 kitchen of his regimental commander to the al- 
 tar, Mrs. Stuff had been for years cook in gen- 
 tlemen's families, and her desire to be avenged 
 for the humiliations she fancied herself to have 
 endured still flamed high in her heart. She 
 never neglected an opportunity to let well- 
 groomed, graduate volunteers, the spoiled sons of 
 her former tyrants, wait as long as possible in 
 20
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 the corridor or at the door for the sergeant. 
 And she had, of course, little pity for this con- 
 ceited fellow who had made her look foolish be- 
 fore her guests. Her delight was great when the 
 hated wretch really appeared and, on the open 
 street, under the vivid attention of passing civil- 
 ians, received his thunderous reprimand. A 
 proud satisfaction radiated from her red face as, 
 arm in arm with her mighty lord, she rustled 
 past the sinner who stood rigidly at attention. 
 
 Gadsky ran off so swiftly that Weiler's short 
 legs had difficulty in keeping up. "I didn't touch 
 the buttons!" he cried and his voice trembled 
 with suppressed rage. "Didn't touch them ! And 
 yet suddenly they were bright enough. But the 
 man's made a mistake. He can't down me with 
 such chicanery." 
 
 "He may not be as ill-intentioned as you 
 fancy," Weiler said soothingly. "You might bet- 
 ter, in God's name, have played a bit for him 
 that day." 
 
 "What should I have done?" Gadsky stormed. 
 "Perhaps I should have been highly honored? 
 Why? Pray tell me why? Because I came to 
 him of my own free will that he might teach me 
 how to shoot, to throw a grenade and whatever 
 else the practice of war demands? No, my dear 
 fellow ! Let them torment me all they please 
 I shall remain the man I was and am. A self- 
 respecting man who, after all, has learned and 
 achieved something, cannot suddenly count for 
 nothing simply because he has slipped into this 
 
 21
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 strait-jacket!" And, after a pause, he added 
 grimly: "If he weren't so stupid he would 
 thank me for defending the dignity of his calling 
 even against himself! But I know what I'll do. 
 I'll talk to Ensign von Krulow. This very day. 
 I won't let this damned non-com, annoy me any 
 further." 
 
 Weiler didn't answer. He knew that Gadsky 
 was far too proud to lodge a complaint. Also too 
 wise to place von Krulow in so embarrassing a 
 position. For the experienced old sergeant was 
 far more highly valued by the captain than the 
 boyish ensign who was far too indulgent to his 
 inferiors. It would be the last straw to have him 
 take the part of the recruit against the drill 
 sergeant! By the time they reached their goal 
 Gadsky would no longer think of complaining to 
 Krulow. It seemed strange to Weiler that the 
 words and actions of a common, stupid fellow 
 like Stuff could really touch the soul of a man 
 of Gadsky's rank. But did he not still walk be- 
 side him with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes? 
 . . . Ah, one must weave oneself into one's own 
 web. One must hide oneself beneath a protective 
 covering of one's own dreams and thoughts ; one 
 must let all this military life with its limitations 
 and its brutalities pass by one unconcernedly 
 like a vision. Of course, that, too, annoyed the 
 others! Weiler smiled when he thought of the 
 impotent rage that his dreamy preoccupation 
 often aroused in those about him. 
 
 Silently they hurried, each employed with his 
 22
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 own thoughts, through the busy turmoil; they 
 rode for a long part of the way in the over- 
 crowded tramway, still without exchanging a 
 word. They did not really become aware of each 
 other again until they climbed the stairs that 
 led to Mathilde's apartment. On the second floor 
 they had to pass the door with the dull brass- 
 plate that bore Gadsky's name. He turned away, 
 and yet his eyes seemed to pierce the wall and to 
 caress, in imagination, the books on his shelves. 
 His tread became heavy. As though constrained 
 by tender arms he had to drag himself to the 
 next landing where he cried out to Weiler in a 
 tone of annoyance: 
 
 "I wish you wouldn't run so !" 
 
 But at bottom he felt flattered and a satisfied 
 smile wavered on his face. Whoever had once 
 fully found his way into her little home always 
 returned thither like a pilgrim to his patron 
 saint. 
 
 He had no doubt but that the little ensign was 
 upstairs already. 
 
 "Why don't you come?" Weiler asked him, 
 leaning across the balustrade. 
 
 "Immediately! Immediately! Just ring the 
 bell!" he replied with gentle sarcasm. 
 
 Every one hastens to her like a child to its 
 Christmas tree he said to himself proudly. And 
 the bell seemed to tinkle like the bell that calls 
 children on Christmas Eve to their gifts. 
 
 In the anteroom there hung next to the en- 
 sign's coat an ulster of rough material and a
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 felt hat with a worn rim. "That damned Dorn- 
 dorf has settled down inside already!" Gadsky 
 grunted. Weiler smiled wearily. "Then there 
 will be a dispute again," he said, shrugging his 
 shoulders. But while he took off his overcoat he 
 added good-naturedly : "After all, he's a faithful 
 soul. We nearly destroy him every Sunday and 
 he turns up again as if nothing had happened." 
 
 Gadsky nodded contemptuously. He had al- 
 ways hated this so-called uncle, and since the 
 war had come he had with difficulty restrained 
 himself from putting the man out without cere- 
 mony. Somehow or other he was related to 
 Mathilde and was immensely taken with his own 
 liberality in overlooking her well-known rela- 
 tions with Gadsky. As a matter of fact, he was 
 attracted by the exquisite meals, the compli- 
 mentary tickets to the opera and the other little 
 comforts which a postal official of middle rank 
 cannot indulge in even if he is a widower. In ad- 
 dition he was proud of the association. 
 
 In the eyes of his cronies at his favorite inn 
 Mathilde von Moellnitz was, after all, a scion 
 of a noble house and her title as member of the 
 Imperial Opera had quite another importance 
 there than it had among the members of the von 
 Moellnitz family. His niece's way of life he had 
 screened by attaching to Gadsky to the latter's 
 profound vexation the appellation of "intend- 
 ed." Moreover, since her appointment as lead- 
 ing alto to the Imperial Opera he wore a broad- 
 brimmed felt hat and a shabby artist's tie. 
 24
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 At the first moment Gadsky felt seriously 
 tempted to turn back. After the undignified 
 scene with Stuff he didn't feel the least inclina- 
 tion to let the "uncle" excite and worry him too. 
 For since August the old man had let the mili- 
 tary situation go to his head and boasted as 
 uninterruptedly as though he had shattered the 
 gates of Liege with his own fist. Was it worth 
 while to be drawn into an angry mood again by 
 this old donkey? 
 
 He was about to stretch forth his hand after 
 his cap and coat when the door opened and 
 Mathilde appeared with the tea-urn in her hand. 
 An immediate languor passed through Gadsky 
 as he saw her erect in her exquisite slenderness 
 in the frame of the door and drew in from afar 
 the indescribable, faint fragrance of her. He 
 no longer thought of leaving. But a stubborn, 
 almost malevolent feeling of opposition, a dull, 
 little ache of hatred arose in him and mastered 
 the tender longing which had brought him to 
 her door. Every Sunday this inner conflict was 
 renewed. . . . Always the deep yearning for her 
 which helped him bear all the unworthy annoy- 
 ances of the barracks, and made of the six days 
 only one weary road to the redemption of this; 
 moment disappeared and was changed into an 
 angry revulsion. Of course he told himself that 
 his disappointment would be far greater if one 
 fine day she were to appear plump and ill- 
 groomed and neglected in order to adapt herself 
 more perfectly to his calloused hands and entire 
 
 25
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 condition. He knew very well that he couldn't 
 bear the sight and would think her foolish to 
 want to look like a cook just because he hap- 
 pened to be looking like a cook's sweetheart. And 
 yet at every meeting he was overwhelmed by the 
 ugly little suspicion that she didn't let herself 
 feel his fate very keenly. ... To be sure, it took 
 only a few minutes for this inner enmity to dis- 
 appear. The peace that radiated from her up- 
 lifted him and the sergeant, the captain and the 
 barracks sank into nothingness. But when Mon- 
 day came, it was devilish hard to become once 
 more the infantryman Gadsky and when another 
 week was gone that strange hostility had grown 
 again. She greeted Weiler first and let him pass 
 her into the room. Tenderly she drew Gadsky 
 close to her and ran her hand through his hair. 
 
 "Take care," he said, "you'll ruin your lovely 
 frock!" He stepped back and his lips became 
 hard and narrow. But the frightened look that 
 met his was so full of understanding and sym- 
 pathy, that he at once regretted his words, raised 
 her slender, fragrant hand to his lips and kissed 
 each finger separately. 
 
 Desire enfolded them like a great mantle. 
 Their eyes closed and they sank away from the 
 world. Then he, still breathing deeply from that 
 contact, went in to the others. He shook hands 
 with the ensign and passed Dorndorf with a 
 frown. The forced, distrustful friendliness of the 
 old hypocrite drove him to a cold resistance. 
 
 "I'm surprised you're so happy to-day," he 
 26
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 called out to him. "You haven't won a single 
 victory all week." 
 
 "I will again! Don't worry! Give me time!" 
 Dorndorf replied with a sweetish grin and 
 glanced at him hatefully afterwards. "I am just 
 hearing to my regret that you haven't had a very 
 pleasant week either!" He pointed to Ensign 
 von Kriilow whom Weiler had just been inform- 
 ing of Stuff's latest shamelessness. 
 
 "Do let that go! I didn't ask you to be my 
 defender," Gadsky said harshly and tried to lure 
 Mathilde away from the others. He didn't like 
 to have her learn of his sufferings; he felt 
 shamed before her like a punished child. "Come, 
 dear ! Don't worry about all that nonsense," he 
 begged insistently. But she had caught the first 
 words and eluded him and went to the others 
 with her little head slightly bent forward and 
 her nostrils vibrating. 
 
 Then he became seriously vexed and called out 
 indignantly to Weiler: "Why don't you com- 
 plain of your own fate? Heaven knows you're 
 not less tormented than I!" He turned away 
 angrily, as though the whole conversation didn't 
 concern him, strolled to the piano and began to 
 improvise very softly. In his heart he was deeply 
 touched by Weiler's zeal. The poor fellow with 
 his fragile, powerless limbs suffered more than 
 any other. Every night he broke down in exhaus- 
 tion and in the guise of a "measly rag" and a 
 "lazy hound" enjoyed the particular attentions 
 of the captain. And vet he bore it all with the 
 
 27
 
 THE JUDGMENT OP PEACE 
 
 dumb patience of a Buddhist saint. Yet his in- 
 dignation flamed up over every injustice suffered 
 by others. Now again he stormed against the 
 whole system of arrogance and violence with a 
 passion that abashed the uncle, so that the lat- 
 ter's replies sounded like the breathless cries of a 
 swimmer against the stream. 
 
 "Precisely you have no right to say that you 
 of all people !" Weiler was saying in an outraged 
 tone. "Discipline is an entirely different thing. 
 And why do you always seek help from some per- 
 fectly stereotyped word like that? Stick to the 
 point and tell me why the pianist George Gadsky 
 whom no one dared with impunity to call an 
 idiot or an ass, who would permit no one to 
 treat him boorishly so long as he was a civilian 
 why this same man is robbed of every shadow 
 of his sensitiveness and honor? That, I suppose, 
 is your idea of the especial respect which you are 
 always demanding for the field-gray garb of 
 honor? Gadsky is, in the name of that, to be in- 
 sulted and brow-beaten by a fellow who, in civil 
 life, might conceivably rise to be a janitor, until 
 he leaves for the front. Then, to be sure, Ser- 
 geant Stuff remains behind in order to continue 
 his fearless attacks on new recruits." 
 
 Dorndorf's face took on an expression of ugly 
 delight. He had been a bureaucrat in a sub- 
 ordinate position all his life and had had to bow 
 down and scrape before others. It gave him a 
 secret joy to have these gentlemen of the so-called 
 28
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 liberal professions complain of the force that 
 oppressed them. 
 
 "My dear fellow," he said with quiet satisfac- 
 tion, "this is a time that demands some sacrifice 
 of every one. One man loses his secure existence, 
 another, like Mr. Gadsky, must give up his 
 liberty, a third must deliver his sons to the state, 
 like myself. Do you think it's easy for me to sit 
 here with the consciousness that at any moment 
 I might get a telegram from the country around 
 Ypres or from Poland? Do you know the trouble 
 and the money it took to get two boys to the 
 point where one might expect some joy of them 
 at last? And now, if it's God's will, they may be 
 crippled for life, or I may never see either one 
 again. It's my opinion that one sacrifice is 
 worthy of another. Or do you believe I wouldn't 
 much rather let your Mr. Stuff hound me?" 
 
 Gadsky had listened with an annoyed shake of 
 the head and had expressed his impatience 
 through thunderous chords. Now he was sur- 
 prised that everything was so silent behind him. 
 For when once Weiler's temperament had been 
 thoroughly aroused, his timidity was quite gone. 
 And surely this answer of Dorndorf's was a 
 challenge. He stopped playing and turned 
 around, for the silence was still continuing. 
 
 He saw that Weiler was alarmingly pale. 
 There was something crouching in his attitude. 
 His eyes were fastened on Dorndorf. One could 
 see the struggle that passed within him, that 
 
 29
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 he made effort after effort to speak and yet, ere 
 the words reached his lips, recoiled from them. 
 
 "For heaven's sake, don't eat me up," the old 
 man jested with an uneasy vibration in his voice. 
 
 Then suddenly Weiler made a gesture of lib- 
 eration, threw aside all scruples with a deter- 
 mined movement of his shoulders and said: "I 
 can't I can't bear to hear that falsehood any 
 longer ! It's time that we spoke out. . . ." 
 
 "Falsehood?" Dorndorf was frightened. 
 "Where do you see any falsehood?" 
 
 Weiler stepped back a trifle. His knees 
 trembled with excitement. "Didn't you say your- 
 self just now that it took a long time until one 
 could take any joy in one's sons? When does 
 that time come? When they are happy and well 
 settled in life? Yes. But in addition your pa- 
 ternal pride wants its sop too. Or would you 
 deny that there are parents who desire their own 
 vanity to be satisfied? Think of the many who 
 drive their dull children to study, who would 
 rather see them break down under the burden 
 than deny themselves the satisfaction of having 
 sons as learned as their neighbors! Consider 
 how often children are plunged into misery be- 
 cause they seek happiness in some marriage that 
 does not satisfy the pride of their parents ! How 
 often tell me yourself how often do parents 
 become the enemies of their own flesh and blood 
 because the children's chosen calling wounds 
 their vanity. Eight in this room there are three 
 of us, thrown together by chance. Let Gadsky 
 30
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 tell you how, to his last breath, his father 
 couldn't forgive him for having become an 
 artist; ask Mr. von Kriilow who wanted to be 
 a painter and hated nothing as he hated force 
 of any kind, by what means he was driven to en- 
 ter the army ! And I? It would take hours for me 
 to tell you of all the little tricks and underhand- 
 ed bits of malice to which my mother resorted 
 yes, my own "widowed mother because I had 
 turned my back upon my father's honorable call- 
 ing. Just three of us, you see. And are we ex- 
 ceptions? Rare exceptions? DQ you believe 
 that? I tell you that the contrary experience is 
 almost the exceptional one. Most men go about 
 the education of their children quite as they go 
 at any other undertaking. For two decades they 
 sacrifice their money and care. Then they pre- 
 sent a bill. Most of them desire to be able to say 
 with self-satisfaction: 'My son took his doctor's 
 degree to-day,' or 'he has been made chief of his 
 governmental department, or councilor, or direc- 
 tor, or has married the daughter of the wealthy 
 Mr. So and So.' That was the situation in times 
 of peace. To-day the circumstances have 
 changed. Whoever wants to impress his friends 
 and relatives to-day and has a taste for envious 
 congratulations, for respect and approval, must 
 be able to tell a different story of his sons. Only 
 he who has a letter from the front with him, only 
 he who can say at his inn: 'My son was at 
 Tannenberg, at Ypres,' only he who can tell of an 
 iron cross, a wound or the death of some descend- 
 
 31
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 ant, can boast of his fatherhood to-day with up- 
 lifted head. So the boys are driven forth! If 
 they were always ruffians, always ready to fight, 
 brutal and hard-hearted so much the better. If 
 they were sensitive, averse from noise, dreamers, 
 they have a hard time to-day. Who can help 
 them? For who would be silent when others 
 boast? Who would be the father of a slacker in 
 this iron time? It sounds ugly, I know. Don't 
 be offended, Mr. Dorndorf. But I can't keep still 
 any longer. I seem to choke when the old men in 
 their security, in their clean beds, are constantly 
 admiring themselves and declaiming concerning 
 their sacrifices, just as in peace they rattled the 
 money which the education of their children had 
 cost them. I don't believe that one ought to be 
 silent any longer, or adopt an ostrich policy. 
 One must demolish these lies. There is no other 
 pathway to the hearts of men. Not until these 
 phrases that every one repeats without testing 
 them, not until they are destroyed can we sting 
 into life the consciences that crouch in cowardly 
 fashion behind a wall of lies !" 
 
 He dropped exhausted into a chair whicti 
 Mathilde had moved nearer to him and with 
 trembling hands patted his forehead. 
 
 "Phrases? . . . You call that phrases and 
 lies?" Dorndorf growled with dull, repressed 
 rage, and his hands, too, trembled. "Then I 
 haven't anything further to say. . . . It's neces- 
 sary for a man to have been a father to " 
 
 "But uncle, Mr. Weiler didn't mean you," 
 32
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Mathilde attempted to interpose. "We know that 
 
 you're the kindest father " 
 
 "Of course not," Weiler interrupted her eager- 
 ly. His kind eyes were fixed anxiously on the old 
 man. His soft, feeling voice almost pleaded: 
 "Surely you don't think I meant you? And 
 surely you don't believe I was foolish enough to 
 assert that there are no unselfish parents. Of 
 course there are many, many! But they're not 
 important to-day. They suffer their children to 
 be torn from them ; they don't sacrifice them. It's 
 the word sacrifice that I can't bear to hear any 
 longer. And not to-day of all days . . . On 
 my way here, I couldn't help thinking constantly 
 of an article I read in last night's paper. In this 
 article it was made abundantly clear that there 
 was no better investment than the war-loans. It 
 was proven with the utmost exactness, by many 
 examples, that the bonds represented the chance 
 of making five per cent, on your money without 
 a shadow of risk, and with the additional satis- 
 faction of serving the fatherland by a patriotic 
 action. When I started reading that last night 
 at the restaurant, I thought it was a joke. And 
 all night long and until morning came I won- 
 dered and wondered why men are willing to give 
 up their sons without any guarantee that they 
 would receive them back uninjured, without ask- 
 ing five per cent., solely for the sake of the honor 
 of doing a patriotic action; and why, on the 
 other hand, they make so many conditions before 
 they give up their money. I couldn't understand 
 
 33
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 why the state didn't conscript banknotes, since 
 the money is as urgently needed as the sons of 
 men. Surely there could be no doubt of the 
 citizens' readiness for sacrifice? Were they not 
 glad to give, without chaffering, their own flesh 
 and blood? Well, before I had found any solu- 
 tion for my riddle I received, in the pattest way, 
 this very morning, a letter from my uncle in 
 Cologne. He has no children and owns a whole- 
 sale house that sells skins and furs and he has 
 a great deal of money. You know how it is with 
 rich relations. I hadn't heard from him in years. 
 Now he wrote with the most astonishing cor- 
 diality. He had heard that I had been called to 
 the colors and so he sent me a check for a thou- 
 sand. He added quite magnanimously that I 
 needn't worry a bit about this loan, because his 
 entire stock had been taken over by the govern- 
 ment at a splendid price ; he was in a position to 
 help me further, if necessary. There, you see, I 
 was confronted for a second time by the same 
 riddle. Why, I brooded and worried about it 
 again, why doesn't the state simply say : 'I need 
 boots for your sons to march in. Hence on the 
 23d inst. all leather-merchants, names A E, and 
 on the 24th, names E N, and so on, are com- 
 manded to deliver their entire stocks at X bar- 
 racks?' Was it possible I shuddered at the ques- 
 tion that the state has so low an opinion of its 
 citizens' devotion that it does not dare take over 
 their money and their banknotes and their mer- 
 chandise without guaranteeing a profit? And 
 34
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 yet it took their sons without any compensation 
 ... I struggled against the explanation that 
 forced itself upon me. Oh, I struggled des- 
 perately ! I thought of the other lands at war 
 of France, England! It was the same thing 
 the same . . . Well, at noon, while we were 
 rinsing our dinner pails, my comrade Frobel 
 was telling me about his father. The old 
 gentleman has a farm somewhere in the foot- 
 hills, and so he has excellent prospects now, 
 because the state is paying a premium to all 
 farmers if they'll plant just what the fatherland 
 needs most urgently. I didn't quite understand 
 the details even when he showed me the news- 
 paper clipping that his father had sent him. But 
 I did note the use of the word "stimulus." It 
 seemed incomprehensible to me that the same 
 people who are not only willing to give up their 
 sons to slaughter, but actually drive them forth 
 with enthusiasm their sons who are the very 
 contents of their lives, the consolation of their 
 old age that these people will renounce a por- 
 tion of their profits only on condition that a sum 
 paid as a "stimulus" reimburses them. If I'm 
 wrong, show me just where I am. And if you 
 can, I'll be glad to praise a spirit of sacrifice 
 that I can't quite trust as long as it stops short 
 at one's purse and not at one's parental love." 
 
 He had grown quite calm as he talked on; 
 he was a little hoarse and there was the weari- 
 ness of a deep disgust in his voice as though he 
 were himself ashamed of the accusation which 
 
 35
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 he uttered. When no one answered him, his 
 eyes wandered in a frightened way among those 
 earnest faces. At last, with a sigh, he seemed to 
 sink back into himself. 
 
 No one found an answer. An oppressive silence 
 filled the room. Gadsky shrugged his shoulders 
 significantly and swung around again on the 
 piano-stool toward the instrument. He had been 
 observing Mathilde's face. The infinitely fine 
 line of suffering had deepened about her moutli 
 while Weiler was speaking. Defiantly he tried 
 to expel what he had heard from his conscious- 
 ness and let his fingers, gentle as breathing, run 
 over the keys while he thought of the lovely 
 Madonna-like face of his beloved. 
 
 Dorndorf didn't speak either. He stared at the 
 carpet, firmly determined not to answer a syl- 
 lable to the wretched slander. He had been 
 wounded in what he considered his most sacred 
 feelings, in his paternal dignity the only kind 
 he had conquered and privately vowed to him- 
 self that he would not cross this threshold again 
 until Gadsky and Weiler had departed for the 
 front. 
 
 The clear, calm voice of Ensign von Krtilow 
 broke the long silence. They all listened; even 
 Gadsky turned around surprised, for it was, so 
 far as he could remember, the first time that 
 Kriilow had entered a discussion of his own im- 
 pulse. Usually he merely followed the talk with 
 shining, enthusiastic eyes, and grew embarrassed 
 when some question forced him to join in the 
 36
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 debate. It was astonishing that he should begin 
 to speak without urging. It was clear that lie 
 was overflowing like a full vessel that could hold 
 no drop more. 
 
 "I hope you won't take my words personally, 
 Mr. Dorndorf," he began hesitatingly. His 
 wavering glance sought Mathilde's face as 
 though he hoped to find there the courage he 
 needed to go on. "I don't know how it is in 
 your circles. But in my family, during my leave, 
 I had never to wait more than half an hour to 
 hear the question: 'Do you know how many of 
 us have already fallen?' Oh, they counted up the 
 iron crosses, too. But that was a secondary con- 
 sideration. It was rather painful for a man iri 
 uniform this disputing among kinsmen who 
 boasted to each other of the number of their 
 dead. It was even more painful for my father 
 who at that time had distinctly to feel humble 
 with his three entirely unwounded sons. I 
 actually felt apologetic to him ..." 
 
 "Oh, you ought to be ashamed !" Mathilde said. 
 She didn't want to believe . . . 
 
 But Kriilow's gentle mouth wore a smile of 
 bitter superiority in knowledge. The others 
 caught it from him and Gadsky laughed as he 
 drove a merry capriccio across the keys. 
 
 Dorndorf alone gazed at the floor in somber 
 silence. He didn't care particularly about the 
 babble of the two others. But to hear an active 
 officer and the son of a general speak so that 
 pained him deeply. Mathilde caught the hateful 
 
 37
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 glance that sprang at Krulow from under the old 
 man's bushy eyebrows. It worried her. She 
 feared that his patriotism was not above writing 
 an anonymous accusation and she wanted to 
 prevent Krtilow's giving himself away any fur- 
 ther. Swiftly she leaned across the table toward 
 him, "Tell me, Mr. von Krulow, isn't there any 
 possible protection from the malice of this hor- 
 rible Mr. Stuff? I can't bear the thought that 
 George is to remain quite defenseless against the 
 whims of a coarse fellow like that !" 
 
 Krulow blushed as he always did when 
 Mathilde's eyes rested on him. He shook his head 
 regretfully. "Discipline, you see . . ." he said 
 with gentle irony. 
 
 "But that's not discipline, that's slavery!" 
 Mathilde returned indignantly. "A thoroughly 
 wicked person like that might torment one to 
 death!" 
 
 "He isn't such a devil as you think," Gad- 
 sky said over his shoulder without interrupting 
 his playing. "If he were actually and thoroughly 
 bad, one could console oneself with the reflection 
 of having had extraordinarily bad luck. But he's 
 positively good-natured. You can't even hate him 
 for his stupidity." 
 
 "Gadsky is quite right," Krulow assured her 
 in his gentle, careful way. "You musn't forget 
 that Stuff has been a sergeant for twenty years. 
 And he thinks nothing of it even now if oc- 
 casionally his captain does him an injustice. He 
 is accustomed to be silent no matter what is done 
 38
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 to him by those above him ; he has no feeling of 
 personal honor in his dealings with his super- 
 iors. If you were to tell him that the human way 
 of walking was unworthy of us, and that a new 
 way of locomotion must be invented he 
 wouldn't be more astonished than by the prop- 
 osition that he is to treat with less conscious 
 superiority a recruit who has great knowledge 
 and ability and need merely learn a few points, 
 of military technique, than a raw peasant lad 
 of twenty who can scarcely read or write. For 
 does he not, in turn, acknowledge without dis- 
 pute the authority of a lieutenant of nineteen? 
 The official superior amounts to more, has more 
 power, knows more than his official inferior. To 
 Sergeant Stuff that is as self-evident as that he 
 breathes." 
 
 "And you seem to be of the opinion that he is 
 wrong?" Dorndorf, unable to control himself, in- 
 terrupted with bitter anger, "I'd like to see any 
 army in the world in which every rookie is per- 
 mitted to develop his own personality." 
 
 The mild and always slightly astonished eyes 
 of the ensign showed a gleam as of blue steel. 
 He looked hard at Dorndorf and said with that 
 cool and unshakable self-control which is a fruit 
 of all official military training: "On the con- 
 trary. Personally, Stuff's way of thinking has 
 passed into my very blood. That is, of course, 
 on account of the education which I let me not 
 call it enjoyed but received. But I understand 
 well that Gadsky is in the happy position of hav- 
 
 39
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 ing been able to cultivate other modes of feel- 
 ing." He pushed back his cuff and held out his 
 right hand toward Mathilde. "Do you see those 
 three white spots above the wrist-bone? Those 
 scars date from my eleventh year, from the day 
 of my entrance into the military training school. 
 At the command of my monitor a lad of four- 
 teen I had to hold out my arm while he 
 dropped burning sealing-wax on it." 
 
 "But why, why?" Mathilde was outraged. 
 "That's medieval. . . . !" 
 
 "You will find hazing scandals in the official 
 military training schools of all countries. They 
 grow out of the spirit that despises both wretch- 
 edness and compassion ; above all they teach even 
 the most stupid the meaning of utter subordina- 
 tion. And any one who has lived so since his 
 early youth can scarcely even appreciate Gad- 
 sky's self-conscious indignation. You can under- 
 stand that, dear lady." 
 
 Mathilde covered her face with her hands. 
 "It's terrible," she moaned. "And do the parents 
 know it?" 
 
 Weiler who had listened with a pale face sud- 
 denly drew himself up. "You musn't think those 
 educational methods are confined to military 
 schools. Everywhere in our modern world hard- 
 ness and a repression of the gentler feelings are 
 cultivated. Boys are ashamed to show feeling. 
 They are ashamed to love poetry, to be moved by 
 noble things. The age trains them to be spiritual 
 ruffians and to call the gentle souls 'sissies.' The 
 40
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 spirit of militarism has crept into all life and 
 over the whole world." 
 
 Ensign von Kriilow had listened with rapt at- 
 tention. He said dreamily, "It's a strange feel- 
 ing for me who grew up in the tradition of 'red- 
 blooded' brutality to hear such heresies openly 
 uttered. There was a legend in my childhood of 
 the little son of a jailer who, when he went out 
 into the world, was astonished that there were 
 people who wore no chains. I remind myself of 
 that boy." 
 
 He fell silent, and a mild and yearning expres- 
 sion gave his face a touch of strangeness. The 
 others lowered their eyes too, as though their 
 homesickness for their far childhood had been 
 awakened. Even from Dorndorf's forehead the 
 dark anger vanished for a few minutes. Mathilde 
 arose and filled the cups. She pushed the cake 
 tray nearer to Dorndorf and then carried a cup 
 of tea to Gadsky at the piano. 
 
 He saw her standing by him ; he felt the still- 
 ness that filled the room pass into his soul and 
 looked up at her tenderly. The current that 
 passed to him from her slender, flexible body 
 made him tremble. Mathilde felt a slight and 
 exqujsite shiver too. She was leaning lightly on 
 his shoulder. Then, with a quick determination, 
 she bent over him : "Can't you come to-morrow 
 evening?" He let the piano thunder and 
 answered aloud: "If Sergeant Stuff has no ob- 
 jection." 
 
 "I'll wait with the car from half past six to
 
 THE JUDGMENT OP PEACE 
 
 seven, as usual," she breathed. She touched his 
 ear delicately and then went back to the table. 
 
 Kriilow had awakened again. He saw the 
 gleam of blessedness in her eyes and flushed. 
 Since the death of his mother, she was the first 
 woman to whom he felt himself attracted in a 
 pure and spiritual fashion. His bitter, intimi- 
 dated heart reached out after her. He smiled as 
 he compared her in his mind with the thin and 
 frosty women among his kin. 
 
 Mathilde had a careworn look. "I'm in con- 
 stant fear, Mr. von Kriilow," she said softly, 
 "that Gadsky will lose his temper and commit 
 some terrible folly. Does he have to endure 
 whatever the sergeant chooses to inflict ? Is there 
 no recourse . . . ?" 
 
 "Naturally, everything has its limits," Krti- 
 )ow stammered in embarrassment. "Even the 
 omnipotence of a superior officer is conditioned 
 on certain rules. If, for instance, a misuse of his 
 authority could be clearly proven . . . But even 
 in that case . . . The worst that could happen 
 to Stuff would be several days' confinement to 
 his rooms. He'd have wine and a game of cards 
 and take no great harm. Gadsky, on the con- 
 trary, would sooner or later, I'm afraid ..." 
 
 Bending far over Dorndorf had listened with 
 curiosity. Now he beamed and completed the 
 sentence triumphantly: " make the acquaint- 
 ance of a court martial." 
 
 "Even if it didn't come to that . . ." Kriilow 
 wanted to continue, but he interrupted himself 
 42
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 as Weiler, who had been walking up and down 
 excitedly, suddenly remained standing and 
 showed the impulse to speak. 
 
 "And that's the sum of their wisdom a court 
 martial!" He spoke with extreme bitterness. 
 "Our captain is perfectly happy when he can 
 threaten us with that particular bogey. Have 
 you ever thoroughly reflected," he turned to 
 Dorndorf "what that really means a court 
 martial? Don't you feel at all that the whole 
 enormous one-sidedness, the blind violence of 
 this great age of yours stares at us from that 
 word? Isn't it the vilest injustice to judge men, 
 to imprison them, even to shoot them, simply 
 because they don't happen to possess one small 
 group of characteristics and faculties? I'd like 
 to see how it would fare with Stuff or even 
 with our captain if, in times of peace, an all- 
 absorbing organization such as every con- 
 script army is demanded of all able-bodied men 
 certain definite mental qualifications the abil- 
 ity, say, of mastering the differential calculus! 
 Why should professional soldiers alone have the 
 privilege now of making one aptitude do for the 
 whole of life, when all other men are threatened 
 with a court martial if they are not skillful at 
 learning a ruffian's trade? Could there be any- 
 thing more senseless than this attempt to reduce 
 all men to a common denominator? It is pre- 
 cisely as though we were to demand of sheep and 
 oxen and all the domestic animals that they are 
 to grow claws for the duration of the war and 
 
 43
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 hurl themselves at the enemy like tigers! Are 
 there not also numberless domestic human 
 beings, who are useful and industrious but who 
 have no claws? Take our poor comrade Frobel, 
 for instance. He's an admirable common-school 
 teacher, just because he is gentle and patient. 
 And now, suddenly, he is to . . ." 
 
 "That would be simple!" Dorndorf roared. 
 "What you want is a paradise for slackers. 
 Every one would say he was the domestic kind. 
 That system would soon finish us. Our enemies 
 could ruin and crush us." 
 
 Weiler suddenly grew very calm. "Ruin us, 
 you say. Then let me ask of you one favor: 
 Imagine this war to have taken place at some 
 other period in history say toward the end of 
 the eighteenth century. And now blot out from 
 human civilization all the inventions, discover- 
 ies, creative works in music and literature, the 
 gains of the medical, philosophical and other 
 sciences, in short, all the intellectual products of 
 the men who, at that point of time, were between 
 the ages of twenty and forty! That will give 
 you some notion what a catastrophe like this 
 means in regard to the future of mankind. You 
 will probably reply that it is not the most gifted 
 who will necessarily be killed. To be sure, the 
 grenades will not select the finest brains to 
 smash. But neither will they spare them. And 
 I'm not inclined to believe that the most famous 
 thinkers, artists and discoverers will make the 
 best bayonet fighters." 
 44
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Dorndorf shook his head irritatedly. "In a 
 word, you'd be in favor of having some people 
 go out there to get their heads smashed for the 
 others who can, in the meantime, sit in arm 
 chairs at home and follow out their beautiful 
 thoughts." 
 
 "And how is it now, if you please?" Weiler 
 was thoroughly aroused. "Wouldn't Gadsky be 
 permitted to stay at home too if his fingers had 
 been trained to drill gun bores instead of to play 
 the piano? Aren't thousands of men engineers, 
 chemists, miners carefully guarded from all 
 danger because they can accomplish more for 
 the war where they are? That is precisely the 
 fearful short-sightedness, that everything is ex- 
 cepted which immediately serves the war, and 
 that it is forgotten that in the total power of a 
 people the achievements of all its members are 
 contained. Or do you believe that the power of 
 a nation can be heightened by increasing the 
 number of guns at the expense of the intellectual 
 values? A narrow-chested weakling who brews 
 some new explosive is more valuable to-day than 
 regiments of giants. Victories are won in the 
 chart-room, in the laboratory, in the munition 
 works. Nine-tenths of the actual fighters die 
 without ever having seen the enemy who kills 
 them. But people still fly flags and boast might- 
 ily, as though success were still the result of 
 greater valor and not of an impersonal organi- 
 zation." 
 
 "Never mind that," Dorndorf replied sul- 
 
 45
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 lenly. "A brave man can still find plenty of op- 
 portunity. And if we construct pieces of artil- 
 lery that no one can imitate, it speaks for our 
 greater capability. We shall win because we are 
 superior to the enemy in every respect." 
 
 "Do you think so?" Weiler interrupted him. 
 "Do you think it is our minds against the minds 
 of the enemy? Not at all! Intellectual achieve- 
 ments are international. We use enemy inven- 
 tions against him ; he uses ours against us." 
 
 "Nonsense," Dorndorf protested in indigna- 
 tion. "We may use his inventions. Very well. 
 We use them better. It shows that we are more 
 skillful, industrious and brave." 
 
 "Suppose we leave the whole question of valor 
 out," Weiler jeered. "Since in this war it is 
 the aim of every general on both sides to get the 
 enemy under fire at the greatest possible dis- 
 tance, so that he can't shoot back, to surround 
 him and attack him, if possible, in the rear, and 
 since all these means to victory depend on the 
 invention of guns and the ability of generals, 
 there is confoundedly little room left for volun- 
 tary personal valor. Power and courage scarcely 
 belong to war any longer. The strongest man is 
 no better than a paralytic if he would compete 
 with one of the gigantic cranes in the Hamburg 
 harbor; a baby, by pressing a button, can lift a 
 thousand times as much. That was all very fine 
 and true so long as the stronger arm x the longer 
 spear, the harder head decided a combat. To-day 
 the same qualities are successful in war which 
 46
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 decide competition in what we call peace. Who- 
 ever has invented the greater number of buttons 
 to press can also manufacture the greater num- 
 ber of grenades. Really one could leave the 
 whole skull-cracking process out altogether. The 
 larger industry would still gain the upper hand ; 
 the more cunning commercial method prevail 
 over the simpler one. It is only because people 
 cling to tradition and because it is to the pro- 
 fessional advantage of some to cling to it, that 
 we still make the number of dead men the cri- 
 terion of power. Naked competition, in all its 
 unadorned sobriety, without any bloodshed, 
 would probably seem too cruel to these people." 
 
 Gadsky laughed aloud. Mathilde had arisen 
 and threatened Weiler playfully. She went 
 toward the door. "Here it's six o'clock. I must 
 get ready to go to the theater and the whole 
 afternoon has passed without our having been 
 happy or comfortable. But watch out! Next 
 time I'll have a Bed Cross bank on the table and 
 whoever argues will be fined." 
 
 Full of remorse Weiler took her hand and 
 touched it with his lips. 
 
 Dorndorf followed his niece with his eyes and 
 waited until the door was shut behind her. Then 
 he turned to Weiler with a challenging air. 
 
 "I'm not up to your profound explanations," 
 he began with sarcastic humility. "May I, how- 
 ever, offer a very simple comparison, even if it's 
 not so witty as your proposal to make tigers of 
 sheep and oxen? So far as I was able to follow 
 
 47
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 your train of thought you were trying, by means 
 of this comparison, to prove that it isn't right 
 to tear peace-loving people from their civil pur- 
 suits and send them to war. But now I want you 
 to tell me whether a man who is overtaken by an 
 inundation and is fighting with the water must 
 not try, above all things, to get firm ground un- 
 der his feet again? I don't believe that he'll give 
 a damn just then about his other talents, but 
 gather all his possible energy into his arms and 
 legs. Even Caruso, in that situation, would 
 hardly sing arias and drown. He'll forget all 
 about his precious larynx and hold himself above 
 water as long as he can. Or do you think 
 he ..." 
 
 Impatiently Weiler interrupted him. "I think 
 exactly as you do. We agree perfectly. You said 
 yourself that the man, in spite of his extremity, 
 will use only his arms and legs. He won't even 
 attempt to swim with his larynx. If his arm 
 and legs aren't strong enough, he has to drown. 
 And that's all I ask. But the state pursues the 
 contrary policy. It says : This is no time to sing 
 or think or poetize or paint or do a hundred 
 other things. Therefore the larynx as well as 
 all the other organs and functions of peace 
 must now be transformed into arms and legs. 
 And if to grant your comparison the larynx 
 doesn't succeed in helping the man to swim, the 
 court martial must teach it to do so." 
 
 "That's quibbling, mere quibbling! Of course 
 48
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 you can take anything and twist and turn it 
 till. . . ." Dorndorf was gasping. 
 
 Mathilde reentered now, dressed for the 
 street. She stepped between the two men. "Are 
 you fighting again?" She pushed her uncle 
 gently aside and turned to Weiler: "You bad 
 man!" 
 
 Dorndorf gasped for air. He stood on tiptoe 
 and shouted across Mathilde's shoulder: "No 
 one can accuse me of undervaluing literature and 
 art. And it's easy enough to prove that a man 
 can't swim with his larynx." Then he turned to 
 Gadsky and added venomously: "A man has 
 gone pretty far when he finds such cheap jokes 
 entertaining." 
 
 Mathilde laid her hand on the old man's shoul- 
 der. "Uncle, we shall have to go now." But he 
 escaped her and exclaimed with unction : "If we 
 had the enemy in the fatherland destroying and 
 trampling down everything and using pianos as 
 fuel, Mr. Gadsky wouldn't have much chance of 
 practicing his art ! And I believe there would be 
 damned few people in that case who would take 
 pleasure in his playing. When the existence of 
 a nation is at stake, even the finest music is a 
 useless toy. One must, after all, distinguish be- 
 tween the things that count more and those that 
 count less. . . ." 
 
 "Existence?" Weiler interrupted him again. 
 "You can't very easily blow away a nation of 
 seventy million souls . . ." 
 
 Gadsky had closed the piano. He stood beside 
 
 49
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Krulow and listened with amusement to the de- 
 bate. Now he suddenly grew grave, pushed 
 Weiler aside and turned calmly but incisively 
 toward Dorndorf . "Listen, my dear man ! I wish 
 you would leave my art out of the argument. 
 You say it is, after all, a mere game ! lam not 
 sure but what the emptier game isn't all this 
 shooting, this waste of billions that lays waste 
 whole countries and brings whole nations to the 
 point of beggary ! It, in fact, is a game the game 
 of a couple of thousand of undeveloped diplo- 
 matic brains all over Europe who would rather 
 smash the world to bits than reeducate their 
 own way of thinking. With my art I can turn 
 gross and uncouth oafs to gentleness and love. 
 With my art I can change hate into kindness and 
 transform the clenched fist into the outstretched 
 hand. And this holy earnestness that impresses 
 you so what does it do? It changes strong men 
 into stinking carrion; it turns kind and good 
 men into cruel beasts everywhere and always. 
 Don't meddle with my art! You'll be yearning 
 for it in dust and ashes some day, if this noble 
 earnestness of yours prevails for another year 
 or two. Wait! Shan't we go?" 
 
