Help me, you who have been done to death! Help me, so that I don’t have to live among those who, for ambition’s sake or to save their skins, gave orders for beating hearts to be terminated and mothers’ hair to turn white! Forasmuch as there is surely a living God, only a miracle can redeem their fate! Come back to life! Ask them what they did to you! What they were doing while you suffered for them, before you died for them! What they were doing while you spent your winters in Galicia! What they were doing that night when commanders phoning your forward position received no answer. All was Quiet on the Eastern Front. Only later did they see you standing there, resolute, shoulder to shoulder, rifles at the ready. For you were not among those who deserted to the enemy, nor those who retreated, nor among those freezing troops a fatherly commander in chief felt the need to heat up with machine-gun fire. You held your positions and did not fall back a single step into the murderous clutches of your Fatherland. The enemy in front, your own country behind, and above you the everlasting stars! You didn’t take refuge in suicide. You didn’t die for your country, you didn’t die because of your country; you died neither through enemy armaments nor your own — you stood there and died from natural causes — you froze to death! What perseverance! What a Habsburg Crypt!
Corpses ready for the fight, protagonists of the Habsburg death-in-life: close ranks and haunt their sleep! Wake from your frozen state! Step forward, you dear friend and kindred spirit, step forward and demand that they give back your life! You died in a field hospital — where are you now? The last letter I sent you was returned, stamped “Deported. Address unknown.” Step forward and tell them where you are and what it’s like, and that you will never again permit them to use you for such a purpose! And you, too, condemned in your last moment to have death written in your face when the beast in charge burst into your trench, formerly perhaps a creature like yourself, now foaming at the mouth — step forward! Not that you had to die, no, but that this was what you had to live through — this makes all future sleep and dying in bed a sin. It is not your death, but what you lived through that I will avenge on those who forced you to die!
I have cast them as the shadows that they are — hollow men putting on an empty show! I have stripped them of their flesh! But I have given shape to the thoughts behind their stupidity and the impulses behind their depravity, making them act out the disjointed rhythms of their nonexistence. If the voice of this epoch had been recorded, the outer truth would have belied the inner, and the ear would have recognized neither. So time renders reality unrecognizable and would grant an amnesty even to the greatest crime ever committed under the heavens. But I have preserved the essence of their actions, and my ear has uncovered the sound of what was done, my eye the gestures of what was spoken, and my voice, even when merely quoting, has caught the keynote of the era for all time.
And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
How these things came about: so shall ye hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;
Of deaths put on by cunning and forc’d cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall’n on the inventors’ heads; all this can I
Truly deliver.
And if the times no longer hear, surely an ear above shall hear. I have done no more than condense the scale of mass murder, taking the measure of the amorphous alliance between the age of journalism and the journalism of the age. Its blood was merely ink — now the writing will be in blood! This is the World War. This is my manifesto. I have weighed everything in the balance. The tragedy, fractured into scenes reflecting mankind’s fallen state, I have taken upon myself, so that it may be heard by a spirit that takes pity on the victims, even if it had renounced forever all connection to a human ear. Let it hear the keynote of these times, the echo of my bloodthirsty obsession, which makes me complicit with these cries. Let it be an act of redemption!
(From outside, at a great distance, the cry — “Ex — traaa!”)
(Change of scene.)
Scene 55
Ceremonial banquet at the headquarters of an army corps. A colossal painting, In This Age of Grandeur, takes up the whole of the wall facing the audience. A collation of pork dishes known as Sow Dance is being served. The band is playing “Our old friend Noah knew what’s best,/The softest boa won’t warm your breast” to the music of Kálmán. The feast is almost over. Officers from the armies of the Central Powers are toasting each other. Distant rumbling of cannons. A lieutenant of Hussars hurls a champagne glass against the wall.
PRUSSIAN COLONEL (beside the general, humming and nodding) Our old friend Noah knew what’s best, eh? — Down the hatch!
AUSTRIAN GENERAL (rises to cheers, taps his glass for silence) Gentlemen — well, now — now that our officer corps has — come through — four years of unparalleled struggle — against the vastly superior strength of the whole world — let me just say — given the faith I place in my staff — I’m totally convinced — we shall continue — undaunted — if at all feasible — to take it on the chin! Our heroic warriors — brave lads! — hardened in battle — are marching towards new victories — we shall stand firm! — the enemy are shattered and sundered — and we’ll shatter ’em wherever we find ’em — and this day — this day, gentlemen — will be a millstone — I mean a milestone in the annals of our glorious army for evermore! (Cheering.) — Up and at ’em! But from you, gentlemen, on whom the most difficult task in this unparalleled struggle is — incumbent — just as it is — encumbered — by our faithful troops, faithful unto death and duty-bound to the — utmost flogging — to the most unflagging — efforts — I expect you one and all to do your duty putting aside personal interests to the last breath of man and mount! The time has come for the final flourish, it will be hot work, but we know — the stakes are high. Indeed! That’s why we are assembled here, each of us at his post — and each of us will stand our ground, hold out to the last — in this very place — where our duty has posted us as soldiers — where service to His Majesty has sent us — as loyal officers! (Cheering)