(Change of scene.)
Scene 18
The Durchhalter family apartment.
MOTHER Take you sandals off in the house, I can’t hear myself think!
CHILD Ain’t we got nothing to eat again today, Ma?
MOTHER Cheeky pup! I’ll learn you — (she’s about to have a go at him. The doorbell rings.) That’s your Dad! He’s been queueing for swedes, let’s hope—
(Sandals clatter. The father, in a cheap suit made of wood pulp yarn, appears in the doorway.)
CHILDREN Bread, father!
FATHER Children, Russia is starving!
(Change of scene.)
Scene 19
Subscriber to the Neue Freie Presse and Patriot in conversation.
SUBSCRIBER We’ll soon have wheat from the Ukraine now, you’ll see.
PATRIOT More power to Czernin’s elbow! Brest-Litovsk means “peace with bread”! Let them try to starve us out now!
(Change of scene.)
Scene 20
Sofia. A banquet of German and Bulgarian newspaper editors.
COUNT OBERNDORFF, GERMAN AMBASSADOR (rises) Esteemed guests! It gives me great pleasure every time I have the privilege of bringing together German and Bulgarian friends for a congenial exchange of views under one roof and the fluttering black-white-red banner. But today it is a very special pleasure. For I welcome you, esteemed gentlemen of the German and Bulgarian press, as — if I may so put it — colleagues.
CRIES OF Bravo! Cheers, dear colleague!
GERMAN AMBASSADOR Even if we have a bone to pick with each other now and again, as can happen between those in the same line of business, diplomacy and the press are closely entwined with one another.
CRIES OF Bravo! Bravo!
GERMAN AMBASSADOR No good journalist lacks that diplomatic sixth sense, no capable diplomat ever made the grade in his profession without a good dash of printer’s ink in his veins.
CRIES OF Stout fellow!
GERMAN AMBASSADOR I say profession, but the word is inadequate. What we practise is an art, an exalted art, and the instrument on which we play is the noblest imaginable, the very soul of the peoples!
CRIES OF Quite right!
GERMAN AMBASSADOR What diplomacy and the press united can achieve, this World War has demonstrated.
CRIES OF Absolutely!
GERMAN AMBASSADOR We should learn from our enemies. If we turn our thoughts to all the diplomatic powers-that-be in the Entente, and evoke such names as The Times and Le Matin, Reuter’s and Havas news agencies, Novoje Vremja in St. Petersburg, not to mention the minor satellites in Rome, Bucharest, Belgrade, then we must admit that this was an alliance that can boast of its successes. Successful lies, success in pulling the wool over people’s eyes—
CRIES OF And how!
GERMAN AMBASSADOR —rage and hatred, the like of which the world has never seen. It is indeed a powerful alliance, one fearful to behold, yet it is but an artificially inflated colossus which will one day implode and collapse. For it lacks the spirit which animates and sustains life — the truth. And the truth is on our side in this fight.
CRIES OF Hear! Hear!
GERMAN AMBASSADOR You are fighting with it, gentlemen of the German and Bulgarian press, and you are fighting for it, in the proud knowledge that every success won by the truth is also a success for our communal cause. On the day the scales finally fall from the eyes of the peoples who are being incited to a futile war against us, the day when they realize what we’re really made of—
CRIES OF Hurrah!
GERMAN AMBASSADOR —our invincible armies and our unconquerable souls — on that day the World War ends! (Sits down. Toasts all round.)
CRIES OF Hurrah — Cheers, dear colleague! — Mud in your eye, Count!
KLEINECKE (BERLIN) I get the feeling, my friend, that the Balkan crew are running scared. Haven’t you noticed, not a peep—!
STEINECKE (HANOVER) That hadn’t escaped my notice. But anyway, what the hell! Oberndorff was wonderful.
KLEINECKE (BERLIN) One good point after the other. The man really does have a good dash of printer’s ink in his veins.
STEINECKE (HANOVER) He’s just about the best speaker we have right now. The truth is on our side in this fight — a simple statement, yet at the same time, how true!
KLEINECKE (BERLIN) Yes, since the day we were able to announce that French planes dropped bombs on Nuremberg. That’s what started the war.