 He turned his back on Dorndorf. But his 
 face brightened again as his eyes met Mathilde's. 
 She healed his soul with the completeness of her 
 silent assent. She slipped past the others and 
 with a characteristic nod of her head which he 
 loved, she said : "I must go, even if you gentle- 
 50
 
 THE JUDGMENT OP PEACE 
 
 men are not quite through. We begin at seven 
 and it's almost half past six." 
 
 Ensign von Krtilow had already buckled on 
 his sword and slipped into his overcoat. He was 
 waiting in the anteroom. His quiet, thoughtful 
 face was suffused with a radiance of content. 
 He went with Mathilde and Gadsky and said on 
 the stairs, drawing his breath deeply: "It does 
 me good to hear Dorndorf obliterated ! All that 
 I've had to choke down for fifteen long years 
 . . ." He fell silent, for Dorndorf and Weiler ap- 
 peared on the landing, and they went downstairs 
 without further speech. Outside Mathilde sur- 
 reptitiously drew tw T o tickets from her bag and 
 turned to Krulow: "Couldn't the leave possibly 
 be extended until eleven? If you were to say a 
 word to his majesty, the sergeant?" 
 
 "Nonsense!" Gadsky thundered. "It's all ar- 
 ranged for the other two gentlemen to go. Don't 
 be childish, my dear." 
 
 "Unfortunately your overestimate my influ- 
 ence," Krulow stammered. 
 
 "Do have a good time!" Gadsky said ener- 
 getically and took Mathilde's hand. 
 
 She tried to hold him back. "I'm in such good 
 form to-day," she begged. "The second act is at 
 half past nine. . . ." 
 
 But Gadsky had already torn himself away, 
 waved his good-night greeting and, drawing 
 Weiler with him, hastened away. Mathilde fol- 
 lowed him with her eyes until he had disap- 
 peared around the nearest corner. "Perhaps he's 
 
 51
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 glad to have the excuse," she said with a mild 
 and tired little smile to Krtilow, who looked at 
 her as guiltily as though it were his fault. 
 
 Weiler permitted himself to be drawn along 
 through the streets. His head was bowed and he 
 answered Gadsky's remarks distractedly. It was 
 always so with him. When his excitement disap- 
 peared, remorse overcame him. When, in the 
 course of a debate, a profound conviction spoke 
 from him, he could be pitiless and sharp. So soon 
 as he was no longer face to face with his op- 
 ponent, he grew gentle and pangs of conscience 
 tormented him. "I shouldn't have spoken so 
 frankly on the point of parental vanity," he said 
 in a depressed way after a while, and looked 
 anxiously up at Gadsky. "But Dorndorf," he 
 continued, "stings me with his empty repetition 
 of stereotyped commonplaces so that I lose all 
 control over myself." But with a new flame of 
 passionate conviction he added: "But it's true! 
 I swear to you it's true! You heard Mr. von 
 Kriilow confirm all I said. Only I shouldn't have 
 told the old gentleman all that to his face . . ." 
 
 Gadsky wasn't at all in the mood to be mild or 
 forgiving. The farewell had stirred up anew his 
 hatred of Stuff, and also the feeling that there 
 were six days of torment ahead of him gnawed 
 at him again. It was stupid, it was mad of him, 
 to creep back every Sunday into that atmosphere 
 of culture and of exquisiteness like a criminal 
 who is drawn back to the scene of his crime until 
 he is caught. The venom had gathered in his 
 52
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 heart and he let his wretchedness rattle down on 
 Weiler. "Don't talk such rot! Not say things 
 to him face to face? You intend to hold in what 
 you think on this fellow's account? You said too 
 little. Watch him how he beams and boasts ! Oh, 
 if only he were young enough to go to the front ! 
 Easily said! You hear it from them all ! They're 
 all aching to go! But one should tell them the 
 straight truth for once these shaky professors 
 and councilors and editors! Like bathing chil- 
 dren they patter about in our blood ! Isn't it a 
 comfortable situation to sit down softly cush- 
 ioned and then to assign to the young the task 
 of dying as though it were a lesson in Cicero? 
 Have you ever watched one of these palsied old 
 fellows when he sees young, strong men march 
 past him out to battle? He barely refrains from 
 calling out to us: 'Eh! We're sixty and our 
 arteries are hardening and the gout is in our 
 bones and we'll survive you for all that! Eh! 
 Eh!' They grin at us as full of malice as 
 monkeys in a cage, and screech their patriotic 
 phrases and wave their arms like an old farmer 
 driving his poultry across the farmyard. Why 
 shouldn't you speak out? You said far too little, 
 not too much !" 
 
 Weiler did not answer. Gadsky's rage intimi- 
 dated him. This scene was repeated every Sun- 
 day on their way back. For it was not until the 
 barracks stretched out its fangs toward him and 
 the whole bitterness of his situation came over 
 him, that Gadsky would return to the debates at 
 
 53
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Miss von Moellnitz' which he had treated as a 
 mere spectator before. And Weiler, the springs 
 of whose enthusiasm and wrath were run down, 
 had to suffer his friend's belated explosions. 
 
 "You are a queer fellow," Gadsky said after 
 a brief pause. "If ever in the heat of debate a 
 frank word escapes you, you let it eat into your 
 soul later. You imagine, I suppose, that Dorn- 
 dorf is just as quiveringly sensitive as you are? 
 You can't imagine that there are people whose 
 inner lives are far more robust. You strike me 
 like a sort of inverted Stuff. That vulgar fellow 
 believes it's quite as easy for any man to cringe 
 as it is for him. And you, on the contrary, at- 
 tribute your own fineness of feeling to every 
 member of the species. That accounts for your 
 morbid love of the mob. You ought to know 
 these people from actual acquaintance as I do. 
 You'd soon lose all desire to defend them." 
 
 "They need no defense," Weiler said stub- 
 bornly. "If I had grown up under such unfavor- 
 able conditions as those poor people, if I had 
 seen nothing about me but hardness and need 
 and discrimination, and had had no sight of any 
 of the beautiful things in life except across a 
 tall iron fence, I wouldn't be different by a hair's 
 breadth." 
 
 Gadsky laughed a brief, jeering laugh but 
 made no answer. He considered that Weiler 
 made a fool of himself over the proletariat. He 
 himself, from his childhood on, had nourished a 
 bitter dislike of the workers. In the little indus- 
 54
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 trial village where he had grown up he had been 
 better clad than the other children. And so he, 
 the son of the government official, had been at- 
 tacked and beaten and pushed into mud puddles 
 in his Sunday best. And the nattering reception 
 which good society had given him immediately 
 after his first success had but served to deepen 
 that early dislike. This was the one question in 
 regard to which he and Weiler could find no 
 common ground. He shrugged his shoulders 
 with a touch of contempt and hurried on until, 
 short of breath, he stopped in the middle of the 
 street. "Where are we rushing to anyhow?" he 
 asked moodily. 
 
 "I thought we were going to dine somewhere," 
 Weiler stammered in his astonishment. Gadsky 
 looked about and pointed to a large, cheap 
 restaurant that boldly threw its cone of light 
 across the street. "That's where we belong," he 
 said. "That's the proper place for common sol- 
 diers this hash-mill!" He laughed at the look 
 of fright in Weiler's eyes. For Weiler had an 
 unconquerable aversion from crowds and their 
 noise. He drew him along and patted his shoul- 
 der. "You must come in there. It will give you 
 a chance to rejoice in your fellowmen. You'll 
 see they'll make much of us. Aren't we going 
 to permit ourselves to be massacred in order that 
 they may swill their beer in peace?" 
 
 The tables were all taken. About the great 
 chandeliers floated clouds of cigar smoke and of 
 steam. They heard a sound of speech like the 
 
 55
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 whirring and grinding of a huge machine. 
 Weiler turned back in the middle and ran 
 toward the door. He was glad there was no 
 vacant table. But Gadsky took him by the arm 
 and led him to a big table surrounded by noisy 
 Philistines who made room for them. Gadsky 
 declared with exaggerated courtesy that he and 
 his friend would be glad to avail themselves of 
 the friendly invitation and gave Weiler a sar- 
 castic look as two boisterous giants drew the lat- 
 ter down on the seat beside them. It gave him 
 a sinister pleasure to observe the desperate de- 
 fenselessness of his friend. He wanted to use 
 this opportunity to heal him thoroughly of his 
 predilection for the mob. He invented stories in 
 order to fasten the attention of these men ruth- 
 lessly upon Weiler. 
 
 "I haven't myself been at the front yet," he 
 said modestly, "but my friend here, although he 
 looks so pale and fragile, has about nine Eng- 
 lishmen to his credit. He won't have to wait 
 much longer for his iron cross." 
 
 "That's right," roared the fat man next to 
 Weiler and held out a great, paw to him. "Don't 
 spare them fellows, whatever you do! A pack 
 o' thieves !" 
 
 Gadsky turned to the man with an apparently 
 deep sympathy and respect. 
 
 "I suppose you know the English thoroughly? 
 May I ask whether you've ever lived among 
 them?" 
 
 The fat man opened his mouth in amazement. 
 56
 
 THE JUDGMENT OP PEACE 
 
 "Why?" he asked suspiciously. But he found his 
 self-confidence again at once. "I? Lived among 
 'em?" He shook his fist protestingly. "Aw, what 
 do you take me for? I never wanted to have 
 nothin' to do with them scoundrels." 
 
 "I understand fully," Gadsky said very grave- 
 ly. "You got your fill of them, so to speak, at a 
 distance." 
 
 Weiler suffered intensely. With hot cheeks he 
 bent over his plate and thought he would choke 
 with every bite he had to force down. The 
 cruelty with which Gadsky carried off his prac- 
 tical joke on these people wounded him more 
 deeply than the hurt done to himself. How could 
 he so misuse the credulity of these good-natured 
 donkeys? 
 
 A man with spectacles who looked like a court 
 assistant turned to Weiler and asked: "When 
 do you return to the front?" He forced a cigar 
 on him. Weiler was going to blurt out the truth, 
 but Gadsky interposed : "In three days and this 
 time to Belgium." He threw off the information 
 triumphantly. 
 
 At once the red, heated heads drew closer to- 
 gether and a flood of questions and bits of advice 
 poured down over the two. Each of the men had 
 particularly authentic information concerning 
 the atrocities of the Belgian franc-tireurs which 
 he believed with all the honest force of his igno- 
 rance and consequent limitation of outlook. The 
 fat man begged Weiler to trust no Belgian out of 
 his sight no, not even the women. . . . 
 
 57
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Wetter could endure it no longer. He threw 
 a coin on the table, slipped into his overcoat and 
 withdrew from further advice and felicitation 
 through flight. Gadsky did his best to make up 
 for his friend's strange abruptness. He let him- 
 self be shaken by the hand endlessly, permitted 
 his pockets to be filled with cheap cigars and 
 laughed at their fierce encouragement and war- 
 likeness. 
 
 On the street he let all his disgust creep into 
 his face. "Now," he turned to Weiler, "now, 
 my dear fellow, you have had a little taste of the 
 class that is so close to your heart. Won't you 
 now . . ." 
 
 But Weiler wouldn't let him finish. He was 
 like a child. There was a moisture in his eyes. 
 But his indignation was virile. "You speak as 
 though you were a prince's child who had grown 
 up away from the world. In the first place, what 
 have these dreary philistines to do with the 
 workers of the world? And it is them whom I 
 defend! But let that go! I grant you that the 
 people are foolish and stubbornly ignorant. And 
 yet you ought to be ashamed! What do these 
 poor devils say? Exactly what the leader- 
 writers in the newspapers teach them to say. 
 Every sentence they uttered fairly reeked of 
 printer's ink. Do you suppose English philis- 
 tines in a London inn have a finer insight into 
 the German character? If you want to vent your 
 rage on any one, vent it on the newspaper scoun- 
 drels in all countries who befog their particular 
 58
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 mob with flattery until national vanity and bel- 
 ligerency is everywhere everywhere like a 
 ravening beast ! Those poor devils in there would 
 also and far rather, I assure you, have been 
 great artists traveling through the world and 
 forming their independent opinion of men and 
 things. Your lofty superiority is really a very 
 inexpensive feeling for you !" 
 
 He stopped rather abruptly and turned in the 
 direction of the barracks. Gadsky stared at him 
 in astonishment. "You're incorrigible," he said, 
 but his voice had lost its assurance. "You say 
 poor devils ! Ah, these poor devils will be sitting 
 at that same table and brag and feel themselves 
 superior to others at the expense of victories 
 which they have helped to celebrate when you 
 and I will be rotting in some foreign soil." 
 
 Weiler made no answer. He walked as quickly 
 as he could through narrow side-streets to reach 
 the great square. He found it hard to react, to 
 liberate himself from the memory of the talk in 
 the inn. He thought of the people behind the 
 front in all the world and their talk their pom- 
 pous, ruthless talk of hate and punishment and 
 self-glorification. It seemed to him to desecrate 
 the unspeakable suffering that filled all lands. 
 Didn't these stay-at-homes know that on every 
 field on every day and every night boys who 
 were on the threshold of life, which should have 
 been full and sweet to them, were laying down 
 their heads upon the naked earth to die? Did 
 they not know that fathers of families, too, were 
 
 59-
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Weeding from fatal wounds and agonizing with 
 their last breath over those they were leaving to 
 the harshness of the riven world? How could 
 they forget that whole lands were dying and sit 
 at home and talk of empty words concerning 
 "justice" and "vengeance" and, of all things, 
 "glory!" 
 
 He had never been an enthusiast for the war. 
 In psychical self-defense he had, with enormous 
 difficulty, made out some sort of a case. He had 
 tried to imagine himself standing before his 
 books on their shelves and hostile forces trying 
 to tear and defile them . . . But that small 
 refuge had been taken from him too. He saw 
 only those men at the table and other groups of 
 men in the enemy countries precisely .like them 
 all ablaze with the lust for violence and booty, 
 land and indemnities, victory and wealth ! And 
 it seemed to him that everywhere those conver- 
 sations were like the plots hatched in the dens 
 of criminals. And everything within him re- 
 belled against being sacrificed in a struggle in 
 which friend and foe seemed to him alike driven 
 by an urge he could not share . . . 
 
 He actually longed for his straw-mattress, for 
 the dark room where he could flee to the walled 
 inner city of his thoughts and dreams. He 
 quivered when Gadsky suddenly touched his 
 sleeve. "Surely you don't want to go back yet? 
 It's only eight o'clock and we have a clear hour 
 and a half. Servant-girls and rookies never come 

 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 back before their time is up. Let's go to see mov- 
 ing pictures. It will distract our thoughts." 
 
 Weiler plead his weariness and his distaste for 
 moving pictures. Gadsky urged him on. He was 
 sorry over the scene in the inn and he feared ta 
 have Weiler end the day in so desperate a mood. 
 For in the barracks, as he knew to his cost, an 
 inner bitterness corroded the soul more and 
 more. On one's cot one lay as isolated as in a 
 prison-cell, buried with one's heaviness of soul, 
 cut off from all human sympathy. Finally 
 Weiler, moved by the remorse in Gadsky's eyes, 
 permitted himself to be led to the entrance of 
 the theater which was flanked by glaring posters, 
 roofed by the arc-lamps, and seemed to him like 
 a huge gullet sucking in the people on the 
 streets. 
 
 At first they were both glad to be in the dark- 
 ness. After the icy wind the warmth of the 
 crowded auditorium was grateful to their limbs. 
 But presently the faint odor of the well-fed Sun- 
 day crowd seemed to oppress their foreheads. 
 Gadsky studied Weiler's thin, rapt face with 
 compassion. In the pale light reflected back from 
 the brilliant screen it looked like a death mask. 
 Where had he lived the thirty years of his life 
 that a contact with the rough average of man- 
 kind crushed and astonished him so? Did he 
 really think the nation was a compact mass of 
 poets and philosophers? If so, then like a 
 precious flower, hidden in his books, guarded 
 from the coarse world, he should be kept and 
 
 61
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 spared the horrors of reality. Hurled into the 
 combat with a gun and a bayonet, he was bound 
 to go under like a stone thrown into w r ater. No 
 force on earth could turn these fragile, kind 
 hands into the paws of a beast of prey. 
 
 Weiler felt the sympathy that came to him 
 from his friend and regretted his recent 
 violence. So they sought each other's minds 
 through speech again in their indignation over 
 the worthlessness of the spectacle. Gadsky 
 cursed the shameless way in which melodies by 
 Chopin and Mozart were ruined and mutilated 
 on poor instruments and in false tempi; Weiler 
 was tormented by the thick sentimentality and 
 inner falseness of the story which the pictures 
 told. But the public took it in devoutly. At the 
 end came pictorial news of the war and the 
 crashing of a projectile from a forty-two centi- 
 meter gun was welcomed with an uproar of ap- 
 plause. The two friends hurried out of the 
 theater. 
 
 "There," cried Gadsky, "there you have seen 
 our hangmen face to face. These people who are 
 so moved when the kidnapped child says its eve- 
 ning prayer, are jubilant at the sight of a pro- 
 jectile that can tear a dozen human creatures 
 into rags. And they are capable of the two emo- 
 tional responses within the same fifteen minutes. 
 And do you know why? On account of the tribal 
 vanity that corrupts the whole world the swin- 
 ish meaning that has been given in all countries 
 to the word patriotism! If it's their projectile, 
 62
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 an invention of some one within their tribe, if 
 it's their achievement let it kill and rend! 
 Isn't that so?" 
 
 "I don't have to ask the question," Weiler 
 replied firmly. "I know it. But I also know that 
 these people and their equals in all the world are 
 capable of being kind and just and modest if 
 school and pulpit, the newspaper and the mov- 
 ing picture had always taught love instead of 
 vanity, brotherhood instead of patriotism." 
 
 With a heavy sigh and a gesture of renuncia- 
 tion Gadsky proceeded toward the tramway. But 
 on the way he remained standing once more for 
 a minute and said with a calm and weary bitter- 
 ness of spirit : "My dear fellow, I envy you your 
 faith. And I don't want to argue any more. But 
 I'd like to explain to you just why I can't fol- 
 low you. I don't care to ask how these people 
 would have been if they had received another 
 kind of psychical nourishment from without. I 
 see what they are to-day. And I know with a 
 thorough knowledge how I have had to lash and 
 goad my imperfect will and drive myself to the 
 piano. Achievement demands its price. And I 
 know too how you, Arthur Weiler, through long 
 years of profound inner agony and self-analysis 
 and intimate suffering, rose from the man to the 
 poet that you are. And to-day I see the two of 
 us sacrificed in order that the vile mob may wal- 
 low in its self-adoration. These poor herd-ani- 
 mals are neither rich nor wise, nor beautiful nor 
 learned. Well, they haven't the slightest desire 
 
 6S
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 to work at their own selves and their own souls 
 to amount to anything. But they want, never- 
 theless, to enjoy all the triumph of self -hood 
 which they have not earned. And that is why 
 they have been led by statesmen and generals 
 everywhere to plunge the world over the abyss. 
 They take refuge in that collective vanity which 
 is called patriotism the universal slogan: 'My 
 country can lick creation !' And it is nothing but 
 a refuge from their personal worthlessness and 
 sloth. They set up their fetish and then sud- 
 denly they no longer know weariness or doubt. 
 They will march thrice around the earth and set 
 it on fire rather than descend into their own souls 
 and cleanse and fortify them." 
 
 He walked on. His cigarette was trembling in 
 his fingers and he breathed quickly as if he had 
 been running. When they had reached the tram- 
 car station he suddenly stretched out his hand 
 toward Weiler and said cordially: "Once in a 
 while I need to relieve myself this way. I won't 
 bother you for a long time now." 
 
 Weiler took the proffered hand and for a 
 moment peace and quietness fell upon the souls 
 of both. Then they jumped on the car and each 
 retired to a corner of the rear platform. 
 
 In the car sat a robust gentleman wearing a 
 broad-brimmed slouch hat that seemed a little 
 out of keeping with his elegant fur-coat. Again 
 and again he peered at Gadsky over the edge of 
 his paper. At last he came over, looked hard and 
 then overwhelmed Gadsky with enforced friend-
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 liness. "Is it really you, Mr. Gadsky? You're 
 in the army, too. Well, isn't that glorious ! How 
 do you do?" 
 
 It was the conductor of the municipal orches- 
 tra, a gossip and a mediocre musician whom 
 Gadsky, in better days, would hardly have held 
 worthy of a clasp of his hand. But now he arose 
 before him like the symbol of a lost world and 
 brought with him the fragrance of rehearsals 
 and of packed concert-halls and the recollection 
 of a certain George Gadsky whose magic hands 
 could change the turbulence of an audience into, 
 a breathless silence. 
 
 The conductor was in his element. He was 
 happy to have found some one who had heard no 
 musical gossip for months. He pretended com- 
 plete astonishment at the other's ignorance. 
 "Haven't you really heard that? You seem to 
 have been at the other end of the earth !" 
 
 Gadsky suffered the flood of speech to be 
 poured over him. Only the little word "mister" 
 seemed to him like a blow each time that it was 
 uttered. For he was bitterly ashamed of the feel- 
 ing of warmth and inner decency which it gave 
 him. "Don't say Mr. Gadsky to me," he spoke 
 with irritation and arrogant bitterness "I am 
 tempted to look around for the person whom you 
 mean. I am Private Gadsky now. I've quite 
 ceased being an honorable fellowman who de- 
 serves the ordinary amenities. A private in the 
 infantry is not a gentleman but a sort of school- 
 boy. Just say 'Gadsky' to me with a touch of 
 
 65
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 condescension. Otherwise I'll seem to myself to 
 be sailing under false colors." 
 
 The conductor gave an embarrassed smile. His 
 small, roguish eyes studied the features of the 
 man before him. He was puzzled. Was it a jest? 
 Or did the man want to be consoled? After some 
 hesitation he thought it best to treat the matter 
 jocularly. He laughed thunderously and imme- 
 diately embarked on another bit of scandal. 
 
 "Attention!" Weiler whispered from behind 
 and pulled Gadsky by the coat. As the latter 
 turned around he saw Sergeant Stuff with his 
 fearfully over-dressed spouse sit down in the 
 car. Gadsky jerked back his shoulders, pulled 
 up his head and rattled his heels together. The 
 cold sweat had gathered on his forehead when 
 the salute was completed and he was forced to 
 turn toward the conductor again. Was it pos- 
 sible, he asked himself, to observe without a 
 secret smile this sudden petrefaction and then 
 the matter-of-fact return to a normal human con- 
 dition on the part of him who had been Gadsky, 
 the pianist? In his embarrassment he looked 
 past the conductor, then bent down and whis- 
 pered to him : "Do you see there that is a 'gen 
 tleman,' a member of the master class and for 
 the time our unlimited ruler Sergeant Stuff." 
 
 The other nodded with the utmost lack of 
 interest. Then he chattered on, telling the story 
 he had begun at the point where he had been 
 interrupted. "Well, you can imagine the rage 
 66
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 of our director. He sent for the man at once 
 
 )) 
 
 Hadn't he really understood? Did he think 
 the sergeant had merely passed the car on the 
 street? "He's right in the car? There next to 
 that fat woman in the scarlet hat !" 
 
 Again there was merely that careless nod. 
 Merely a matter of politeness. The conductor 
 actually thought the interruption a bit rude. 
 "Our tenor isn't backward either. So he said to 
 
 his Excellency right straight out to his face 
 
 
 
 Gadsky didn't hear the other's words. His 
 blood throbbed in his temples. He seemed to fall 
 into some unplumbed moral abyss. All he could 
 see was the conductor's infinitely careless little 
 nod of assent. And he couldn't calm himself. It 
 was perfectly natural, of course, that the con- 
 ductor shouldn't take the slightest interest in a 
 mere sergeant. Why should he care even to 
 glance if but for a moment at the features of a 
 thoroughly indifferent person? He himself would 
 not have turned his head a few months ago. 
 
 But his reason failed him to-day . . . The 
 sight of the fat, careless man took his breath 
 away. His fingers grasped the brass bar beside 
 him ; he gnashed his teeth. He struggled against 
 the temptation to cry out concerning the injustice 
 that he endured. And all this flared up in him 
 anew when he and Weiler left the car and turned 
 into the narrow street that led to the barracks. 
 
 "The sergeant is behind us," Weiler whispered 
 
 67
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 to him. "Hold yourself up or he'll order extra 
 drill to-morrow. He's capable of it." 
 
 Gadsky moaned. He almost hated his friend 
 for walking in correct military fashion. He 
 wanted to act unconscious, not to do the brute 
 that much honor . . . Then he remembered his 
 engagement with Mathilde for the following eve- 
 ning and immediately observed his own heels tap 
 the pavement more resonantly and his arms 
 swing more rhythmically. He, a grown man, was 
 acting like a mechanical doll because those ac- 
 cursed looks were at his back, because he knew 
 that stupid male scold was behind him . . . 
 
 And the conductor? 
 
 He was no older, no weaker, no less vigorous 
 than himself. He hadn't honored the sergeant by 
 a glance. He walked the way he pleased and 
 went home to his own bed ; he was his own mas- 
 ter, and made his own plans for the coming day. 
 
 The tyrant who ruled his fate, the disgustful 
 polypus whose fangs were in his flesh day and 
 night was as nothing to that other man, less than 
 any of the other little events that interrupt a 
 conversation in public. The conductor hadn't 
 even turned his head to look so infinitely 
 secure was he under the protection of his release 
 from military service. 
 
 It was wrong! It was unspeakably mon- 
 strous ! 
 
 Breathlessly he ran up the stairs. When he 
 reached his cot he sat down on it like a man 
 68
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 turned to stone, taking off neither his coat nor 
 his cap. 
 
 Weiler undressed quietly. He was about to 
 lie down, but the sight of his friend made him 
 restless. "Do undress, Gadsky. Stuff is going to 
 make his rounds." 
 
 But Gadsky didn't move. What was the mat- 
 ter with him? It seemed to Weiler as though a 
 quiver shook his friend's back. Slowly he went 
 nearer and peered at him and saw the distorted 
 face on which there were tears of rage and humil- 
 iation. 
 
 "For heaven's sake, what is wrong with you?" 
 
 Gadsky stared at him with unseeing eyes. 
 Then he shook his head sadly and muttered, with 
 a suppressed sob in his voice, as reverently as 
 though he was uttering an incomprehensible 
 secret : 
 
 "He didn't even turn around. . . ." 
 
 69
 
 II 
 
 MUTINEERS
 
 n 
 
 MUTINEERS 
 
 empty wagon stood on the great square 
 A with its shaft projecting perpendicularly 
 upward. It was surrounded by soldiers and 
 looked like the skeleton of an animal with great 
 black ribs. The icy wind of March swept through 
 the village, whirled the thick clouds of dust 
 across the frozen street and gnawed at a man's 
 fingers even if they were deep in his pockets. 
 And yet the groups of men did not scatter but 
 seemed to be held together by a secret expecta- 
 tion. 
 
 George Gadsky helped the stretcher-bearer, 
 from whose neck the sweat was pouring, arrange 
 his papers and quietly watched his comrades 
 from behind a chart. Their slow hesitation, the 
 stubborn hostility with which they watched each 
 other as though each expected of the other man 
 that liberating cry which he himself choked 
 down this embarrassed lingering on the 
 draughty square, although the chimneys all 
 around were smoking and the lamp-light shim- 
 mered through the dim windows ah, all this 
 moved him more deeply than the moaning of 
 the wounded had done a little while ago. 
 
 He knew why these poor devils didn't want to 
 
 73
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 return to their warm billets. Seventy-three mu- 
 tilated, whining human creatures had been un- 
 loaded before their eyes from the wagon on 
 which the French peasants used to carry their 
 dung to the fields. And in the flickering eyes of 
 the men gleamed all the horror of it and the 
 dread question: "Is it really irrevocable? Shall 
 I have to drag my poor body thither where it is 
 trodden under or torn into quivering frag- 
 ments?" 
 
 For a moment Gadsky felt dizzy, as though he 
 were wrapped in a colored cloud which lifted 
 him up so that he no longer felt the earth be- 
 neath his feet. Out of a distant roar his own 
 voice seemed to emerge and to echo sharply 
 across the windy square: "Comrades!" He 
 thought he had heard himself calling out and 
 was so frightened that he sunk his teeth into his 
 nether lip and surveyed the circle of faces about 
 him suspiciously. He peered successively into 
 every face. 
 
 No, thank God, it had been a delusion. And 
 what end would it have served in reality? Could 
 his words have aroused the souls of men whom a 
 dray full of human torment did not sting into 
 revolt? He remembered the old tale of King 
 Midas's servant who had wanted to bury his 
 voice in the earth. Even that seemed wiser than 
 to hope for a response from the men about him. 
 He knew them! Not more than two would risk 
 so much as a nod of agreement. He knew of 
 each man what attitude he would assume. He 
 74
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 could pick out the better ones who would at least 
 turn aside in compassion and feel humiliated by 
 Ms useless sacrifice of himself. And then he 
 looked at the many who would themselves help 
 to lay hands upon the mutineer out of stupid- 
 ity or ambition, revengefulness, envy, patriot- 
 ism ! For tenaciously as they clung to life, great 
 as was the dread in their eyes, they would never 
 endure a liberator from among themselves. For 
 this alone made their fate tolerable, that they 
 were all equal in wretchedness and suffering. 
 Woe to him who would lift himself above them ! 
 They would fall upon him as upon the revealer 
 of their shame and would trample him into 
 expiation . . . 
 
 He lowered his eyes. He could no longer 
 endure their glaring masks. They were like 
 grotesque relief figures on the base of a great gen- 
 eral's monument. They were an hundred thou- 
 sand arms and legs animated by a single brain. 
 Whatever else of humanity still adhered to them 
 was mere waste, the result of an imperfect mili- 
 tary training. 
 
 Gadsky felt again the profound disgust he had 
 experienced when, a few days before, this same 
 herd of men had acclaimed the Field Marshal 
 who had driven in an auto between their dirty, 
 sweat-bathed ranks. On that day he had seen 
 these extinguished eyes gleam, he had seen their 
 faces glow as though all that had left their 
 bodies empty shells without will or hope lived 
 on in that idol of theirs. 
 
 75
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 He could not help in a sense hating this horde. 
 They were ready to be slaughtered and they were 
 willing to applaud their hangman if only his 
 great, scientific sickle caused even greater de- 
 struction among the enemy. The enemy! But 
 there was no hope in him. He, too, had sold 
 himself to the professional murderers who lead 
 in war ; he too dreaded and slew. Gadsky hated 
 them all all! He had been ready to speak to 
 these men of his own people, to sacrifice himself. 
 Why should he for these cold, hard, blunted 
 creatures ! 
 
 He passed his hand over his forehead. The 
 memory of the scene had been as vivid as its real- 
 ity. It had happened to him often recently that 
 the past and the present had become inextricably 
 blended in their images in his mind. His brood- 
 ing had become so intense and the dull monotony 
 of the past few months had so deadened his re- 
 ceptivity to reality that his thoughts threw their 
 shadows upon all happenings. The days had be- 
 come featureless. The eternally equal burden 
 had stamped them into an indistinguishable 
 mass of gray, and only the dream embraced an 
 hundred times the dream of the war's end and 
 of liberation projected like a radiant reality into 
 the insupportable present. 
 
 One glance seemed to be tugging at him, to be 
 unwilling to let him go, and drew him back into 
 that circle of men. Into his awakened mind 
 stared the deadly pale, perturbed face of the non- 
 commissioned officer Frobel. The man's eves 
 76
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 were wide open with terror, a deep line of intense 
 sorrow ran from his mouth. But Gadsky felt the 
 glance of those eyes like a dull challenge. He 
 clenched his fists and turned away at once. The 
 wretched coward must learn to bear his agony 
 alone. Each man had enough here if he but car- 
 ried his own burden. 
 
 "If you let the sheets fly away, I'll have to de- 
 cline your assistance," the stretcher-bearer said 
 and took up his bag of documents with trembling 
 fingers. He walked off and, still handling the 
 sheets nervously, disappeared in the hut of the 
 hospital station. His going seemed to release 
 the men from their rigidness. They cleared their 
 throats and spat and lit their pipes again. Then 
 one group broke up and quickly, as though re- 
 lieved of a nightmare, the others followed. 
 
 Gadsky saw them hastening in all directions 
 toward the doors of the houses. Their heads 
 were hanging, their backs were bent. And at 
 once all his old compassion for them came to life 
 again. His wrath fell silent within him at the 
 sight of all these lowly shoulders. By God, they 
 were being sorely punished for their obedience. 
 Even the dullest among them carried with him 
 into the warm room of his billet frightful 
 images: he saw himself return on a cart as a 
 mass of bloody flesh and sat at table opposite 
 his own corpse. Not one choked down his supper 
 to-night without, as it were, saying farewell to 
 his own pulse and heart. 
 
 With tall, upturned collar, alone on the great 
 
 77
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 square, he stared shivering at the deserted wagon 
 and at the broken shaft that projected ever 
 higher into the darkness. It looked like a gal- 
 lows. And the thought came to him again that 
 behind all those gleaming windows poor, human 
 sinners were taking what they feared might be 
 their last meal on earth. And he seemed able to 
 see their thoughts, secretly chaffering with their 
 great misfortune, each involuntarily offering the 
 other as a sacrifice to their monstrous doom. 
 And suddenly it became very clear to him that 
 his own indignation over the drawn face of Fro- 
 bel had been nothing but the reaction of his own 
 cowardice, a protest of his own fear for himself. 
 That was the inner reason why any show of fear 
 was tabooed among soldiers in war, because each 
 was conscious that there lived in him the treach- 
 erous hope that he, he alone, would be protected 
 as by a guardian angel, even if his whole battal- 
 ion suffered death. And whoever, like Frobel, 
 did not conceal his fear beneath a mask of some 
 sort, was shamelessly crying out this secret hope 
 of his to the others: "I don't want to die! Go 
 and die for me " 
 
 He felt sorry for Frobel. He meant to go and 
 look him up. Just then he felt a hand on his 
 shoulder and when he swung around he saw the 
 deep-blue eyes of Weiler looking at him with 
 deep earnestness. 
 
 "Have you seen Frobel?" Weiler asked with 
 a strange vibration in his voice. "Poor fellow! 
 78
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Don't you think he might report sick? He looks 
 terrible." 
 
 Gadsky didn't answer. He seemed a giant to 
 himself beside this transparent, slender figure 
 who wore his clumsy, muddy, army boots as 
 though he were in disguise. Finally he said, 
 forcing himself to express an unfelt indigna- 
 tion : "You know, I think there's almost a touch 
 of affectation in your pity for Frobel. What you 
 can stand, surely that great lout with his non- 
 com, stripes can stand too. No one here has 
 more than one life to . . ." 
 
 Weiler didn't let him finish. His pale, kind 
 face suddenly lost its mild radiance and grew 
 weary with a great sadness. "No," he plead, 
 "you musn't talk like the others. You know it 
 isn't a question of muscles. Imagine that you 
 had been teaching elementary branches to the 
 children of the poor year in and year out, and 
 that all your joy and the true content of your life 
 had been summed up in Frobel's little three-room 
 flat, and that your highest hope had been to 
 save enough for an extra handsome rug and 
 a dictionary! Identify yourself with the poor 
 devil for five minutes and you will not judge 
 him so harshly. He always makes me think of a 
 snail who has built its little house from the 
 sap of its own life. And now cruel forces come 
 and tear the little house from the living flesh 
 out of which it has grown. Last week when 
 we lay under fire in the new trench some one 
 asked for the day of the month. Frobel replied 
 
 79
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 quick as lightning and added sadly : 'I know be- 
 cause to-day my little wife is paying the last 
 installment on her sewing-machine. Now they 
 can't rob her of that, at least.' And even while 
 he was speaking his teeth were rattling and the 
 cold sweat of terror poured from his forehead. 
 I could have wept over the smashing of this poor 
 happiness this humble happiness on the install- 
 ment plan. I wanted to cry out, too ! To think 
 that society forces men to become machine-like in 
 this fashion, to reckon out their wretched lives 
 to the payment of a final penny on a given date, 
 and then steps in and shatters their addition 
 when it has just amounted to a comfortable little 
 three-room flat for a wife and a child. And you 
 needn't pretend. You feel just as sorry for him 
 as I do." 
 
 Gadsky turned away. He was unmanned by a 
 great tenderness. He could have embraced 
 Weiler in love and reverence. For the latter had 
 won a great victory over the common enemy of 
 friend and foe. He had offered an impregnable 
 proof that all the blind force in the world can- 
 not crush the spirit of an entire man. Here he 
 was, fragile and worn, exhausted, tortured, dirty, 
 about to set out on his march to death. And he 
 had risen above his tormentors because he had 
 risen above himself. With all their insistence 
 upon uniformity, with all their hatred of any 
 one who would not merge himself in the mass, 
 they had not been able to change this poor, tor- 
 mented slave of theirs one jot. He bore the rifle 
 80
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 and the bayonet. But his soul was the soul of 
 goodness, and he was victorious over the univer- 
 sal machine of war. 
 
 Weiler waited for an answer and thought that 
 Gadsky had rejected his reasoning and his plea. 
 "You do poor Frobel wrong," he therefore added 
 softly. "He has a harder time than you or I. Do 
 you think we would be braver than he if our 
 social environment had not taught us the stoi- 
 cism of good form? People of our kind always, 
 so to speak, carry a mirror before them, and each 
 one suppresses his pain so as to hide the 
 grimace which might tell of that pain to others." 
 
 r <No," Gadsky said thoughtfully and took 
 Weiler's arm. "We're a bit worse off just be- 
 cause of the mirror. But let that be. Let's go to 
 supper. That is the thing we should be thinking 
 of, just like the others." 
 
 He was about to draw him along when, behind 
 them, a door slammed and some one called out 
 to them. 
 
 It was the stretcher-bearer. He approached 
 them with long strides and asked from afar: 
 "Can you tell me where I can get some tea or 
 rum or anything hot? I haven't had anything 
 warm for thirty hours." 
 
 Weiler saw that the man was a corporal and 
 saluted. Gadsky observed the stranger as he 
 slowly took in all the details of Weiler's person- 
 ality. Then, suddenly, in civilian fashion, he 
 offered his hand. 
 
 "Never mind that sort of thing. We seem to 
 
 81
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 be among ourselves." He spoke lightly, pressed 
 Weiler's hand and then turned again to Gadsky. 
 
 "Isn't there such a thing as an inn around 
 here?" 
 
 Gadsky's face had brightened. Everything 
 seemed different to him. He began to like the 
 corporal. When they were unloading the 
 wounded he had been too tragically fascinated 
 by the fearful bandages and the flickering rest- 
 lessness of the dying to notice the man. Now 
 first he observed him. In spite of his long limbs, 
 his heavy hands, his sensual lips and the rough 
 modeling of his features, there was something 
 of tenderness and of sadness about him. And 
 Gadsky was quite taken, too, by the way in 
 which he had treated Weiler and refused to be 
 misled by the horribly baggy uniform which' 
 represented Stuff's final malice. And so he in- 
 vited the man to share their solemn farewell 
 meal with them and boasted humorously of the 
 culinary delights which they had to offer. 
 
 "You'll even get one of our fresh eggs," he 
 said, "honestly bought, too, not requisitioned. 
 I'll give you my own, if necessary. Because it's 
 a wonderful feeling that in spite of all obstacles 
 men of a certain kind will find each other. And 
 even if they tricked us out like bushmen, that 
 secret free-masonry would still prevail." 
 
 The corporal laughed. "You'll withdraw both 
 your favor and your egg. My perspicacity isn't 
 so great. But a while ago when you were work- 
 ing with the severely wounded and were hand- 
 82
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 ling an artillery man with a terrible abdominal 
 wound, one of you used the word 'moribund.' 
 That's how I knew." He was silent for a moment 
 as they set out for Gadsky's billet. Then sud- 
 denly in a dry tone and with an angry gleam in 
 his eyes he added : "I'm bound to say that as a 
 rule I prefer common men. The officers of the 
 reserve and those who are ambitious of joining 
 them well, I could tell you a good deal." 
 
 He started off again and the other two ex- 
 changed astonished glances behind his back. 
 Then Gadsky went ahead and as he pushed open 
 the heavy gate of the yard and ushered the cor- 
 poral into the darkness, he couldn't help com- 
 paring him to the hungry, tousled peasants' dogs 
 who wandered about. These animals were driven 
 forth by hunger; they were fierce and yet hum- 
 ble; they showed their teeth while their eyes 
 begged for a bite. And in this man's eyes, too, 
 there was a beseeching look while his mouth 
 seemed grim and hard. 
 
 Weiler led the corporal by the hand across the 
 yard, in the middle of which there was a huge 
 shell hole. Gadsky remained behind, and was 
 soon heard talking to a woman who said in a 
 sharp, pointed way: "Je n'ai rien, rien, rien." 
 Weiler at last found the keyhole and took their 
 guest into a long, musty room which by the 
 light of a pocket-lantern revealed itself as an 
 abandoned school-room. 
 
 The forms had been piled up high against the 
 rear wall. On the other side there were two beds, 
 
 83
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 and, between them, a straw-mattress with a rolled 
 up military coat as a pillow and a spread that 
 had once been .sky blue. On a little platform, in 
 front of the windows, stood the teacher's desk'. 
 A great ironing board had been put across it so 
 that a large, horizontal table had been built. 
 This table was covered with books, tins, half 
 emptied bottles. There were two real chairs and 
 one school bench without a back. 
 
 The little cast iron stove was red hot and 
 seemed to fill the large place with ghostly rest- 
 lessness, so that the whole place struck the 
 corporal as surprisingly emptied, strangely dis- 
 peopled in the light of the coal oil lamp with its 
 quivering shadows. He looked about and smiled 
 sadly at the map of France against the wall, 
 which was now flanked, in all innocence, of 
 course, by the trench-helmets and side-arms of 
 the billeted Germans. Then he dropped wearily 
 into a chair and gazed at his great muddy boots, 
 while Weiler busied himself with plates and 
 glasses in a corner. 
 
 "You're well taken care of here," he said after 
 a long pause. And when the voices of Gadsky 
 and of the woman of the house became audible 
 in the yard, he added: "Your friend seems to 
 be on excellent terms with her." 
 
