EXCHANGE PROFESSOR Exactly, England’s global arrogance must be smashed, and whoever doubts our peaceable intentions will soon see the other side of the coin! The German’s sole desire is to stay at home, sustained by the honest products of his colonies. After all, in exchange we give the world the benefit of our erudition!
NATIONAL–LIBERAL DEPUTY Yes, up to now the world has shown too little appreciation for our unique culture, so let us now really knock it into their heads.
EXCHANGE PROFESSOR That will take time, unfortunately, and America alone has to bear the blame. Moltke told that American that the war will go on until America stops supplying weapons and munitions to our enemies. Moltke does admit that such shipments are the work of a private trust, but he is astonished that so many Americans are infringing neutrality for material advantage, and that the government doesn’t put a stop to it. The fact that German arms factories themselves supplied our enemies in peacetime is something quite different. The armaments industry does that everywhere. Consequently, we were in the same boat as our opponents, the only difference being, according to Moltke, that we were forced to help ourselves, while our enemies, in addition to being supplied by German arms factories, could count on the support of American industry as well.
NATIONAL–LIBERAL DEPUTY Yes, I read that. The same issue of the paper takes note of the “revelation” in the New York World that we ourselves made attempts to get munitions from America. And they call that a revelation — how naive can you get! Priceless! As if it wasn’t a perfectly natural thing to do.
EXCHANGE PROFESSOR Absolutely, and since we didn’t obtain any, we’ve surely a perfect right to complain about their breach of neutrality at least!
NATIONAL–LIBERAL DEPUTY Absolutely, and all the more so since there was no breach. For look, the United States specifically states that its definition of neutrality permits it to sell weapons and munitions just as freely to us as to our enemies. And why shouldn’t we make use of this neutrality if the factories were willing to supply us? That’s also the line taken by the Frankfurter Zeitung in its discussion of the New York World’s amazing “revelation.” The only drawback is that we are unfortunately unable to obtain the munitions we would like from the German factories in America — neither from the German-American ones nor the Reichs-German ones, both of which supply our enemies.
EXCHANGE PROFESSOR What? You mean German, Reichs-German firms? Not English ones?
NATIONAL–LIBERAL DEPUTY No, no. Some of the British-owned firms in America apparently refused to supply England. Oh well, they would probably have refused to supply us, too. That’s just our bad luck, the enemy firms won’t supply us, and the German ones are already committed to supplying the enemy. Well, there you are, a factory as such is under no obligation to uphold the principle of neutrality. It’s certainly not being violated by the German factory owners when they supply arms to the enemy!
EXCHANGE PROFESSOR But surely — wait a minute — yes, surely — oh, it’s so confusing! These concepts all seem to have exchanged their meaning in this war. If only it were peacetime again, then I could at least arrange another academic exchange and everything would be back to normal.
NATIONAL–LIBERAL DEPUTY Come on, put your mind at rest. We mustn’t make a mountain out of a molehill. The debate should soon be redundant anyhow. Fortunately, America is sure to enter the war, and then the German Americans will have no choice but to think again and instead of supplying weapons to our European enemies, supply them to the American army.
EXCHANGE PROFESSOR That’s the way of the world!
(Change of scene.)
Scene 35
Lecture hall in Berlin.
POET
… Step by step we thread our way through
Spent shells, barbed wire, flesh in tatters.
We must reach the line on cue,
Obey our orders, naught else matters!
Don’t call for heroes in a crisis—
We do our duty, that suffices.
(Shouts of “How true!”)
… With stirring battle orders ever ringing in our ears,
The thunder of the guns is like the music of the spheres.
(Shouts of “That’s how it is!”)
… March on, cries God, protect your land,
And save your children’s Fatherland!
(Lively applause.)
… Steely grey our German fleet,
Each gun flashes a white incisor
To rip apart, destroy, defeat,
The scum who steam against our Kaiser,
Under the German sky.
(Stormy applause and bravos.)
… The Kaiser did create the fleet,
God saw that it was good (Shouts of: “It is!”)
The sons of Satan to defeat
In Germany’s global feud.
The red tongues of our boys in blue
From hissing cannons’ mouths do spew
Their tongues of fire, and so propel
The enemy through the gates of Hell,
Under the German sky.
(Tumultuous applause.)
… Up and at ’em, through enemy fire,
Rat-a-tat-tat in the rolls of barbed wire,
While larks sing for joy in the heavens above!
Hurrah! Hurrah! Put an end to that screaming,
Enemy flesh stabbed by bayonets gleaming,
While larks sing for joy in the heavens above!
(Thunderous applause.)
… Sing, comrades, our faith expressing:
This earthly horror has our blessing!
(Endless applause. Shouts of “Long live Dehmel!”)
Scene 36
Lecture hall in Vienna.
GRUMBLER
“With Watch in Hand”
“On the 17th September one of our U-boats in the Mediterranean sank a packed enemy troop transport. The ship sank within 43 seconds.”
So death is now reduced to a mechanical device.
Once bravery meant power — shall that no more suffice?
For here the clock is ticking towards the hour of doom,
Can the valiant god of battles save us from the tomb?
Once clumsy stage effects produced a god from the machine,
But precision engineering now dominates the scene!
There it stands, its legs apart and iron arms akimbo,
A proud machine but soulless, for its soul is lost in limbo.
A mortar there, the man beside lies in a trench, protected,
The gun was man’s invention but the link’s been disconnected.
Since dwarfs confounded giants, there is now a new device,
A clock that halts the march of time, and one that’s quite precise!
Go, fall asleep, sleep through it all, have peaceful dreams and fair,
For otherwise you’ll find one day a cripple in your chair,
In your office, at your keyboard: London disappears in smoke,
There’s speculative profit for you, millions at a stroke!
And has the time not come when this might really come about?
Eyes stung with poison gases find it hard to make things out,
But the bell has tolled at midnight and the ear’s as sharp as ever,
The glass is falling hour by hour — you can’t hold up the weather.
Such motley jokes the people love, the papers too that feed them,
But God forbid that God himself should ever have to read them!
When progress creates amputees as well as profiteers,
Holding a watch in hand inspires their patriotic cheers.
LISTENER (to his wife) Say what you like about him — he sure can write!