OPTIMIST What?! The most peace-loving emperor of all time, the champion of the young with his proverbial affability, the chivalrous monarch, the kind old gentleman in Schönbrunn who was spared nothing — is that any way to speak of him, especially now he’s dead?
GRUMBLER He’s dead? Well, aside from the fact that I wouldn’t believe it, even if I knew it to be true, I have to say that this won’t save his bacon at the Last Judgment. For once he won’t be able to claim favours or plead piety: no more wangling it! Above all, death will count less as a means of exoneration from punishment than as a prerequisite for judgment. I’d also like to think that it is more pleasing to God to honour the awful majesty of death at the graves of ten million men and boys, of hundreds of thousands of mothers and infants who starved to death — than before a single tomb in the Capuchin Crypt containing the old man who had weighed everything in the balance and, with a stroke of the pen, brought it to pass; and that the tortured visage of the human survivors will bear implacable witness before that supreme tribunal against this same dead individual. For this embodiment of homely congeniality who was spared nothing — which was why he spared the world nothing, let them say what they like and be damned! — one day passed a death sentence on the world.
OPTIMIST But surely you don’t believe the Emperor wanted this war? After all, he’s supposed to have said he was tricked into it!
GRUMBLER Absolutely. That’s what happens. I don’t mean him as an individual being tricked into it. I mean the lunacy of these monarchical systems that made it possible to trick both him and us. I’m thinking of the bloodthirsty demon of his accursed dynasty, whose workings were made manifest in just those imperial whiskers and in a conviviality that shed precisely the blood it could not see. I do not know who, I only know what governed us; and that for seven decades this spectral state presented the world with the spectacle of a commode disguised as a throne, on which the inveterate absentee of legend squatted manfully at his ease. Of him as a person I know only that he was mediocre and stiffly formal. But precisely these attributes, in conjunction with the lethal poisons of the times and of this country’s tangled nationalities, meant we were inevitably heading for disaster. Franz Ferdinand, he of the grim visage, who could have avoided this by sheer willpower — for it is not what one wills, but simply the fact of willing, that could stem the chaos — Franz Ferdinand was destined, by his death, only to cause gleefully malicious flames to shoot up from the witch’s cauldron of the monarchy. If this Franz Joseph, who was spared nothing except a personality, had not been tricked into world war, he would have died rejoicing in the calamitous but well-preserved Austro-Hungarian world. As his successor, Franz Ferdinand might well have put things right without bloodshed. But Franz Joseph was spared that possibility — thanks to the safety measures provided for touring heirs to the throne. He preferred to prepare its final eclipse by world war and inevitable defeat.
OPTIMIST Franz Joseph was in a helpless situation.
GRUMBLER Certainly, he’d been tricked into it, while Germany, the more active partner in the Special Relationship, obliged him to hurl us into the breach.
OPTIMIST What are you insinuating by safety measures provided for touring heirs to the throne?
GRUMBLER That one could safely predict the result of the trip to Sarajevo.
OPTIMIST That’s merely a conspiracy theory. Though it’s certainly amazing that the most powerful man in the monarchy couldn’t arrange greater security for the trip, but—
GRUMBLER —it’s understandable. For when he tried to arrange it, he was no longer a living force. Deprived of that, a powerful man no longer has any influence.
OPTIMIST But surely he was only assassinated after—
GRUMBLER —his attempts were unsuccessful, quite so. All right, then, if you insist on the chronology: a powerful man can do anything except prevent his own assassination.
OPTIMIST You surely aren’t suggesting that Franz Joseph, who was spared nothing, had his nephew done away with! That would be easy to disprove, for when he received news of the assassination—
GRUMBLER —one eye wept and the other shone. His Majesty’s need of rest meant that the funeral service was curtailed and the World War initiated. It was mankind that was awarded a first-class funeral.
OPTIMIST The assassination of an heir to the throne surely provides—
GRUMBLER —a welcome pretext for a purposeful strategy. The fact that the speculation came unstuck and Austria suffered heavy losses in her search for lost prestige — that’s another story. Malice aforethought and criminal intent will still count at the Last Judgment.
OPTIMIST But surely you won’t blame the monarch’s personal characteristics for—
GRUMBLER They’re of little interest to me. Doubtless he was merely a pedant, not a tyrant, cold but not cruel. If he had been, then perhaps he would have retained enough mental vigour into old age not to allow himself to be tricked. He would have known his limits. All he did was count the buttons on his uniform — so the uniform had to prove its mettle. He was a tireless worker, and one day, among the execution warrants he signed, there was a document that condemned mankind to death. It wasn’t what they intended, none of them. But since the rest of us most definitely didn’t want it, all we can do is blame them. The imperial calling just happens to require that whoever wants to be left in peace, and then starts a world war to achieve it, is saddled with total responsibility on Doomsday. Just as the uniform of a retired country postman would provide no alibi if he turns out to be a vampire. A Christian on his deathbed should not regard the danger of losing his benefice as a greater evil than if he were to endanger all his fellow men, nor purchase the salvation of his soul by calamitously encumbering everyone else. And so I believe, at the very least, that the evil genius of his house was involved in the decision, and I believe most definitely in the possibility that a few villains, lacking in imagination, were able to make him sign his famous manifesto, passing the buck for their bloodthirsty senile dementia on to the peace-loving old man who sees no option but to sign the stylistically perfect document. He had weighed everything in the balance — then he was tricked into it. It’s typically Austrian bad luck that the ogre who provoked the catastrophe should have the features of a kindly old gentleman. He has weighed everything in the balance, but he can’t do anything about it: that, finally, is the most cruel tragedy of all, one that he was not spared. I’ve composed a song about it, as long as his life, a never-ending melody which I put in his mouth when he appears in my drama of the World War. I wrote this tragico-satirical song, like a large part of the play, in 1915—that is, when he was still alive — in case you want to insist, dreamer that you are, that we’re now governed by a Karl and no longer by a Franz Joseph.