 Weiler emerged from his corner into the light 
 of the lamp before he answered. "The poor 
 woman's husband is over in the French lines, and 
 she always complains that she can't look at our 
 rifles without thinking that it may be from one 
 84
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 of them that some day the bullet will fly that 
 will widow her. And it is frightful. She trembles 
 for her husband and has to look on as we load 
 ourselves with munition. Of course, it's the 
 same with our women in Upper Alsace and was 
 so in East Prussia. That doesn't make it the less 
 painful." 
 
 The corporal jumped up. "You haven't been 
 at the front very long, I take it, since you are 
 still able to let the fate of individuals move you. 
 That is the first impulse which you must crush 
 in you if you want to endure it. A certain 
 Frenchwoman ! You musn't let the idea come to 
 you. We dare not think of individual French- 
 men in the enemy trenches, any more than they 
 dare think of Karl Schulze or Ernst Miiller. 
 You must work with collective concepts : wound- 
 ed, dead, enemies, comrades. And thus too you 
 must regard the inhabitants of the occupied 
 areas. You must simply merg'e your French 
 teacher's life in the mass. You saw me unload 
 my cart awhile ago? To-morrow I'll come with 
 a similar load, and day after to-morrow with 
 another. And that has been my life for seven 
 months. Nothing has changed but the land- 
 scape. Sometimes it was in Poland, sometimes 
 in Flanders, to-day it's near Verdun, to-morrow 
 it may be in the Carpathians. Try to imagine 
 what would have become of me if I hadn't 
 learned to think of men simply in the mass, if I 
 knew to-day whom I had picked up yesterday, 
 and would mourn to-morrow over the little 
 
 85
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 sharp-shooter both of whose legs were torn off! 
 I've restricted myself to numbers. To-day my 
 cases numbered thirty-seven including six 
 severely wounded. That's all I dare to know. 
 You must do the same. It's the only point of 
 view that can keep a man sane." 
 
 Weiler did not answer. He watched the other 
 walk up and down with great strides and ob- 
 served the restlessness in the quivering, strange- 
 ly crumpled face. He hung his head, for he 
 realized that behind the 'man's enforced rough- 
 ness there lurked an all but irrepressible despair. 
 He turned around and was about to go back to 
 his corner when the corporal suddenly emerged 
 from his thoughts into speech again. 
 
 "You haven't, I know, grasped my peculiar 
 vision yet. We cannot let ourselves be crushed. 
 We, each one of us, is bearing his share of the 
 intolerable burden that is making the knees of 
 humanity tremble. We dare not increase it we 
 dare not. Here I've known you for one hour and 
 I've seen you go behind the barracks to the little 
 sharp-shooter and take upon your feeble shoul- 
 ders the added burden of his woe, and now you 
 tell me that you also act as a burden bearer for 
 this poor woman who has to watch you equip 
 yourself for the hunting of her husband . . . Let 
 me tell you how matters stand. Kecall some hot, 
 old-fashioned summer day in times of peace, far 
 in the country, when the flies were so bad that 
 something had to be done. People placed on the 
 table a subtly contrived globe of glass which let 
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 the flies get in at the top. But there was no 
 return for them, and exhausted at last, they fell 
 into the water at the bottom and were drowned. 
 The poor beasts raged and agonized, swam on 
 their backs and struggled with their tiny legs 
 and we sat at the table reading or talking and 
 almost unconscious of their despairing buzzing. 
 We didn't really notice that a life and death 
 struggle was taking place before us. Well, for 
 flies substitute men. That is war. The substi- 
 tution isn't hard to make. Men are falling like 
 flies. Let them lament and struggle but don't 
 look in their direction. For we are all in the 
 same great trap. And take my word for it : who- 
 ever doesn't dedicate himself wholly to the task 
 of getting himself out of the trap with sound 
 limbs will die the death of a fly." 
 
 Weiler twitched. The comparison had awak- 
 ened him. He grasped the corporal by the arm 
 and his voice was hoarse with excitement. 
 "That's just what I shall never understand 
 never ! Imagine the generals on both sides who 
 sit behind their respective fronts quite comfort- 
 ably and are responsible for the slaughter and 
 really treat their men as if they were mere ver- 
 min ! Can your mind grasp it that there are men 
 Germans, Frenchmen who coldly plan an at- 
 tack that will cost ten thousand human lives, 
 give the command for it, and then calmly sit 
 down to dine in expectation of the bulletins of 
 victory? Listen! A few weeks ago, immediately 
 after our detrainment, we marched by the head- 
 
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 quarters of our army at noon. The gentlemen 
 were sitting on the terrace of a chateau taking 
 their after-dinner coffee and we could see the 
 glint of the porcelain and the glitter of the 
 silver and the blue puffs of cigarette smoke. 
 And there floated toward us the sound of calm 
 speech and even now and then, of laughter. And 
 on the road, on a motorcycle, a messenger on his 
 way to headquarters met us. And the man's 
 face was still a sort of death mask from the 
 horrors he had seen. He called out to us : 'You'd 
 better look out! It's hell out there! Oh, it's 
 sheer hell !' And those two pictures I have been 
 carrying about with me ever since the terrace 
 in the sunshine and that man's face. And when- 
 ever I lie in the trench under fire, or see a poor 
 devil like that little sharp-shooter, I seem to see 
 in the background of the war those sunny 
 chateaux in which the gentlemen on the general 
 staffs of all the armies concerned drink their 
 after-dinner coffee and smoke their cigarettes." 
 He had spoken very swiftly and now took a 
 deep breath and there was a keen despair in 
 his large, shining eyes. And when the corporal 
 only gave a sarcastic smile and shrug, he burst 
 out again and cried in his cruel indignation: 
 "How do you know what the sufferings of a fly 
 really are? Who knows what its little life means 
 to it? No one. But those gentlemen know very 
 well what it means to a man to die. From the 
 general down to the junior telephone operator on 
 his staff, they have each been in some room of 
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 death; they know how breaking eyes still cling 
 to this visible world that is all we know, and 
 how the poor hands grasp for one last contact 
 with life ! In cities, they put straw in the streets 
 and the tramways stop ringing their bells and 
 no one passes without a shadow in his soul if 
 but one man is dying one ! And here these gen- 
 tlemen have learned to laugh while day by day 
 thousands thousands " 
 
 The corporal interrupted him. "Precisely. 
 One dying man is sacred in their eyes. But a 
 thousand who die, ten thousand dead ah, then 
 the emphasis is shifted on to the number. All 
 they feel is how many? Hush, some one is com- 
 ing!" He interrupted himself at once and lis- 
 tened tensely. 
 
 Weiler's lips still quivered. It was hard for 
 him to master the indignation of his soul so sud- 
 denly. The sudden stopping of the corporal 
 brought their position home to them again. Had 
 the whole world been turned into a "Holy Rus- 
 sia?" Were all free men in all countries in the 
 position of servants who must stop their gossip 
 at the approach of the master's step? ... A 
 deep shame took the place of his anger. "It's 
 only Gadsky with the food," he said. Then he 
 slunk back to the stove and got the plates and 
 glasses and put them on the table, bowed by the 
 feeling of their deep humiliation. 
 
 Gadsky had the air of a victor. He had a 
 steaming bowl in which the promised eggs were 
 swimming and his success had brightened his 
 
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 mood. In his conference with the woman of the 
 house and his desire to be hospitable he had for- 
 gotten everything else and it took some minutes 
 before he became aware of the fact that the other 
 two men had talked themselves into an entirely 
 different mood during his absence. 
 
 "Mme. Veriot is an angel," he cried, and next 
 to the bowl he put down two dust-covered bot- 
 tles which he had brought in under his arms. 
 ^She has given me the two last bottles of wine 
 out of her cellar. Of course, I had to tell her 
 that our new guest is a common school teacher, 
 too." And while he moved the bench nearer to 
 the table and cleared one of the chairs for their 
 guest, he added laughingly : "We all pretend to 
 be teachers to please her, you know." 
 
 "That's a queer sort of confidence game," the 
 corporal answered absent-mindedly. 
 
 "Oh," Gadsky protested with a laugh, "not so 
 queer. Our immediate superior officer Frobel is 
 really a teacher in civilian life. We should never 
 have gotten this splendid place without him. 
 Even my very decent French wouldn't have 
 helped. But I trotted out the group picture of 
 the Frobel family. And no one can convince 
 Mme. Veriot that a teacher can be a bad man. 
 She knows from experience that a teacher really 
 prefers the rod for children to the rifle for men. 
 Occasionally, of course, she remembers that we 
 are enemies. But then I say to her in my nicest 
 French: 'Come now, your good husband is also 
 forced to try to kill our comrades!' And that 
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 obviously sensible remark brings back her friend- 
 liness at once." 
 
 He had grown graver again during his last 
 sentences. He looked at Weiler, then at their 
 guest, and when the silence lengthened his su- 
 perficial and half-enforced cheerfulness vanished 
 too. "What's gotten into you?" He turned to 
 Weiler was a touch of annoyance. "All we need 
 now, of course, is Frobel with his grave-digger's 
 expression. Then the funeral feast would be 
 complete. You're usually more sensible." 
 
 Weiler raised his head slowly. "Where is 
 Frobel?" 
 
 "Oh, he's an awful fool," Gadsky replied. 
 "He's standing in the square and gazes yearning- 
 ly at the wounded. And when they're put into 
 the ambulances and the ambulances start back 
 home, the tears trickle down his face. He'll go 
 on until some one tells the captain and then it 
 won't be so pleasant for him. I wouldn't like to 
 be a member of his squad." 
 
 Weiler had listened impatiently. "Do you 
 really think it so incomprehensible that the poor 
 fellow gazes at the autos? Is there a keener 
 temptation than the sight of those cars that 
 go home? The road home is daily before his 
 eyes. It's like a rope, at the other end of which 
 his wife and children are tugging with desperate 
 energy to pull their unique and irreplaceable 
 Karl Frobel back out of danger ! Can you blame 
 him for gazing at it, turning back to it like an ox 
 that is led to the slaughter?" 
 
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 "I don't think your comparison is a very hon- 
 orable one. What is the use of his human reason 
 if it does not teach him to resign himself to the 
 inevitable? Can you tell me . . ." 
 
 Weiler had been walking through the room. 
 He stopped in front of Gadsky and interrupted 
 him. "Can you tell me what the reason has to 
 do with war? If you set fire tp FrobeFs house I 
 assure you that he will save his little daughter 
 at the risk of his life. He might even risk it for 
 some object for which his wife and he had toiled 
 and saved. But it is precisely his reason that 
 prevents him from resigning himself. He knows 
 very well that poor M. Veriot has just as little 
 desire to harm Frau Frobel as he has to harm 
 Mme. Veriot. How often have you yourself in- 
 sisted that it was much easier for those men, who 
 go to their death in the profoundly sincere con- 
 viction that there is, humanly speaking, no 
 choice that we must slay the enemy or he will 
 slay us! And as for enthusiasm! A man who, 
 for thirty-five years, has lived the life of an 
 angle-worm cannot suddenly soar with the 
 eagles. And you're the last one to reproach him 
 with his sobriety of mind. You've yourself point- 
 ed out to him how the papers French and 
 English and German all play the same game 
 of lies. And you have told him of your French 
 and English friends. And now that you have 
 destroyed the simplicities of his patriotic faith, 
 you . . ." 
 
 "Well now, look here ! I beg of you ! I haven't 
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 anything against Frobel. But I can't have you 
 make me responsible." 
 
 He was standing upright and waving his arm. 
 Suddenly the corporal touched him and said: 
 "Permit me one question: are you going to the 
 firing-line for the first time to-day?" 
 
 Gadsky looked in astonishment at the hand 
 that touched his arm. He suspected for a mo- 
 ment some quiet irony in the question. But the 
 calm steadfastness of the sad, compassionate 
 eyes at once soothed him. "Yes and no," he 
 answered hesitatingly. "We've been taken to 
 the immediate front five times, but each time 
 without being utilized. The barrage bit into us 
 pretty thoroughly each time. Once it fell pre- 
 cisely on the second line of trenches in which we 
 were waiting and our losses were actually 
 greater than those of the battalion that repulsed 
 the enemy attack. Another time the expected 
 attack didn't come off. Last week again no one 
 seemed to know why we were taken out at all. 
 Our losses seemed like sheer waste and, of course, 
 we weren't due for any distinctions either, since 
 we were not technically in the fight. But it may 
 be significant if I tell you that our captain hasn't 
 the iron cross yet." And after a brief pause he 
 added with a bitter smile, "We'll fetch it for 
 him to-day without fail because we're going into 
 the front trenches to relieve other troops. I sup- 
 pose I ought to say 'Thank God,' or 'at last!' 
 The captain expects his men to be burning for 
 their chance of trying out their bayonets. Even 
 
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 his adjutant, a former teller in the German 
 Bank, acts as if he could hardly restrain himself 
 any longer. He thinks it's the last word of good 
 form to lick his lips at the expectation of mur- 
 dering or being murdered." 
 
 His silence was full of thought and he looked 
 surreptitiously over at Weiler who was still 
 walking back and forth. Then he turned again 
 to their guest and, in spite of himself, used the 
 old, vexed tone : "Don't you think, too, that one 
 has to have a very good memory in order to cling 
 to life when one is here? I really think they 
 make it damned easy for us to say farewell to the 
 sun. Whoever has a spark of personal pride left 
 in him is as well prepared as a cancer patient 
 who desires to be relieved of his misery even by 
 death. Of course, I'm not thinking of Frobel. 
 For people like him life is its own sufficient aim 
 and justification. But men who have always 
 been accustomed to use life for some higher aim, 
 the intellectuals who were always willing to 
 spend themselves and their strength for some- 
 thing beyond themselves for them the problem 
 as to what they are asked to die for is of supreme 
 importance. It isn't true, in addition, that war is 
 the only Moloch that demands to be fed with 
 human flesh. When, on the first day of general 
 mobilization, I hastened back from Italy, the 
 conductor on the train that took us through the 
 Alpine tunnel told me that when the tunnel was 
 dug the water rose unexpectedly at one point 
 and twenty men were drowned. Those men were 
 94
 
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 just as anxious to have their chance at life as 
 Frobel. As for me, I am willing, if necessary, to 
 die for the sake of a tunnel that brings two 
 great nations nearer to one another and confirms 
 man's mastery over nature. But there is, you 
 see, that difference between the men who live 
 only for salary increases and the few who don't 
 measure existence exclusively by their stomachs 
 and their bank accounts. Every thinking man 
 must be capable of throwing his life away for an 
 idea. But I no longer see one in this war ! I see 
 greed, vengefulness, above all, a stupid helpless- 
 ness to restrain the raging fires on all sides alike. 
 At the start I volunteered. . . . !" 
 
 "So did I." The corporal nodded sadly. His 
 gray, faithful eyes were fastened on Gadsky's 
 face. The latter had lost the thread of his dis- 
 course for a moment. But now he plunged back 
 as though all the stored up brooding, the bitter- 
 ness of all the weeks had to be given forth, as 
 though he feared to die without having expressed 
 himself thoroughly. "And so, since no visible or 
 noble aim is left, what does it come to? That 
 men are trained like bloodhounds to jump at 
 each other's throats. And we have endured that 
 training. There is the unspeakable shame that is 
 poisoning the soul of mankind. What decent 
 man in any country will, if ever peace comes, be 
 able to face his own defiled soul again? Who 
 will be able to cleanse himself from his own sub- 
 mission to dirty, arbitrary force, from the 
 tyranny of men who are in no wise his equals 
 
 95
 
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 who are without vision or culture or inner dig- 
 nity? Do you think that one has to be partic- 
 ularly lofty to feel that? I don't deny the effi- 
 ciency of the methods employed. In the long run 
 no soldier in any army will go on fighting unless 
 he fears the court martial at 'his back more than 
 the enemy before him. And why should he? At 
 first each nation raised the cry of self-defense! 
 Very well. But to-day? Murder will out! So 
 will greed! Our militarists want the Belgian 
 coast, their French colleagues want the German 
 coal country, the English colleagues want Africa 
 and the whole Orient. What is left? A very 
 simple formula for the men actually fighting: 
 You go on killing simply to go on living. Who- 
 ever isn't satisfied with this war-aim had better 
 not, at least, ladle out subtleties to his com- 
 rades . . . " 
 
 Weiler could control himself no longer. His 
 face was crimson and he cried out to Gadsky: 
 "Why do you say that? How dare you say that? 
 Don't you know? But of course you do . . ." 
 He seemed about to leap at Gadsky. 
 
 The corporal had been watching Weiler. He 
 moved nearer to Gadsky and turned around. He 
 begged Weiler to forgive him for interrupting 
 him. Then he said: "I wanted to explain why 
 I annoyed you with the question just now 
 whether you were going into action for the first 
 time to-day. It is because every time I visit the 
 rear lines and the billets I witness the same 
 curious struggle. And it is always the best 
 96
 
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 friends and comrades who seem fated to vent on 
 each other their suppressed irritation, their 
 strangely hostile moods. Among the common 
 men it usually leads to little fights. And the 
 men, later on, can't possibly tell what started it. 
 I've never known it to fail. It seems almost as 
 if people had to rehearse the hatred which they 
 are supposed to feel in face of the enemy and 
 for which they haven't the slightest natural 
 aptitude. But in reality that deep irritation is 
 directed against all one's comrades collectively 
 and against each one in particular. And the 
 reason is this: The consciousness knows dimly 
 that if all one's comrades were suddenly to dis- 
 appear, if there were left no one to jeer or 
 despise one, then one could calmly turn one's 
 back to danger and resolve to return to life. 
 We're no better off than shipwrecked men. The 
 sharks are showing their fangs. And a rope is 
 within our reach and we cannot take it because 
 we dare not risk the judgment of the onlookers." 
 
 "An excellent comparison," Gadsky said with 
 an ironic smile. "But it applies only to the peo- 
 ple at home. They are the onlookers who have 
 firm planks under them, who are safe ifrom 
 danger and whom . . ." 
 
 "Whom, however," the corporal continued for 
 him, "one doesn't see. But our comrades are on 
 the spot. Their example controls our actions. 
 And in that fact lurks the secret of our irritation 
 against them. Each nurses a little enmity 
 against the other, because that other contributes 
 
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 his infinitesimal share to the total social pres- 
 sure that drives him to the butcher's block. And 
 what do you expect? It's like a terrible mutual 
 corralling process. I grant you gladly that the 
 drivers at home who are safe make the most 
 bloodthirsty gestures. I have an old uncle there, 
 aged sixty-eight, who gives a prize a handsome 
 cigar case for every slacker that one of his ac- 
 quaintances hounds into publicity. But these 
 people can't hurt us. We'd soon get rid of them 
 without those others who are willing to swim and 
 to sink at one's side." 
 
 Gadsky did not reply but stared at the lamp. 
 Before his inner vision appeared again the great, 
 empty square with the shaft of the wagon against 
 the darkening sky. Again he saw the frightened 
 faces of the soldiers with the secret, lurking ex- 
 pectation in their eyes. And a strange pressure 
 seemed to descend upon him, for he knew now 
 that the stranger's voice had given utterance to 
 his own most hidden thoughts. And Weiler, too, 
 was silent and walked up and down, shamed by 
 the cold objectivity with which the corporal laid 
 bare the feelings against which he had been 
 struggling in his innermost heart. And he felt 
 the impulse to go over to Gadsky and press his 
 hand and ask his pardon for the violence he had 
 shown. But his dislike of any emotional expan- 
 siveness restrained him. 
 
 The corporal seemed lost in thought. Drops 
 of the red wine had been spilt on the table, and 
 98
 
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 using a burnt out match he drew little channels 
 of red on the pale wood. 
 
 There was no sound in the room for a time 
 except the resonant steps of Weiler. Then sud- 
 denly the corporal threw back his head and said : 
 "You see, when we met and I said something 
 hostile about the educated classes, you suddenly 
 looked at me almost as though I were a danger- 
 ous animal. And now it turns out that you have 
 just my own deep grudge against them." 
 
 He laughed a hoarse laugh as Gadsky gazed 
 at him in utter astonishment and went on. "Of 
 course you have ! You will not assert that it is 
 the humble men who pretend that they are no- 
 where so happy as at the front. Whenever I have 
 seen a man say, with an artificial gleam in his 
 eyes, that he hoped soon to return to the front, 
 it was invariably a member of the educated 
 classes. Peasants and proletarians haven't the 
 inner elasticity that is necessary for a man to 
 adopt an attitude as a matter of good form and 
 patriotic custom. Those poor fellows go where 
 they are led in dull resignation, do as they are 
 commanded, fight and lie down to die, if need 
 be, in the honest conviction that it is probably 
 necessary since it has been so arranged. I bite 
 my lips till the blood comes each time I pick up 
 a poor fellow of this kind. For these men are 
 exactly in the position of the stokers on an ocean 
 liner. They see nothing of the beauties of the 
 voyage. But if trouble comes they are the first 
 to drown. And they go to their death without 
 
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 ever having reached the deck. They sweat over 
 their fires; they don't know the direction of the 
 voyage; they obey orders blindly, and strangely 
 enough, they don't grudge the happy passengers 
 their free vision and clean air and easy life. And 
 they do all that to be rid of all responsibility., 
 Can you imagine anything worse than the deceiv- 
 ing of such trust? And think of the crowd that 
 has walked the promenade deck all these years - 
 on the liners of all the nations and has not 
 watched the mighty ones on the bridge nor ques- 
 tioned whither the course was set. But now 
 these fine passengers throng the life-boats and 
 the humble man below pays the piper again and 
 fills the great graveyards of the war." 
 
 "That's not just," Gadsky exclaimed. "The 
 common people are in an absolute majority. If 
 you consider the numerical proportion, you will 
 find that just as many " 
 
 "Oh, no," the corporal cried passionately, and 
 shook his head so energetically that strands of 
 hair fell across his forehead. "Yours is the 
 graver injustice. It isn't a question of percent- 
 ages. A hundred thousand dead are more than 
 a thousand, even if the figures represent the -same 
 percentage of quite artificial divisions. But even 
 as an argument yours won't hold water. The 
 common soldier is cannon fodder precisely as it 
 is at sea. For the fine people above there are, 
 after all, life-belts and life-boats. Whoever can 
 manage it avoids infantry service and brings his 
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 money and his influence to bear on the situa- 
 tion." 
 
 "Not among us," Gadsky said earnestly. 
 "Truth is truth. It may be so in the enemy 
 countries . . ." 
 
 The corporal laughed a jeering, aggressive 
 laugh. "It's not unknown even among us. That 
 it is far rarer, I grant you. The only question 
 is: why? You haven't, after all, reflected very 
 deeply about the inner connection of things. For 
 first you are indignant over the wretched hypoc- 
 risy that pretends in its disgusting way that war 
 as we see it is a great and glorious thing, and 
 then you boast with righteous pride that there 
 are so few among us who have the courage to 
 show that they don't wish to die !" 
 
 But Gadsky's patience was at an end. "My 
 dear man, if you interpret anything I have said 
 as a defense of slackers I'm sorry. I tried to 
 make my meaning as clear as possible. It is just 
 this dull, indifferent crowd with its mere animal 
 patience that I detest. I protest against the 
 bestial injustice of trying to depress all men to 
 this crowd's level, just because it is easier to do 
 that than to elevate the masses to one's own 
 standard. But you must not draw the conclusion 
 that I am hostile to the strong, to those who 
 know and yet have their enthusiasm and make 
 the supreme sacrifice joyously!" 
 
 Weiler jumped up and shot like a bolt over 
 to the table where Gadsky was. "Joyous sacri- 
 fice," he repeated. "Are you going to defend that 
 
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 hypocrisy now? You're like a weathercock 
 Your mother loved assuredly you and nursed 
 you when necessary. But it never, just as surely, 
 occurred to her, to be jubilant over an illness of 
 yours because it gave her an opportunity for 
 self-sacrifice. And war is nothing but a disease, 
 a disease of blood and tears." 
 
 "I wasn't talking of jubilation," Gadsky said 
 drily and waved his hand with a touch of irrita- 
 tion as the corporal interrupted him again. 
 
 "But there was jubilation, certainly in North 
 Germany, and just as certainly in Paris. The 
 mobilization found me far in the South of Ger- 
 many and I was able to observe the mood in 
 many places. Of course there were everywhere 
 thoughtless howlers. But I remember how sur- 
 prised I was when near Halle I met the first 
 radiant faces. Don't misunderstand me. In the 
 South of Germany, too, every man was ready to 
 do what he conceived to be his duty. But be- 
 hind the iron determination there lurked a sense 
 of horror. And the higher one ascended in the 
 social scale the more profound one saw the grief 
 and disappointment to be over the fact that the 
 twentieth century could still endure such things. 
 I am not sure that a jubilant tone would have 
 been tolerated there. In Berlin, as in Paris and, 
 for all I know, in London, it was just the other 
 way around. In the East End I saw a few poor, 
 grief-stricken women and tearful farewells. But 
 Unter den Linden the mood was a festive one. 
 Ladies in costly gowns and white-haired privy 
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 councilors rejoiced over the prospect as though 
 war were a necessary or a desirable thing. It 
 wasn't enough there to go when you were called. 
 It was not enough to assent and do your duty. 
 Whoever wanted to be known as a red-blooded 
 patriot had to accept the war not only without 
 sorrow, but with a sort of self-righteous joy. And 
 stories have filtered through from other coun- 
 tries that tell in accordance with the differ- 
 ences in national temperament the same story. 
 The intellectuals and the bourgeoisie of the 
 world gloated over the war!" 
 
 "Not over the war," Gadsky protested. "Not 
 over the war. That's perverting the facts. I 
 know that there were foolish and base individ- 
 uals. And I don't deny that there are people 
 who think it's good form to be bloodthirsty and 
 rabid in case of war. I'm the last man to wish 
 to defend these vile fools and snobs. But I do 
 deny that this sort was very numerous among us. 
 The honest exaltation of those August days of 
 1914, at least, came from deeper and nobler 
 sources. Whoever does make a great sacrifice, 
 should make it gladly." 
 
 "Oh, how splendid," came from Weiler with 
 fierce sarcasm. "The instance of the mother 
 again : Hurrah ! my boy has typhoid ! Now I can 
 nurse him with complete self-abnegation." 
 
 The corporal acknowledged Weiler's remark 
 with a smile. Then he shoved him very gently 
 aside and went close up to Gadsky. "You're 
 simply contradicting us now because you've been 
 
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 put in a defensive position," he said almost 
 heartily and with that ingratiating calm which 
 at once passed over the argument like a current 
 of refreshing air. "And also," he went on, "be- 
 cause there are things that one doesn't like to 
 hear said even if one secretly harbors exactly 
 the same view. I know that feeling. I've had 
 it happen to me to defend something simply be- 
 cause some one else has been aggressive. But 
 you're in an intellectual blind alley just now. 
 There is no sense in denying the effect after 
 you've granted the cause. I have no wish to be 
 hard on my country. But I wish to see clearly. 
 Other countries have other faults quite as grave. 
 And the faults of both have been produced by 
 historical and other causes that are, so far as 
 we know, not within any conscious human con- 
 trol. And therefore I am not afraid to say that, 
 even in peace, military ideas and manners were 
 more fashionable among us than elsewhere. A 
 man who wanted to impress women of a Sunday 
 what did he do? He pretended to be an officer 
 in mufti. Those trifles go deep. Poets and bank 
 directors and even film heroes copied the monocle 
 and the arrogance of the officers' corps in the 
 sweat of their brow. In Vienna the young men 
 imitated the great actors and the famous poets, 
 in France they copied the Parliamentary phrase- 
 makers, in Italy every callow youth tried to trill 
 Caruso's aria from 'La Tosca' when he wanted 
 to impress his sweetheart. But in our part of 
 the world the type to be copied was the military 
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 one. Kestaurants were fashionable if officers 
 frequented them. If your butcher's daughter got 
 married, he wanted at least an officer of the 
 reserve at her wedding party. And so, when 
 war actually came, the fashionable thing to do 
 was to imitate the attitude of the military caste 
 toward it. It was good form, whether you felt 
 it or not, to welcome the war just as the officers 
 did. And they forgot that fifty years of laurels 
 which they had not yet earned really changed 
 the status of the officers who, in the old days, did 
 deserve respect for the dangers they were con- 
 stantly ready to undergo, the death which they 
 constantly courted. But why do you shake your 
 head so fiercely?" 
 
 Weiler almost hissed. "God knows they're not 
 so badly off to-day. And at least it's their busi- 
 ness. No one ever honored poor Frobel, no one 
 ever imitated him. Now he has to be quite as 
 ready to risk his neck as any one. Even the 
 Kohns and the Finckelsteins, whom the officers 
 would have nothing to do with when everything 
 was safe, are now permitted to put on the offi- 
 cers' coat which was once supposed to be too 
 good for them, and are graciously allowed to 
 shed their blood ! Therefore, I say the unheard- 
 of thing is that the officers are still given special 
 privileges, privileges which may conceivably 
 have been their due at a time when the plain 
 citizen was permitted to remain at home on the 
 understanding that they and they alone took on 
 themselves the duty of protecting the state with 
 
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 their lives. But how is it to-day? We are con- 
 scripted, but they keep their grandeur. Their 
 calling has ceased to be one of special danger and 
 therefore of special honor in an age when war 
 rests just as heavily on the shop assistant and 
 the digger of ditches." 
 
 The corporal nodded in agreement and laid his 
 heavy hand soothingly on Weiler's shoulder. "In 
 fact far more heavily. The officer doesn't carry 
 a pack of eighty pounds; he doesn't have to 
 endure the impudence of men who might be his 
 sons. If he's no longer young, he's at least a 
 major and sits safely behind the sand-bags in the 
 well-protected dugout. Every officer is at an 
 advantage. Even my wretched corporal's stripes 
 relieve me of half the sorest burdens. I know 
 what it means to be able to rest five minutes 
 longer, to be able to send some one else on an 
 errand at the end of a grueling day, to dip my 
 head in cooling water a little sooner. If you 
 hadn't interrupted me, you would have seen that 
 I hadn't any intention of defending the military 
 caste. No one can deny that the honor in which 
 they are held among us is the thoughtless, un- 
 tested survival of a tradition that has long 
 ceased to have any justification. Therefore it 
 was their duty to earn again and earn now the 
 rights ..." 
 
 Gadsky, who had been walking up and down 
 in his turn, now stopped short and laughed out 
 of the darkness. "It's safe to say they felt under 
 no such obligation. There's a dear little ensign 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 in our company, a sort of white blackbird who 
 should really have been a painter but, being a 
 general's son, was not permitted to choose an- 
 other calling than the army. I wish you could 
 hear his stories. You speak of an outlived tradi- 
 tion, of the officers earning their privileges. I 
 tell you those men have a subtle contempt for 
 any one but themselves whatever his services to 
 the state and to mankind and think that he ought 
 to be honored by the privilege which conscrip- 
 tion brings him of dying in their noble com- 
 pany." 
 
 "And the saddest thing is," the corporal said 
 triumphantly, "that so many men actually feel 
 honored. Those are the very people I had in 
 mind, the men who, when some one is around, 
 curse the wound that takes them out of the 
 battle and who in August, 1914, welcomed the 
 war like a fashionable diversion. They are the 
 traitors who made any opposition impossible. 
 That's why I hate them. For fifty years and 
 longer the common people of the world have 
 borne the burden and expected the men of learn- 
 ing and of science to bear theirs too. And the 
 men of thought and science did nothing of the 
 kind. They knew the diplomatic history of their 
 times; they knew the furious competition in 
 armaments. What did they do? But I am not 
 concerned with the enemy countries now. They 
 must answer to their own peoples. I attack our 
 own men of thought, of light and of leading who 
 permitted a great and a good people to become 
 
 107
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 the involuntary tool of a statesmanship and a 
 method of international life that is several hun- 
 dred years behind the times. It was our business 
 to see and warn! But no one knew or no one 
 dared. And just because of the preeminence of 
 the German intellectuals in the world do I blame 
 them most bitterly for their neglect and for their 
 acquiescence in this insensate thing. And the 
 same is true of the socialists of 'all countries 
 the men whose profession it was to be in the 
 opposition. These same people who shouted 
 about militarism in Germany and about the op- 
 pression of inferior races in England and about 
 what not in France, had forgotten all these fine 
 things when the test, the great test, came !" 
 
 He had grown more and more impassioned 
 and had given himself up wholly to his righteous 
 wrath. When no one answered him, he spread 
 out his arms in a gesture of resignation. Then 
 he added: "I understand perfectly how one's 
 fundamental decency rebels against the uni- 
 versal cowardice. Because the whole of this so- 
 called great age is in the grip of a great coward- 
 ice. So long as the mortality of mutineers is 
 likely to be ninety per cent, in excess of the 
 mortality among 'heroes/ there will always, 
 naturally, be an excess of heroes. But whoever 
 realizes that as keenly as you do, ought to have 
 the courage to face the fact boldly. The greatest 
 coward is surely he who consciously plays the 
 game as the safest under the circumstances, al- 
 though he knows perfectly well what he, as a 
 108
 
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 matter of the deepest reality, ought to do. The 
 worst cowards are the men of compromise who 
 steered against the current so long as the stream 
 splashed gently but who, when it was in spate 
 and produced whirlpools, changed their course 
 with a great display of phrases. They are the 
 cowards and not the common man who endured 
 everything as he would endure hail or storms." 
 Out of the dusk came Gadsky's voice. And 
 there was the cutting sharpness of an indignant 
 sarcasm in it. "You are indeed right. To-day 
 when the wounded were unloaded I made some 
 observations again. Your dear common men 
 stood there and their faces were as glum as 
 though they felt the wounds on their own bodies. 
 Each one would have given the world to be able 
 to take to his heels. But what would have hap- 
 pened, do you think, if some brave man had pro- 
 claimed to them with the tongue of men and 
 angels all that we hide and repress? These fine 
 fellows would have thrown themselves upon him ; 
 they would have obeyed the command to fetter 
 him and out of the initiative of their own feeling 
 of duty they would have added a few kicks. You 
 reproach me because, as you say, I have never 
 reflected on the connection of things. I think it's 
 you who have things upside down. You take the 
 butcher for the sacrificial lamb. Don't you know 
 that it is this inert mass that drags us down 
 like lead? These silent ones with their accursed 
 patience form the stream that drags us to 
 destruction when the flood-gates are opened. It 
 
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 is we who must be silent and who must submit, 
 because this huge herd knows nothing but the 
 path of its bell-wethers. A man who would have 
 tried to remain true to himself that fatal August 
 would have perished under the heels of the mob." 
 
 The corporal moved away from the table, out 
 of the light of the lamp into the shadow and his 
 great heavy body loomed up near Gadsky. His 
 words were full of wrath. "And why are these 
 people a dead weight? Did they suddenly submit 
 against their better knowledge and belief like 
 ourselves? No! You and I and all our kind have 
 left them to the mercy of the state, to the mercy 
 of a slave-education! What have the common 
 people heard in church and school all over 
 Europe except the blare of the nationalist and 
 the war-monger? And what have the states 
 done? They have rewarded these shouters and 
 patriotic teachers and have crushed, subtly or 
 roughly, every one who protested. And when 
 that happened, what did the intellectuals do? 
 They drew caricatures of those in power. They 
 jested cheaply over the phrases on which the 
 common people were fed. But did they ever go 
 to the people? Did they ever arise freely against 
 the powerful organizations that taught Europe 
 enemity and rivalry and chauvinism and filled 
 men with the fear and hate of their neighbors? 
 And now, now, you want to blame the victims?" 
 
 His voice gave out for a moment. He breathed 
 deeply before he could go on. "We were the 
 cowards and we alone. The burdens we have to 
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 bear are our just due. I am tempted to rejoice 
 over every one who now groans under the yoke 
 which he did nothing to lift so long as it hurt 
 only the neck of others. Whoever had no deal- 
 ings with the people and thought his light too 
 precious for their eyes the artists and the 
 thinkers and the men of letters is reaping his 
 reward now that the helplessness which he per- 
 mitted tears him along." 
 
 Gadsky had sat down on his bed and sup- 
 ported his head in his hands. But when the 
 corporal, with a gesture of self -contempt, inter- 
 rupted himself, he arose slowly and came for- 
 ward. "Well, we are being punished." He said 
 it quietly and bent over the lamp to light a cig- 
 arette. His words had sadness in them now and 
 humility. "You may well be satisfied. Whoever 
 stood aside in peace out of arrogance and indif- 
 ference has the hardest lot to bear now. The 
 people don't smell any better in war. But 
 whether they are really so entirely innocent of 
 all things I still doubt. Perhaps it was more so 
 in Germany than in other countries. But I am 
 not so sure. The fact is that the great mass is 
 everywhere instinctively on the side of power 
 and of those in power. There is little general 
 love for the martyr, for opposition. The people 
 admire the show and fact of power and awaken 
 but slowly to the truth that they suffer from it. 
 Usually they glory in it as if it belonged to them. 
 If we were cowards you must grant, at least, 
 
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 that we received little encouragement to be 
 brave." 
 
 The corporal was too weary to take up the 
 challenge again. He shrugged his shoulders. "I 
 didn't say it would have been easy." A moment 
 later he jumped up. "For heaven's sake! It's 
 past eight o'clock. I must be off!" And as he 
 gathered up his pipe and tobacco pouch and hur- 
 ried to where his greatcoat was spread over the 
 forms, he said with a strangely humble regret, 
 half jesting and half in bitter earnest : "I must 
 say that I haven't shown myself very grateful 
 for your hospitality. First I ate up your food 
 and then I filled you up with superfluous truths, 
 which each might better keep to himself. Don't 
 resent it, please. It's my own loss too. My two 
 hours of respite are over and instead of resting, 
 I've talked myself hoarse. But that's so human. 
 Our disgust over the great murder makes us fight 
 our real friends in the intervals." He turned to 
 thank Weiler who was holding his coat for him. 
 When he saw the poet's helpless sadness and the 
 great, anguished questions in his eyes, the cor- 
 poral fell silent. For a minute he busied himself 
 with his glove. Then he turned and, placing his 
 large hands tenderly on the other's fragile shoul- 
 ders, looked ruefully into the eyes that met his. 
 "I hope you're not really taking my chatter to 
 heart. A good deal of it is nonsense. At least, 
 that's all past and gone. The main thing is to 
 get out of it all safely. There will be something 
 worth doing for each one of us afterwards." 
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 The spectacle moved Gadsky. It was curious 
 to see this giant with his uncouth limbs bending 
 over Weiler. Who would have suspected this 
 hidden tenderness in him? His rough and almost 
 brutal voice had a deep mildness now and one 
 felt that he hated himself at this moment for 
 every trace that his words had left in Weiler's 
 defenseless soul. 
 
 Finally he tore himself away and held out his 
 hand to Gadsky. Then the latter saw that it was 
 the corporal who in his regret and sorrow needed 
 consolation now. He took his hand and laughed. 
 "Don't imagine that without your kind help we 
 wouldn't have argued just the same. We always 
 do, you know. And we're grateful for it. It 
 wouldn't be endurable without that relief. In 
 your absence we might have taken different 
 sides, but the questions at issue would have been 
 the same. It is so everywhere. You'll forgive me 
 for saying that you neither invented them nor 
 brought them with you. On the contrary. You 
 were a reliable listener, and that's about the 
 greatest service that one man can render another 
 out here." 
 
 A great change came over the face of the cor- 
 poral. He stood still in all his ruggedness for a 
 space. Then he threw his arms out in a great 
 gesture of lamentation and the speech that came 
 from him was in a hollow whisper, as though he 
 were revealing a great secret. 
 
 "It is so everywhere. Men sit together and 
 speak as we have spoken to-night. In every 
 
 113
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 trench, in every hospital garden, in the dark cor- 
 ridors of barracks everywhere they crouch and 
 put their heads together and speak of the fearful 
 consequences of the victory they are helping to 
 win. When at night I roll myself in my coat and 
 put my ear to the earth I seem to hear all those 
 voices. I hear them argue and rebel as we did 
 to-night. And when morning comes they march 
 by me unafraid, their rifles in their hands. Not 
 one recoils at the imminence of death; not one 
 dares to speak openly. At the word of command 
 they fight like tigers. Is that not strange and 
 unthinkable? And many such lie even now in the 
 great graves. And I tell you that one could find 
 whole divisions at the front composed of men 
 who think exactly as we do, and fear nothing as 
 they fear the triumph of the forces that victory 
 would unleash. There are whole-souled men 
 among them, free minds whom nothing could 
 subdue in peace, who resented all pressure and 
 who now give their blood for the prison that is 
 to be built about them. Never was there such 
 a combat! Men have died for a conviction, for 
 their freedom or for booty. But never except in 
 this war have men fought for a victory which 
 they feared." 
 
 He still stood with his arms outstretched. His 
 eyes wandered from one to the other of the pallid 
 faces beside him. When no answer came to him 
 his long arms fell to his side and from his great 
 chest there came a cry of wild prophecy. 
 
 "God help us if we win ! And I fear that we 
 114
 
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 shall! God help the victors whoever they be! 
 For their rage and cruelty in war will be as 
 nothing to the rage and cruelty and monstrous 
 tyranny with which they will turn upon their 
 own people. The victorious army whichever it 
 is is forging the chains that will bite into its 
 flesh when the victory is won. For the victors 
 will believe that their victory has justified their 
 deeds and will drag their peoples at their chariot 
 wheels through the very dust !" 
 
 His stone-gray forehead had flamed and his 
 whole body seemed to palpitate with inner fire. 
 
 Gadsky and Weiler dared not look up. The 
 whole large room seemed to vibrate with the 
 man's prophetic rage and grief and despair. In 
 vain they sought for some words to soothe him. 
 And it was with something like relief that they 
 saw him at last turn to go. At the open door he 
 looked at them once more and a deep irony dis- 
 torted his large features. He saluted and called 
 out: "Good luck and victory, then provided 
 our principles be remembered !" 
 
 His irony fell into the room like a heavy stone. 
 Then they saw him melt into the darkness which 
 hung like a black curtain across the open door. 
 
 When, after a long search, he had found his 
 driver and horses and helped hitch them on the 
 great square, he saw that the battalion was as- 
 sembling. 
 
 Loiterers hastened past him, gasping under 
 the heavy packs which gave their silhouettes a 
 
 115
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 grotesque outline in the dim light. There was a 
 crunching and rattling as one straggler after 
 another joined the long, black, sinuous line of 
 men that was lost in the darkness at both ends. 
 
