OPTIMIST These people are manifestly impatient to get to the front. This privilege is being withheld from them—
GRUMBLER No, it is being offered to them: “Consequently the War Ministry is compelled to decree that such cases shall be prosecuted with the full rigour of the law. The prescribed penalties are severe, and can be made even more so through appropriate sanctions; moreover the offender, once convicted, shall draw no wages while incarcerated, so that conviction in such cases may be taken to constitute a highly effective deterrent and corrective—”
OPTIMIST Those are indeed severe penalties, and such characters have also forfeited any prospect of being sent to the front.
GRUMBLER Not quite. “Workers liable for military service who are investigated and identified by due legal process as the ringleaders of such outrages are no longer to be returned to their workplace after completing their sentence, but are to be transferred by the military controllers of the factories in question to the nearest reserve unit with a view to their being drafted to the appropriate troop formation. On arrival, these persons are to undergo immediate training and to be assigned to the nearest battalion scheduled for the front. If any worker thus compulsorily enlisted is classified as suitable only for sentry duties, arrangements are to be made for him, after the completion of his training, to be assigned to a sentry squad in or adjacent to the combat zone. Signed, for the War Minister, by General Schleyer with his own hand.”
(The Optimist is speechless.)
You seem to be at a loss for words. As you see, people who long for the good fortune of getting to the front end up instead being sent to the front as punishment.
OPTIMIST Yes — even as a specially severe punishment!
GRUMBLER Yes, indeed — the Fatherland conceives of the opportunity to die for the Fatherland as punishment, and the most grievous punishment to boot. For the citizen, it is the highest honour. He wants to die a hero’s death. Instead of which he is sent for training and assigned to the next battalion scheduled for the front. He wants to enlist, instead of which he is compulsorily enlisted.
OPTIMIST I can’t believe it — a punishment!
GRUMBLER There are various degrees. First, a disciplinary measure, secondly, a tribunal hearing, thirdly, imprisonment, and fourthly, the most severe form of penalty: the front. The repeat offenders are sent to the field of honour. The ringleaders! Those with a criminal record are sentenced to a hero’s death. A hero’s death, for the Chief of the General Staff, namely when it is his son who dies, is a grievous blow of fate; the War Minister calls it a punishment. Both are right — the one and the other — the first true words spoken in this war.
OPTIMIST Yes, you make it difficult to be an optimist.
GRUMBLER No, that’s not so. After all, I admit that true words are also uttered in wartime. Especially regarding the main point at issue. I’d almost forgotten the truest of all.
OPTIMIST Which is?
GRUMBLER Something that could almost reconcile you to “being compulsorily enlisted”, or vengeance for debasing mankind as “human raw material”: namely, “being activated”, for as long as mobilisation lasts, as a MOB! After FLAK and KAG and RAG and all the other abominations, one almost welcomes these amputations of language — and of life. For as long as mobilisation lasts, we are truly activated as a MOB!
OPTIMIST Your approach drains the colour from every patriotic flag. Is everything a lie, everything prostitution? Where can truth be found?
GRUMBLER With the prostitutes!
Let no one dare deride the memory
of those so often spurned as Fallen Women!
They stood their ground against a greater foe,
the Monstrous Regiment of Men. They fell,
each one alone, the mistress of her fate,
not facing random threats from mere machines
from which you might escape, for they defied
the stormtroops of implacable repression.
They are the Fallen. So let’s honour those
heroic victims of the field of honour
who served the greater motherland of Nature!
(Change of scene.)
Scene 30
Somewhere on the shores of the Adriatic. In the hangar of a seaplane squadron.
ALICE SCHALEK (enters and looks around) Of all the problems of this war, that of individual bravery interests me most. Even before the war began I often pondered the nature of heroism, for I had met men aplenty who put their lives on the line — American cowboys, pioneering explorers in the jungles and primeval forests, missionaries in the desert. But they usually looked like you imagine heroes look, every muscle taut as if forged of steel. How different the heroes you are faced with now in the World War. They’re people with a liking for the most harmless jokes, who secretly dream of hot chocolate with cream on top, and then tell you now and again of their experiences, which are among the most amazing the world has ever seen. And yet! — The War Press Bureau is now quartered on an empty steamship lying at anchor in a bay. In the evening a big dinner, music and wild goings-on; shut your eyes, and you could imagine yourself back in the old days at some jolly revel in the mess. Well, I’m dying to find out how the sub-lieutenant of this frigate — ah, here he is! (The sub-lieutenant of the frigate has entered.) I haven’t much time, so keep it brief. You are a bombardier, so, what do you feel when you’re dropping bombs?
SUB-LIEUTENANT OF FRIGATE Usually we circle the enemy coast for half an hour or so, drop a few bombs on the military targets, watch them explode, photograph the fireworks, and then return to base.
SCHALEK Have you ever been in mortal danger?
SUB-LIEUTENANT Yes.
SCHALEK What did you feel?
SUB-LIEUTENANT What did I feel?
SCHALEK (aside) He looks at me closely and somewhat askance, weighing up subconsciously how I can be expected to understand what is still in a state of turmoil in his mind. (To him) We noncombatants labour under such stereotyped concepts as courage and cowardice that the frontline officer must always suspect we have no ear for the infinite multitude of nuances continually changing and shaping his feelings. That’s my guess — am I right?
SUB-LIEUTENANT What? You’re a noncombatant?
SCHALEK Don’t take offence at that. You are a combatant and I would like to know how it feels. And above all, what it feels like afterwards.
SUB-LIEUTENANT Well, it’s strange — it’s like being a king who suddenly turns into a beggar. You know, you almost do feel like a king, soaring at such an inaccessible height, high above an enemy town. There they are, down below, defenceless — at our mercy. No one can run away, no one can save himself or take cover. You’ve got power over everything and everyone. There’s something majestic in that, it puts everything else in the shade, Nero must have felt something similar.
SCHALEK I can understand your feelings. Have you ever bombed Venice? What’s this, you’ve got scruples? Let me tell you something. The problem of Venice is one that needs pondering long and hard. When we entered this war, we were full of romantic ideas—
SUB-LIEUTENANT Who was?
SCHALEK We were. Our intention was to wage war chivalrously. Slowly and after painful object lessons we’ve cured ourselves of that habit. Which of us, only a year ago, would not have been horrified at the possibility of bombs being dropped on Venice! But now? Just the opposite! When they shoot at our soldiers from Venice, then our soldiers have to shoot back at Venice, calmly, openly and without sentiment. The problem will only become an acute one when England—