 Just as the driver was climbing on the box, 
 the commanding officer's voice rang out acridly 
 and the long line grew rigid. Now an oppressive 
 silence lay over the square, a convulsive silence 
 into which the loud words of an invisible small 
 group, somewhere near the center of the square, 
 rose like a challenge. 
 
 A flash-light flamed up, held by an arm that 
 showed in the small cone of light, and the offi- 
 cer's voice threw name after name against that 
 line of men. 
 
 The corporal stood on his wagon and grasped 
 the driver's hand. "Wait !" he said and listened 
 tensely. 
 
 He saw a strange spectacle. To prevent one 
 man's answering the roll-call for another beside 
 himself, the order had been given that as each 
 name was called the man in question should 
 light up his face with his own flash-light for 
 identification. And so the little flames danced 
 like will-o'-the-wisps about the square and each 
 time lifted out of the darkness one ghostly head 
 and face that was immediately resubmerged in 
 the black air. 
 
 The driver groaned, so heavily was the cor- 
 poral leaning on him. A name was called : "Fro- 
 bel." The corporal drew himself up, but the 
 man's face had melted back into the darkness 
 116
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 before he could see it. But the word "here" had 
 sounded as firm and sure as that uttered by the 
 other voices. It was so with Gadsky, too. And 
 then there followed great numbers of indifferent 
 names and the driver was about to turn around 
 with a question on his lips. At that moment 
 Weiler's face flamed up for a moment. It seemed 
 near enough to grasp, though wreathed by thick 
 shadows and half hidden by the trench-helmet. 
 And his voice uttered the single necessary word 
 in a strange, hard fashion with all the conven- 
 tional military coldness and assurance. 
 
 The corporal nodded to the driver and the 
 wagon hastened on. Then he threw himself back 
 on the moist straw that still held the odor of 
 congealed blood, and with a wild curse raised 
 his gnarled fists to the starry heaven whose glit- 
 ter sank upon him like the glass wall of a gigan- 
 tic fly-trap. 
 
 117
 
 Ill 
 
 REAR GUARD
 
 Ill 
 
 BEAR GUARD 
 
 IT was the little tailor of the first squad, the 
 "vaudeville man" as he was known on ac- 
 count of his curved nose and his bandy legs, 
 whose suspicions were aroused first. At noon he 
 had been commanded to help a wounded man to 
 the nearest hospital station. He did not come 
 back until night because the station had van- 
 ished and he had had to entrust his utterly ex- 
 hausted comrade to an ammunition truck. More 
 than that he would not say, so long as a crowd 
 of the curious surrounded him. But when, sev- 
 eral minutes later, he met Gadsky in the commu- 
 nication trench, he first looked around rapidly 
 and then, wildly gesticulating, attacked him 
 with a flood of alarming news. 
 
 Where had the hospital station gone to? Why 
 had it been withdrawn further to the rear? Why 
 were all the roads full of columns of men march- 
 ing rearward, while only an isolated motor- 
 cyclist whirred toward the front now and then? 
 And why, above all, was the park of the chateau 
 yonder deserted as a graveyard at midnight, 
 when usually it swarmed with officers and theft 
 ordinances? Why was that, he wanted to know? 
 
 121
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Wasn't it evident that the thin chain of out- 
 posts that still occupied the front trenches had 
 been calmly dedicated to the ravens? "Bear 
 guard, I tell you, that's what we are. We're like 
 the remnants a man leaves on his shelves for the 
 creditors after a dishonest failure. You'll see 
 that I'm right. This time to-morrow we'll be 
 done for! Our respite ends when the fog lifts. 
 When the curtain goes up our little performance 
 will be over. Mark my words !" 
 
 The thin, hollow-cheeked Jew with his cun- 
 ning face and his frightened, intelligent eyes had 
 said all this as if it were a lesson he had learned. 
 In his zeal of communication he had backed Gad- 
 sky to a corner of the trench. His thin arms 
 fluttered like the wings of a bat. It looked from 
 afar as if he wanted to attack Gadsky. The 
 latter's smile of superior incredulity increased 
 his desperation. He found more and more proofs 
 for his contention and finally released his victim 
 with a sharp : "Very well. You'll see !" 
 
 Gadsky had at first dismissed the lurid story 
 with a shrug. He liked the queer little man well. 
 He thought it quite comprehensible that a timid 
 man who had plied the yard-stick all his life 
 should lose his judgment in this atmosphere of 
 danger and death. It was not until later when, 
 in spite of the falling dark, the service of supply 
 men 'did not appear with supper and the com- 
 mand was given to break into the iron ration, 
 that the tailor's prophecies came back into his 
 mind. Hi* superior smile faded into a mere un- 
 122
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 willing glint of teeth when the "vaudeville man" 
 slipped by him, drenched with misery and said: 
 "Well, what did I tell you?" 
 
 He tried to shake off his discomfort in the 
 dugout where some one's birthday was being cele- 
 brated and even notorious misers contributed 
 their share. But the merriment and the jests 
 grew intolerable to him. He fled from all that 
 and also from the deep sighs and the melancholy 
 nods of the tailor who stood against the wall like 
 an animated message of doom. He returned to 
 the trench and in a corner summoned all his will 
 power to master his ridiculous nervousness. He 
 was not going to let that shaking, little coward 
 with his silly chatter influence his mood. 
 
 But now the cinematograph in his mind had 
 been set in motion and his throbbing pulses 
 drove armies of mad images through it. He saw 
 all phases of a desperate hand-to-hand encoun- 
 ter. He saw himself captured; saw himself 
 wounded and above him the white-eyed Algerian 
 negro troops warming their cold fingers in his 
 blood. The stories that he had affected to despise 
 became terribly concrete now and his reason was 
 powerless against his flogged senses. 
 
 It was his particular misfortune to be on 
 sentry duty that night, just at midnight. And 
 in the foremost piece of trench, between friend 
 and foe, isolated in the impenetrable darkness,, 
 he succumbed utterly to his fevered imagination. 
 
 The rain fell quite softly, sickered with a mo- 
 notonous whisper into the upturned earth, and 
 
 123
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 dripped on his helmet with a maddening reg- 
 ularity that tugged at his nerves. There was 
 about him an uninterrupted concert of equivocal 
 noises which always forced him to listen tensely, 
 until every murmuring and thumping and rat- 
 tling caused the shadows of imminent danger to 
 arise before him. The fog did its share. Over 
 every suspicious shadow it threw a veil and a 
 second later fluttered its gray streamers from 
 the posts of the wire entanglements, as though 
 it were signaling to the enemy beyond. In vain 
 did Gadsky seek to liberate his mind from these 
 shadowy goings on. The loose streamers sank 
 down, became gray masses that rolled forward 
 up to his loop-hole, so that at moments his blood 
 threatened to congeal. His own breath coming 
 from above penetrated into the trench and, with 
 his convulsive fingers on the trigger, he would 
 seem to see again and again the gleaming of a 
 strange eye in front of his . . . 
 
 The illuminated dial on his wrist-watch 
 showed that it was half past twelve. Only half 
 of this dreadful night was over. Suddenly 'the 
 fog, caught by a gust of wind, lifted and showed 
 the piece of No Man's Land before him like an 
 empty stage. The emergence of the well-known 
 posts and hillocks served to quiet his nerves. The 
 hammering in his temples ceased and he looked 
 about him like one who after a long climb has 
 sight of a familiar valley. In many hours of 
 loneliness and danger, pressed close against the 
 breastworks, he had impressed upon his mind 
 124
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 every foot of ground, every inch of wire. He 
 knew this bit of earth by heart as he had known 
 some piece of music he was going to play pub- 
 licly. He could close his eyes and see every detail 
 every white bit of stone, every rag of a uni- 
 form ; he had accustomed himself to this God for- 
 saken spot as one accustoms oneself to some 
 loved implement or the view of one's neighbor's 
 garden from a study window. He knew he would 
 be more unhappy if he were ordered to some 
 other point of the system of trenches and smiled 
 sadly at the humility of heart which attached it 
 instinct for home to pieces of cadaver and to shell 
 holes. 
 
 With a smoother forehead he now sent his 
 glances over the familiar points and gazed, at 
 last, at the small, black island which lay like 
 a puddle between the tall posts of the wire-en- 
 tanglements. It was "the Frenchman," a poor 
 devil who, when these trenches had been taken 
 by the Germans, had been singled out from his 
 fleeing comrades by a last, stupid bullet and had 
 been hurled into the wires of the French en- 
 tanglement. For a long time he had swung there 
 like a tight-rope walker, bent over backwards in 
 the shape of a horseshoe and swinging lightly 
 up and down whenever a projectile had landed 
 near him. A well aimed shell had finally lib- 
 erated him from the wires between heaven and 
 earth and for a long time now he had been lying 
 on the ground, losing his clothes, putrifying 
 away, and even his mere skeleton existence was 
 
 125
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 fast coming to an end. At night he now seemed 
 merely a little heap of earth. By day it had the 
 appearance, at a distance, as though he were cut 
 in half, with the greater part of his body under 
 the surface of the earth. Whoever saw him for 
 the first time thought that he lay in a hollow. 
 Eeally the ground under him was as level as a 
 table. One more change of sentries and he would 
 cease to be useful as a point of orientation and 
 the orders and announcements that had long con- 
 tained such stereotyped phrases as: "To the 
 right of the Frenchman," would have to change 
 their wording. 
 
 So many weeks had passed since poor Weiler 
 was gone ! . . . Gadsky measured the tiny eleva- 
 tion, which was all that remained of what had 
 once been a man's body, and counted up the weeks 
 since Weiler's departure, the weeks which he had 
 passed in the outmost trench. It was strange 
 how in the present each holir seemed to be an 
 eternity, yet in memory the experiences of this 
 life seemed to pass in such close succession as 
 though the terrible intervals of inactivity and 
 dull misery had never been, or as if they had 
 vanished like the tide which also leaves as visible 
 witnesses only the wrecks which it has washed 
 ashore. Nothing, absolutely nothing, had hap- 
 pened since that storm attack on the French 
 position, since that frightful slaughter which 
 Weiler, driven on by his captain, had had to 
 share, reeling and with half -maddened eyes. And 
 then, a few hours later, the sentinels had brought 
 126
 
 THE JUDGMENT OP PEACE 
 
 him back a madman, shaken by horror as 
 though the dead Frenchman was at his heelg. 
 
 Gadsky had a vivid memory of every word 
 that his friend had spoken, and also of his 
 cruelly distorted face. They had lashed him to 
 a stretcher and kept him there until he could be 
 carried to the rear under cover of darkness. Even 
 now, after so many weeks, it was unendurably 
 hard to think of the transformation of this ten- 
 der and gad and lovely soul into a raving maniac 
 whose long howls could be heard many minutes 
 after the stretcher-bearers had gone with him. 
 He had broken down under the too heavy burden 
 of his fate and what they carried away was only 
 the ruins of his being only an exanimate body 
 alive merely because the blood coursed through 
 its veins. Even the preparations for the attack 
 had exceeded his strength. Then came the fear- 
 ful storming forward and the unspeakable bar- 
 barism of a hand-to-hand encounter. Finally, 
 before his nerves had had a chance to recover, he 
 had been ordered on sentinel duty only a few feet 
 away from the body that hung in the wires like 
 a caught insect, and, for all that any one knew, 
 might still have been quivering and twitching 
 with life ... 
 
 "Courage is a lack of imagination," Weiler 
 had once declared. And in truth, to his fever- 
 ishly active imagination, to his morbidly ex- 
 quisite sensibility which felt the pains of others 
 within its own innermost being, this sight had 
 been far more insufferable than it would have 
 
 127
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 been to some blunt fellow whose inner vision did 
 not exceed his physical sight . . . And many 
 other sayings of his which they had smiled at 
 once upon a time had proven themselves to be 
 deeply true. How queer, for instance, he had 
 once thought another assertion of Weiler's, 
 namely, that no one's imagination is capable of 
 envisaging his own death, that the calmness with 
 which men spoke of their own extinction was 
 sheer hypocrisy, because in the back of his mind 
 each one held fast to the conviction that he him- 
 self would not die and mentioned the possibility 
 of it only out of tactfulness toward others. Fool- 
 ish as that had once seemed, and much as he had 
 mocked at it, he was bound to confess now that 
 the observation was true. In moments of the 
 highest danger, before that great attack, for in- 
 stance, a similar feeling had involuntarily arisen 
 in him. He, too, could not imagine the dawn 
 arising upon a dead George Gadsky who might 
 be, like that poor Frenchman, only a little heap 
 of decay. 
 
 But suppose to-morrow morning . . . ? Sup- 
 pose the little tailor was right ! 
 
 He drew himself up and looked at his watch 
 again. Was this hour never going to end? The 
 sweat gathered on his forehead; he pushed his 
 trench-helmet far back and held his face into the 
 cooling wind which was just gathering force ancl 
 tearing the fog as with angry fingers. The rain 
 flowed from the rim of his helmet down his back ; 
 he didn't notice it. His eyes were again fastened 
 128
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 on the dead Frenchman who seemed to play hide 
 and seek with him, drawing up the fog about him 
 like a sheet and peering forth again. For him, 
 at least, the ultimate agony was over! Had he 
 been young, Gadsky wondered, when the last 
 bullet hit him? Probably. They had all been 
 very youthful and had worn gallant little mus- 
 taches. He remembered one in especial . . . 
 But no ! He forced himself not to think. For it 
 had been murder, murder all the generals and 
 all the cunning men of the whole world notwith- 
 standing. And involuntarily he held his gun in 
 a slacker grasp as though his fingers were nause- 
 ated at the touch of each other. 
 
 That poor fellow in front there was, he 
 thanked God, on some one else's conscience. The 
 sergeant of the second squad was probably the 
 sender of that final bullet. And now he lay there, 
 on this sick earth, which the projectiles of both 
 armies had tormented and disfigured and sown 
 with scars. And while he putrefied here into an 
 unspeakable liquid, there was somewhere prob- 
 ably a fragrant, exquisite little wife who was 
 still excited at each coming of the postman and 
 reverently kept his place on the broad French 
 marriage bed. . . . 
 
 Gadsky closed his eyes for a moment. From 
 afar there seemed to come to him the fragrance 
 of all tender memories, the infinitely pathetic 
 beauty of life, as though from that imagined bed 
 a perfume had floated to him as to a friend. 
 
 Wasn't it enough to drive one mad? To await 
 
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 one's end now at the very height of one's vital 
 powers? To be shot or stabbed like a mad dog in 
 the middle of the road? Was he not filled to the 
 brim with hope and strength and high possibili- 
 ties? And he was asked to give up, perhaps, 
 thirty noble years of love and art and all the 
 glories of the earth! 
 
 Why? 
 
 And suddenly Weiler appeared before him 
 again Weiler whom the whole battalion had 
 regretted with tears in their eyes. Now he lay 
 in a white bed behind a wall of glass that pro- 
 tected him from wind and rain, and to-morrow 
 he would see the sun arise over the roofs of the 
 city and to-morrow night he would see the sun 
 set again. Mad or not he was alive. And would 
 go on living. He would see the loveliness of 
 women and perhaps hear the singing of his blood 
 again some day. And next he seemed to see at 
 his side the wounded man whom the tailor had 
 conducted to the rear to-day. He saw him walk 
 in a blossoming hospital garden and look 
 through the lilac bushes toward the street and 
 hear the rattle of the trams. And he saw women 
 in bright summer dresses look into the garden at 
 the heroes there. That same man who this morn- 
 ing had stood here pale and gnashing his 
 teeth . . . 
 
 The man who would else, here with the others, 
 have . . . 
 
 And why? 
 
 Because a stupid piece of iron had fallen some 
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 paces nearer to the right than was expected and 
 had torn into that man's flesh his permit to go 
 back into life . . . No, that wasn't possible! 
 That was . . . The devil take these ghosts! 
 George Gadsky, the darling of destiny, was in 
 danger of imitating the shabby little schoolmas- 
 ter Frobel. Had he not volunteered? And now 
 he grieved like any philistine who knows no dif- 
 ference between living and breathing. One 
 should, indeed, be sorry for Frobel. He had 
 nothing but misfortune before the eyes of his 
 mind, trembled for his life constantly, and had 
 no trust in his star. But he, George Gadsky, was 
 sinning against his destiny, challenging the gods 
 with his lack of faith . . . 
 
 He clenched his fist and determined to pass 
 the fifteen minutes which must elapse before he 
 would be relieved in brighter thoughts and not 
 to be overcome by the shadows again. If only it 
 had not been for the fog. It lay before one's eyes 
 and on one's chest and rolled heavy, stone gray 
 balls on the cratered field, covering everything 
 that might distract one's thoughts. It was diffi- 
 cult, thus isolated, not to fall into brooding and 
 to suck oneself full of misery. A vigorous enemy 
 fire was easier to bear ; at least it kept the senses 
 awake and the muscles taut. When the shells 
 came whistling along and, after each explosion, 
 one's life seemed to blossom anew because one 
 lived, when one might so easily have been dead 
 in the midst of that sharp struggle and gamble 
 for existence one had, at least, no chance to 
 
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 reflect. And above it all hovered the prospect of 
 some days in the rear positions, and even an hour 
 in the dugout, when measured by the whistling 
 breath of the grenades, seemed to promise an 
 eternity of shelter. And this tension was re- 
 peated from minute to minute ; it filled ten thou- 
 sand with a consuming ache for life ; it flamed up 
 intolerably when a projectile curved in the 
 empty sky; it smoldered behind the front in the 
 daily hope for the miracle of peace before a new 
 march to the firing-line. 
 
 Gadsky's heart grew warm when he thought 
 of this storm of fevered pulses, of this gigantic 
 hope that held millions breathless. 
 
 It was as though the great clock of life were 
 hung visibly before men's faces. They were all 
 united in their vigil. Those in front clung to 
 the second hand whose movements were marked 
 by the soaring explosions of death ; those behind 
 them counted the hours, and far behind these 
 surged the sea of those whom every day brought 
 nearer to the great peril. From each of a million 
 hearts came this great stream of hope ; it rose to 
 an incredible breadth and depth and beat against 
 the thresholds of those mighty ones who were 
 lords of so much life in dread. 
 
 And did those mighty ones remain quite calm? 
 . . . Did they not see that the great stream was 
 rising to their feet, to their hearts? . . . Was it 
 possible? 
 
 He listened. The wind wailed in the telegraph 
 wires ; the streamers of the fog were like widow's 
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 weeds; and out of the flood of beseeching faces 
 that assailed him there arose the careworn face 
 of his sister. She was guarding her only child, a 
 boy of seventeen. She had been as glad to see her 
 brother go as if she felt it was giving the child 
 a longer respite. Oh, how full of dread were the 
 mothers . . . the mothers . . . Many who at 
 the beginning of the war had blessed the youth 
 of their sons grasped the paper to-day in that 
 same wild and despairing hope and cursed the 
 vigor of their growing lads. A voice in them 
 called louder and louder for peace; their hearts 
 clung ever more desperately to this one hope 
 until at last the fatal hour came and a child went 
 from them and soon returned with the pride of 
 youth still in its eyes but in its hand the terrible 
 implement that is lord of life and death. And 
 while the son grew harder and more estranged 
 from day to day and was taught the trade of mur- 
 der, of shooting and of stabbing other mothers' 
 sons who were far away and who were learning 
 to do the same while all this happened, the poor 
 mother held to her wild heart the long weeks of 
 training and cried, cried, cried for peace! How 
 could the masters fail to hear? The great cry 
 went up from wherever boys were growing to 
 manhood, from the hospitals where wounds 
 healed so terribly soon, from barracks where 
 bearded men knelt in their beds like little chil- 
 dren, from all the ends of the tormented earth 
 arose that cry. . . . Were the masters deaf? 
 Gadsky recalled the everlasting questions and 
 
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 arguments of Frobel in the barracks ; the man's 
 rigid belief that the war would end before their 
 battalion was summoned to the front. A mad, 
 dull rage arose in him at the thought that this 
 same hope was still keeping weary men from 
 sleep on their military cots, while the dreadful 
 wheel was still turning. . . . How long would 
 the millions still be pushed nearer the abyss with 
 each turn of the wheel, and sink over the edge 
 in great crowds only because the masters of this 
 pitiless mechanism held peace in their closed 
 hands and would not, would not open them! 
 
 He bit his teeth together. He could hardly 
 restrain the great hatred that arose within him. 
 The dark feeling that he had had this precise 
 mental experience before in life arose to trouble 
 him. He turned over memory after memory until 
 suddenly the vision he was seeking stood before 
 him, to the minutest details in the glare of a 
 strange sun. It had happened during his great 
 tour through the United States. How long ago 
 was that? Five years? No, it was only four! 
 And yet it seemed to beckon to him as from a 
 blessed and infinitely far past a millennium of 
 rugs and bath-tubs half incredible to the poor 
 cave-dweller of to-day, that servant of servants 
 who scarcely dared recognize his identity with 
 the George Gadsky who had once had a dream 
 that was so like reality of glittering concert-halls 
 and of people stretching out their arms after 
 him as after the stars. . . . 
 
 In those far days he had had the experience 
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 that he now recalled. It had been on a brilliant 
 spring morning in Chicago. From his great 
 house, guarded like a sanctuary by exotic trees, 
 his host, a fat little Yankee with thick fingers 
 and a double chin for whose business thirteen 
 hundred sheep were slaughtered daily, and who, 
 nevertheless, was capable of a moisture in his 
 eyes at a Beethoven sonata this man had driven 
 him over to his kingdom. The extensive factory 
 buildings appeared before Gadsky's mind clear- 
 ly. He saw again the workers' cottages, the long, 
 flat store-houses, and beyond the endless expanse 
 of the prairie which seemed to be filled to the 
 very horizon with the victims of the coming 
 slaughter. And it seemed to him that he could 
 still smell the sour odor of congealed blood and, 
 exactly as on that day, a nausea threatened to 
 choke him, a nausea which had increased at the 
 sight of the blood-spattered men who, with the 
 regularity of machines, dipped their glittering 
 knives into the living animals which were pro- 
 pelled toward them and then swung away by the 
 same mechanism and, while they were still quiv- 
 ering, into another place to be disemboweled and 
 cut limb from limb. There, in that great hall 
 that was filled with the acrid stench of blood he 
 had had his first vision of the grinning gargoyle 
 of fate . . . 
 
 Then a siren had blown its cleaving whistle. 
 The roar of the wheels had stopped, the speeding 
 machinery slowed down, the hangmen laid 
 aside their knives and slipped out of their bloody 
 
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 aprons, and the troop of victims was driven back 
 to its stalls back to life. And even to-day, in 
 the midst of war, himself a murderer, beside him 
 the slim knife with which his hands had extin- 
 guished the life of the little Frenchman even 
 to-day, he could feel again his 'triumphant joy 
 and the solidarity he felt with the animals who 
 had been saved, whom another respite from 
 death had been given. And with a shudder he 
 thought of the last sheep killed, the little beast 
 for whom the whistle had sounded just too late. 
 
 Sheep! Stupid, bleating, voracious animals! 
 And he had been so full of compassion for the 
 one that had had to give up its little life just 
 because the steam had entered the siren a 
 moment too late! 
 
 Was there no one who had compassion upon 
 men? Was there no signal that would put an 
 end to this slaughter? 
 
 Wrapped in the fog which grew thicker from 
 moment to moment Gadsky gave himself up to 
 the remembered indignation that had filled him 
 when his fat little Maecenas had explained to 
 him the part assigned to the bell-wether who, day 
 by day, led his unsuspecting brothers down to 
 the slaughter-house. He still saw before him the 
 great, overfed beast who was stubborn and had 
 to be driven back with sticks because he was 
 accustomed to retire to the stables alone, in 
 order to return later, proudly prancing, at the 
 head of new victims. He could still hear the meat 
 king's condescending laughter over his artistic 
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 sensitiveness, and his fingers grasped Ms rifle 
 convulsively as if he could even now aim at that 
 repulsive beast which was pampered and hon- 
 ored and which, as arrogant as though aware 
 of its importance, passed its magnificent life at 
 the expense of whole herds of its brothers whom 
 it led daily to the killing-pens. 
 
 How right that musical murderer of sheep 
 had been to laugh at him. What did it matter 
 that the blood of those animals was shed? One 
 ate their flesh with pleasure and never thought 
 of how it was obtained. How devoid of signifi- 
 cance the whole process had been! How absurd 
 his shudder seemed ! 
 
 For here precisely the same machinery was 
 in action and it had been erected so as to cover 
 kingdoms and republics of men and the blood 
 that dripped from the wheels was the blood of 
 men. Here, too, everything had been well thought 
 out; here, too, illustrious guests were invited to 
 visit the organization of the factory; here, too, 
 there was no escaping from the steel nets and 
 iron arms that dragged children from their 
 parents. And first they were also put into the 
 stalls to be washed and shorn and prepared, and 
 on great meadows they were made ready for the 
 killing. There was no stopping the relentless 
 machinery which knew no holiday and no uncer- 
 tainty until it had delivered its victims to the 
 killing-pens of the firing-line. And here too, the 
 material came inexhaustibly from the depots 
 while millions of eyes and ears and foreheads, 
 
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 damp with bloody sweat, listened for the voice 
 of the siren millions who, in their convulsed 
 souls, clung to the single hope that the siren 
 would whistle and the wheels stop before their 
 bodies were swung to the place of knives and 
 blood. . . . 
 
 And there were men in the world, men of flesh 
 and blood themselves, with eyes that could see 
 and ears that could hear. And these men had 
 the power of letting the steam pass into the 
 siren and give the signal and did not do so. 
 There were men who felt the looks of this world 
 full of agony fixed on their faces and who had 
 their hands on the lever that guided the machin- 
 ery and they exerted no pressure, made no sign. 
 He could not help repeating this thought, for it 
 seemed to him the most monstrous and incredible 
 thought in the world. Yes, there were men who 
 could give life to millions, could save those al- 
 ready quivering on the edge of the abyss, could 
 work this unspeakable miracle and refrained. 
 They were, on the contrary, quite calm, and kept 
 their eyes fixed on some quite distant goal which 
 they themselves did not clearly see or under- 
 stand and said : "Until that goal is reached the 
 men at the front must carry on." It was incred- 
 ible. They sat where they could control the 
 wheels that rolled over blood and bones, and ate 
 and drank and slept oh, yes, they actually 
 slept, while the machinery roared on and hun- 
 dreds of thousands who had hoped to the last 
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 moment, bared their necks to the gleaming 
 knives. 
 
 How was that possible? 
 
 A painful feeling of being utterly deserted and 
 alone had come over him. He seemed to see him- 
 self standing there in the fog, abandoned by the 
 world and even by himself, and by all who knew 
 him, sinking in a shoreless swamp from wfiich 
 salvation was impossible. He thrust his hand 
 into his mouth, so ungovernably strong had 
 grown his desire to cry out loud, loud, as loud 
 as he could that he w r anted to live, to live ! 
 
 Did he amount to nothing any longer? Was 
 he of no more value to the world than the first 
 tailor's apprentice that one might meet? How 
 had they once pressed his hands, and sunned 
 themselves in the reflection of his fame and 
 turned the eyes in their heads over the unforget- 
 able delights that he had given them! Where 
 were they now? Oh, at staff headquarters or 
 within their accustomed places at home. And 
 they were very careful not to breathe a word. 
 For it was safest, if one had gotten off so far, 
 to be very still, to say no word. There was al- 
 ways the danger of being drafted and of sitting 
 no longer at one's table, but of joining the others 
 in their dance of death. Who was going to risk 
 the exchange? You couldn't help those at the 
 front anyhow. 
 
 An inexpressible disgust shook him when he 
 thought of that cowardly crowd who pursued 
 their business, quite satisfied that they had 
 
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 saved themselves from the great flood. He saw 
 those gentlemen whose lives he had made beauti- 
 ful with his art and who had pressed his hands 
 when they heard that he had volunteered for the 
 service. They talked with self satisfaction of 
 "carrying on" and continued to command their 
 employees and thought it quite right that other 
 men should sink back into slavery. How indif- 
 ferently they envisaged the monstrous fact that 
 their own lives continued in the accustomed way, 
 while others went where first their souls were 
 stamped out of their bodies and then those 
 bodies were mangled and mutilated before death 
 gave them rest. And if any one were to dare to 
 shake them up and complain of the utter hor- 
 rors that others had to endure they would for- 
 bid such annoyances and shut their ears. For 
 they, too, were human, and dared not have the 
 reality brought home to them. It was better to 
 say and to believe that each bore his share of 
 the great burden. It was the part of the "brave 
 boys at the front" to be butchered without mak- 
 ing a disagreeable noise. Aiter all, it was no 
 one's fault. 
 
 Once only he would have liked to hurl his 
 contempt into the face of those who had accepted 
 the war like any other change in the world, and 
 those who were even profiting by it! Hard as 
 were the things he had had to endure, bitter as 
 others might still be, he knew that he would not 
 exchange places with those men. Nor would he 
 have exchanged places with some of his im- 
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 mediate colleagues. If he had to choose again, 
 he would still choose to die here rather than stay 
 at home and give charity concerts for widows 
 and orphans behind a wall of lies ! 
 
 He, at least, had the right to look the war face 
 to face, to despise and hate it from the depths 
 of his heart. He did not have to play the hyp- 
 ocrite and declaim the contrary of what he really 
 thought, like those who called a murderer 
 blessed simply because he had passed their own 
 throats by. He served the war, thank God, by 
 giving himself up to it, not by withdrawing him- 
 self from it. He at least was perishing because 
 he had let a false radiance mislead him. No one 
 could accuse him of praising the great murder 
 at a safe distance and of securing himself by an 
 acquiescence from afar. 
 
 Proudly he raised his head and then sud- 
 denly started and uttered a little cry as some one 
 tapped his shoulder softly from behind. 
 
 It was the sentry w T ho had come to relieve him 
 and whom he had almost forgotten. Without 
 looking at the man he stepped back silently 
 and slowly followed the corporal on duty. The 
 wind blew behind them and pressed his sodden 
 shirt like a cold bandage against his neck, so 
 that his teeth chattered with the chill. Angrily 
 he pushed his helmet -forward again to prevent 
 the water from trickling down his back and mur- 
 mured, half to himself, half to his companion, a 
 curse against the weather. 
 
 Immediately the corporal stood stock-still as 
 
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 though Gadsky's words had sprung a strange 
 trap. "For God's sake, don't worry about the 
 weather," he said hoarsely and his eyes gleamed 
 strangely in the darkness. "When the fog lifts, 
 it'll take us all along to heaven !" 
 
 Gadsky felt his breath give out. What did 
 that mean? Had further orders come in while he 
 was on sentry duty? More exact orders? Or did 
 this man merely repeat the empty croakings of 
 the little tailor? He was just about to ask a 
 definite question when the corporal stepped 
 aside and there arose behind him the tall slender 
 silhouette of Ensign von Krtilow. As in a 
 dream, and as though a thick wall separated him 
 from those two, he heard Kriilow utter a few 
 brief words, heard the corporal's respectful an- 
 ' swer and the thump of the latter's boots on the 
 wet clay. Not until the sounds of the steps had 
 died away and he felt the hot hand of the ensign 
 igrasp his, did he awaken and draw a long breath. 
 Without a word having been uttered, from the 
 silence itself, he felt the icy certainty flow into 
 his mind, as though the great peril itself 
 breathed its cold breath upon his face. He 
 opened his mouth. He meant to ask a question; 
 he tried to pierce the darkness and see the fea- 
 tures of Kriilow. But he remained silent. Only 
 the throbbing of his own pulses sounded in the 
 stillness, and when Kriilow released his hand he 
 felt as though a last means of salvation had been 
 forevermore withdrawn from him. 
 
 Kriilow was silent, too. Without stirring, 
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 they stood facing each other for a little while, 
 listening to each other's souls and staring at the 
 blackness of the trench wall. 
 
 "It's all over," Gadsky thought. And then 
 every fiber of his being rebelled against the hope- 
 lessness of these words. There was no such 
 thing. Had not people held out for days in mid- 
 ocean clinging to a plank? Had they not been 
 buried fathoms deep in earth and been rescued 
 after all? He pulled himself together for a new 
 attack upon despair. Then the nervous hand of 
 the ensign touched his arm and from the soft 
 voice that he heard there arose a sadness so 
 weary and complete that all strength left him 
 again. 
 
 "I was just going to ask you to use your 
 influence over Frobel," he heard Kriilow say. 
 Involuntarily he made a gesture of denial, deeply 
 wounded by this demand which, passing his own 
 need by, seemed to fix its attention on another's. 
 By what right was so much more demanded of 
 him than of others? Why should he take up a 
 stranger's burden at this hour? A burning feel- 
 ing of utter outrage arose in him. He meant to 
 say at last that he felt no inner call at all toward 
 laying down his life with any especial elegance 
 of gesture, or more carelessly than any other 
 man. He wanted to say that shamelessly and to 
 say it to just this kindly lad whose heart was 
 so open to all appeals. He wanted to show him 
 the abyss between the wretched lives of these 
 Others and the magic wealth of his own. 
 
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 But Kriilow didn't let him speak. He had not 
 been able to see the hurt and outraged look in 
 Gadsky's face and he took the gesture and the 
 shake of the head to be merely an attempt 
 modestly to deny any influence over Frobel. 
 
 "Oh, yes, you can. You have more influence 
 over him than the captain," he whispered and 
 spoke on insistently, almost beseechingly, hold- 
 ing out his hand for a last clasp in case any one 
 should appear. 
 
 "The captain is beginning to have his sus- 
 picions. I've done all I could to reassure him. 
 But whenever we talk about Frobel he says : 'I 
 shouldn't have advanced that fellow. He seems 
 to be a damned coward.' Frobel has got to pull 
 himself together. The captain just told us that 
 everything now depends on keeping up the dis- 
 cipline. He's quite ready to make an example of 
 any one in order to stiffen the morale of the 
 others. Tell Frobel that the minute you see him. 
 He's an awfully good fellow and, of course, you 
 can't turn a kindly sheep into a tiger as our 
 dear Weiler used to say. But he ought to 
 restrain himself at least in the captain's pres- 
 ence. He's got time enough to let his head hang 
 if things really get bad. We're far from the 
 worst now. The fog may stay another whole day. 
 Or the enemy may not catch on until the with- 
 drawal is complete. We need hold out only 
 twelve hours more. Then we have permission to 
 evacuate this trench. Tell him that, if he'll keep 
 a stiff upper lip, I'll get him a week's leave as a 
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 reward. And also tell him that I've got a 
 brother over in Corsica. He was made prisoner 
 in just such a situation as this. His whole 
 squadron was cut up. But he got a bullet in his 
 lung at the very start and simply slept through 
 the whole affair. When he came to, a French 
 surgeon was standing at his bedside. Fact ! My 
 brother wrote us all about it. Tell Frobel that 
 story to encourage him. I'd be sorry to see him 
 disgraced. You can see him sitting in the dug- 
 out. He's like a horrible example! If the cap- 
 tain catches him that way there will be trouble. 
 Impress that on him. He believes so in you." 
 
 He had said all that in feverish haste, glancing 
 to the right and the left. Just as he had finished 
 a sentinel appeared in the communication 
 trench. He called out in a forced voice: "You 
 have understood, haven't you?" Then he saluted 
 and disappeared. 
 
 Gadsky stared after him. He had scarcely 
 heard the second part of his friend's discourse. 
 Only the phrases: "We need hold out only 
 twelve hours more . . ." and : "The enemy may 
 not catch on . . ." had hooked themselves firmly 
 into his brain and came back again and again as 
 though a wheezy gramophone played the same 
 record without end. 
 
 So it was true. Irrevocably true. Not merely 
 a suspicion or the gossip of the trenches. He had 
 heard it from an officer who had probably read 
 the orders with his own eyes. . . . Twelve hours 
 more. That meant that the enemy had to be held 
 
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 here till evening. At any cost. The order prob- 
 ably read : "To the last man !" Oh, yes, that was 
 the customary formula. 
 
 "To the last man !" It was easily said. It gave 
 you a pleasant shiver. Warlike sentences like 
 that were all the rage now. "To the last man !" 
 or "To the last breath of man and beast!" You 
 could rattle with such phrases and with their 
 implied heroism and virility just as you proudly 
 rattled gold coins in your pocket. At the begin- 
 ning, when this whole monstrous thing had first, 
 as with one stride, stepped out of the history 
 books and the historical dramas into the realities 
 of every-day life and grandiose phrases had 
 taken the place of common speech, in those early 
 days, he was bound to confess, those phrases had 
 given him too a reverent shiver, a prickling sen- 
 sation made up of curiosity and vanity. . . . To- 
 night he was forced to think, as he did so many 
 times, of Weiler. All of the latter's prophecies 
 seemed gradually to come true. Now at last it 
 became clear how little one had, after all, reck- 
 oned with the possibility of death. It had seemed 
 something incredibly remote. What had seemed 
 real was a mixture of iron crosses and heroic 
 gestures and a triumphant return home. Now 
 the one shadow amid all this splendor had become 
 the sole inexorable reality. The weight of a com- 
 plete hopelessness was upon him. Five days in 
 the very front trench under the incredible ham- 
 mering of drum-fire still gave one a chance. One 
 could fix one's eyes on that chance and overlook 
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 the horrors. But such combats as those that 
 were ahead now meant the end. If they repulsed 
 one attack, it only meant a brief pause, a pro- 
 longation of their torment. And behind all that 
 there was nothing, emptiness, at most a few 
 frosty sentences: "Ah, Gadsky, too! Well! 
 well ! I must say I am sorry." 
 
 His arms hung down as if filled with lead. 
 His knees felt hollow. A weariness as after a 
 ten hours' march weighed down his limbs, tore 
 the rifle from his hand, forced him to sit down 
 on an empty munition box. Behind him raged 
 the wind, rose to a stormy yiolence, and flapped 
 his icy shirt again and again against Kis glowing 
 body. He smiled bitterly as he thought that he 
 needn't fear taking cold, not even developing 
 pneumonia. It no longer mattered. He didn't 
 care in what state of health the fatal day might 
 find him. Germs that settled in him to-day were 
 not destined to a long or a merry life. 
 
 There was an advantage in everything, he 
 told himself ironically and fought desperately 
 against the gentler emotions which Kriilow's 
 superhuman forgetfulness of self had called 
 forth within him. The boy wasn't twenty. He 
 came from a social caste that looked down on 
 primary school teachers as from a tower. And 
 yet in this hour fated to end his scarcely opened 
 life, he had taken thought of that humble man 
 who was fifteen years his senior. Why must such 
 radiant goodness perish before it had a chance to 
 scatter its limitless treasures into a thousand 
 
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 empty hearts and minds? And others who meant 
 nothing to any one but themselves were saved 
 from danger by a happy chance. Was one not 
 almost driven to believe that an evil chance 
 ruled the affairs of men, when one saw the 
 destruction of the kind and noble and the careful 
 preservation of the cold, the narrow and the 
 malicious? This little Ensign von Kriilow had 
 two brothers. And he loved life so touchingly 
 and was here. Those two were arrogant, stupidly 
 proud of their name, tramped like blind beasts 
 through that world which he won for himself 
 through the great love in his soul. And one of 
 those two, the elder, had a comfortable berth in 
 Berlin at the great headquarters of the General 
 Staff ; the other was safe and sound now in Cor- 
 sica. Could not these two dry souls who heard 
 no sigh of man, no cry for help, could not they 
 have paid the toll of blood instead of the young- 
 est in whose hands every penny of the great fam- 
 ily fortune would have been a seed of mercy to 
 men? 
 
 Holding his head between his hands Gadsky 
 still stared at the tracks which Krulow's feet 
 had left. These were slowly filling with water. 
 And he tried to think of Krtilow. For in the 
 light of his friend's thoughts he was ashamed of 
 his own. Did not the two hundred men who had 
 lived by his side for months until they had all 
 become links of the same chain did they not 
 also approach destruction? Yet in that night 
 his thoughts had not touched upon their woe. 
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 His indignation against those who were safe and 
 far away had been quite free of any sympathy 
 for these others. He had thought of no one, he 
 told himself bitterly, not even of his friends, not 
 even of Frobel, not even of Krtilow who was so 
 much younger than himself and who had yet cast 
 scarcely a glance into the great banqueting hall 
 of life which had been for him the scene of not a 
 few triumphs. 
 
 His drenched shirt tormented him every 
 moment and clung to his back at every motion he 
 made. His whole body shivered and trembled, 
 but he was determined to stay here. He wanted, 
 morbidly, to taste the whole bitterness of his 
 humiliation, his physical wretchedness and deep 
 discomfort. With shame, with a hatred of him- 
 self, he thought of the days when he had driven 
 through life in his dry dancing-shoes and had 
 taken no thought of the poor devil on the box 
 separated from him by only a pane of glass 
 whose back was soggy with the rain water and 
 whose clothes flapped in the cold wind. Dared a 
 man who had lived thus be indignant against the 
 cruel compulsion that held him here? 
 
 And now, as through a veil there came an image 
 to him, a memory that he did not want to face. 
 But in defiance and pride he forced himself to 
 do so. Inexorable to himself, he spurred his 
 memory on to reconstruct that scene. And he 
 felt a cold grip upon his heart when he calculated 
 that to the very day two years had passed since 
 that night since his last concert in Paris ! Who 
 
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 would have thought that it was to be his last? 
 There was a storm of spring just as now and 
 shook the hansom cab. Mathilde was sitting 
 beside him in it and her eyes gleamed into his. 
 He had surpassed himself on that evening so that 
 he had been dragged back to the piano again and 
 again. He was now tasting the full savor of suc- 
 cess in the pressure of her fingers and the glow 
 of her cheeks. He had indeed played for her 
 alone. From the far corner of the hall where she 
 had had her seat, power and tenderness had 
 streamed into his hands. 
 
 And then? Ah, he lived through that scene 
 again as vividly as though it were being reen- 
 acted before him on an invisible stage. He saw 
 again the white-haired old cabby, blowing and 
 wheezing in the storm that swept across the 
 street and made his cab shake. Of course, he had 
 had no desire to palaver with the cabby. He 
 wanted to get to Neuilly, to the exquisite little 
 cottage where the very chairs and hangings were 
 impregnated with the subtle perfumes of Ma- 
 thilde's body. There supper was awaiting them ; 
 there he wanted to take her in his arms and feel 
 his triumph as an artist in the kisses of her love. 
 Was it surprising that he had spoken briefly and 
 gruffly to the old man, and had utterly lost all 
 patience when the rain dashed over the apron of 
 the hansom and turned Mathilde's frock of pale 
 green crepe de Chine into a moist rag that clung 
 to her slender limbs? 
 
 "Mais M'sieur! Par c' temps!" the old man 
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 had pleaded. And his answer had been merely a 
 harsh : "En avant !" 
 
 Ah, that was precisely what those mighty ones 
 were saying who conducted this retreat: "En 
 avant!" They too, desired with an equal fervor 
 the success that would bring them fame and 
 decorations and the arms of love. "En avant !" 
 the words were also echoed by the pack that pur- 
 sued money in all countries war-profits through 
 steel and explosives the money that should 
 have bled as from a thousand wounds, but that 
 meant to them pale green frocks of crepe de 
 Chine and lovely cottages as homes of love. That 
 same master feeling that made him tense as a 
 bow each time that he ascended the concert plat- 
 form and made a willing tool of his soul and his 
 body with which to rule the hundred-headed 
 beast below him, that same intoxication and rage 
 for success was now storming through the Gen- 
 eral Staff offices and burning in the hearts of the 
 men who wanted their success and their rewards 
 and their victory, no matter what became of cab 
 or cabby, of George Gadsky or of an hundred 
 thousand others ! 
 
 He seemed to sink back into himself; an un- 
 canny gaping emptiness surrounded him. He felt 
 unmasked and could not escape from the net 
 that he himself had woven. For it was just as 
 he had told himself. There was no evasion. The 
 monstrous injustice which he had cursed that 
 night in the outer trench, when it was rightly 
 and objectively looked upon, was nothing more 
 
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 than a mere change of social station. George 
 Gadsky had been expelled from that happy circle 
 which was upborne and had fallen to the level of 
 the bearers of burdens. In peace he had been, 
 as it were, a member of the General Staff; to- 
 night he sat on the box of a cab exposed to the 
 streaming rain and drove others toward their 
 success and their joys. 
 
 He saw clearly enough that there was, as an 
 ethical question, a way out for him, an excuse he 
 could offer for himself. But he disdained it. 
 The son of a humble man who had gone forth into 
 the world after success, insatiable after radiance 
 and triumph and love, could not worthily make 
 the excuse now that he, at least, had not sacri- 
 ficed the lives of men to his greatness. Because 
 there were the poor fellows who had paid for his 
 success with infinite disappointments, who had 
 dragged on a wretched life as piano-teachers 
 and who had sat with hungry eyes in the crowded 
 halls at his concerts. For those halls, when they 
 had rented them with their last pennies for which 
 they had starved and suffered, always remained 
 empty. Was there a general who had spoken 
 more contemptuously, more pitilessly, of the 
 soldiers who gave their lives for his success than 
 he had done of these "piano-threshers" and all 
 the tribe of "bloody amateurs"? No, this con- 
 flict with bayonets and grenades was not much 
 more cruel than that competition which stamped 
 on souls and then raced on without asking how 
 those victims of fate managed to carry on their 
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 broken lives. And he himself, had the choice been 
 offered him of begging his way through life as a 
 man of unrecognized talent, embittered and 
 pitied, or of succumbing, freed of all that agony, 
 on this bloody field, would have hesitated not a 
 moment to accept the latter fate. 
 
 Suddenly he grasped his rifle more sturdily 
 and jumped up. A new strength, a wild and 
 stubborn determination had taken hold of him. 
 With great, firm strides he went toward the dug- 
 out. He was too tired to untangle the coil of 
 these monstrous happenings here in the windy 
 trench with death before his eyes. He could not 
 get to the bottom of it all now. But he felt 
 clearly that he had his share in the world-wide 
 guilt. He knew that the hurricane that had up- 
 rooted him and hurled him hither, had not arisen 
 suddenly and without cause, but had slowly 
 emerged from the regardless greed for life that 
 had once mastered him too. And the mad rage 
 which impelled these nations to fly at each 
 other's throats and to wade through blood and 
 tears, was only that same million-voiced cry in 
 each of them after wealth and power and ease at 
 the expense of others ; it was the same blind sel- 
 fishness that had stung him too to follow, with- 
 out thought or ruth, at the heels of success. 
 
 He hastened back to get some sleep before 
 morning. He wanted to enter that fight strong 
 and rested. Now that he recognized that he was 
 not a guiltless sacrifice at the mercy of an ex- 
 ternal catastrophe, but a fighter in a combat 
 
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 which he like every friend and every foe had 
 helped to summon upon earth, he was determined 
 to defend himself to the last breath. Let them 
 beware who would rob him of his life ! Whoever 
 had shown himself as sturdy in the battle of life 
 as he, need not lose all courage because the fight 
 was to be fought to-day with other weapons, 
 with actual blow and thrust. He would defend 
 himself. Yes, he would, by God. What glory, 
 what unimaginable blessedness would there not 
 be for him if he could fight his way back once 
 more into his real life. For he would now be 
 able to value it a thousand times more after this 
 bitter trial! Then only then could he hope to 
 make up for the shortcomings of his old avidity 
 and selfishness. He could become a giver, one 
 who does not walk ruthlessly over the weak, but 
 shares his happiness, and, like Kriilow, builds 
 himself a house of joy out of the joy he gives 
 away. But to do that he needed to live he 
 needed to preserve himself. Only if his body, 
 like that of the Frenchman yonder, slowly 
 blended with the earth only in that case was the 
 present result of his life a final one. 
 
 So he would fight! 
 
 But when he entered the dugout, he seemed 
 to receive a sudden blow. With its mighty 
 grasp the disconsolate sight that met him tore 
 the security he had battled for from his soul. 
 What a change! He had left merry faces here 
 and clinking glasses. And now he found shrunk- 
 en figures and staring eyes. The room seemed to 
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 exhale horror. They crouched there as though 
 the bony hand of death were already at each 
 man's throat. With the cold smoke that floated 
 above them was blended the acrid odor of the 
 sweat of terror that poured from the men's bodies 
 as the inevitable hour of death drew near. 
 
 Shuddering, Gadsky leaned against the en- 
 trance, when some one grasped his arm and drew 
 him along. "Please, please, come on out!" 
 Frobel's voice hissed into his ear. He wanted 
 to relieve himself of the weight of his rifle, but 
 the shaking fingers clasped his wrist convul- 
 sively, and the hoarse voice pleaded wildly: 
 "Take it along ! Please take it along !" 
 
 Annoyed and frowning, Gadsky permitted 
 himself to be drawn out into the trench and fol- 
 lowed the man's breathless pace far back, beyond 
 the third turning of the trench, to a niche that 
 had once been filled with sandbags and had then 
 been a sort of first bandaging station. "Where 
 the devil are you dragging me to?" he cried in- 
 dignantly and shrugged his shoulders contemptu- 
 ously as Frobel laid a warning finger on his 
 lips. 
 
 He stopped in the niche and before Gadsky 
 could prevent it Frobel had thrown himself on 
 his knees before him and was stretching out his 
 folded hands toward him. "Save me ! For God's 
 sake, save me ! Think of my wife and my child ! 
 For God's sake !" 
 
 Gadsky felt a bitter taste come into his mouth ; 
 a physical nausea arose in him at the man. He 
 
 155
 
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 could have struck him in his disgust. "Get up !" 
 he said. "How can you kneel?" And when the 
 dark body at his feet seemed to sink into the very 
 mud and the arms embraced his hips and he 
 heards sobs, he repeated angrily: "Do get up! 
 How can you?" 
 
 Frobel remained where he was. "Help me!" 
 he whined. "I've tried everything! I can't do 
 it !" He released Gadsky and buried his face in 
 his hands and wept softly. Then his terror 
 shook him again, he clung to Gadsky's coat and 
 cried out: "Help me! Please help me!" 
 
 Gadsky shoved him aside and said gruffly, 
 "For heaven's sake, get up! How could I help 
 you? We're in the same boat. . . ." 
 
 Frobel jumped up as if he had been stung. 
 He came so near that his lips almost touched 
 Gadsky's ear and whispered: "You can, you 
 can help me. You can save me if you want to ! 
 It isn't two yet. If I start soon I can reach the 
 rear lines. . . . Help me. . . ." 
 
 Gadsky stared at him uncomprehendingly and 
 stepped back a pace, since the other had grasped 
 his rifle and almost tore it from his hand. "What 
 are you doing? Take care! It's loaded." 
 
 Frobel's teeth chattered like a man's in a high, 
 cold fever. "You reported to me yesterday that 
 . . . that your rifle is defective. . . . Do just 
 touch the trigger. . . . I'll pretend I was exam- 
 ining it. . . ." 
 
 Gadsky hurled him afar. "Are you mad? Do 
 you want us both to end on the gallows?" 
 156
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Frobel fell upon him. "No, no, no, no! You 
 won't even be suspected. I've thought it all 
 out!" 
 
 Gadsky's patience was at an end. He freed 
 himself roughly from the man's clasp and held 
 his rifle behind his back. When he saw Frobel 
 in a state of collapse lean against the wall of the 
 trench and sob like a child, a shadow of pity arose 
 above his disgust and he tried to convey to him 
 the kindly and encouraging message of Ensign 
 von Krtilow. He tried to screen all coming 
 danger behind the anecdote of the elder Krtilow 
 and painted Frobel's ultimate home-coming out 
 of captivity in the most alluring colors. He was 
 finally ashamed of the mushiness of the story. 
 
 But Frobel scarcely listened. Gadsky had 
 first of all told him of the captain's suspicions 
 and that upset his whole plan. He broke down 
 utterly, cowered on the earth, his head upon his 
 knees, and his pointed shoulders shook. Then he 
 pulled himself together a little and spread out 
 his arms and said in a voice as toneless as though 
 it came from a great distance, "I can't. I as- 
 sure you I've tried. I simply can't understand 
 you. I know that there's nothing worse in store 
 for me than for you and all the others. But I 
 can't understand you. It always seems to me as 
 if all of you must be pretending, just playing up 
 to each other. I keep asking myself: Do these 
 men realize that when it comes to actual dying 
 they'll have to stop acting? Or do they count on 
 recognition after death? I can't understand 
 
 157
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 how a man can be willing to give up his life for 
 a word of praise of which he'll be as unconscious 
 as this stone." He took his head between his 
 hands and pressed on his temples with all his 
 might and cried out almost at the top of his 
 voice : "I've determined a thousand times to 
 pull myself together; I know that the others 
 jeer at me, that my stripes will be torn off if I 
 don't improve. In vain. A thousand times I've 
 determined to be braver at the next danger, just 
 as brave as the others who aren't killed either 
 right away, just because they don't crouch so 
 low or even stand up. But then I always ask my- 
 self again : Is your life worth less to you than 
 an appreciative word from the captain? Is it 
 better to rot with your stripes under the earth, 
 or to be disgraced and branded, but alive? Does 
 any one really know what people say of him when 
 he's dead? I can't get around that, much as I 
 try." 
 
 The man's confession arose from an unfath- 
 omable depth, sincere, tormented, moving. And 
 yet it filled Gadsky with a cold repulsion. The 
 man's whine revolted him just because it seemed 
 to express as by means of a crazy caricature the 
 very fight he had fought out in his own soul, and 
 because it voiced shameful thoughts that he had 
 crushed into silence. He saw the convulsive fin- 
 gers that were stretched, out toward him as 
 though he were a plank and he turned away in 
 deep distaste for this love of self that forgot 
 wholly that another man was hovering over the 
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 game abyss and needed all his energy to hold him- 
 self erect. 
 
 Frobel felt the disgust of his friend. He shook 
 his head sadly and fell silent for a while. Then 
 he bent quite near Gadsky again and whispered 
 to him as though he were betraying a great se- 
 cret, "Look, right behind that observation stand 
 Dangler's body is lying. They haven't buried 
 him yet. Twice since noon I went over there and 
 looked at him. Ten hours ago he was alive. He 
 might still have been alive. But he volunteered 
 for dangerous duty just because he wanted the 
 iron cross before his next leave. You remember 
 how proudly he looked around and how his eyes 
 shone when the captain pointed him out as a 
 model soldier. Look into his eyes now ! He lies 
 next to a heap of boards there and he's no better 
 than a board himself. You can saw him in half ; 
 you can burn him; he'd never know it. What 
 good is it to him now that he was a model soldier 
 yesterday? Oh, if you knew how I've tortured 
 myself. But no it's beyond me. While I was 
 standing by him the sun appeared for just a 
 second and shone into his eyes, into his terrible, 
 white eyes that seem to follow you about when 
 you move. And like a crazy man I called out to 
 him and asked him if he'd do the same thing over 
 again, or whether he wouldn't rather have an- 
 other glimpse of the sun and go home to his wife 
 and child without a cross, unpraised, despised, 
 spat upon, but erect on his legs that now fall 
 back to the earth like pieces of wood when you 
 
 159
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 lift them. Oh, I tell you, I would have given 
 the world to have had him answer me that ques- 
 tion! I could have split open his head to dis- 
 cover whether you know when you're dead, that 
 you've died a hero, died an honorable death." 
 
 He gasped and gasped and wrenching sobs 
 shook his body. He could not master himself 
 and stretched out his hands toward Gadsky. "I 
 know you despise me now because I'm a coward, 
 because I beg you to save me without asking 
 what'll become of you and our comrades. But 
 I can't help myself! There must be something 
 in you that I haven't got! You must all have 
 some belief that I can't share. Otherwise you 
 couldn't play this way with your lives; you 
 couldn't let people set you the task of dying as 
 if it were a lesson for which you wanted a good 
 mark. I can't take it that way, dear Mr. Gad- 
 sky I simply can't." 
 
 His voice was smothered in tears. Gadsky 
 gave him a somber glance and shook his head con- 
 temptuously. There was no help for this man 
 and there was no reason why he should let his 
 own hard-won self-possession he undermined. 
 The last straw was that the man talked so loud 
 that the conversation might easily be overheard 
 from the communication trench and reported to 
 the captain. There had been a wavering shadow 
 yonder that he hadn't quite trusted. With quick 
 determination he lifted his rifle and started to 
 
 go- 
 
 Frobel flung himself at his feet again and em- 
 160
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 braced his knees. "No, no! Don't leave me! 
 Don't, dear Mr. Gadsky! I can't do it myself. 
 No one will ever know. For God's sake !" 
 
 Gadsky thrust him back wildly. "Attention! 
 Some one is watching us." 
 
 Frobel fell silent and looked about him 
 apathetically. Then the shadow which had 
 awakened Gadsky's suspicion emerged from the 
 sandbags and the tall, slender figure of Kriilow 
 appeared turning the corner. Gadsky breathed a 
 breath of relief. He bent over Frobel to help him 
 up. 
 
 "How can you propose anything like that to 
 a comrade?" Kriilow asked in a muffled tone. 
 "If I report you, you will be disgraced, tried, 
 probably shot and your poor family would get 
 no pension. If I fail to report you, it is only out 
 of compassion for your poor wife. But I want 
 you to remember that you drive her and your 
 child into shame and want by your cowardice." 
 He dried the sweat on his forehead which had 
 gathered from the effort it cost him to speak so. 
 Then, after a moment's reflection, he stretched 
 out his hand and said sternly: "You may go." 
 
 Frobel slunk tottering away. They could hear 
 the sobs in his throat until he had turned the 
 corner. The two friends remained silent for a 
 little while. The painful scene that had passed 
 still lay between them. Gadsky knew how hard 
 it was for Kriilow to play the officer's part to- 
 ward older men, to scold the father of a family 
 as though he were a school boy. And so they 
 
 161
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 stood for a little until Kriilow conquered his sen- 
 sitiveness and said, "You rushed past me with- 
 out noticing me. But the way Frobel pursued 
 you made me suspect something. I didn't mean 
 to listen. But I was afraid some one else might. 
 So I watched." He sighed with relief. He had 
 freed himself from any possible suspicion that 
 his friend might harbor. And now he resumed 
 his ordinary tone of familiar friendship. "Won't 
 you join me in the officers' dugout for a bit? I'm 
 alone there. The gentlemen have gone over into 
 the neighboring sector for a conference." He 
 looked at his watch. "They can't be back in less 
 than an hour." 
 
 Silently they went through the deserted com- 
 munication trench and entered the officers' dug- 
 out. Gadsky left his rifle at the entrance. He 
 looked around. There was nothing, God knows, 
 in the room, nothing on the walls that could have 
 aroused a private's envy. The dugout was neither 
 better nor better furnished than the caves of the 
 men. And yet, whenever he entered it, Gadsky 
 felt oppressed and rebellious. He couldn't help 
 thinking of the peasants at home who had turned 
 their hats in their hands when they had entered 
 his father's office. The feeling came to him not, 
 assuredly, from anything in the appearance or 
 equipment of this place. But he could not for^ 
 give the dark hole for the fact that he, George 
 Gadsky, had stood at attention at its door like a, 
 lackey. 
 
 The ensign invited him to sit at the cente^ 
 162
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 table that rested on four rough posts rammed 
 into the earth, and offered him a cigarette. Then 
 they stared silently into the little lamp, fettered 
 by the tension that was in them. For Gadsky 
 guessed that Krtilow had invited him in for a 
 definite reason. He saw his friend's narrow, pale 
 face grow restless and the corners of his mouth 
 twitch and felt that beneath the high, smooth 
 forehead the thoughts were crystallizing into a 
 thing difficult to say. 
 
 Kriilow noticed his glance and said sadly: 
 "I'm sorry for poor Frobel. It was heartbreak- 
 ing to see him leave his wife. I remember how 
 he kept calling out to her long after the train 
 had left the station." 
 
 Gadsky shrugged his shoulders and continued 
 silent. Surely it was not for this . . . Krtilow 
 was evidently trying to gain time. He tried to 
 start on another subject to divert himself. But 
 his large, astonished eyes sought Gadsky 's face 
 oftener and oftener and at last his slender arm 
 crept slowly across the table. "I ... I wanted 
 to thank you before . . ." 
 
 Gadsky gazed at him in astonishment. He felt 
 the clear, warm glance upon his face. And with 
 a sharp ache in his throat he pressed the prof- 
 fered hand. 
 
 "You can't quite understand, I know, and I 
 can't explain it very well, what the friendship of 
 you two fellows has meant to me. I'll have no 
 chance to tell poor Weiler. So I wanted, at 
 least, to thank you." He lowered his eyes and 
 
 163
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 hesitated again and then began anew with a 
 steadier energy. 
 
 "I've aften told you what a hard time I had 
 at the military school. Imagine your passing 
 your whole childhood and youth without one 
 soul-comrade, teacher, relative, who had any un- 
 derstanding for your love of music. Imagine 
 every one around you without exception lov- 
 ing whatever you abhorred, and jeering at every- 
 thing that inspired you as low and unmanly. 
 Wouldn't you have been tempted to believe that 
 the fault, the defect, lay in you? I had no experi- 
 ence, you see, nothing but my dreams, and since 
 I couldn't believe that the whole world was spirit- 
 ually crippled I naturally thought that I was." 
 He took a deep breath and his cheeks glowed and 
 one felt that every word came from hidden 
 depths and at the cost of a great effort. "As I've 
 told you before, my zeal was my misfortune 
 my unappeasable hunger for intellectual food. 
 Everything that was in the text-books and I 
 had few others and everything that my teach- 
 ers happened to say fell into my mind as into a 
 well. And again and again I came upon contra- 
 dictions that I couldn't explain. I was willing 
 to let my pastor persuade me of the contemptible 
 immorality of the Jesuits and of their motto that 
 the end justifies the means. But when I timidly 
 asked whether the use of cunning and deceit in 
 war, the attempt to catch your enemy napping, 
 was not dictated by the same principle, I was 
 sternly condemned as harboring an immoral 
 164
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 opinion. I was proud and justly proud of the 
 iron resistance which my ancestors had opposed 
 to every one who would rob them of their free- 
 dom and their German character. And yet my 
 father whipped me when, in the summer, at our 
 country place which was near the linguistic 
 boundary, I applied the same argument to the 
 nationalistic efforts of the Poles. I couldn't be 
 satisfied with the explanation that in war victory 
 justifies a belief not only in the greater power, 
 but in the higher morality and righteousness of 
 the victorious nation, for I observed in history 
 that no defeated nation ever reasoned thus con- 
 cerning its conquerors. And indeed, it seemed 
 to me that this was a remnant of the medieval 
 idea of God's intervention in combat and led di- 
 rectly to oppression and violence. I hinted these 
 things to my brothers and to my comrades, but 
 I found none who was plagued by such doubts. 
 I was no weakling. But there were naturally 
 some who were stronger and in reality more 
 brutal than I. Modest as I was, I couldn't feel 
 that I was more worthless than these rough fel- 
 lows who took no interest in anything but fights 
 and practical jokes. Neither was I inclined to 
 take revenge on the younger boys for the miseries 
 I suffered at the hands of the older ones. So I 
 had no compensation whatever. Thus, since I 
 knew from my own experience the nature of op- 
 pression, I could not think oppression a sacred 
 thing if practiced by one social group over an- 
 other. And so, as in the nationalistic atmosphere 
 
 165
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 of any modern state, it was brought home to me 
 that I alone did not love the fatherland as it was 
 my duty to love it." 
 
 He had arisen and walked around the table 
 and stretched out both hands toward Gadsky. 
 "Can you imagine what it meant to me when you 
 and Weiler revealed to me a world in which I had 
 no longer any need to be ashamed? It was like 
 some old fairy-tale in which the crooked back of 
 the child is suddenly made straight! You two 
 expressed openly, and as a matter of course, 
 everything that I had barely dared, with infinite 
 doubt and hesitation, to confess to my own heart. 
 For the first time in life I felt as though I didn't 
 bear some mark of secret shame. For the first 
 time I had a circle in which I could truly be at 
 home, for the first time . . ." He interrupted 
 himself and his suddenly embarrassed eyes 
 sought the dark corners of the dugout. And with 
 a deep but hasty and final word of gratitude he 
 dropped Gadsky's hands. 
 
 Gadsky understood him. Before him too had 
 arisen the image of Mathilde's little reception 
 room with the Louis XVI chairs that had as- 
 sumed an almost hectic fragility when her friends 
 had begun to appear in the strange clumsiness 
 of their military boots. He heard again the 
 bright, dear laughter of Mathilde which always 
 came so beautifully at the right moment when 
 any debate threatened to develop a touch of un- 
 due heat. Oh, he remembered those last Sunday 
 afternoons, so sweet and so bitter, that seemed 
 166
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 like the slow dying and tragic farewell flare of a 
 beautiful, vanishing world. The whole melan- 
 choly magic of those last few cultivated conver- 
 sations over her delicate teacups arose in his 
 heart once more and contracted it. These fare- 
 well hours had emerged like rare stepping-stones 
 from the humiliation of the week's morass, in 
 which one sank deeper and more hopelessly 
 month by month. He looked at Kriilow's averted 
 face and he knew that they were both far away 
 for a moment from this noisome hole in the 
 earth, and he closed his eyes, as though he could 
 thus capture the image that traveled by them 
 for a last time. 
 
 When he looked up again and took in Krfilow's 
 slender figure from the small, beautifully shaped 
 head to the narrow, aristocratic feet, the tor- 
 menting thought entered his mind that this 
 dreamy, beautiful lad who was made for love 
 would have to go under here without ever having 
 known it. ... A nameless bitterness arose in 
 him and the strange and subtle thought that 
 Krtilow was the one man to whom he would not 
 have grudged Mathilde in the event of his own 
 earlier death. But he rejected the melancholy of 
 this mood with a vigorous oath and said : "We 
 say good-by to each other here as if it were a 
 cut and dried fact that the devil will fetch us in 
 the morning. We're not quite at that point yet. 
 Let's defend ourselves !" 
 
 Krtilow didn't answer. But he shook his head 
 with a tired smile. 
 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 "What does that mean?" Gadsky burst out. 
 "Don't you intend to put up a fight for your 
 life?" 
 
 Krtilow looked past him in an embarrassed 
 way and said : "Never mind about that. There's 
 no use. And I suppose I must ask you to go 
 now." 
 
 But Gadsky refused to be put off in that way. 
 Suspiciously he scrutinized the pale, resigned 
 'features of his friend and reminded him of the 
 fortunate escape of his own brother. 
 
 "Oh, everything is possible . . ." Kriilow an- 
 swered and his eyes wandered again. Then he 
 tried surreptitiously to steer Gadsky toward the 
 entrance. "It's all the same in the end. We 
 must all die some time. Whether it's a few years 
 earlier or later . . ." 
 
 "You can't get rid of me so easily," Gadsky 
 said firmly. "I've got to talk you out of this 
 mood. You're quite, quite wrong. Nature 
 doesn't work that way. She works like an in- 
 dustrious sculptor at the heads of her victims. 
 In the course of months the chin is pointed, the 
 cheek-bones are raised, the eyes hollowed and not 
 until the skull has almost swallowed up the face, 
 not until the thread is thin to the vanishing point 
 does fate cut it. It is by no means the same thing 
 whether a tooth is torn from your young and 
 vigorous gums against your will, or whether an 
 old man's tooth drops easily from his enfeebled 
 jaw. We must fight for our lives. I talked quite 
 as you do so long as death was afar off like a 
 168
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 bogey man that no one quite believes in. But 
 during the night I thought hard. And I know 
 now that our present and obvious duty is to de- 
 fend ourselves. All other considerations can 
 wait." 
 
 "And I have done my thinking, too," said 
 E^rulow very quietly and seemed suddenly to 
 withdraw himself into an austere loneliness of 
 soul while his face grew stern and gray and his 
 gentle mouth hard and determined. 
 
 "Listen, Kriilow," Gadsky cried and went up 
 to him, "I give you my word of honor that I won't 
 leave you unless . . ." 
 
 Krulow smiled again and put his hand on 
 Gadsky's shoulder and his voice had all its own 
 gentleness. "What do you want me to do? I'm 
 willing to grant that you're right. I didn't mean 
 it that way, anyhow. Of course there's a great 
 difference between dying at twenty or seventy. 
 All I meant was that all men whether early or 
 late is no part of the argument must die. You 
 cannot draw your first breath without obligating 
 yourself to draw your last. From the moment 
 that we received the gift of life we also received 
 our condemnation to death." He paused for a 
 moment and said in an impassioned and uplifted 
 voice, "But we are not all condemned to kill! 
 Millions die without having stained their hands 
 with the blood of their brothers ! And that is a 
 decision which each man must make for him- 
 self." 
 
 "Yes," Gadsky cried, "but he must also decide 
 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 whether it is not his duty to preserve his life at 
 the expense of others who would be an infinitely 
 smaller loss to the world than himself." He 
 leaped back into the middle of the room. "On 
 the kind of people that survive this filth depends 
 the whole future of humanity. I, personally, 
 have probably already done my best work, I 
 could do little but repeat my achievements. But 
 even I am worth defending to the last breath. 
 Promise me to do the same ! Have you a vision 
 of what the future would be like if all high- 
 minded men who have recognized the brutal 
 stupidity of war were to perm'it themselves to 
 be cut down without resistance and leave the 
 earth to the beasts and the fools? We under- 
 stand each other, you and I. And I ask you : Do 
 you think our captain will fail to resist and do 
 you want him and his kind to have the ordering 
 of the future?" 
 
 "He has the right to resist," Kriilow said, and 
 joined him near the table. "He has the right 
 because he firmly believes that it is a good deed 
 to kill as many soldiers of the enemy as possible. 
 His conviction is an honest one." 
 
 "Ah, never mind about his convictions. That's 
 true enough. But when it comes to the point 
 he'll fight quite simply for his life. Death is a 
 ticklish business." 
 
 Kriilow shook his head. His face had assumed 
 its usual aspect. But instead of his accustomed 
 timidity he showed an expression of mystical 
 and utter certainty which occasionally appears 
 170
 
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 on the faces of silent, thoughtful people when at 
 last they show the full treasure of their hearts 
 and minds. 
 
 "No," he said, "you do not understand the 
 militarist of the captain's type. He has existed 
 in every age; he exists to-day in every country. 
 He is even more dangerous, but far less ignoble 
 than you think. I've been through it all and I 
 know. For you, Gadsky, death was only a dis- 
 tant threat of which you didn't think, a creditor 
 of whom you hated to be reminded. But to the 
 men of my class death death in the service of 
 our king and country is the daily familiar thing 
 of all our thoughts and scenes and studies from 
 childhood on. There is no piece in your repertory 
 that you have rehearsed so often and so thor- 
 oughly as Captain von der Otte has rehearsed 
 the death he will die when morning comes. His 
 studies, his work, his private and professional 
 life all culminate and were meant to culminate 
 in this final and supreme act. Everything he has 
 ever done or thought has contributed to the sac- 
 rifice he will make to-morrow. And he awaits 
 that to-morrow in no very different mood from 
 yours when you prepared yourself for your first 
 public appearance as an artist." 
 
 He ceased for a moment as though exhausted 
 and then went on once more with a sharp and bit- 
 ter little smile. "Poor Frobel wasn't so far 
 wrong in his analysis. There's a bit of play-act- 
 ing about it all, however unconscious. People 
 like our captain do not, from their point of view, 
 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 die alone. And though the enemy were to let him 
 starve in a subterranean cell into which no hu- 
 man eye can penetrate, yet the feeling that he is 
 dying for his king and his country would sur- 
 round his martyrdom with a host of invisible 
 witnesses. All the great generals from Hannibal 
 to Napoleon, and from Moltke to Hindenburg, 
 all the lesser heroes in the traditions of his regi- 
 ment, all the teachers and the comrades of his 
 youth will seem to be there and to nod their ap- 
 plause when Captain von der Otte once more 
 shows the Frenchmen how a Prussian officer can 
 die! Ah, that is it! He believes! He has the 
 faith! He has the right to defend himself, for 
 he truly believes that the deed which is dishonor- 
 able when done from personal motives is illus- 
 trious and glorious if it brings new might and 
 new wealth to his sovereign lord, the king. He 
 believes and is he, alas, so far wrong? that the 
 world admires a country that can strew the fields 
 of battle with the bodies of its bravest sons ; he 
 holds it to be his sacred duty to leave the enemy 
 no choice but death or submission to his country's 
 will. And does not the very enemy, who is filled 
 with the identical faith, sustain him in his own? 
 Then why should he not defend himself? Why 
 should he not kill or else be killed, since the 
 kernel and marrow and backbone of his entire 
 life is in this faith? He would rather have re- 
 nounced life itself long ago than the opportunity 
 of this honor ! It's all, you see, a question of the 
 inner man. What makes this day so insufferably 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 hard for us is that we are asked to die for the 
 ideals of Captain von der Otte and not for that 
 which seems beautiful and important to our- 
 selves. And so, since there is no salvation for us, 
 since we must die there is but one thing left 
 us : to change the aim and purpose of our sacri- 
 fice. I shall push my own faith into the fore- 
 ground and death will no longer be too hard to 
 bear." 
 
 Tormented by a keen uncertainty, Gadsky 
 walked rapidly up and down the floor of the dug- 
 out. Now and then he stopped to regard the 
 flaming and determined face of his friend. The 
 music of the lad's voice had captured him; he 
 felt an almost fatherly anxiety. He sought in 
 all the corners of his brain for something, some 
 hope, some task with which to sting into new 
 energy Kriilow's will to live. And he remem- 
 bered suddenly Mathilde's strange assertion that 
 the little ensign wore an invisible crown of thorns 
 and that the occasional glint as of a Savonarola 
 in his gentle features made him so charming. 
 Ah, women had a fine instinct for these hidden 
 passions of the soul. Perhaps that accounted for 
 Krtilow's reverential adoration of Mathilde. He 
 felt that she knew, that she guessed. . . . And 
 suddenly Gadsky determined, as a last resort, to 
 use her name. He approached the table once 
 more and exclaimed: "I wish Fraulein von 
 Moellnitz were here to help me. She'd set you 
 straight !" 
 
 Kriilow turned away and his cheeks flamed. 
 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 The name had been hovering between them unex- 
 pressed. Now it was suddenly flung at him. It 
 was like a blow. He clasped his hands behind 
 him and walked to the other end of the room. 
 Gadsky felt sorry and sought for words in which 
 to ask the other's pardon. But Krtilow mastered 
 his emotion, returned and answered quietly and 
 with an almost cool superiority, "I am convinced 
 that Fraulein von Moellnitz would understand 
 me. She confessed to me that she was deeply 
 repelled by the men who came back from the 
 front, radiant and boasting of the murders on 
 their conscience like criminals in a den of thugs." 
 He reflected for a moment and then laid his hand 
 on Gadsky's shoulder with an air of finality. 
 "You must believe me when I say that I have re- 
 flected on these things thoroughly. And long be- 
 fore last night. From the moment that I saw 
 the first dead and wounded, I knew with the ut- 
 most certainty that nothing nothing in all this- 
 world could possibly justify or sanctify mur- 
 der. The conviction which I long suspected in 
 myself has now become an unalterable certainty 
 of my soul. And I owe that not least of all to 
 you and to Fraulein von Moellnitz herself. I do 
 not believe that there are any circumstances 
 which can make it honorable to pierce the bodies 
 of men with bayonets or bullets. And I do not 
 believe that any one has the right to require that 
 deed of me. All that any one can ask is that I 
 should die rather than give up my faith. And 
 that I shall do. I shall not kill ! I will neither 
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 stab nor shoot. For the fact that other and sorely 
 misguided men will seek to take my life is no 
 reason for me to yield to the same madness. I 
 shall die for what I hold to be my duty, for what 
 seems good and honorable to myself, precisely as 
 our captain will do. Please don't try to per- 
 suade me. It would be quite useless. And you 
 must go now. If you were found here it might 
 be embarrassing to us both. We'll see each other 
 later. And perhaps we won't reach the extrem- 
 ity this time. We may be able to withdraw be- 
 fore the French attack." Jestingly but with the 
 faintest suggestion of seriousness he added : 
 "Please go now or I'll have to act the officer." 
 
 It was still with an inner resistance that Gad- 
 sky approached the opening of the dugout. And 
 when, for the last time, he surveyed the whole 
 grim plainness of the room and saw himself 
 standing there hand in hand with Kriilow, a say- 
 ing of Frobel's flashed into his mind : "They're 
 all play-acting." And wasn't it like a well- 
 managed scene? Like the effective curtain of 
 an heroic dramatic action? Two men in the dark 
 night . . . death lying in wait for them . . . 
 the image of a beloved woman hovers above them 
 both . . . silently they grasp each other's hands 
 . . . there are tears that do not reach the eye. 
 Ah, no ! This lad, at least, was not acting. He 
 was throwing his young life away without think- 
 ing of any effect it would have. And indeed his 
 way of doing it would be thought soiling and de- 
 grading. And yet, and yet, and yet Gadsky
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 felt it in a moment of troubled and supreme in- 
 sight into this farewell of theirs there entered 
 something of the false feeling of all the age-long 
 declamations concerning the readiness of true 
 men for an honorable death, and the courage of 
 warriors ! Honest as was their dumb determina- 
 tion, free as they felt themselves of any concern 
 for the crowd and its judgments, yet deep within 
 them slumbered their boyhood's admiration for 
 heroes who threw their lives away like copper 
 coins deep in them glowed the fever with which 
 they had read the nights away over heroic stories 
 of old times deep in them throbbed the poison 
 of that immemorial tradition of blood and tears. 
 And like a sudden prescience, far and faint, there 
 came to Gadsky's mind the prophetic thought of 
 a new romance that would be built of Frobel's 
 indestructible will to live, of Krtilow's fanatical 
 reverence for life the new romance of a new and 
 better world. But the vision was lost in the dis- 
 consolateness of the present and he permitted the 
 cool, slightly vibrating hands of his friend to 
 lead him out into the darkness of the trench. 
 
 Outside he remained standing for a while. 
 There were tears in his throat. He was tempted 
 to return and not to desist until he had wrung a 
 promise from Kriilow. With a heavy sigh he at 
 last took up his rifle and vowed a solemn vow not 
 to leave Krtilow's side on the morrow, to risk his 
 own life for him at every moment. Then at last 
 he turned to go. 
 
 In front of the men's dugout he turned reso- 
 176 
 
 \
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 lutely away. He wanted to pass alone the few 
 hours until dawn. He did not want to endure the 
 judgment of Frobel's tearful glances. He turned 
 up the collar of his greatcoat and went out to 
 seek some hidden corner. Perhaps he might get 
 a little sleep yet. Already the darkness above 
 the trench was turning into a blackish blue ; the 
 wind had fallen; only far above, under the in- 
 visible vault, a roaring could be heard. 
 
 A few steps from the empty munition box to- 
 ward which he was going, he saw a soldier rest- 
 ing his head against the wall of the trench. He 
 looked closer and recognized the little Jewish 
 tailor whom they called the "vaudeville man." 
 "Well, what did I tell you?" The words came to 
 him sadly. Yet despite his sympathy he smiled 
 at the involuntary singsong of the voice, which 
 reminded him of nights in variety theaters and of 
 merry anecdotes and seemed so strange and con- 
 tradictory amid the sandbags and the trench 
 mortars. 
 
 Gadsky sought for some consoling thing that 
 he could say to the small man, and finally told 
 him the story of the older Kriilow which, some- 
 how, didn't sound very convincing. The tailor 
 did not answer for a time, carefully withdraw- 
 ing his face within the protecting shadow. Then 
 suddenly he pulled up his shoulders and ex- 
 tended his arms and answered bitterly: "Thafs 
 very fine for a Mr. von Krtilow, for an aristocrat 
 who rode horseback already when he still had a 
 rubber nipple in his mouth. If I get that same 
 
 177
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 shot into my little tailor's lungs I'd be dead be- 
 fore the Frenchmen got to our trench. And any- 
 how, why do you want to make me feel hope- 
 ful? You might better help me to give up hope. 
 For ten hours I've been trying to persuade my- 
 self that it's all over with me and I can't believe 
 it yet." 
 
 Gadsky lowered his head and stared at his 
 boots. It was sad to hear this ready jester talk 
 in that unaccustomed way. And God knows, he 
 was right. Why revive hope here? And yet 
 Gadsky couldn't bear to leave the poor devil 
 alone with his equanimity which was so hard- 
 won and which suited him as little as the trench- 
 helmet did his face. And so in farewell he laid 
 his hand on the tailor's shoulder and willingly 
 put all the human warmth he felt into his voice : 
 "Why do you stay out here? It's much easier to 
 bear among others where one must pull oneself 
 together." 
 
 Before he had ended the sentence the shoulder 
 slipped from his touch and a suddenly strange 
 and hate-filled voice struck on his ears. "No, 
 thank you. Frobel has that right, but not I. I 
 was just thinking as you came along, how well off 
 the rest of you are. If you happen to be brave 
 you're one of the many splendid German fighters. 
 If you sit in the dugout, pale as a sheet, with 
 your eyes full of tears, you're just the cowardly 
 Karl Frobel, let us say. That's all. But I've 
 got to go and hide here because my three Jewish 
 comrades in the battalion would be made to pay 
 178
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 for every sigh I might indulge myself in. And 
 do I help any one, I ask you, if I do pull myself 
 together? I've just been asking myself what 
 good it will do if I die here as grandly as if I'd 
 been a lion tamer all my life and not a Jewish 
 tailor? It will help no one, I tell you no one 
 in the world will be the better for it. When my 
 two boys grow up they'll be called cowardly 
 Jews just the same and no one will ask whether 
 their father was a tiger or a hare." 
 
 Deeply shaken Gadsky listened to the man's 
 grim bitterness. Was it really the "vaudeville 
 man" who spoke thus? Could one thus live side 
 by side with a human being for months and not 
 suspect the bitterness that ate into his soul? 
 "Your two boys will not be called that," he said 
 with all the energy and conviction of which he 
 was capable. "Surely you are making that im- 
 possible by your own . . ." 
 
 A sarcastic laugh interrupted him. "You 
 think so? Then listen to me. Yesterday it was 
 my turn to clean the officers' dugout. And there 
 I picked up several copies of the paper which is 
 sent to the captain. Do you want to read an 
 article I read there? I can show it to you. There 
 you'll see it printed black on white that the 
 Jews are the worst profiteers in the war, that 
 they're the only ones who sell shoes with paper 
 soles and take usurious interest and then go and 
 swamp the expensive restaurants. The man that 
 wrote that doesn't know anything, of course, 
 about the four of us here in the battalion. Oh, 
 
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 no, what he knows about is the expensive restau- 
 rants. Otherwise how would he know who eats 
 there? But can you tell me why he never takes 
 a look at the back page of one of the liberal 
 papers the so-called Jewish press and finds 
 out about the crowd of Siegfried Cohns and 
 Moritz Rosenthals of whom it is announced there 
 either that they have received the iron cross or 
 else that they have fallen on the field of honor? 
 Don't tell me! My boys have just such crooked 
 noses and crooked legs as I have. And the people 
 who meet them will always connect them in their 
 thoughts with the fat profiteers whom they've 
 seen somewhere eating lobsters or decked with 
 diamonds, and no one, no one, I tell you, will 
 think of the many thousands of crooked noses 
 who have fed the worms at every front ! No, no, 
 you needn't excuse yourself. I know it isn't your 
 fault." 
 
 Silently Gadsky held out his hand to the little 
 man. He was profoundly moved by that last 
 sentence which was meant to take the sting out 
 of all the sharp accusations he had made. He 
 felt the gratitude to him personally that shone in 
 those final words and the heartiness with which 
 the little man took his hand put him to shame. 
 For hadn't he also once thoughtlessly joined in 
 the cheap jests of others when a certain fat 
 woman in her best clothes, flanked by two boys 
 with curved noses, had come to the barracks to 
 call for her husband on Sunday? How much 
 true self-mastery, how much corroding and 
 180
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 valiantly suppressed indignation did this little 
 man hide behind his courtesy and his pleasant 
 humor! And because in the loneliness of his 
 last hours, in the isolation which he had stub- 
 bornly sought, he heard a gracious word, because 
 one open ear was lent to the lightening of his 
 righteous anger before it died forever for so 
 little he was grateful and had pressed the hand 
 of his enemy as though it had been a brother's. 
 
 It was hard to find a reply. For what the man 
 said was no result of a fleeting mood. It had 
 been thought over a thousand times ; it had been 
 suffered for in many hours of humiliation. After 
 long hesitation and shuddering, even while he 
 said it, over its frosty banality, Gadsky said: 
 "You take too black a view." The man accepted 
 the conventionality of the saying and replied 
 with a forced laugh, "Why shouldn't I? As you 
 know, my name is Black." 
 
 And again, as in the officers' dugout, the feel- 
 ing came over Gadsky that he was on a stage. 
 And he felt like asking : Why do we try to play 
 up to each other now? He dropped the tailor's 
 hand, chilled by the realization of the fact that 
 only his presence constrained that valiant little 
 coward to force a few last jesting words to his 
 lips. Why compel him to pretend any longer? 
 
 Hastily he went, throwing behind him the 
 words : "Good luck !" 
 
 The little man laughed. "Luck? What do you 
 mean by luck now? Wish me a clean bullet 
 straight through the head." 
 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Gadsky carried the bitter jest away with him. 
 With great strides he hurried back to the empty 
 ammunition box and sank down on it as weary 
 as though he had been broken on the wheel, as 
 burdened as though all the heaviness of heart of 
 which he had become aware were resting on his 
 back as though Krtilow's will to death and 
 Frobel's raging terror and the Jew's terrible 
 accusation had all turned to stone and were 
 dragging him down an abyss. And all that 
 what an infinitesimal part it was of the sum of 
 life and suffering here. Oh, it was but one drop 
 which to-morrow would be sucked up by the 
 rays of the indifferent sun. 
 
 Kriilow, the Jew, Frobel, himself, the whole 
 battalion and several adjoining battalions it 
 was all hardly worth mentioning. If the enemy 
 were only held until the division could occupy 
 the newly prepared positions, every telegraph 
 wire to-morrow night would tingle with the tri- 
 umphant message: "With negligible losses we 
 succeeded in withdrawing to carefully prepared 
 positions and unhindered by the enemy, etc, 
 etc." 
 
 "Negligible losses" yes, that would mean 
 them. The dread of that last night, the crip- 
 pling of their terrible will to live "Negligible 
 losses" copper coins that you throw on a table 
 without counting. 
 
 A soft gray was sickering through the dark- 
 ness and raised out of the black chasm at his 
 feet the boards which ran through the trench. 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 The shovels and spades that lay there, the rifles 
 that leaned against the walls, these were not 
 yet distinguishable and only gradually detached 
 themselves from the solid darkness, as if assum- 
 ing their forms for the first time. And while his 
 eyes clung to the emerging contours of a spade 
 or a rifle, there arose within him stubbornly 
 again and again the expression: "Lifeless ob- 
 jects . . . lifeless objects." And this expression 
 seemed itself gradually to attain to visible form 
 and to weigh him down and tug and tear at his 
 heart with the yearning over the inviolability 
 which it expressed. 
 
 Nothing could harm these things. A shell 
 might shatter the handle or roll up the metal 
 into the likeness of a strange flower. These dead 
 things could not die. The terrible step into the 
 land of insensibility, the wrenching from life, the 
 incomprehensible secret that cried from every 
 human corpse these dead things knew nothing 
 of it nothing of its terrors. Truly, poor Frobel 
 was right: It was not easy to think oneself the 
 like of a trench spade. And yet it was so. A 
 survivor who might put one foot on a broken 
 shaft and the other on the dead breast of George 
 Gadsky would . . . 
 
 He sprang up wildly, enraged at himself and 
 gazed over the top of the trench out into the 
 field. He saw emptiness. Only the nearest posts, 
 only the hillocks immediately in front of the 
 trench stood out in the darkness shot with 
 silvery gray. 
 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 And beyond there, behind the curtain which 
 still protected both there sat the others. There 
 sat men, holding their heads in their hands, 
 dreading the morning like himself. They might 
 conceivably be acquaintances, even friends of 
 his; there might be crouching there the son of 
 a' Frenchwoman who had once kissed him with 
 such fevered lips. And perhaps some one who 
 had admired him in Paris and pressed his hands 
 enthusiastically would strike him down to-day 
 with rifle butt or bayonet like a mad, dangerous 
 beast. Why? 
 
 Was that not madness? Was that not the very 
 blindness of unreason? 
 
 His thoughts glided back to his first hand- 
 to-hand fight the only one that he had gone 
 through. His groping expectation was con- 
 stantly being pushed out of consciousness by 
 memory until he re-lived all the horrors of that 
 first fight anew and also transposed it into the 
 future. He did not recall many details for, from 
 that moment in which, without any protection, 
 he had stormed out across the open plain, a 
 strange security had mastered him as though the 
 government of his limbs had been transferred to 
 some one outside of himself. He had heard his 
 blood roar in his ears and a red curtain had 
 descended over his eyes, so that he neither heard 
 nor saw but yielded passively to that other who 
 was leading him. He ran as though a wire were 
 pulling him, lifted his arm in defense, as though 
 some one else had pulled it upward and struck 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 out with a rage which came from his mind and 
 yet not from it ... What had that impulse 
 been? The will to live? The blind passion to 
 survive? He didn't know. The whole thing 
 smoldered in his memory like a mystery that one 
 hesitated to touch. But he had a keen recollec- 
 tion of the moment of awakening and of the hor- 
 ror he had felt at the sight of his blood-flecked 
 hands. 
 
 Would it return at the moment of supreme 
 danger that feeling of mystic security? 
 
 He looked about him and by now he could see 
 the whole of the straight trench and every pack 
 and rifle was clearly distinguishable. 
 
 Day was no longer far away. 
 
 He shivered and moved from the trench wall 
 that had given him support and started to return 
 to the dugout. There was no chance of sleep 
 out here. The fresh and vigorous morning air 
 awakened all his senses. He meant to go down 
 there where the brooding of the others, the at- 
 mosphere of their dread might descend like a 
 heavy fog upon his eyes and brain. 
 
 Half way to the dugout he was overtaken by a 
 shrill, whining scream that suddenly arose in 
 the distance and slowly came toward them. 
 Heavy shells! . . . He stopped with that hard, 
 keen tension in his face that even after a thou- 
 sand experiences still convulsed soul and body. 
 . . . The grenades fell only a few yards short; 
 they caused the posts of the wire entanglements 
 to rise to dizzy heights and strewed a hail of 
 
 185
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 earth and stone across Gadsky's path. From 
 every corner about him soldiers emerged, some 
 with the sleep still in their eyes and dragging 
 their blankets behind them. Like frightened 
 game they came from under their cover. Gadsky 
 was drawn along by the gathering mass, was 
 caught by the air pressure of another grenade 
 and hurled against the trench wall, heard a 
 creaking and bursting behind him, a cry, and ran 
 on without glancing back. 
 
 At the door of the dugout stood the senior 
 lieutenant, affecting entire calm and thoroughly 
 immersed in a conversation with the sergeant. 
 From afar Gadsky saw his jeering, challenging 
 smile that met him and at once resumed a normal 
 pace. He passed the two quite slowly, threw 
 back his head defiantly and heard the lieuten- 
 ant's biting words: "Why don't you hurry? 
 Late for something?" 
 
 What was it Frobel had said: "Is my life of 
 less value than an appreciative word from the 
 captain?" 
 
 If any one had told Gadsky one short year 
 ago that he, of all people, would assume a 
 hypocritical demeanor in the very face of death 
 for the sake of an insignificant little bank-clerk 
 whose shoulder strap bore a silver bauble ! 
 
 With compressed lips, with infinite anger 
 against himself and those others who caused 
 men, ai though they were trained dogs, to jump 
 through flaming hoops, he crept into the dugout 
 and, utterly weary, fell down on his straw mat- 
 186
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 tress. Yes, he was tired tired, above all, of this 
 senseless comedy, this wretched game which 
 would have been so unspeakably trivial and con- 
 temptible if it had not been for all the blood 
 . . . He looked up. He felt oppressed by the- 
 bodies of all the men who seemed to drag his 
 strength out of him; he felt buried as in a 
 forest . . . 
 
 The dugout was crowded. One could scarcely 
 stir one's arm without irritating one's neighbor. 
 It was a great coil of troubled faces, a heap of 
 men in utter dread tied to each other by that 
 common fear. "Negligible losses," Gadsky mur- 
 mured to himself. "Oh, yes, negligible . . ." 
 
 He looked at them again and nodded. Then he 
 closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight any 
 longer. For a second the mad suspicion flamed 
 up in him that it must, after all, be but an evil 
 dream. Life here was but one cry for an awaken- 
 ing from it for a disappearance of the wires 
 and the helmets and all the useless pain. He 
 could almost have smiled to welcome that awak- 
 ening. Then he turned his head to one side 
 and fell asleep. 
 
 Above him the grenades hammered. Every 
 moment the opening of the dugout might col- 
 lapse or be buried. With every explosion the 
 faces there grew paler at the vision of being 
 stamped out or drowned in a flood of earth. 
 Gadsky slept. Oppressed by the thick atmos- 
 phere of the overcrowded cave a snake-like coil 
 of dream images whirled through his brain. He* 
 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 saw his own body lying in the field, reduced to a 
 little heap like that of the Frenchman. He recog- 
 nized himself and heard the others in the trench 
 discuss his death and so he was glad to know 
 that all consciousness did not depart with life. 
 The only thing that pained him was that he 
 couldn't remember dying at all. He tried and 
 tried. He wanted to know whether the extinc- 
 tion of life had been painful or whether, perhaps, 
 it had been less terrible than one imagined, and 
 he was angry over his own forgetfulness. What 
 was to be done now? He couldn't die a second 
 time! Was the uncertainty to weigh him down 
 always? He tried with all his might to remem- 
 ber and then the scene changed and merged into 
 one in which he was a prisoner of the enemy and 
 was surrounded by all his Parisian friends. 
 They were all there, even the women, and were 
 all dressed in the queerest uniforms and took 
 him by the hand and did not seem hostile at all. 
 But he breathed more easily when his old friend 
 and patron the Marquis de Puys, in a general's 
 uniform ablaze with decorations, scattered the 
 throng of the others and led him out to his car. 
 He knew perfectly (within the dream) that the 
 old gentleman had died before the war and that 
 at the request of the family he himself had 
 played the organ a thing he rarely did at the 
 solemn requiem mass in the Madeleine ! And the 
 thought came to him to ask the general concern- 
 ing the latter's experience of death. But the car 
 drove on with such mad swiftness that the rush 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 of the air made it impossible for him to utter a 
 word. He heard the thunder of the motor, held 
 fast to the car and flew suddenly sobbing with 
 the blessedness of it into Mathilde's arms. He 
 drew her along with him, up a great stairway 
 and into glittering halls that merged into dark- 
 ness behind them and led her to a piano. He 
 cried out in wild delight as his fingers touched 
 the blessed keys again and then, with a roar of 
 pain and horror, observed suddenly that both of 
 his legs had been amputated far above the knees. 
 The tiny stumps that remained could not reach 
 the pedals, try as he would. Beside himself, he 
 hammered with his fists down on the accursed 
 instrument and shrieked with pain and rage 
 and woke up. 
 
 Astonished he looked about, pursued by his 
 own terrible cry which now came from quite 
 near him and from other lips. The senior lieu- 
 tenant lay not two feet from him, swimming in 
 his own blood, unspeakably mutilated, convul- 
 sively trying to free his hands and plunge them 
 into the great scarlet hole that cleft his abdo- 
 men. Gradually, too, Gadsky recognized the cap- 
 tain who was bending over his fellow-officer with 
 a careworn face. He jumped up. What had hap- 
 pened? Didn't the captain too have bloody 
 scratches on his forehead? A grenade must have 
 hit the officers' dugout ! 
 
 And Kriilow? The fright went through his 
 body like a blade. Where was Kriilow? In wild 
 haste his eyes searched the room and the world 
 
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 swayed with him as he recognized nowhere the 
 dear, small head of his friend. He made his way 
 forward through the crowd at the entrance. In 
 vain. He leaned against the wall of the trench, 
 scarcely mastering the sobs that arose in his 
 throat. He made the difficult decision to question 
 the sergeant who was covered with earth and 
 who must have witnessed the happening. That 
 stern individual looked him over coldly but fi- 
 nally condescended to give some information. 
 The ensign had had the extraordinary good luck 
 of having been ordered out of the dugout an hour 
 ago and sent on a special "mission." The ser- 
 geant made no indication as to the character of 
 the "mission." But it was evidently a matter 
 touching their cooperation with another bat- 
 talion since the sergeant mentioned the name of 
 a young lieutenant who belonged to it. 
 
 Deeply relieved Gadsky withdrew, straining 
 every nerve not to permit a certain emotion to 
 rise into the field of consciousness. He would 
 not, would not envy his friend. He drove the 
 thought away and yet heard the word "saved" 
 ring in his ears as from the blast of a bugle. 
 
 Was he envious? Envious? No! God knows 
 he was glad the dear, warm-hearted boy would 
 live- 
 As from the window of an express train he 
 saw again the hospital garden of his vision and 
 the ensign and the two others behind the hedge 
 of lilacs. And he tore himself away from the 
 vision and from the loathsomeness of his envious 
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 yearning. Convulsively he sought for some diver- 
 sion and looked back into the dugout where now 
 an officer's coat had been thrown over a stirless 
 heap upon the ground. How mysterious was 
 that quiet. Among an hundred sleepers, each 
 covered by an identical coat, he would have un- 
 dertaken at once to point out the coat that 
 covered a dead man, so cruel was the stillness 
 that lay within its folds. Less than an hour ago 
 this man had jeered at another fleeing from 
 death; he had thus jeered at death itself. And 
 now he was the first to have reached this goal. 
 The grenades that from time to time plunged so 
 deep into the neighboring earth that the dugout 
 swayed like a ship's cabin would trouble him no 
 more. If the secret "mission" led through the 
 fire that was going on now, poor Kriilow's luck 
 wasn't so remarkable. Perhaps, who could tell? 
 he lay even now in some crater lay like this 
 man . . . 
 
 Luck? What did it mean now? A clean bullet 
 through one's head. 
 
 What had become of the little "vaudeville 
 man," he wondered. He looked about and his 
 eyes rested suddenly on an extraordinary scene : 
 the corporal on duty stood in one corner, bent 
 over and talking to some one invisible. He ges- 
 ticulated, drew his hand across his forehead, 
 tried to drag the invisible man up by force and 
 ever again threw an anxious glance in the direc- 
 tion of the captain. 
 
 Gadsky was curious. He approached and rec- 
 
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 ognized in the supine figure the "Capuchin" who 
 had joined the battalion shortly before its de- 
 parture to the front and who, usually, conde- 
 scended to speak to no one. He now crouched on 
 the earth, pale as a sheet, his missal and his 
 rosary clutched in his fleshy fingers and only 
 from time to time shook his head stubbornly. 
 A chill stole over Gadsky. The "Capuchin" was 
 refusing obedience in the very face of the enemy 
 and would not go up into the trench ! It was his 
 turn for sentry duty and he refused! If only 
 the captain would not notice. Of course he was 
 quite right. As long as the heavy calibered guns 
 hammered this way the enemy wouldn't leave his 
 trenches. But the captain! Anxiously Gadsky 
 followed the corporal's eyes. Fortunately the 
 captain was attending eagerly to something else. 
 
 "I'm not going," the "Capuchin" suddenly de- 
 clared at the top of his voice. At once every- 
 body turned around and all eyes were directed 
 toward that corner. 
 
 The forehead of the corporal was moist from 
 his efforts. He threw up his arms in despair and 
 declared in an angry voice : "All right then. It's 
 not my fault not mine!" 
 
 Gadsky motioned to the man. His action was 
 utterly senseless. But he didn't move. He 
 pressed his rosary to his breast and shook his 
 hairy head. 
 
 They told the story in the battalion that the 
 man had really been a father of the Capuchin 
 order and had thrown his robe and cowl aside 
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 shortly before the war in order to be able to 
 marry. And suddenly Gadsky remembered that 
 on the way from the barracks to the station a 
 pale blonde woman had marched next to the 
 bearded man. And had she not been with child? 
 The bull-necked giant looked quite like one who 
 might tear down the structure of his life for the 
 sake of a woman. And was he anxious now to 
 fling that life away since the war had so soon 
 shattered his hard- won happiness? 
 
 Gadsky's glance pierced that pallid face. He 
 wanted to go over to him. But it would have 
 been too noticeable since he stood halfway be- 
 tween the captain and the strange man. Why, 
 he asked himself regretfully, had he happened 
 never to have exchanged a single word with him ? 
 
 "I'm not going !" For a second time the words 
 echoed through the place and cut the mounting 
 silence so sharply that Gadsky abandoned hope 
 and turned aside. Yet something in him plead 
 for a respite some kind, from anywhere as it 
 had done when he was a child and had not 
 known his lesson and had seen the teacher ap- 
 proach his name in the class book. Only the con- 
 versation of the captain could now be heard in 
 the silence. "No, oh, no !" something said in Gad- 
 sky. But already the fatal sentence sounded 
 from the captain's lips and stopped all hearts as 
 though they were ticking watches. 
 
 "What's the matter over there?" Oh, how he 
 disliked that harsh, official voice. The bearded 
 man arose slowly. The silence grew tenser and 
 
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 uglier with every moment. The corporal ap- 
 proached the captain and stammered out his re- 
 port with tired, unhappy gestures. Then the 
 Capuchin opened his lips and flung the words 
 "I will not go," like sharp stones straight into 
 the captain's face. 
 
 The captain drew back. His jaws set like 
 steel. He seemed to bark out his words. The 
 bearded man wrapped himself in his silence. It 
 was not until the captain laid his hand on his 
 revolver and repeated his question that a scarcely 
 noticeable trembling went through the man's 
 mighty body and his pale lips rolled the word 
 "no!" like a fragment of rock to the captain's 
 feet. 
 
 An invisible noose seemed to strangle every 
 man present. Immovable stood those hundred 
 figures and endured with a dull defiance the keen 
 eyes of the captain that searched their rows. 
 The silence seemed to arise like a beast with an 
 hundred claws ready to fall upon the tamer who, 
 with a quick decision, raised his revolver and 
 took aim. 
 
 Gadsky closed his eyes and held his ears. But 
 the report did not ring out. The captain lowered 
 his weapon and cried out : "I shall not even let 
 your body fall among loyal men, you dog !" And 
 his voice rose to a still higher pitch as he gave 
 the order: "Officer Frobel and five men to form 
 a firing-squad !" 
 
 Gadsky started. That that was impossible! 
 Frobel? Karl Frobel who had embraced his 
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 kneea in his extreme and unmanly fear ! He was 
 to execute this man? No! His eyes dilated with 
 terror and disgust as the form of Frobel actually 
 emerged from a corner and approached falter- 
 ingly as a flame that flickers in the wind. Would 
 he really . . . really. . . ? 
 
 The captain's eyes leaped about the room but 
 no other man stepped forth. They stood in 
 somber, silent groups and a deadly hatred 
 seemed suddenly to beat into the captain's face. 
 The latter muttered an incomprehensible curse 
 and with a wave of his hand separated from their 
 fellows the five men who stood nearest to him. 
 
 And at this fatal moment of highest tension, 
 as Gadsky was slowly approaching Frobel and 
 struggling with the determination to put him to 
 an ultimate human test into this throttling ex- 
 citement there burst a miracle. 
 
 The bearded man lifted up his voice and sang. 
 Sang with a wonderful and mellow voice, with 
 a warm, rich baritone that streamed from his 
 mouth golden-clear as wild honey sang with a 
 voice that rose to the ceiling and burst it and 
 brought sunshine and mountain air into that 
 suffocating hole. He sang an Ave Maria and the 
 prayer spread out its wings and came beseech- 
 ingly and bathed in tears, yet also radiantly 
 from his throat came with the sweet and heavy 
 softness as from an old 'cello whose heart the 
 centuries had stained and mellowed. 
 
 Gadsky threw wide his arms as to embrace 
 his beloved. "Music !" "Music !" his heart spoke 
 
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 jubilantly. He glowed with a blessed pride as 
 though he were father and son and brother of 
 this voice, and in his eyes there was a challenge 
 and a mighty boast as though he would have all 
 men acknowledge on their knees the magic of his 
 art his art. 
 
 "Et benedicta tu!" the jubilant voice rose 
 higher and the singer crossed the threshold 
 which he seemed to raise into the radiance of his 
 voice and drew them all with him and took the 
 heaviness from the earthen faces and stagnant 
 limbs about him, so that they felt the earth blos- 
 som at their feet and clung to this voice and let 
 their souls be carried by it out of that cave and 
 far away from stench and fear. . . . 
 
 "Music !" Gadsky's heart felt triumphant. He 
 gazed at the captain and a hot gratitude filled 
 his eyes, for even that hard face was struggling 
 to maintain its harshness and the command that 
 urged the firing-squad forward sounded more 
 like a cry for help than a threat. 
 
 A master's bow passed over the strings of 
 that divine instrument as it sobbed out to the 
 Mother of God: "Ora pro nobis, nobis pec- 
 catoribus!" And each man's breath stopped as 
 though the singer were taking it from him, only 
 to let it pour back dipped in a golden endless 
 melody. 
 
 Gadsky closed his eyes. He heard the accom- 
 paniment in his inner ear, and his fingers played 
 on invisible keys and wove the dark, great web 
 of organ tones until the austere measures arose 
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 like a forest of noble firs from whose sides poured 
 the clear ichor of this most blessed human 
 voice. 
 
 He went forth and followed the song as though 
 it were a procession and he a neophyte and he 
 had long, long forgotten whither that voice was 
 traveling. He had forgotten death, the captain, 
 the six rifles, the singer's fate. His body and his 
 soul vibrated to the tones. "Will he take the 
 high C too?" That was his only thought and his 
 muscles grew tense as though he could help the 
 singer climb the divine height. 
 
 Ah, he took it! The tone seemed indeed to 
 come from above first with a threatening quiver, 
 then in a glorified clearness. 
 
 Gadsky gave himself up to the beauty of it. 
 Then he shook, for the voice suddenly grew 
 smaller as though it were now but an echo of 
 itself or had been sucked up by the depth of the 
 dark trench. Then it ceased. There resounded 
 the fourfold crack of rifle-fire. A fifth detonation 
 limped behind. A harsh voice cried: "You 
 cowardly crew! Do you want to close up the 
 entrance?" 
 
 It took a while for Gadsky to comprehend. At 
 first he couldn't believe that so much glory could 
 be destroyed, could be smashed as simply as a 
 pane of glass. Then he cried out, beside himself. 
 He stormed along with clenched fists and wanted 
 to throttle those vile murderers who had broken 
 the holy instrument that God the Father seemed 
 to have been playing upon His own knee. 
 
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 Four strong arms thrust him back and a wild 
 whispering beat down upon him until sobbing, 
 forgetful of his purpose and exhausted, he sank 
 down in his corner. 
 
 A fluttering and hoarse cry of command rolled 
 through the cave which had just echoed the 
 divine music. The ultimate hour had come. The 
 voice wakened a hundred fold echo that brought 
 Gadsky to his feet too. He permitted himself 
 to be shoved and dragged to the entrance by the 
 scrambling crowd and took a deep breath as the 
 cold, vigorous air of the trench filled his lungs. 
 Now he woke up. One moment he stood still, 
 overwhelmed by the comfortless devastation all 
 about him. He saw the singer lying there, blood 
 on his beard, the blessed lips still open. . . . 
 Then he heard the captain's voice snap out and, 
 as on that other occasion, a strange exterior will 
 asserted itself over him and hurled him to the 
 breastworks into the face of danger. 
 
 Blue as the sea on the Cote d'Azur he saw 
 the wave of attacking Frenchmen pour over hills 
 and shell craters with breathless swiftness. His 
 blood hammered. Involuntarily he loosened his 
 collar. For a moment he was strangely moved as 
 he heard from the approaching troops the hoarse 
 strains of the "Marseillaise." How often had he 
 played it and with his magic technique rolled 
 marvelous variations of it across the keys. And 
 now that melody fell upon him like a mad dog 
 with a hundred sharp teeth of polished steel. 
 
 He would defend himself ! 
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 Exalted by this resolution he jerked his rifle 
 to his shoulder, took aim and fired. He con- 
 tinued to fire calmly at the first line of the blue 
 wave; he fired as firmly as though all the ener- 
 gies of his body had gathered in his hands. But 
 the flood came nearer and nearer. Bits of earth 
 that had just seemed far from them shimmered 
 blue at the next moment. Gadsky kept firing and 
 took a new magazine from his pocket with me- 
 chanical exactness. He was animated by the one 
 thought now : His life was at stake. 
 
 "Formez vos 'bataillons!" it sounded clearly 
 from amid the rough voices. A certain hardness 
 in the singing, a certain relentlessness awakened 
 Gadsky's defiance. He cried out toward them: 
 "No!" He cried out toward those men who 
 marched up so bravely to what they thought the 
 fine task of cutting George Gadsky's throat. 
 No, they should not succeed, they should not get 
 him. Not as long as he could stir a finger. 
 "Sing on," he cried, "I'll spoil your singing for 
 you !" A strange intoxication had come upon 
 him. Almost painfully his hands grasped his 
 rifle. He aimed and fired, aimed and fired. His 
 eager eyes tried to persuade him that the blue 
 line was thinning out. But the accursed wave 
 did not sicker into the sand. It was too great 
 a wave, composed of too many drops, and it 
 rolled over the field, rolled over the brown fur- 
 rows and came nearer and nearer despite the 
 many splashes of forever moveless blue which it 
 was forced to leave behind. 
 
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 "Qu'un sang impur" they roared, almost upon 
 him now. And those words which Gadsky, even 
 in times of peace, had always thought ignoble, 
 made a great rage flame up in him now, so 
 strong that he could control himself no longer, 
 but had to utter it in words. "We shall see 
 sang impur, sang impur Yes, it shall mix with 
 yours, my "unclean blood" it shall mix, it shall 
 mix !" And he repeated the phrase blindly after 
 each shot. 
 
 Now they no longer permitted themselves to 
 be merely shot down. They were near enough to 
 let a hail storm of hand-grenades rattle down on 
 the trench. The first grenades fell short; Gad- 
 sky saw them burst, tear up the earth, hurl 
 earth and stones into the air and his whole body 
 trembled with a sudden access of measureless 
 bitterness and rage. Just so they wanted to tear 
 open his warm and living body, thus were his 
 life and his blood to be flung out to spatter the 
 earth. 
 
 They worked their way agonizedly through 
 the wire entanglements, pulled down the stakes, 
 trod on the wires, came nearer and nearer ! Most 
 of them had long ceased singing. Here and there 
 a single voice still croaked miserably, but was 
 soon lost in the moans and cries and whines of 
 the wounded men who struggled like gigantic 
 insects in the wires and were pitilessly stamped 
 into the mud by their fellows who came behind 
 them. But they came nearer and nearer. And 
 above the bursting of the hand-grenades he could 
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 now hear out of his own trench the moaning and 
 crying of his stricken comrades. 
 
 A wild curse escaped him when he found no 
 munition left in his belt. Some one must help him 
 out! He turned around and his blood froze at 
 the sight of the gaps that had been torn in the 
 ranks. So many and so soon ! The whole bottom 
 of the trench was filled with a coil of creeping 
 men and bloody limbs stretched out in horrible 
 confusion. Here and there one sat erect and with 
 an unspeakable melancholy regarded his wound. 
 Oh, was it conceivable that fate permitted men 
 to be so tormented and stamped upon and scat- 
 tered on the earth like refuse ! The words of 
 Krtilow thundered their silent message into Gad- 
 sky's ear out of this cave of death and lamenta- 
 tion, and from his innermost depth there arose 
 a helpless sobbing and an uncontrollable indig- 
 nation, and tears of pain and rage leaped from 
 him as from a child that feels the pain of an 
 undeserved punishment. 
 
 "Scoundrels !" he cried out into the deafening 
 hubbub and felt himself exalted and lifted up 
 almost physically by a sudden, nameless hatred. 
 Oh, if he could only have taken all the men, all, 
 in every land of earth who had helped to spread 
 this bloody carpet at his feet, who had helped to 
 weave it, who rejoiced in their work and sought 
 to cover it with an illusion of false glamor if 
 he could have grasped them and pressed and 
 stamped them into this morass of lacerated 
 human flesh. . . . 
 
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 "Scoundrels!" he roared hoarsely and almost 
 unconscious from the pitiable whining and moan- 
 ing that flowed into him from the trench behind. 
 But that strange power that once again led him 
 to his own defense drew him to the pile of hand- 
 grenades that lay a few feet away against the 
 wall. He let his rifle drag behind him and sprang 
 toward the grenades and knew only in a dream- 
 like and detached way that his soles had trodden 
 upon living flesh. But he was in a hurry. He 
 heard those others above; he knew the sharp 
 teeth that were ready for his flesh. He gathered 
 as many of the grenades as he could hold and 
 started back. 
 
 But suddenly he stood still. For his feet were 
 entangled in an unearthly grasp. He stared 
 down and he thought that his eyes would turn 
 to stone. For what held him was the dead hand 
 of a mutilated man. And the man was Frobel 
 was what had once been Karl Frobel and was 
 now but a mass of blood and filth and earth. 
 Nothing of him remained recognizable save the 
 right half of his face which seemed yet, in the 
 rigidity of death, to cry out its reproach at him. 
 Ah, what could he have done? Was not an equal 
 fate awaiting him? Did he not have to carry his 
 own body with its resisting instincts into the 
 slaughter? Might he not rather envy him who 
 had already suffered the inevitable and was now 
 at peace? 
 
 And that strange envy did come to him and 
 stole into his very marrow so that for a moment, 
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 devoid of all will, he stared at the mangled body 
 of the man that body which now had nothing 
 more to fear of pain or of indignity. And then 
 he remembered that other's words. Yes, yes, it 
 was possible, it was so! Karl Frobel was no 
 more. There was a thing ... a log. . . . 
 
 Wildly he tore himself free and followed the 
 others who clambered up the ladders and rude 
 steps and helped each other over the edge so as 
 not to perish in the trench like rats in a hole. 
 Gasping under the burden of grenades which he 
 had assumed Gadsky climbed over the top of the 
 trench. When he arrived he was so filled with 
 a feeling that he had come too late that, without 
 looking about, he stormed forward toward the 
 blue ranks of the enemy. 
 
 He plunged madly into that mass of men, felt 
 himself gripped and hurled aside and saw the 
 blue ranks roll on beyond him. He remained be- 
 hind, dizzy from the blow he had received. But 
 what had happened? He stood there astonished. 
 Gradually he realized that he had ventured forth 
 too far, that the wave of men, drawn by the arms 
 and weapons that opposed it, had rolled past him 
 and was now flowing forward toward his old 
 trench. Stinging sweat seemed to pour over his 
 left shoulder. At last he determined to look and 
 saw his sleeve ripped and bloody from a thrust 
 or blow that one of the passing men had given 
 him. But he could still move his arm. He let 
 his rifle slip from him and, grasping a grenade in 
 his right hand, turned to pursue the enemy. But 
 
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 he remained transfixed with contorted lips and 
 watched the madness that was unleashed before 
 him. 
 
 The lines both of his comrades and of his 
 adversaries had definitely broken. Isolated knots 
 of men that now and then were coiled into 
 larger groups and then separated again were 
 contending with each other. There was no sing- 
 ing now on either side. In silent bitterness they 
 hammered at each other and there was no sound 
 except the crash of rifle-butts and the bursting of 
 bones, and the cries and curses of the wounded 
 and the painful gasping and coughing of all 
 those creatures in torment. Gadsky swung the 
 grenade above his head. But he did not dare to 
 hurl it. For he could no longer aim at any enemy. 
 All clean division had disappeared in that mon- 
 strous coil. Everywhere there was the inter- 
 mingled waving of gray and blue-clad arms like 
 the many limbs of a variegated polypus ; nowhere 
 could he see any mass of blue definite enough 
 to aim at. 
 
 Into his hesitating mood there burst from the 
 right a cry, rising steeply as a rocket, throttled 
 by the very extremity of human fear: "No! 
 No! No!" It was a well-known voice and he 
 saw the little "vaudeville" man hurled to his 
 knees by an immensely tall Frenchman who held 
 him by the collar and turned to another group so 
 soon as he had seen him fall. But a black- 
 bearded man in front of him swung his rifle-butt 
 high in the air. 
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 "No!" the tailor tried to cry out once more. 
 Gadsky too wanted to cry out and to hasten for- 
 ward to help. But he stood moveless, fascinated 
 by the horror of the whirring weapon. A howl of 
 inhuman rage burst from him as the blow fell 
 and crashed with a terrible cracking and grind- 
 ing straight into the upturned face. His grenade 
 flew and a momentary relief loosened his rigid 
 limbs as he saw the bearded man burst open and 
 reel forward. But even in that moment the sight 
 of that destroyed human face had sunk im- 
 measurably deep into his soul. This face that 
 had been loved, that had been longed for, that 
 had been kissed, had become a single gaping hole. 
 The eyes which had but now looked so beseech- 
 ingly, the curved nose that had often brought 
 jeers upon the brave heart, both had been 
 crushed into that single, crimson hole framed 
 only by the teeth and the dark hair. 
 
 With superhuman force that great anger 
 broke forth again in Gadsky, that raging, sobbing 
 and yet impersonal anger over a world that let 
 such things be done, that lay abed and followed 
 its business while human faces were obliterated 
 with wooden clubs. Oh, from whatever depth 
 there was in him boiled his avenging hatred 
 against all those in all the world who hid such 
 realities under the boom of false words and 
 taught children, whose fathers were being dis- 
 emboweled like beasts, words and thoughts con- 
 cerning the glory and nobility of war ! 
 
 His grenades flew in rapid succession into the 
 
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 thinning groups. He saw them strike and even 
 while his own bitter will to live forced the others 
 into his hand, the tears streamed down his face 
 and he sped words, like arrows, into the rhythm 
 of his hurling. 
 
 His grenades were nearly gone. He swung the 
 one before the last above his head. At that 
 moment the strange, impersonal force that 
 guided him in battle drew the veil of tears and 
 hatred from his eyes. And he saw the faces, con- 
 torted with rage, that were separating them- 
 selves from the coil of men and turning toward 
 him who had become a new source of danger. 
 Swiftly he bent down, grasped his rifle by the 
 barrel, swung it high and ran to meet his mur- 
 derers. Trembling in every limb, blinded and 
 deafened by an inner flickering and roaring, he 
 struck and struck without seeing where the 
 blows of his club fell. And all he was aware of 
 at this moment was his own life, his own life 
 surrounded by merciless murderers who would 
 crash his face into his head. He must get free of 
 their blows and their claws. He wanted his life. 
 And he struck and thrust and hammered until 
 suddenly he stood in a strange stillness, alone 
 with his shaking knees, alone with the gasping of 
 his lungs and the throbbing of his heart. 
 
 "Was he saved?" The question flamed up in 
 his soul. He did not dare to turn around. He 
 did not dare to look down upon the warm and 
 heavy weight that lay at his feet. "Was he 
 saved?" He asked himself again, doubting and 
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 yet hopeful. He flung out his hand seeking for 
 some support, unable to hold himself erect, 
 seized by a great dizziness that seemed suddenly 
 to whirl about him. 
 
 But at that moment from the distance a 
 familiar sound came to his ears. A new wave of 
 blue was approaching a reenforcement of fresh 
 men. And from a hundred throats it thun- 
 dered : "Allans enfants de la patrie!" He let his 
 arms fall beside him disconsolately,. Then a 
 determination flared up in him: he would give 
 himself up. He had done his duty. His hands, 
 his arms, his shoulders, his whole body was 
 bathed in blood. His skin and his clothes were 
 in tatters. His munition was exhausted. Yes, 
 he had the right to yield himself prisoner. 
 
 But the captain? 
 
 His anger against that harsh and limited intel- 
 ligence broke forth again. Because even now the 
 man had the power on pain of death to forbid his 
 saving his life. But where was the captain? 
 Was he even alive? 
 
 Blindly his eyes fled past the wounded and 
 the dead toward the right wing where a last 
 group was still fighting. Immediately at the edge 
 of the trench that group still swayed back and 
 forth. Every now and then a fragment of it 
 broke off and fell backward into the trench and 
 fought on there and the roar of the overcome 
 was terrible to hear. 
 
 Gadsky wavered. Was he to plunge in again? 
 Was he to risk his life once more? 
 
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 No! The French reinforcements that were 
 coming up were tenfold superior more than 
 tenfold to the little group that was still stf 
 desperately defending itself. Even the captain 
 would not demand . . . 
 
 That coil of fight at the trench's edge rolled 
 nearer. He could see better now. And anger 
 and disgust and also a great compassion choked 
 him as he saw four men, four bleeding, lacerated 
 men defend themselves against insuperable odds. 
 One of them was the captain. His uniform was 
 in shreds ; the skin of his skull had been severed 
 and a rag of it hung down hiding his left eye. 
 His right eye was glassy and bloodshot. But 
 he fought like a wild boar at bay. They struck 
 at him from all sides. He defended himself with 
 the butt of a splintered rifle, coughing, gasping, 
 the bloody foam flecking his lips and face . . . 
 
 At that moment he must have heard the sing- 
 ing of the French reinforcements. For he uttered 
 a great cry and flung back his head and began to 
 sing hoarsely, brokenly, terribly: "Deutschland, 
 Deutschland, ijiber Alles, uber Alles ..." 
 
 As though upborne by invisible arms and flung 
 forward, Gadsky hurled himself toward that 
 group. So moving was the disproportion be- 
 tween that one croaking voice and the mighty 
 chorus of the enemy, that his compassion with 
 the weakness of that voice flooded and washed 
 away all his scruples. He ran, overcoming the 
 spongy resistance of the dead beneath his feet, 
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 until midway he stopped and his half-uttered 
 cry: "Here, captain!" died on his lips. 
 
 It was too late. 
 
 The long Frenchman who had first pulled 
 down the Jewish tailor from behind had crept 
 forth from the trench and, with one vigorous 
 thrust, plunged a bayonet into the captain's 
 back. Gadsky saw the point appear through the 
 chest immediately below the neck, saw the cap- 
 tain throw himself upward so that for a moment 
 he dangled almost in mid-air, and fall. Then he 
 turned swiftly toward the new ranks that were 
 approaching, dropped his rifle and searched in 
 his numbed brain for the words with which he 
 would announce his readiness to yield. He stood 
 there wildly and stubbornly hoping for the sight 
 of some face he knew among the approaching 
 Frenchmen. 
 
 Then a sudden stinging suspicion that im- 
 mediately became certainty smote upon him. 
 There was an immediate danger. The group that 
 had overcome the captain. . . . That tall French- 
 man was still behind him. He swung around and 
 saw the tall, blue figure arise immediately in 
 front of him and saw the narrow, shining blade 
 rush toward his breast and threw himself back, 
 grasping the head of his enemy with both 
 hands . . . 
 
 The wild teeth bit into his hands: he felt a 
 rending pain in his palms and opened them with 
 the unutterable horror of the thought: "My 
 hands ... I can't play again" . . . ! And he 
 
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 tried to stretch out his arms to see if the irrep- 
 arable had happened. 
 
 But all he saw was two red spots gleam 
 through a veil. Then he heard a deafening crash- 
 ing and grinding as though his teeth were being 
 mashed to pulp, and a thunder behind his fore- 
 head in his very brain . . . Wearily he let his 
 head drop on his right shoulder and sank back 
 into the darkness of night. . . . 
 
 210
 
 IV 
 THE TRAITOR
 
 IV 
 
 THE TRAITOR 
 
 IN narrow beams the sunlight fell in from 
 above, sharp and hot. It flowed over the 
 golden candelabra in front of the altar; im- 
 pudently it raised the saints from their accus- 
 tomed darkness so that they looked like rouged 
 actors, helpless and intimidated and ashamed of 
 their cheap gaudiness. A single, stray shell had 
 succeeded in robbing the old church of its con- 
 secrated air. Neither the beds along the wall nor 
 the wretched pallets under the columns had 
 been able to do that. The place stared at one 
 as naked as a looted shop. It seemed as though 
 all the influences which the faithful had brought 
 here during the centuries, the hopes they had 
 carried to the altar, the burdens they had cast 
 aside, had taken flight through the windows 
 which gaped in the walls like open wounds. For 
 the beautiful stained glass that had so long kept 
 the echoes of perished song and the sound of 
 priestly words from floating into the godless 
 world, had been shattered by that stray, unaimed 
 projectile and lay in fragments in the little 
 graveyard without. 
 
 Two sleepy French ambulance men stirred 
 
 213
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 among the fragments of glass with their canes, 
 deciphered a bit of an inscription now and then, 
 played with the remnants of saints' pictures as 
 with a Chinese puzzle and made coarse jests and 
 laughed. But soon they grew tired of their game, 
 for the sun burned down on the graveyard and 
 drove them back into the shadow of the church 
 walls. 
 
 There they lay down again on their coats, 
 their packs under their heads, precisely as they 
 had lain yesterday and the day before, and 
 yawned and heard the bees hum and took up 
 the thread of their complaining where they had 
 broken it off half an hour ago. 
 
 "Isn't it the craziest thing?" grunted the 
 larger of the two, a robust, broad-shouldered 
 Walloon with a tangled, blond beard. "At the 
 front they hunt 'em like rabbits and tear 'em up 
 so they'll have hard time finding their right 
 limbs on judgment day. And here in the rear 
 we've got to watch so that the damned bodies 
 can die quiet in the church. Not that I care. 
 Nothing can happen here. That stray shell last 
 night is the last we'll know of them. I bet they're 
 near the Rhine by now." 
 
 The smaller man shrugged his shoulders con- 
 temptuously, and threw a suspicious glance at 
 his comrade. "You don't like their grenades, eh? 
 Well, I'd rather have the worst drum fire than 
 stand this church. They lie there as dumb as 
 fishes and stare at you and die. Is it a soldier's 
 work to sit here and wait till they die and are 
 214
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 ready to be buried? By God, we sit here like 
 two ravens waiting for carrion." 
 
 The blond man laughed his coarse laugh. 
 "You're right. They are like the whitefish when 
 you tear the hook out of their jaw-bones and 
 let 'em flop down bloody in the boat. But what 
 do you expect 'em to say? Sister knows as little 
 German as you or I. How many are there, any- 
 how?" 
 
 The big man's loud cheerfulness made his com- 
 panion nervous. His face assumed a troubled 
 look and his tone was vexed. "They left us 
 twenty-one day before yesterday. Since then 
 we've dug holes for six. You know that as well 
 as I. Two a day. If it goes on that way we'll 
 have to dig graves for another week." 
 
 He spat and fell silent. His eyes sought the 
 distance where, beyond the ruins of the village 
 and the shattered trees, the high road bounded 
 the horizon like a smoking line. There the 
 vehicles rolled by night and day, an endless 
 chain of wagons. Every now and then a great 
 sudden whirl of smoke, dark as the sand column 
 whirled up by a grenade, betrayed the whizzing 
 by of an auto. The soldier sighed wretchedly 
 and brought his clenched fist down on his hard 
 pillow and repeated : "By God, like ravens !" 
 
 But there was no assent to his words. His 
 comrade lay with open lips and slept. Thought- 
 fully the small man regarded the rigid, expres- 
 sionless face, the open gullet, thought of the 
 many bodies they had picked up in the last few 
 
 215
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 days and was tempted to awaken his neighbor 
 by a vigorous shake. But he restrained himself 
 and glanced once more at the melancholy spec- 
 tacle before him the wall of dust in the dis- 
 tance, the blackened ruins, the torn graveyard 
 with its heaps of glittering glass. Everything 
 was gray, dispeopled, vaulted by smoke and 
 fume, bedded in deadly silence. Not even the 
 rattle of an automobile broke the stillness. The 
 church was too far from the high road. "Like 
 a lonely island in the middle of the ocean," the 
 soldier thdught. He threw himself angrily down 
 beside his companion and soon they were both 
 snoring. 
 
 Sister Marie sat on the highest step at the 
 door of the church. Her elbow leaned upon her 
 drawn-up knees; her chin rested on her hands. 
 Her careworn face gleamed for a moment when, 
 after a brief interruption, she heard the accus- 
 tomed duet once more. It was too comical tLe 
 men's unlimited capacity for sleep at any time of 
 the night or day. She herself had scarcely closed 
 an eye for thrice twenty-four hours; she could 
 hardly hold herself up on her burning soles; 
 from under her red and swollen lids she stared 
 in a drugged way out upon the blinding light of 
 the square. 
 
 She knew no longer where to turn. A dozen 
 times at least she had sent the two men out to 
 the road to give her pressing message to the 
 drivers and motorcycle men and despatch bear- 
 ers. Perhaps these men had not reached the hos- 
 216
 
 THE JUDGMENT OP PEACE 
 
 pital headquarters in the great confusion; per- 
 haps they had simply forgotten to deliver the 
 message. There was no sense, at all events, in 
 shaking the two men out of their sleep and send- 
 ing them out still another time. And they might 
 even refuse. For the small man had gone so far 
 in daring as to stop an auto that belonged to the 
 General Staff and, according to his story, had 
 narrowly escaped being shot by the indignant 
 major who could not realize how, in the midst 
 of a victorious advance, as he was racing back 
 to the staff with the most magnificent news, any 
 one could have the impudence to stop him with 
 a story about a lack of medical supplies as if 
 he were a damned pill-slinger. No, there was no 
 hope in these hurrying men. They came from the 
 front where the bodies of men lay in mounds, 
 they drove past crowds of men with ashen faces, 
 past the wounded who dragged themselves along 
 on their shattered limbs and vainly and dumbly 
 besought help from every vehicle. And so, how 
 could she expect any one who had passed so> 
 many horrors to recall the story of the little 
 church with its suffering enemies. 
 
 And yet what other hope was there? She 
 couldn't simply go on vaguely waiting. The 
 bandages needed absolutely to be renewed. They 
 were stiff with blood; they chafed the healing 
 wounds open again. The small store of supplies 
 left behind by the fleeing Germans had long been 
 used up. Only the telephone apparatus still 
 
 217
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 stood there. Ironically the severed wire dangled 
 from the window. 
 
 The sister's eyes filled with tears. Was she 
 patiently to watch one after the other of the 
 poor fellows in there get gangrenous and die? 
 Her whole body quivered with indignation at the 
 consciencelessness of the people who had sta- 
 tioned her here and then forgotten her. For three 
 days she had thrilled joyously every time an auto 
 passed on the distant road ; her eyes had clung to 
 the cloud of dust as though they could drag the 
 car from the high road to the stony street that 
 led to the church. Now she was vexed at her 
 own credulity and could not help reproaching 
 herself for some share in the responsibility for 
 the whole misfortune. For had she not been a 
 witness of the joyous confusion which broke out 
 when suddenly the ambulances drove up and 
 some one cried out a command through the halls : 
 "Pack up everything! We are advancing! The 
 Germans are falling back! Victory! Victory!" 
 The whole field hospital had, in a sense, gone 
 mad. And she herself, in spite of her sixty years, 
 had she not let the word victory intoxicate her? 
 And had she not again let three days pass now 
 without making a move? 
 
 For a whole year, since the days of the first 
 skirmishes, she had been a surgical nurse in the 
 field. She knew from experience what happened 
 in the hospitals after whole days of fighting 
 when the wagons came in endless file and all 
 corridors were filled with the blood-stained 
 218
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 stretchers. The surgeons would sweat like 
 stokers at their work and it would need to be an 
 officer of high rank or some one who had special 
 influence for a patient to be operated on or 
 bandaged afresh on the very day of his arrival. 
 And not only enemies, but even their own men, 
 poor moaning poilus who begged to be bandaged 
 afresh, were scolded and pushed back roughly 
 when they held out their bloody stumps to the 
 doctor who, after twelve hours of toil in the 
 summer heat and the fumes of blood and chloro- 
 form, had no compassion left except for his own 
 unspeakable exhaustion. So it was but natural 
 (as it was her duty to have foreseen) that the 
 staff physician would forget his hasty promise 
 and, in the excitement of a victorious advance, 
 abandon her and her twenty German wounded. 
 
 The guilt was hers alone. It was her crime 
 that twenty young, strong men for whom wives 
 and mothers were in dread and fear at home, 
 must here die a most wretched death. 
 
 Her fists clenched, her head fallen forward, a 
 silent sobbing in her throat, Sister Marie seemed 
 to collapse more and more. With her natural 
 instinct of a nun of magnifying and subtilizing 
 all her sins, she wrung from herself as though 
 she were her own confessor the admission that, 
 had French wounded been lying in the church, 
 she would probably, nay, certainly, have sent for 
 help far sooner and not risked the lives of her 
 countrymen so rashly. She, a bride of Christ, 
 had divided her suffering fellowmen into friends 
 
 219
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 and enemies, precisely like the military surgeons 
 who always sent the French wounded back in 
 automobiles, but forced the Germans, if they 
 could but drag themselves, to crawl the twelve 
 miles to the hospital on foot. How could she 
 have had trust enough to be patient at all with 
 the memory of those wanderers before her? It 
 seemed to her that she could still feel the look on 
 her face of the tall, pale, emaciated German 
 when the harsh word of command had rung out 
 and he had twisted his terribly swollen foot 
 about a rough stick and had begun to limp along 
 his way of the Cross with all the helplessness of 
 unendurable pain in his blue eyes. And now? 
 Now this man whom she had not been able to beg 
 off was saved ; he had been operated on and lay, 
 well bandaged, in the hospital. And these others 
 whom she had taken into her refuge shook with 
 gangrenous fever, formed pus in their wounds 
 and were dedicated to certain death. 
 
 Must her soul, her soul, really expiate all that 
 guilt? 
 
 No! 
 
 Pressing her hands upon her knees she pulled 
 herself slowly up. Staggering with weariness 
 she went along the wall to the soldiers. With 
 desperate eloquence she explained to them both 
 the danger in which her patients were, begged, 
 threatened, confessed too that she had already 
 taken off and used as bandages her own body 
 linen, and her crumpled, old face flushed as with 
 maidenly shame before these men's eyes that 
 220
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 now knew her bare body to be hidden from them 
 only by her black robe. 
 
 The Walloon was not to be moved. The small 
 man said he was ready to go out to the road once 
 more. As for going directly for help he re- 
 sented the very suggestion. The field constables 
 were stationed everywhere like spiders, he said, 
 ready to catch any poor soldier whom they found 
 in the fighting zones alone and without a written 
 permit from the military authorities. 
 
 The tall man lost patience when even this con- 
 sideration did not cause the nurse to desist from 
 her prayers. She was a hellish good patriot, ac- 
 cording to him, quite willing to send an honest 
 poilu into trouble for the sake of a handful of 
 boches who had one foot in the grave anyhow. 
 Enraged he pulled his comrade along with him, 
 swearing he would not lift a hand again for this 1 
 woman and her devilish church. 
 
 Pale as death the poor sister dragged herself 
 back to her seat. She shivered and gazed 
 through the open door into the church as though 
 the devil really awaited her there and grinned 
 at her through the vain expectations of the 
 fifteen souls. There was nothing left for her to 
 do but wait and close the eyes of the dying . . . 
 Her knees trembled as she leaned against the 
 pillar behind her. She could not find the courage 
 for a round among the beds. Even this morning 
 several of the men had tried to rise and with 
 threatening, flashing eyes had demanded a sur- 
 geon. Others had strained and strained to trans- 
 
 221
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 late their direst needs into French. And the 
 gleam of hope in their poor faces when they suc- 
 ceeded in uttering the necessary words was 
 harder for her to bear than the reproaches of 
 the more indignant ones. Now too, she heard a 
 call every now and then or the sound of a brief 
 conversation in the church. And it all sounded 
 to the sister as though every word was a curse 
 directed against her. Was she to excuse herself? 
 Was she to tell them the truth? But that would 
 be robbing them of all hope, to place death before 
 their very eyes . . . 
 
 Suddenly she felt herself strong again and 
 lifted her head and sent a grateful glance to 
 heaven. She saw her particular task before her ! 
 She was prepared to take upon herself all the 
 hatred which, she felt sure, met her from all 
 those beds, in order that these poor men might 
 keep their faith that medical aid was sure to 
 come and to make up for all that the indolence 
 of their nurse had caused. 
 
 Softly she slipped into the church on her felt 
 slippers. Without looking to the right or to the 
 left she went straight to a bed that stood in the 
 middle surrounded by straw pallets. When she 
 reached it she felt as though she had gained a 
 refuge, so deep was her sympathy for the young 
 officer who, afflicted with a bad abdominal 
 wound, had been struggling with death here for 
 ten long days. He was somehow different from 
 his comrades. She could nurse him without the 
 ugly feeling of touching an enemy who had sent, 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 heaven knows how many, good Frenchmen to 
 their death. At the bedsides of the others, too, 
 she tried honestly to lose that feeling. On the 
 first day she had carried all the strange uniforms 
 into a corner of the church so as to see nothing 
 but suffering fellowmen. And yet it was hard. 
 From the chatter of the two French soldiers it 
 had suddenly become clear to her what it was 
 that always obtruded itself like a wall between 
 her and these men and diminished her compas- 
 sion. "They lie there dumb as fishes . . ." She 
 heard that over and over again that was it. 
 She had nursed and bandaged so many French- 
 men and had seen them suffer and die. They 
 moaned and whimpered and complained; they 
 were like weak and helpless children whom one 
 could console and pity actively. But these 
 strangers who lay in her church were not like 
 sick children. They bore their sufferings with 
 compressed lips and without complaint. They 
 remained grave men to their last breath. A de- 
 fiant pride shone from their eyes and seemed to 
 exclude all pity. And she could not help think- 
 ing that these must be hard men who could be 
 so hard toward their own suffering flesh. She 
 had heard similar stories about the English. But 
 she felt that there must be a difference. 
 
 Only the lad in that isolated bed had eyes of 
 another kind. He seemed more familiar to her, 
 even though he spoke less French than his com- 
 rades and although his name, beautifully in- 
 scribed on a card over his bed sounded inexpres- 
 
 223
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 sibly foreign to her: "Ensign Egas von Kru- 
 low" The poor sister could not even guess at 
 Ms rank. It was different with the lieutenants 
 and the majors, for those words were the same 
 in her own tongue. But at least this youth would 
 let her pity him a little and looked grateful 
 into her eyes when she spoke comforting words 
 and even groaned with pain now and then. 
 
 Impelled by her warm compassion she leaned 
 over his bed and passed her hand tenderly over 
 his glowing forehead. 
 
 He was already drifting over the edge of life. 
 But his mind was in a feverish ecstasy, out of 
 which arose bubbles of memory as though the 
 river of life had to be remounted once more be- 
 fore its current ceased. His fingers grasped after 
 figures that glided by, a monotonous murmuring 
 moved his lips, anger and joy chased each other 
 in swift alternation across his yellowish face, 
 which had become old and furrowed as though 
 he had swiftly lived through the fifty remaining 
 years which his youth might claim. Only his 
 body did not stir. It lay under the covers small 
 and shrunken in the glow of fever. 
 
 A tender smile hovered on his lips, a recog- 
 nition of the cool hand that touched his forehead 
 so gently. The touch completed the memory in 
 his fevered brain. ... It had been just so on the 
 night in his childhood when the flames threat- 
 ened his bed his little white, lacquered bed with 
 the tall sides. For hours he had been wondering 
 where the little tongues of flame came from 
 224
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 which now warmed him, like old friends, and 
 now flared up angrily and seemed to singe his 
 eyelids or drop like molten lava into his brain. 
 What wild and woeful things he had dreamed! 
 . . . Thank God, he was at home, in his dear, lit- 
 tle room and not in the great bare church to 
 which he had had to flee because a devil pursued 
 him, a great, black, hairy devil whom surely, 
 quite surely he had met before. Oh, he could well 
 remember the sharp, three-pronged pitchfork 
 which the monster kept dipping into his abdo- 
 men. Once, he knew, he himself had handled 
 such a fork. But his hand had grown since then. 
 
 No, he hadn't merely dreamed that devil. 
 That fiend had really broken the windows in his 
 rage over the successful flight of his victim. Or 
 was it . . . ? Was it but the old, Italian doll 
 that stood on the shelf among his other toys, who 
 had a long tongue of red cloth and flames of red 
 cloth sewn on his cowl? Then perhaps father 
 would come in with his terrible willow switch 
 and push the gentle mother aside and lift him 
 up and . . . whip him . . . whip him. . . . 
 
 A loud and penetrating cry of fear echoed 
 through the church so that all the sick men 
 started up and stared at Ensign von Krtilow 
 who was writhing in his bed as though he were 
 beside himself. He didn't want to be whipped. 
 He was grown now and he defended himself with 
 all his might against the unhead-of injustice 
 of being punished for misbehavior that he had 
 expiated so long ago. For on that night when the 
 
 225
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 flames came, it had been impressed upon him 
 that a boy must not show fear. He had been told 
 that whoever wore the emperor's coat must set 
 his teeth even at seven and rather suffer terror 
 than be a coward and call for his mother. And 
 he had since learned what it was to repress 
 everything everything for fear of being laughed 
 at. He had learned it so thoroughly that the 
 consciousness of having cried out, of having 
 failed in manly self-control drove the sweat of 
 fear upon his brow. 
 
 Had they heard him? . . . Surreptitiously he 
 opened his eyes but closed them again with a 
 moan, for the light seemed molten and hot and 
 to drop like liquid fire into his brain. So he was 
 in that church, after all. And that fork was 
 stirring in his entrails, too. Only his mother 
 was no longer there and her shadow no longer 
 guarded him from the sight of the tongues of 
 flame. Her visit was the only thing he had 
 dreamed. The flight into the church, the tor- 
 ments it was all reality. But the cool, kind 
 hand he sought in vain. 
 
 So she had really died? . . . They had not lied 
 to him. She was dead and there was no one left 
 in the world to whom he could pour out his 
 heart, to whom he could be tender? He felt the 
 sobs rise in his throat and bit his teeth into his 
 nether lip and stretched every nerve in deadly 
 fear. For again he saw the commandant of the 
 military school sit at his desk, handling a tele- 
 gram. And he knew what was at stake. If he
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 didn't succeed now in imitating the demeanor of 
 his brothers ; if a single tear escaped him, all the 
 officers would be instructed to teach him self- 
 control and all the petty tyranny would victim- 
 ize him again. 
 
 No, he didn't want to be called a sissy again 
 and be tormented and jeered at and despised. 
 Kather than live those years over again he would 
 follow his mother into the darkness. When he 
 had been with her he had had no need to dis- 
 semble. She had shared his indignation over the 
 roughness of so many of his companions. She 
 did not even despise him when, at the end of the 
 summer vacation, he threw himself with bitter 
 tears into her arms and begged her not to send 
 him back to school. Why was she not here now? 
 Why did she not protect him now that he needed! 
 her protection so sorely? He felt his forehead 
 where the hand had touched him. He would so 
 liked to have called her as in the old days when 
 there had been no happiness for him comparable 
 to that of being ill and being nursed by her. And 
 he felt a mad yearning to be petted and con- 
 soled and pitied. And he did not realize that his 
 fevered lips cried out into the echoing church all 
 the thoughts that stirred in his sick brain. 
 
 Sister Marie knelt praying at the altar when 
 she was startled by a loud cry from him a sud- 
 den cry for help that soon changed into a re- 
 proachful moaning. Anxiously she bent over 
 him, pressed his hand softly and whispered: 
 "Vous souffrez? Patience! Qa ira mieux" 
 
 227
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Egas von Kriilow did not understand the 
 words. Only the tone he heard, the tone that he 
 had heard no more since his mother died. And 
 he felt the cool hand. The voice was music the 
 blending of a thousand dear words that he had 
 missed so long. His whole body seemed to relax 
 in a warm well-being to let in the blessed sound. 
 With a beatific smile he stretched out his arms 
 to draw down the beloved voice nearer to him- 
 self, and to it he told of his pain and begged it 
 tearfully, like a frightened child, for his young 
 life. 
 
 The sister had stepped back. Her face was 
 red, her temples throbbed, as though all the 
 rusty hinges of her old heart had begun to move 
 smoothly at the sight of the youth's outstretched 
 arms. She looked shyly about her and uttered a 
 cry at sight of a strange face that arose near her 
 a face apparently hewn of stone. 
 
 It was the face of an officer who lay in a bed 
 against the wall. He had raised himself up with 
 superhuman exertion and had listened to the 
 ensign with a flame of anger in his eyes. He 
 looked ghastly with his white lips and his blond 
 mustache which seemed alien and strawy in his 
 pallid pain-distorted face. He leaned as far 
 over as he could and cried: "For God's sake, 
 man, grit your teeth ! Do you want to shame us 
 all with your goings on?" 
 
 Kigid with astonishment the sister listened to 
 the hard and angry voice. She saw the heads 
 of the others rise from their pillows and send a 
 228
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 fire of angry looks at the youth in the lonely 
 bed. She guessed from the tone of the words 
 which now sounded from all sides that some 
 strange force had arisen in the whole church that 
 was hostile to her dying favorite. Utterly con- 
 fused she gazed at the many angry faces. 
 
 Egas von Kriilow had dragged himself up too. 
 His breast labored and a great anger showed on 
 his face. He stretched out his right arm and 
 clutched at the air. His lips sought to form 
 words, his poor powerless lips, words that so 
 desired to leap into the world. He did not see 
 the yellow face of his fellow officer. His fever 
 blinded vision could not reach to the next bed. 
 He saw only dim outlines, but these blended into 
 an image which his great indignation created. 
 For it was not an individual who had cried out 
 those words to him it was the dragon, the Min- 
 otaur that had devoured all his childhood and all 
 his youth, the enemy that had grudged him every 
 caress and every tender word. 
 
 Now at last he could grasp the monster, now 
 he could lay hands upon it. ... His chest ex- 
 panded, his mouth opened, all his imprisoned 
 pride rebelled against that thing of evil that he 
 desired to confront sternly for a last time. But 
 even this tragic satisfaction was denied him! 
 The words rose only to his lips. Then his 
 strength failed. Instead of the heavy words of 
 judgment and revolt, a thick stream of blood is- 
 sued from his mouth. Once more he looked about 
 him for help with his great frightened eyes. 
 
 229
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Then he sank slowly back into the sister's arms 
 slowly and gently as a stricken bird. 
 
 A cold, estranged silence filled the church 
 when, shortly before sundown, the two French 
 stretcher-bearers came for the body. Covered 
 only by his blood-stained greatcoat they carried 
 him past his comrades. They laid him down on 
 the naked earth near the glittering fragments 
 of glass. 
 
 "Measure him!" the tall fellow grunted with 
 a cynical shrug. The other obeyed silently and 
 with his spade drew two light furrows in the 
 earth at the head and feet of the dead man. The 
 big man tapped his shoulder. 
 
 "Look at his hands, will you? Like a prin- 
 cess's. Believe me, he didn't want to die! He 
 might have had a lot of fun yet." 
 
 The small man shook his head angrily. "Rot! 
 Nobody wants to die rich or poor." And hur- 
 riedly, as though fearing further comment, he 
 lifted his spade and plunged it viciously into the 
 earth as though he were striking at his worst 
 enemy. 
 
 The big man still stood thoughtfully, lost in 
 his contemplation of the body. "If his mother 
 could see him!" he cried with an ugly grin. "I 
 suppose she's sitting on a fine upholstered chair 
 knitting a silk muffler so that her little son don't 
 catch cold." 
 
 Like an angry little dog the small man barked 
 230
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 out at his companion: "Stop your damn' talk. 
 Go to work!" 
 
 The other grumbled, turned up his sleeves 
 slowly, examined his spade, glanced at the set- 
 ting sun, spat and went to work. 
 
 The last rays of the sun penetrated the dust 
 whirled up by the high road. There was no sound 
 but the heavy breathing of the two gravediggers 
 and the crunching of their spades against the 
 flinty earth. 
 
 31
 
 V 
 
 PRISONERS OF WAR
 
 V 
 
 PRISONERS OF WAR 
 
 fTHHE lake gleamed in the overwhelming sun- 
 A light. In its angle between cliff and water 
 glittered Lucerne, which, in its radiance, seemed 
 scattered about in that hilly country. The houses 
 were placed apparently at random, as though a 
 child had scattered them down from some nearby 
 peak. They shone from the green of the wood- 
 lands, lay on the gay meadows, gathered in little 
 groups here and there as if they had not been 
 able to roll across the white road. A few stood 
 hard by the lake and seemed to be kept from fall- 
 ing into it by a white fence or a group of trees. 
 And the steamers, too, looked from afar smaller 
 than the toy boats at Christmas. And the old, 
 brown wooden bridge and the powder tower, 
 above all, looked like toys, so that one was 
 tempted to see if they were not really made of 
 marchpane and whether the tower were not filled 
 with sweets instead of powder. 
 
 George Gadsky sat on the low wall that 
 bounded the hospital garden and dangled his legs 
 over the abyss. He was utterly lost in his vision 
 of the glimmering, sun-drenched landscape. But 
 a deep and gnawing sadness oppressed him and 
 the consciousness that he dared not show how 
 
 235
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 difficult the parting would be increased that sad- 
 ness to the wilderness of grief. Hastily he pulled 
 the official paper from his pocket. It had just 
 been handed to him. He turned it about slowly, 
 reading his own name, the route of travel, all the 
 various instructions and orders and jumped back 
 into the garden with a loud curse. 
 
 At last it was decided. To-morrow his feet 
 would be on German soil again. But what joy 
 was there in that when it meant a return to the 
 slavery of war, to the slavery of Stuff a slavery 
 that involved the issues of life and death? 
 
 Mathilde? ... He tried to think of her. He 
 closed his eyes to see her face better, to vis- 
 ualize her joy and her caress. It was all dim 
 to him. The reality was the barracks in which 
 his journey ended. Not until he had reported 
 there would he have permission to return on a 
 leave to his recovered life. 
 
 A steamer blew its whistle below and drew his 
 glance toward the lake. Was it not madness to 
 leave the radiance of this blessed peace and re- 
 turn to that careworn country that was breaking 
 down because its conscience was the first among 
 the consciences of the nations to awaken and to 
 rebel, silently as yet, against the horror and the 
 wrong of war? And he, though seeing clearly, 
 would have to go back in silence and continue 
 silent and patiently watch a nation repress its 
 immitigable tears because it was still too "loyal" 
 that deadly universal word of doom and 
 slavery too "loyal" to fly at the throat of that 
 236
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 mere handful of men who had led it into these 
 tragic straits . . . 
 
 With bowed head Gadsky strode toward the 
 gate. He seemed already to bend under the bur- 
 den that awaited him. He heard some one calling 
 his name but feigned not to hear and hastened 
 on so as to escape. So great was his fear that 
 some tiresome bore would join him and cross his 
 plans that he ran for a part of the way and did 
 not walk until he had reached the wood. They 
 were whispering in the hospital concerning these 
 lonely walks of his. The idea of being unmasked 
 on the last day had little of the alluring. He was 
 under considerable suspicion of sympathizing 
 with the enemy even as it was. Especially among 
 the non-commissioned officers there were men 
 who could not forgive him because in the French 
 prison camp he, a mere private, had been treated 
 better than themselves. They reproached him 
 with having lived almost like a French officer and 
 would have been happy over the discovery that 
 in the woods he met an interned Frenchman and 
 carried on endless conversations with him. 
 
 High in the forest Gadsky sat down on a stone. 
 From this point he had a view of the whole land- 
 scape as far as the railroad track. He had be- 
 come accustomed to rest here until he was quite 
 sure that no one was spying on him. He smiled 
 at these precautions that reminded him of old 
 times, of little love affairs which, in that goodly 
 life in the past, had seemed so serious. Whoeve'r 
 watched him day after day would doubtless have 
 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 wagered that he had an affair with a woman. 
 Ah, adultery even would have been a small mat- 
 ter compared with the crime that he was com- 
 mitting . . . Secret meetings with an enemy. It 
 wasn't easy to contemplate the annoyances that 
 his secret might conceivably produce. 
 
 He had arisen and looked at his watch. But 
 he sat down again, determined to wait another 
 fifteen minutes. Stuff was casting his shadow 
 before. The thought of having to meet him to- 
 morrow increased his vigilant care. What a 
 triumph would the fellow enjoy if Gadsky, whom 
 he had never liked, returned as an unmasked 
 traitor. 
 
 Quickly Gadsky took Mathilde's last letter 
 from his pocket as if it were a talisman that 
 could lay the evil phantoms. She wrote very 
 hopefully. She had received a definite promise 
 from the director of the Imperial Opera and she 
 felt sure that his release from further military 
 service would be procured when once he was at 
 home again. But how did he know that the at- 
 tempt would really succeed? He hadn't much 
 confidence in such things; he wanted to spare 
 himself an unbearable disappointment, and he 
 could not help remembering the difficulties into 
 which Mathilde's zeal had already plunged him. 
 If she hadn't so tirelessly persuaded the authori- 
 ties and twice traveled to Switzerland to plead 
 for him with the medical commissioners, he 
 would not now have been forced to return home 
 and, perhaps, to carry his pierced lung into bat- 
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 tie again. That was, for the present, the only re- 
 sult of her activities. If she were not successful 
 in actually obtaining his release from service for 
 the remainder of the war, it would be her love 
 that was actually driving him once more into all 
 the terrors of death. Without her efforts he 
 would still be in the wooden hut of the French 
 prison camp. They had granted him a piano, and 
 Ducrecy, the kindly, careless major of terri- 
 torials, had quietly seen to it that he did not 
 suffer. . . . 
 
 He, personally, had no reason not to remember 
 that camp with kindness. He had forgotten, as 
 one will, the murderous monotony, the thousand 
 humiliations. Only the pleasant evenings with 
 Ducrecy passed with tea and music projected 
 into his memory from that quiet period. He saw 
 himself sitting at the piano and saw the droll, 
 old gentleman enthusiastically stalk through the 
 room, beating time and often, when he waved his 
 arms like a conductor, sweeping the glasses from 
 the table. It had been an almost idyllic life. 
 
 Mathilde, of course, was unable to realize how 
 well he was taken care of. She thought, quite 
 naturally, that his pleasant generalities were 
 meant to calm and soothe her. The censorship 
 forbade any concrete description of his condi- 
 tion. And he could not blame her. For he had 
 but to recall the first months to realize that a 
 woman had every cause to tremble for her be- 
 loved in French captivity ! With the hands of a 
 veritable hangman the hate-maddened French 
 
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 staff surgeon had probed his wound and torn off 
 his bandages. The attendants of both sexes had 
 done their best to equal their commander in pa- 
 triotic zeal until his vigorous organism had re- 
 mained victorious and the hated boche had 
 ceased spitting blood and was discharged. Then, 
 like a corpse that returns to a ghastly life from 
 the dissecting table, he had staggered and stum- 
 bled on the long march to the railroad station. 
 A cold shiver ran down his back to this day when 
 he remembered his transportation from the hos- 
 pital to the prison camp. Trembling with cold 
 he had sat in the quivering August heat of the 
 railroad carriage. Bayonets stared at him from 
 all sides. Next to him had crouched the actually 
 bestial marechal des logis who had driven the 
 quivering skeletons under his charge out of the 
 compartment at every station as though they had 
 to change trains, and had done this merely for 
 the fiendish delight of driving them in again at 
 the end of bayonet and rifle. Of course, the piti- 
 able creature had been maddened in the usual 
 way. All through the journey he had read out 
 aloud the accounts of atrocities which (accord- 
 ing to the Paris Matin, of course) the boches 
 committed against their French prisoners. On 
 that trip Gadsky had regretted that the strength 
 failed him to hurl himself upon the bayonet that 
 was held to his chest without ceasing and so to 
 end his intolerable misery. And yet he could 
 not hate even this fanatical beast. Worthy of 
 hatred were only those accursed ghouls of the 
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 press who never examined evidence, who exer- 
 cised their vile imagination to produce more and 
 more hatred, and who cared little for the poor 
 devils of prisoners who had to pay with broken 
 bones for the pay which those inflammatory arti- 
 cles brought their authors. 
 
 Below, in Lucerne, a tower clock struck the 
 half hour between three and four and aroused 
 Gadsky from his thoughts. Hastily he arose, 
 searched the fields and woods with his eyes and 
 once more and now in a calmer mood began the 
 ascent. The farewell that was ahead of him 
 made him review in his mind the eleven months 
 he had spent in Switzerland. It made him also 
 recall the day on which he had met his dear, old 
 Ducrecy. He remembered the terror born of 
 his most bitter experience that had throbbed 
 in his very throat when, on the second day of his 
 stay in the prison camp, he had been summoned 
 to the commandant. The fear of having made 
 some thoughtless remark in his fevered and en- 
 feebled condition seemed to rob his bloodless 
 limbs of all power as he stood waiting in the 
 anteroom. He had entered. And the major had 
 asked him whether he was a relation of the fa- 
 mous pianist. But the question had been un- 
 necessary. Even in that swaying skeleton the 
 major had recognized the honored and beloved 
 young master and would have embraced him but 
 for the presence of the two secretaries. The old 
 gentleman knew by heart the program of all his 
 Parisian concerts ; reminded him, with gleaming 
 
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 eyes, of many fine points in his execution and 
 even asked him quite seriously, after a while, 
 why he played a certain passage with wild 
 energy now which, in 1910, he had played with 
 slow retardation of movement. . . . 
 
 Smiling sadly Gadsky stopped on the height 
 once more, looked back at the lake, and passed 
 his cane across the tall grasses that trembled at 
 the edge of the forest. He smiled again as he 
 recalled his old friend. He had taken him into 
 the office as interpreter and let him sleep there 
 so that he, a private soldier, without even the iron 
 cross, enjoj'ed the priceless luxury of privacy. 
 Then had come the piano into the hut, ostensibly 
 for the Sunday services. The tousled head of the 
 major's wife had followed and had kept turning 
 up in the office. And one comfort after another 
 had been furnished the poor prisoner. 
 
 But Gadsky's smile yielded to a hard and bit- 
 ter expression and he clenched his hands. For 
 he remembered, too, how foolishly and child* 
 ishly and shortsightedly he had really behaved ! 
 He, too, had been taken in by the stupid catch- 
 word "liberty" which all governments had 
 drilled into their citizens to enslave them but 
 the more easily! Could he blame Mathilde for 
 her tireless efforts when he himself, despite all 
 the kindness which he, at least, had received, had 
 been as full of delight as a child when his sad- 
 dened old friend had announced to him his ap- 
 proaching liberation. How ashamed was he now 
 when he remembered that scene. Surely, surely, 
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 he need have been no very deep thinker to realize 
 that the wires and stakes of the prison-camp 
 protected the prisoner from the deeper slavery 
 of war. In the front trenches, when the drum 
 fire built its roof of steel, when death hewed the 
 quivering earth with its unchoosing fangs how 
 happy one would have been to flee to such a refuge 
 as this prison camp. And but a few weeks after 
 one's almost miraculous escape, here one was 
 making wild plans, digging tunnels, inventing 
 disguises, only to escape this kindly rampart 
 that saved one from the floods of war, but which 
 a few bayonet points turned apparently into a 
 real prison. So blind could words make one, so 
 blindly was one ruled by them, that the most 
 fearful slavery loomed up as a kind of freedom 
 if a wall or a fence prevented one from rushing 
 into it. . . . 
 
 Gadsky turned away from the radiant land- 
 scape at his feet and went forward again amid 
 the woodlands which grew on the ascent after 
 the clearing had been crossed. 
 
 Of the first months of his internment in Swit- 
 zerland he hated to think. He could easily, of 
 course, had it been necessary, have freed himself 
 from any suspicion of having had any wrong deal- 
 ings with the enemy. But he had taken wine and 
 bread and associated with the commander on so- 
 cial terms and played to him and his wife. And 
 this was set down against him as a 'lamentable 
 lack of pride and self-respect." And it was prob- 
 ably no mere accident that in Switzerland he had 
 
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 been put directly under the non-commissioned 
 officer who had made it his business to tell the 
 story of his strange fraternizing with the enemy. 
 
 This sergeant, of course, had gleefully brought 
 it home to him that here he was no more than 
 any other private. As often as possible he com- 
 manded him to perform disagreeable and humil- 
 iating duties. But he could have borne that if 
 only, as in the prison-camp in France, he had 
 been able at night to withdraw to the privacy of 
 a little wooden hut. What weighed upon him 
 was the constant presence of uneducated, curi- 
 ous, unsympathetic men who made crude jokes 
 and had no reticence. And this became all but 
 unendurable when Mathilde arrived. 
 
 Since they were not married, there was no way 
 of getting an official leave of absence from the 
 barracks at night. The thought, moreover, of 
 the men's confidentially lecherous glances made 
 him content himself with the few daylight hours 
 of leave which were his in the regular course of 
 things. But the little town was so filled with 
 gray uniforms that it was like a little garrison 
 town in times of peace and gossip was the chief 
 occupation. Everywhere he was quietly pointed 
 out as the soldier lover of the famous singer ! 
 
 Only in the comfortable little apartment that 
 Mathilde had taken in the magnificent Castle 
 Hotel could they be together undisturbed. There 
 his blessedness, longed for a thousand times, 
 awaited him. There he could cleanse his defiled 
 soul in her great tenderness. And yet it was 
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 just these hours that he grew most to fear. 
 Twice only during her stay had he ventured 
 into the hotel. Even in the foyer a darkness fell 
 upon his eyes. For the place swarmed with Ger- 
 man guests with people whom the war had en- 
 riched and with a few who had somehow been 
 released from military service. And the cruel 
 contrast between these people and himself smote 
 upon his heart. They had rights which were not 
 his ; they had freedom and human dignity ; they 
 were the slaves of no machine, of no petty tyran- 
 nies. But he, who, from the conventional point 
 of view, had suffered everything for the father- 
 land, who had almost lost his life, who had en- 
 dured the extreme cruelty of the enemy, who had 
 forever burdened his soul with the slaying of 
 men he who was in himself a man of distinction 
 and an adornment to his country, had not the 
 rights of these profiteers and slackers, but was 
 penned at night in a stall with riff-raff and had 
 to keep his eye on his watch when he was with 
 the woman whom he loved. The indignation 
 that this caused him blended with the irritation 
 of his overwrought nerves to such an extent that 
 he knew in retrospect that his behavior to 
 Mathilde had ill repaid her for her impassioned 
 and tireless and devoted love. And to-day a 
 chill came over him at the thought of the scenes 
 which he, or rather his sick nerves and his 
 wounded sense of justice, had caused her. And 
 yet, although he saw it all clearly now and swore 
 to make it up to her in the future in redoubled 
 
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 tenderness and delicacy, yet no feeling of genuine 
 remorse arose in him. For he sternly recognized 
 the unescapable fact that her presence had em- 
 phasized and raised into the most glaring light 
 the loss of liberty and human dignity to which he 
 was condemned because he had served his coun- 
 try and because he was still a member of its 
 armed forces. Had not the Swiss surgeons freed 
 him from this situation by declaring his lungs 
 not yet perfectly healed and his right hand in 
 need of electro-therapeutic treatment, he would, 
 at that early period of his internment, have taken 
 his own life. 
 
 He had been so absorbed in his own thoughts 
 that he had walked on until, of their own accord, 
 his limbs stopped at the edge of the little upland 
 meadow that had been for weeks the meeting- 
 place of his strange encounters. When he looked 
 up he saw the anxious face of his friend behind 
 the trunk of a tree. The face was anxious be- 
 cause Gadsky had evidently been talking to him- 
 self and Merlier had begun to fear that he was 
 not alone. They laughed over the little misun- 
 derstanding and shook hands warmly. Then the 
 Frenchman threw a deep, questioning glance at 
 Gadsky and said hesitatingly: "So this is our 
 farewell?" 
 
 Gadsky nodded silently. His heart, too, grew 
 heavy as he regarded the pale, sincere face that 
 had been his joy and his consolation here. It 
 would disappear from him now. And how little 
 chance had they of ever meeting again ! Silently 
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 they sat down on their accustomed tree stumps 
 and stared down at the lake and the city until 
 Merlier laid his hand on the shoulder of his 
 friend and said in his droll, delicately pro- 
 nounced German : "This is the fiftieth time that 
 we are meeting here." 
 
 Gadsky smiled sadly. Wasn't it strange how 
 their national parts were exchanged. Merlier 
 was the exact one who noted everything, remem- 
 bered everything and had entered their conversa- 
 tions in his diary night after night. And what 
 had they not discussed? 
 
 An uncanny sense of spiritual emptiness came 
 over Gadsky when he considered that these meet- 
 ings and conversations were at an end for all 
 time. Where would he find a substitute? Poor 
 Weiler was still in the asylum; Kriilow was 
 listed as "missing." All of his friends that he 
 really cared for were dead or in enemy prisons. 
 The little Frenchman had become indispensable 
 to him. When he sat there and noticed how the 
 greenish gray of his own uniform contrasted so 
 ill with the horizon blue of his friend's, when he 
 considered how the very colors of their garments 
 seemed at war, he was still constantly astonished 
 at the certainty with which fate, through the 
 harmony of their two minds, had brought them 
 together despite all the anger and terror with 
 which their masters would have pursued them 
 had they known. And they had been safe so far. 
 A single unfortunate meeting with some one 
 would have spread the scandal of their friendship 
 
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 among the French as well as among the Germans 
 in the town. But nothing had happened. 
 
 When he had first arrived in Lucerne an al- 
 most physical nausea had overcome him at the 
 sight of the swarming blue uniforms in the rail- 
 road station. For these uniforms were insepara- 
 ble in his mind and nerves now from the hoarse 
 croaking of the "Marseillaise" in hand-to-hand 
 fighting, from moans and dirt and cruel suffer- 
 ing. As often as he met a French soldier he 
 could almost feel the tingle of the enslaving 
 bayonet of the prison master against his side. 
 But his unforgettable experience with Merlier 
 had definitely freed him of that unhappy feeling. 
 
 It had happened on the first Sunday of his 
 stay in Lucerne a magnificent day, fragrant 
 with spring. Under the roof of the early foliage 
 of the great promenade people were happily 
 walking, freed from the heaviness of their winter 
 wrappings. The uniforms gleamed among the 
 civilians like crocuses on a meadow. The band, 
 almost nervous in its careful neutrality, followed 
 up the Pilgrims' Chorus from Tannhauser by an 
 overture of Boildieu. The public, equally neu- 
 tral, applauded both exactly alike. German, 
 French, English and Swiss soldiers strolled by. 
 Every one was talkative and care-free and so well 
 rested and happy that one might have thought 
 oneself on a different planet. 
 
 He, too, had walked there, lighter of body and 
 of mind and filled with a sense of regal independ- 
 ence. He had just been trying to squeeze past a 
 
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 group of chattering girls when there bobbed up, 
 unexpectedly and from the opposite direction, a 
 little French infantryman. He tried to step 
 aside, collided with the whirl of white frocks and 
 was somewhat ungently pushed against the 
 Frenchman. Automatically he saluted and ut- 
 tered the ordinary formula of courtesy. At the 
 same moment he was aware of the same gesture 
 on the part of the sky-blue enemy and heard the 
 latter speak the identical words. He walked on 
 a few paces, involuntarily swung around and 
 caught the Frenchman doing the same thing. 
 Their eyes met and a spark sprang from man to 
 man that illuminated once more the crass stu- 
 pidity of the whole bloody game. Their tribal 
 consciences drove them swiftly apart that day. 
 But their friendship was an established fact. 
 Daily they exchanged swift, furtive glances and 
 when, on Corpus Christi day, they happened to 
 meet in this isolated spot, their cordial greeting 
 of each other was quite instinctive. They were 
 in reality old friends, for they had read the same 
 books, admired the same pictures, loved the same 
 composers long before they had met. They could 
 begin their conversation where each had inter- 
 rupted it with his like-minded comrades in in- 
 ternment. And just as Europeans in a far coun- 
 try will often pass whole days in the saddle for 
 an hour's talk with a man of their own kind, so 
 these two had met in this hidden corner as often 
 as possible and their farewell was not an easy 
 one. 
 
 249
 
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 Once more they walked through the house of 
 their friendship room by room and listened to the 
 echo that each had awakened in the other's soul. 
 
 The sun was sinking behind the great moun- 
 tain; the air quivered as with dust of gold and 
 strewed the distant peaks with a heavy glow. 
 The lake lay like a dim mirror. To the left the 
 Kigi towered from among its tufted cloudlets, 
 rosy-peaked against the sky and falling like a 
 mantle of precious stuff into the water's pastel 
 blue. Merlier's hand drew a nervous circle in 
 the air as though he meant to include in this, 
 gesture all the glory and peace that lay before 
 them. "And it is still war? Can you believe it? 
 Still war !" A quiet despair was in his voice. 
 
 Gadsky nodded gravely. "Up in the wretched 
 mountain village that thought tormented me 
 too. I had a secret place, a projecting ledge of 
 rock and often there at sunset I was forced to 
 imagine how, beyond the mountains, the shells 
 were still screaming and men were still tearing 
 each other like wild beasts, instead of going in 
 peace into their houses and lighting their eve- 
 ning lamps. But up there such thoughts were 
 harder to bear than here. Because that village 
 had really grown up within a few years, because 
 the physicians thought that precisely this spot 
 had an extraordinary healing power. And so 
 the railroad had been brought here to transport 
 to a year or two of life, people who, in the val- 
 leys, would have died within a few months or 
 even weeks! And for that work of mercy tun- 
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 nels had been bored and tracks laid and billions 
 of money expended ! And beyond the mountains 
 crawled the endless wagon trains, rattled the 
 cranes, and millions of arms worked and the 
 strength of whole nations was poured out in or- 
 der to reduce the lives of healthy men to a few 
 hours of blood-soaked torment. At first the con- 
 trast maddened me so that I could have run out 
 into the village like a herald of doom. But in 
 time I grew calmer. And every evening, at twi- 
 light, the great square would be filled with an 
 international crowd waiting for news from the 
 seat of war. And each side, if the other had suf- 
 fered a defeat, broke out in loud jubilation. 
 And these Frenchmen and Germans, remember, 
 were not parlor strategists who were ignorant 
 of pain and horror. Not one man there who had 
 not been saved as by a miracle, few who did not 
 shriek with horror in their dreams from the 
 poison of their memories. Yet each group had a 
 good time counting up the enemy's prisoners, 
 wounded and dead, as though it were a business 
 transaction. It is hard, I tell you, to pity man. 
 For no animal can be so ferocious. The beasts 
 slay only from hunger and then but rarely mem- 
 bers of their own species. Man alone is capable 
 of that joy in the hurt of others, and in inflicting 
 upon others what he most dreads for himself. 
 Since he can be frank, since the pretense of con- 
 siderateness and kindness has become unneces- 
 sary that is, since 1914 one can measure the 
 whole force of his evil instincts. If before the 
 
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 war a great scientist had arisen and declared 
 himself capable of rooting out all the suffering 
 in the world, the scourge of all diseases, but had 
 required for the preparation of his great medi- 
 cine one month of such sacrifices as the nations 
 have made for dozens of months I assure you 
 that the world would have remained as it was. 
 The nations would not have endured one week of 
 such suffering for a noble cause. Ah, my dear 
 friend, you're young and you cling to your belief 
 in humanity! Ten years from now you'll stop 
 fishing with ideas for souls. Men cannot be 
 stirred unless you appeal to their bellies or their 
 vanity. Whoever doesn't come to see that in 
 time, will crash his head into stone walls." 
 
 Merlier shook his head slowly. He looked at 
 the mountains and the sunset and spoke slowly, 
 as though his answer were written in the sky 
 and were difficult to decipher. "No, I won't be- 
 lieve that ten years from now either. And you 
 will recant long before the ten years are gone. 
 For don't you see that there is really progress 
 from century to century? Why, at the beginning 
 of the war, did every State find it necessary to 
 proclaim that it had been attacked? Two hun- 
 dred years ago each would have said quite 
 frankly: We're going out to kill our neighbors 
 because they have coast cities or iron mines or 
 over-sea trade or fine ships that we could well 
 use ! Why did each government, even that of the 
 United States in the end, persuade its soldiers 
 that they were defending their own homes and 
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 hearths! No government dared to say to its 
 men : If you win you will make more money, eat 
 more, wear handsomer clothes, all at the expense 
 of the enemy whom you must first, however, de- 
 feat and humiliate before you can rob him ! But 
 no one dared to ask common men to fight for 
 booty no one ! You can no longer wage a pred- 
 atory war in the West without hiding your evil 
 purpose from the people behind a veil of fine 
 phrases. Isn't that in itself splendid? Doesn't 
 it show that all we need do is to tear asunder 
 that veil of phrases in order to save the world? 
 If you must feign a noble cause to lead men into 
 drumfire, to fight and to die, how can you doubt 
 their power to sacrifice and endure if you were 
 to substitute a truly noble cause for lies and 
 crimes?" 
 
 Gadsky smiled silently. He loved to hear 
 Merlier speak. His gentle German pronuncia- 
 tion with its rolling consonants sounded delight- 
 ful for its tinge of dialect. Merlier had gone to 
 school in Berlin up to his fourteenth year. His 
 father had been a teacher of French there. And 
 it was a daily pleasure to Gadsky to hear a 
 French infantryman use some inimitably Ber- 
 linese locution. Then, too, Merlier was so charm- 
 ingly young and so full of flaming enthusiasm 
 and Gadsky hated to rob him of his faith. But 
 after a long pause he ventured : "Perhaps your 
 countrymen are more capable of enthusiasm than 
 mine. And they did once bleed for the rights of 
 man, although I suspect that even then hunger 
 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 played a greater role than ideals. But you can- 
 not judge an alien folk. . . ." 
 
 Merlier interrupted him swiftly. "There is no 
 such thing as an alien folk. There is only man- 
 kind! Only the languages differ and evil men 
 and forces exploit that difference. Look at the 
 two of us! Are we not infinitely closer to each 
 other than each is to the majority of his com- 
 patriots? And your peasant lads would find 
 ours far more congenial than they would find 
 you. They could talk about their harvests and 
 their cattle just as you and I discuss literature 
 and music. They belong together just as you and 
 I belong together and they would realize that if 
 there were honest interpreters to guide them. 
 Remember that the artificial differences that lead 
 to war have diminished through the ages. Once 
 neighboring cities made war on each other until 
 highways united them into counties. Then 
 steam and electricity created the great powers 
 of to-day. The next war, if there is to be one, 
 will be between continents Asia, perhaps, 
 against the West. And at last the world will be 
 one and the love of man will take the place of 
 patriotism. You smile? Didn't Christ proclaim 
 that two thousand years ago? Did not every 
 great modern State have to erect monuments, 
 force children to sing patriotic songs in the pub- 
 lic schools, introduce more or less universal mili- 
 tary service, and fill its prisons with radicals and 
 objectors in order to stem this tide of develop- 
 ment? It won't last much longer. Suddenly 
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 the great turning-point will have been reached. 
 You and I will both live to see it." 
 
 Gadsky sighed. He remembered his debates 
 with Weiler and with Krtilow and looked with 
 deep emotion into Merlier's face. They were all 
 alike, these dear dreamers and idealists. In 
 their thoughts they built up the world of their 
 desires and confused their yearning for it with a 
 possible reality. 
 
 "There is one thing, dear Merlier, that you 
 forget," he said. "In spite of the long duration 
 of the war, it is only a certain fraction of hu- 
 manity that is feeling its horrors in its own 
 flesh and blood. You mustn't imagine that the 
 war is to all our contemporaries a terrible blood 
 bath, a reversion into bestiality, a crime that 
 must not be repeated. You forget that in every 
 country there are behind the wall of warriors 
 who bleed, the great armies of munition makers 
 whose wages are magnificent. You forget the 
 merchants, the manufacturers, the farmers and 
 the officers of higher rank all that great host 
 that makes money or reputation out of every but- 
 ton that we wear. The twenty millions of actual 
 fighting men are the wares that are carried to 
 market. The chafferers in the rear try to squeeze 
 the last drop of profit out of this rare opportun- 
 ity. I grant you that the poor devils upon whom 
 rests the actual weight of the war would be a 
 grateful soil for the seed of your ideas. But too 
 many of them will be, when it is all over, liter- 
 ally a part of the soil. And it is possible 
 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 though I hope I am wrong that the survivors, 
 especially the victors, whoever they be, will not 
 care to add new miseries to those they have 
 barely escaped. And the evil in the world will 
 not fall without a struggle. For those who will 
 have profited from this vast woe, again especial- 
 ly in the victorious countries, will be so famous 
 and so rich and will defend their war, their 
 great and profitable war, far more passionately 
 than any man has ever defended his fatherland or 
 his ideals." He drew a newspaper from his 
 pocket. "If you read the papers you must see 
 with how precise an aim more and more hatred 
 is always concentrated on Germany. In Ger- 
 many itself, to be sure, since the dream of rapid 
 victory vanished, those in power know quite well 
 that their methods are losing in popularity 
 every day and that the idle talk concerning dis- 
 armament and the family of man is really rising 
 to the dignity of an earnest yearning and a 
 mighty wave of action. And yet, if, when it's all 
 over, there were to be found everywhere a great 
 mass of men who desired a new order in which 
 each nation should leave the other what it has, 
 in order to preserve its own what whispers and 
 warnings would be sounded, what inferences 
 drawn from the artificial stimulation of hate? 
 Men would be told in each country in turn : 'Ah, 
 well and good, if the others were like you. But 
 while you're nursing your fine dreams the hun- 
 gry wolves across the frontier are sharpening 
 their claws and teeth.' It's all arranged in the 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 most sophisticated and intricate way. You can't 
 govern a mechanism like that with ideas and 
 feelings. While we philosophize here, those mas- 
 ters drive the nations into slavery and sow the 
 seeds of hatred so deeply, and water the soil of 
 hatred so plentifully with blood, that their great 
 machine will be in no permanent danger of stand- 
 ing idle. Behind both fronts stand the merchants 
 who are equally interested in their wares of hu- 
 man flesh and equally careful to nurse all meth- 
 ods that will keep the trade from dying out. 
 And this trade has been carried on by these same 
 methods since the beginnings of history . . ." 
 
 "And has now met its doom!" Merlier inter- 
 rupted triumphantly. "The great machine 
 doesn't function perfectly any more. The stuff 
 it weaves comes threadbare from the shuttle. 
 Hold it against the light and the truth shines 
 through. As long as three years ago think of 
 that ! an illiterate cowherd from the Ardennes 
 to whom I had to read bits from the paper in our 
 dugout, because he couldn't read, said to me that 
 when he heard the rot of the scribblers for the 
 papers it seemed to him as if he had a vision of 
 two men at fisticuffs, each trying to knock the 
 other's teeth down his throat and tear out his 
 hair and each howling out: 'I'll show you that 
 I'm the finer, more cultured and better of us 
 two! There's another crack at your jaw. Do 
 you believe now that I'm gentler, more unselfish 
 and more Christian than you?' And that was a 
 mere cowherd. Men aren't as stupid as you 
 
 257
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 think. They will surprise the masters very 
 soon." 
 
 Gadsky shrugged his shoulders. He couldn't 
 conquer his old dislike of the common people. 
 He had lived with them in the barracks. "That 
 was a good deal for a cowherd to realize," he 
 said drily. "In Germany, as you know, things 
 are different. Every one can read and reads that 
 things are very well as they are. And I do not 
 deny that the State gave the people much good 
 dwellings, hospitals, insurance against old age 
 and illness, free medical treatment, excellent 
 wages. Who was better taken care of than the 
 German? Who read better books, saw better 
 plays, heard better music? No one. And so 
 political energy and thoughtfulness, such as even 
 your dissatisfied cowherd may have had, was 
 lulled to rest. And I almost fear that those 
 qualities which were not apparently needed be- 
 fore the war are now in part atrophied. And so 
 the great slaughter can go on. For the men be- 
 lieve that they are fighting to defend advantages 
 which were perfectly real from enemies who 
 wish to crush them. If the revolution does come 
 in Germany, it will therefore entail a more tre- 
 mendous inner change than it would in any other 
 land, a more profound shaking up of all the 
 spiritual foundations. For the people believed 
 that all their prosperity and civilization was a 
 gift of 1870, a gift of war, rather than the ex- 
 pansion of national qualities in a new age. And 
 so these men are both the freest and, in a special 
 258
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 and narrow sense, the most enslaved of all." 
 Merlier had jumped up and walked up and 
 down before Gadsky. "And how is it with us? 
 The poor among us live as you Germans would 
 not permit a dog to live. They have dirty hos- 
 pitals and no free baths and are fed with so- 
 called political rights which is cheaper, no 
 doubt. It is much worse that the common, daily 
 life of our people has been stripped for a festive 
 garment, a symbol of liberty that hangs in the 
 show-window with gold-embroidery hiding the 
 moth holes. And with this gilded sham we've 
 deceived the men across our frontiers into think- 
 ing that we possess something of which we 
 haven't, in reality, a shred. It was a viler decep- 
 tion than yours. . . ." 
 
 "No," Gadsky said calmly ; "it was not. Your 
 people are hungry and hungry people have a 
 chance of knowing that they are cheated and 
 may one day smash up the whole evil trade. 
 Ours were fed and well fed and I am afraid. . . ." 
 Merlier stopped and nodded at Gadsky with a 
 smile. "There we are at our old trick of defend- 
 ing each other's country and being in all likeli- 
 hood uncharitable to our own because we have a 
 keener sense of its shortcomings. How simple 
 everything would be if men would only be a bit 
 more rational. You have, I remember, a neat 
 proverb to the effect that every man should be 
 careful to keep just his own threshold clean. The 
 war could end to-day if both sides would heed 
 that simple wisdom as you and I do. I abuse 
 
 259
 
 THE JUDGMENT OP PEACE 
 
 France because I know her faults, you abuse 
 Germany because you feel her faults to be a part 
 of your human responsibility. Unfortunately, 
 most men fail to cure the ills they have and con- 
 sole themselves with the fact that their neighbor 
 suffers from worse ones. When I tell my com- 
 rades concerning the sins of our chauvinists and 
 imperialists, they yell at me: 'Et les boches?' 
 You have had a similar experience among your 
 comrades, of course. In simpler days it never 
 occurred to a pickpocket to defend his trade be- 
 cause there were probably murderers and burg- 
 lars in the world. To-day all the nations have 
 grown so modest that each is quite satisfied if 
 it can only believe itself less base than the 
 enemy." He fell silent for a moment. Then he 
 threw his arms into the air and said : "And they 
 must all become good all !" 
 
 Gadsky, too, had slowly arisen and stepped to 
 the edge of the little meadow. Sadly he surveyed 
 the radiant scene below him. The passionate 
 cry of Merlier brought to his face a weary and 
 indulgent smile. "Perhaps they will all become 
 good and just and even unselfish and love their 
 neighbor as themselves, even when he wears a 
 different raiment and speaks another tongue! 
 Perhaps! They have even now been trained to 
 restrain their envy of a competitor around the 
 corner, and no longer murder a fellow tribesman 
 because his wheat is taller than theirs or his 
 cattle more fecund. So why shouldn't they learn 
 to endure the prosperity of those whom they do 
 260
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 not even see? The only question is: Will they 
 be ordered to feel and act so? For I am con- 
 vinced that the redemption of men will not come 
 from among themselves. Ah, if I could only share 
 the trust that you idealists have in the poor and 
 the disinherited ! But they have never yet been 
 freed by their own will and power. They have 
 always clung to their masters and crucified their 
 saviors. All liberty has been handed them from 
 above as completely prepared and wrapped as a 
 Christmas gift. Serfdom in Europe was abol- 
 ished not because the peasants came with scythes 
 and pitchforks, but because the conscience of the 
 masters could no longer endure treating men like 
 beasts. The Jew T s did not emerge from their 
 ghettos until a few free and strong men helped 
 them pull down the walls. The negro slaves of 
 North America were liberated because the domi- 
 nant Europeans suffered so in their conscience 
 that they and not the oppressed negroes 
 fought for them during four years. The Count 
 de Mirabeau did more for your famous revolution 
 than ten thousand sansculottes. And so it will 
 come this time if the change is to be permanent. 
 Not till the rich man can bear no meat that 
 tastes of the sweat of helots, not till kings and 
 prime ministers and generals are revolted by the 
 blood that stains their laurels not until then 
 can that become concrete reality of which you 
 and others like you dream. Why will you waste 
 your strength? If you would be heard you must 
 address the head and not the feet." 
 
 261
 
 THE JUDGMENT OP PEACE 
 
 Merlier faced Gadsky with a smile of victory 
 and said triumphantly: "You speak of 'above' 
 and 'below' as though these represented un- 
 changeable concepts like North and South. 
 What is 'above'? It is that which men aim at 
 the height that man would reach. Transfer that 
 goal of desire to the valley and your 'below' has 
 become an 'above.' The trouble hitherto has 
 been that the weak and the poor have themselves 
 been so greatly in love with power and wealth. 
 That is what we must change and therefore we 
 turn to the lowly. It is they who have made the 
 head say rather the stomach and the purse 
 what it is by their desire and envy of it. The 
 false prophets have had an easy time so far. It 
 was enough to lead them to the window of a 
 luxurious restaurant and show them the rich 
 eating pheasants and drinking champagne. Why 
 waste one's words, or struggle for souls, or dig 
 to the ultimate evil, when that simple process 
 gained you the discipleship of all the hungry? 
 You simply said to them: 'Those people are 
 growing fat on your labor while you starve. Fol- 
 low me and you will sit in there feasting while 
 their faces will be pale against the panes! So 
 any man could become a leader and was really 
 doing the work of the rich whom he feigned to 
 attack. For it was thus that arose the false 
 glamor of money that blinds the conscience of 
 men. The people in the restaurant were nat- 
 urally confirmed in their belief that they had 
 achieved something desirable when every bite 
 262
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 they took was accompanied by the envy of a mul- 
 titude. How should their shame grow articulate 
 when the slaves desired only to sit in their 
 seats and act likewise? People chatter a lot of 
 nonsense to the effect that the morality current 
 within a social group should be transferred to 
 international relations and that thus war would 
 become impossible. As if, in ordinary civil life, 
 anything had ever counted but victory! Who- 
 ever wanted to be respected by all men and live 
 a goodly life was in some way responsible for 
 the enslavement of his workmen, his clients or 
 his customers. He had to make money out of 
 the needs of others, to make .such a peace 
 with his beaten enemies or competitors as would 
 serve only his interests and which had to be up- 
 held by force. In a word, he acted precisely as 
 the State does. Everywhere hitherto the strong 
 man had all rights, the weak man all duties; 
 everywhere pride flourished and not a conscious- 
 ness of guilt, envy instead of contempt. If, 
 therefore, we succeed in changing the soul of the 
 individual, so that he becomes ashamed of his 
 self-seeking even when it is profitable, the States 
 will follow suit and the world will be saved. 
 And we must succeed we must! Ah, you may 
 smile ! But don't you see how little is needed to 
 blow down this house of cards which is held to- 
 gether even now only by a relentless exercise of 
 force? You said yourself a while ago that one 
 must appeal to people's appetite or to their van- 
 ity to influence them. Well, we will use their 
 
 263
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 vanity. The single abusive word 'slacker 5 has 
 power enough within the present order to turn 
 the most arrant cowards into men who will en- 
 dure the extremest danger and pain. Do you 
 believe that other words will be less potent when 
 they carry an equally dishonorable implication? 
 Will it be harder to force men to magnanimity 
 and sympathy than it is now to force them to 
 risk pain and despise death? Take our French 
 duelists and your German fraternity students 
 with their scratched faces and transport them 
 both to England where dueling is seriously 
 in disrepute. They'll try to satisfy their vanity 
 in other ways, to be sure. But they assuredly 
 won't pick quarrels of so-called technical honor. 
 Human vanity is like a mighty locomotive that 
 is always under steam but that can just as easily 
 do useful work on the tracks and in the station 
 as it can smash walls and kill men. It all de- 
 pends on the direction of the tracks and the posi- 
 tion of the switch. Bring it about that every one 
 who gorges himself on the hunger of others is 
 despised, that every one a State or an individ- 
 Jual is ostracized and contemned if he casts down 
 the weak instead of lifting him up accomplish 
 this, and wealth will lose its glamor and attrac- 
 tion and the nations be ashamed of their victories 
 of force. And that's the way we're going to turn 
 the switch now. And you will have to help, too. 
 Every man must help in his own country, for 
 every country is in equal need. But it will be 
 much easier than most people believe." 
 264
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Gadsky was touched by the fine light in his 
 friend's eyes. He laid his hand on Merlier's 
 shoulder and said gently : "I shall gladly be one 
 of your apostles even though I cannot share your 
 faith. I am afraid that nothing was so ill fitted 
 to turn humanity to new paths as this very war, 
 which has raised self-seeking to new heights and 
 will, in the case of the ultimate victors, heighten 
 it to the point of utter madness. How can . . ." 
 
 "For that very reason," Merlier cried, and 
 stretched out his arms as though he would em- 
 brace the world. "Have not these four years 
 taught every nation and every individual that 
 you cannot seek to enslave others without rob- 
 bing yourself of all freedom? Is it not clear by 
 this time that you cannot rob your neighbor 
 and not live thereafter booted and spurred and 
 with your rifle in your very bed? Thrice witnTn 
 fifty years your countrymen won an easy vic- 
 tory, and that was bad for them and it was also 
 bad that an increase of prosperity followed each 
 victory and seemed, at least, to spring from it. 
 But now both they and the rest of the world must 
 at last be persuaded that the game is not worth 
 the candle. There was a time when the Germans 
 were ahead of us all ; they had found their souls 
 at a time when we still worshiped force and 
 were swollen with pride each time that we broke 
 the back of some weaker people. Then we reached 
 the point of satiation and the truth might per- 
 haps have dawned on our full stomachs. But, 
 alas, Germany was not satiated. Germany was 
 
 265
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 still hungry as we had been in older days. And 
 in her there awakened the hunger which we had 
 already satisfied. And in that contrast lies the 
 source of the unreasoning and stupid hatred that 
 has hurt your people so tragically. But though 
 your national claims are not unjust, the hour to 
 enforce them as we always enforced ours has 
 gone by I trust that it has gone by. Much will 
 depend upon the peace when it comes much! 
 If it is an evil peace, Germany will be justified 
 not in her best but in her worst motives and ac- 
 tions. If it is a good peace she will be cleansed 
 and we shall be cleansed with her. Ah, all this 
 blood cannot, cannot have been shed in vain! 
 The peace must be just and good and things must 
 return to their finest level. Always we have 
 given our ideas to Germany to nurse for us, as 
 we give our children in France to strong and 
 sane people in the country and do not ask them 
 back until they themselves are strong and sane. 
 And like a faithful nurse, Germany developed all 
 our ideas, whether they consisted of a new motor 
 or of a philosophical system. And so it will be 
 again. In our delight over our liberation from 
 our nobles we have given ourselves up defense- 
 lessly to the scorpions of capitalism. And we 
 have nothing lef Uof the rights of man for which 
 we once fought but conscription, which once 
 upon a time we assumed gladly as a means of 
 self-defense ! Your countrymen, solid and thor- 
 ough as they are, have taken the opposite course 
 they began by cultivating their duties and will 
 266
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 now arise to defend their rights. And the hands 
 which are now lonely yours and ours will find 
 each other. For there is one language that is 
 spoken in all the world. The starving Hindoo 
 coolie understands it as well as the men who, de- 
 serted by all but death, have lain opposite each 
 other it is the language of pain and the lan- 
 guage of the soul that rebels against the injustice 
 that it has suffered. And all nations have been 
 imprisoned behind boundaries and given uniform 
 varnishes and have been egged on against each 
 other, and have been caught in nets of ostensible 
 duties and honors in order that that universal 
 speech might be silenced. But that is over ! But 
 for that very reason the suffering had to be so un- 
 endurably monstrous in order that all the fetters 
 might snap like paper thread ! The whole world 
 is in labor and is bearing the rights of man that 
 have been in her womb for two hundred years 
 and are now to see the light completely formed 
 for all time. Be sure of that !" 
 
 His pleasant young voice shook. He was un- 
 manned by the depth of his own faith. He turned 
 away and held out his hand to Gadsky. 
 
 Gadsky took the hand in both of his. Moved 
 beyond his wont and with a sigh he said : "Let 
 us hope sol" 
 
 Behind the mountains the sun showed its ulti- 
 mate splendor and laid a bar of gold upon the 
 ridges. All the colors of the scene flamed up 
 once more as though nature itself was for a mo- 
 
 287
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 ment radiant with the hopes that lived in Mer- 
 lier's eyes. 
 
 Gadsky remembered a picture, a poor litho- 
 graph that he had seen somewhere in the corri- 
 dor of an inn. It was called "The Covenant of 
 Griitli." It showed a mountain meadow flooded 
 by sun or moonlight and three quaint old men 
 with flowing beards who raised their hands in 
 solemn affirmation. Thus had the Swiss Kepub- 
 lic been founded. And was not the peace that 
 filled this evening scene, was not this whole 
 blessed land which, in the midst of a world's 
 rage and hate, alone held human life a holy thing 
 was it not rooted in that ancient oath? 
 
 He looked at Merlier, saw his own gray sleeve 
 melt into his friend's blue one and repeated, put- 
 ting all his heart into the words: "Let us hope 
 
 80 !" 
 
 A gray and ugly day showed through the rain- 
 swept panes as the train pulled out of the sta- 
 tion at Lucerne. The crowded carriage smelled 
 of damp garments and wilted flowers ; the leaden 
 heaviness of the morning lay in all limbs and the 
 convulsive merriment, the exaggerated mood 
 that whirred about him heightened Gadsky's dis- 
 couraged sadness to an aggressive irritation 
 which he found it difficult to suppress. The 
 crude jests, the loud laughter were like blows to 
 him. Why did these men act as though a fine 
 dream of theirs were approaching its fulfillment, 
 as though they had really been eager to be trans- 
 268
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 ported back to their own country which, as 
 things were, would mean again the barracks and 
 drill and, in the end, the trenches? Had he not 
 seen them await the decision full of dread? Only 
 two elderly men who yearned for their families 
 had reported voluntarily when first the question 
 of a possible exchange of prisoners had come up 
 in the hospital. Whence did the others take the 
 courage to act as merrily now as though they had 
 never confessed their true and secret feelings to 
 each other? Was it, or was it not, an empty pre- 
 tense? . . . Could the two weeks' leave, the 
 short period of grace that would be granted 
 them, make them blind to all the horrors that 
 awaited them as behind a screen of gaudy paper? 
 Gadsky listened to the rhythmic thumping of 
 the wheels, stared out into the dripping land- 
 scape, sought in vain not to hear the words and 
 cries that reminded him of school children re- 
 turning home. He would like to have had his 
 friends here Weiler, for instance, or that mys- 
 terious stretcher-bearer ! They would, of course, 
 have defended this dull, patient, murderous 
 crowd against all his accusations! What did 
 these innocent souls really hope for? What for- 
 tified their unshakable faith in the "people"? 
 And had not Merlier, too, no longer ago than the 
 day before, spoken with deep conviction of the 
 awakening of these sleepers, spoken exactly as 
 Weiler would have done? Were his friends 
 blind? Did not one glance into this carriage 
 suffice to cure one forever of such dreams? 
 
 269
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 "Awakening?" "A new vanity?" What force 
 would be strong enough to change the aim and di- 
 rection of these lives, since even the experiences 
 of the war had been obliterated, leaving no trace, 
 by the prospect of a two weeks' vacation at home? 
 
 But as his eyes searched the men before him 
 his anger changed to honest envy. A careless 
 and sincere happiness which could not be merely 
 assumed gleamed from all faces. Yet they all 
 brought home the same memories ; all had sworn 
 a hundred times that no power on earth could 
 force them back into the slaughter! Every one 
 who sat here would have cried out in horror and 
 rage if in the field or in foreign captivity a 
 prophet had told him that a two weeks' leave of 
 absence would make him subservient once more 
 to the machine of war. There was not one man 
 in the whole train who had not an hundred times 
 clenched his fists, murmured dark oaths of ven- 
 geance, spoken somber and secret words even in 
 Switzerland against the shamelessness of those 
 on the press and behind it who released anew 
 the indignation of the civilian populations and 
 sought to hide the facts of the war behind a veil 
 of rhetoric. They had likened this to the drum- 
 taps which accompany a man to execution. There 
 was not one here who, in this return home, was 
 not acting the traitor to his own soul and to all 
 his comrades. Not one seemed to remember his 
 sacred promise to speak out and spread the truth 
 if ever, as the phrase went, he got home once 
 more! 
 270
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 Oh, how gladly he would have leaped up and 
 hurled that sentence back at those who had re- 
 peated it so many thousand times. He could have 
 taken each individual by the shoulder and struck 
 him for his base forgetfulness. His nails sank 
 into his own flesh, so great was his suffering un- 
 der this assault of false and empty noise. 
 
 He closed his eyes and all that he had suffered 
 in the past two years traveled through his soul. 
 He saw Weiler foaming at the mouth,, strapped 
 to the stretcher, he saw the disemboweled body 
 of Frobel, the crashed-in face of the Jew; he 
 heard the captain cry out like a tortured animal 
 as the skin flapped over his eye. He looked at his 
 own hands and felt the great, crimson welt on 
 his chest and thought of the little Frenchman 
 with the timid mustache, the first brother man 
 whom he had slain. And finally he felt a dim 
 compassion for himself too, at the recollection 
 of his passive martyrdom in the French hospital 
 and on that terrible transport train where a 
 raw beast played with him as though he were a 
 captured insect. 
 
 And all these things had suddenly lost their 
 significance and were supposed to fade into noth- 
 ingness before the insignia on the collar of Ser- 
 geant Xavier Stuff ! 
 
 The thought ate into him like fire. Every fiber 
 of his body rebelled against the injustice. He 
 could see himself in the barracks, standing at 
 attention, condescendingly greeted by the ser- 
 geant who might let him wait at the door, who 
 
 271
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 could conceivably insult him or even place him 
 under arrest as though nothing had happened 
 within the two years! The nameless bitterness 
 which Mathilde's first visit had aroused in him 
 broke out in him again, throttled him and made 
 him resolve not to submit, not to be put off with 
 two weeks like the others! 
 
 Mght after night Stuff had lain in his com- 
 fortable bed beside his large spouse. Now the 
 man could rule him again ! No ! If no one else 
 had any piety toward his own torments he 
 would set them an example ! He would speak out 
 the words that he had sworn to speak when 
 death was his chief witness. It was well that he 
 had, first of all, to report at the barracks to wait 
 on Sergeant Stuff. It would serve to harden his 
 purpose. No beseeching of Mathilde would deter 
 him. They could all keep their indulgence for 
 the slackers and the released. He wanted no 
 favor. He needed justice ! 
 
 He would raise his pierced lung and his whit- 
 ening temples like a banner for all the world to 
 see ! He would proclaim the truth that he who 
 came home broken and patched need not bow 
 down to any one, but could demand the respect 
 of those who had been fed and warmed far from 
 all danger, even though braids and stars, even 
 though diamonds adorned their uniforms. 
 
 And he would refuse his release from further 
 service ! He would reject any exceptional treat- 
 ment! He desired for himself only what every 
 man should demand. And it was this that no 
 272
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 one should be sent twice into the firing-line, that 
 no one should sweat the bloody sweat twice so 
 long as there were men in the land who, under 
 whatever pretext, had not yet staked their lives 
 nor put the burden of slaughter on their souls. 
 
 This fight he would fight to the finish come 
 what might. He threw back his head proudly, 
 uplifted by his resolve. And then he looked about 
 frightened, as though awakening from a deep 
 dream. For he had been but dimly aware in 
 the midst of his thoughts of the detrainment and 
 the boarding of the steamer. But he was al- 
 ready on its deck and about him were the waters 
 of Lake Constance and the Swiss shore was softly 
 receding and from the mast fluttered the im- 
 perial flag. 
 
 He hastened forward where the crowding was 
 not so great and tried to remember how he had 
 come here. Dimly, as though years lay between, 
 the images arose before him the thrusting and 
 pushing, the examination of his papers, the pud- 
 dles into which, tottering under one's heavy lug- 
 gage, one was propelled. Then laughter and the 
 thundering of many heavy heels on a bridge. 
 He could hardly believe that all this had hap- 
 pened. 
 
 Lake Constance! 
 
 A dust-like rain swept against his face. The 
 ship plowed its way into the grayish wall of fog 
 that still kept the German shore from view. 
 
 He remembered his last trip across the lake. 
 Where the army packs towered, the leather trav- 
 
 273
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 eling bags had lain. And when the shore ap- 
 peared, a charming little Viennese lady had be- 
 gun to cry because she had to return to St. Mo- 
 ritz. Dear God, how easy life had been once upon 
 a time. . . . 
 
 He stepped to the railing to take his leave of 
 Switzerland. But the shore had disappeared. 
 The steamer was wrapped round by the fog as by 
 wet clothes. He could see only the side-wheel 
 shovel the water into foam and the banner on 
 the masthead. 
 
 Gadsky wanted to sit down but the crowd was 
 surging forward. In the other direction there 
 was no longer anything to see. Soon it was im- 
 possible to move. Each wanted to be the first to 
 see the shore of the fatherland emerge from the 
 fog. Round about him bottles were opened and 
 men who had not seen each other since the oc- 
 casion of their capture celebrated this meeting 
 with delight. A giant of the Cameroon territori- 
 als recognized his father in the person of a 
 wrinkled little reservist; an officer from the up- 
 per deck nodded with kind condescension to 
 where, amid the crowd, he recognized one of his 
 recruits and called to him by name. Joy radi- 
 ated from all faces as though these men were 
 really returning to liberty or to their fatherland 
 in its normal and noble sense. 
 
 Gadsky looked in vain for some breach in the 
 human wall about him. What was that? He 
 swung around. But his name had been called. 
 It was too late for escape. It was the sergeant 
 274
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 had reported the Ducre"cy episode and had 
 then pursued him with his small maliciousness 
 until his transfer to Lucerne had put an end to 
 that. He approached Gadsky with a grin and 
 jeered in his ugly cracked voice: "You don't 
 look very happy ! I suppose you'd rather go back 
 to the French prison camp hobnobbing with the 
 fat major?" 
 
 Gadsky didn't answer. He stood at attention, 
 annoyed, as of old, by the mechanical function- 
 ing of his muscles at the sight of a sergeant's 
 coat. It recalled Stuff, who had trained him so 
 perfectly. 
 
 "Of course, you won't be such a big man in the 
 army as you were with those French people!" 
 the sergeant continued, and his bony face glowed 
 with malicious pleasure. "Where are you sta- 
 tioned, anyhow?" 
 
 Gadsky coldly named the city and returned 
 the gaze of the evil, little eyes. They were bound 
 for the same place. He knew that from the pris- 
 on-camp, where he had had charge of the mail. 
 The thought flamed up in him at once that this 
 vengeful creature would blacken his character to 
 Stuff. 
 
 He trembled at the danger of further ques- 
 tions, and breathed a sigh of relief when the man 
 finally returned to the group of his friends with 
 a condescending inclination of the head. His 
 release from further service couldn't be accom- 
 plished in a day or even a week, no matter what 
 influences Mathilde had set in motion. It only 
 
 275
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 needed the evil accident of this man's meeting 
 Stuff to give the latter as well as his superiors the 
 necessary military pretext to refuse. 
 
 Was he afraid? Surely not! He had no rea- 
 son to cringe! He could have beaten his own 
 body for harboring this unworthy fear. What 
 was the gossip of two sergeants to him. He came 
 from captivity. Deep scars were on his body. 
 He would not forget that again ! 
 
 He tried, with the utmost determination, to 
 make his way through the crowd. But the path 
 led by a group of non-commissioned officers; he 
 would have actually to brush the detestable ser- 
 geant with his sleeve. And just as he had nearly 
 succeeded in getting past, a merry group came 
 from the opposite direction and forced him into 
 the circle he desired most to avoid. 
 
 "I'll ask to be assigned to a camp of French 
 prisoners," he heard one of the men say. "And 
 the fellows that I get hold of won't have a picnic, 
 believe me. For eighteen bloody months their 
 countrymen wiped their heels on me. I'll knock 
 the hell out of 'em!" 
 
 He didn't stop to hear more. A darkness had 
 descended on his eyes, a nausea had arisen from 
 his stomach. Here was the spirit of the war, the 
 universal spirit of the war. Hope was folly. 
 Kegardlessly he shoved aside all who blocked 
 his way, careless of the angry words that pur- 
 sued him, fought his way through and reached 
 the other end of the ship. He was covered with 
 sweat. But it was quieter here. There were 
 only small groups here gray-haired men of the 
 276
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 last line of reserves, cripples with crutches, and 
 under the fluttering flag, huddled in traveling 
 robes, the terrible wreck of a man in a wheel- 
 chair. 
 
 Gadsky stood bending out over the railing and 
 stared into the pearly wake left by the steamer. 
 He thought of Merlier. . . . These were the peo- 
 ple whom he wanted to awaken to goodness. 
 These were the carriers of a new future! Be- 
 cause they knew from their own sufferings how 
 hard a lot it is to be defenseless in the hands 
 of hostile men, they desired to inflict the same 
 fate on others. Not even their own pain could 
 make them merciful to another's. And if these 
 bitter memories had no power over their hearts, 
 what words could ever win them? How could 
 another's martyrdom inspire them? How could 
 a brave man's example spur them on? How 
 could ideas that no one was able to impress on 
 them become their motives? 
 
 "Eight!" . . . "Human dignity!" . . . Gad- 
 sky laughed a sarcastic laugh and looked sus- 
 piciously at the men behind him who were car- 
 rying on a loud conversation. A broad-shoul- 
 dered marine, smoking a pipe, was talking con- 
 descendingly to the crew of the lake steamer. 
 And these inland sailors looked reverently up at 
 the sailor of the deep seas and shook their heads 
 in awe and wonder. 
 
 Gadsky heard fragments of their talk mere 
 fragments, but the words "prisoners of war" 
 and "war-captivity" clung to his mind and 
 suddenly assumed a strange and different and 
 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 ghastly reasonableness of sound and meaning. 
 
 "Prisoner of war !" He turned the word about 
 as though it were a rare coin. Did that mean: 
 Imprisoned by the war? Then he was surely 
 on the way back to that fateful captivity and not 
 returning from it! 
 
 The ship was sailing straight into the war. 
 Hidden behind the fog was the unspeakable maw 
 of the war which would crunch him between its 
 grinders the moment he set foot on land. 
 
 "Prisoner of war!" A single sentence from 
 the conversation he had held with Merlier twen- 
 ty-four hours earlier would almost suffice to 
 bring him to the gallows in that captivity of war 
 to which he was going. For wherever war is, 
 thought is slain. War in all lands has to make 
 its captives dumb and blind. A thinking army 
 has no morale. He would have to choke in in- 
 tolerable silence. There would be silence in the 
 barracks, silence on the street, silence wherever 
 strange ears could overhear. . . . 
 
 "Prisoner of war!" 
 
 With wild eyes he looked about him. He saw 
 the men lift up their packs and storm forward. 
 Mechanically he shouldered his own pack too and 
 fastened the straps and felt his knees tremble 
 under the weight, so weak had he grown. 
 
 "Prisoner of war!" The words would not let 
 him go. Was he not mad to risk that captivity 
 once again? 
 
 From forward a singing came to his ears and 
 loud hurrahs and cries of joy. Germany? . . . 
 He bent far over to see. and his head was as 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 heavy as a stone. As with grappling irons the 
 words "prisoner of war" had hooked themselves 
 into his brain and seemed to weigh him down 
 even as the song rose higher and higher. 
 
 It seemed to him as though on the approaching 
 gangplank he could: see the crimson face of 
 Stuff contorted into a grin of fiendish delight. 
 Triumphantly the man was awaiting his pris- 
 oner of war and carrying clanking chains for his 
 limbs and mind. A few minutes more and the 
 chains would be used. . . . Whither could one 
 flee? . . . 
 
 He had a vision of himself caught in the chains 
 and driven along by Stuff under the lashes of a 
 whip! And round about stood people and 
 laughed. A short, hoarse moan came from him. 
 He wanted to open his tunic and show his deep, 
 deep scar. Then he let his arms sink. It was 
 all nonsense. Mathilde might even now have 
 procured his definite release. . . . 
 
 No! He must save himself! A cry for help 
 stuck in his throat. But he knew with a mad 
 certainty that he could not land, that he could 
 not return to the captivity of war, to Stuff and 
 the chains. . . . He must not, whatever the 
 cost. . . . 
 
 Music struck on his ear. The foghorn blew 
 its blast. And he saw the prison open, saw it 
 arise from the fog in its might! And the fog 
 hung so deep that it hid the hills of his father- 
 land from his sight and also the tops of the 
 trees, so that only their trunks showed like the 
 serried bars of a huge cage. . . . 
 
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 THE JUDGMENT OF PEACE 
 
 In another minute and he would be behind the 
 bars and Stuff would lock the gate and pocket 
 the keys. . . . 
 
 No! 
 
 They must not have him again ! A blessed re- 
 solve poured through his veins. He bent over 
 farther and farther. ... The thought of Ma- 
 thilde flashed through his mind. . . . But al- 
 ready the heavy pack had glided forward and 
 pulled him down and pressed him toward the 
 water as with an iron fist. He wanted to utter 
 her name. His hands struggled but found no 
 resting-place. With a great cry of "No !" he was 
 plunged into the white foam. 
 
 "Man overboard!" the marine roared at the 
 top of his voice. 
 
 No one heard him. All were crowding for- 
 ward, waving their caps and kerchiefs. 
 
 "Damn it! Man overboard!" The marine 
 looked about for a rope or a life-belt. He found 
 neither and raced up the stairs. On the upper 
 deck he saw, far in the wake now, a head bobbing 
 out of the water and behind it, swollen to a great 
 size, a soldier's pack. 
 
 "Man overboard!" the marine roared toward 
 the bridge. But the captain could not hear his 
 voice because it was drowned by a song that 
 came from many hundred voices : 
 
 "In the homeland, in the homeland, 
 There we shall meet again." 
 
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