Friedrich ran into a number of people here whom he had known well in Zürich. He even saw Bernardin and Dr Schleicher again. They had both become diplomats and maintained their understanding. They had sealed an alliance for life, were inseparable, and promenaded silently together because they had no more to say to each other. They had talked themselves out. They knew everything about one another. Now they were united by the memory of their bartered confessions. They were peace comrades just as two men who once met in the trenches were war comrades. Each also represented his country. And as both were concerned with so-called peaceful relations between Germany and France, and as they might have been reproached with remissness for any clouding of these relations, they both cherished peace like their own careers and their ambition accorded it the value that generals accord to war. And just as professional marriage-brokers are concerned about the bliss of the parties they have brought together, because their living depends on it, so Dr Schleicher and Bernardin were similarly concerned about peace between the two countries. They trafficked in peace as they had trafficked in state secrets during the war. Their friendship was troubled only if the name of one of them was mentioned in the newspapers more often than that of the other, or if, in the group photographs of conference participants published in the illustrated magazines, the face of one was more distinctly recognizable than that of his friend. This ‘congenial gathering’ too was taken by a photographer for publicity purposes, to appear under the title ‘A diplomatic tea-party’ in the Sunday supplements. Bernardin and Dr Schleicher separated, since they took it for diplomatic subtlety not to let their association become apparent to the other nations. While they stationed themselves in the background with heroic modesty, they pressed their faces between the shoulders of the front row so as to appear on the plate nonetheless. And furtively but persistently, in their anxiety at the crucial moment when the flash blazed out, they would discard the facial expressions they had donned as advantageous, cast sidelong glances at each other, and consider which of them was standing in a better and more prominent position. The journalists, whose vocation is ever to scent out secrets, believed that the glances of the two were the equivalent of abbreviated diplomatic Notes. And every reporter who spotted this exchange of glances thought at once of the possibility of drawing attention to it in the morning paper under the magic formula of ‘as rumoured in exclusive circles’.
There was only one journalist at this gathering who considered it unworthy to pay attention to glances. This was the Dr Süsskind whom Friedrich had encountered on the train years before. To be sure, Dr Süsskind did not recognize his old travelling companion. But, even if he had recognized Friedrich, it would probably not have prevented him from remarking very audibly to one of the press attachés who had become so common after the war, and who were initiating the era of democracy: ‘When I was in Austria during the war, I realized at once that we should lose the war. Perhaps you remember what I wrote after the breakthrough at Gorlice?’ And as the press attaché, who was not yet sufficiently versed in diplomacy to succeed in being tactful, said ‘No!’, Dr Süsskind went into a detailed account of his article which had revealed a prophetic pessimism. Friedrich recalled the journalist’s optimism in the train. ‘I once had the pleasure,’ he said to Dr Süsskind, ‘of meeting you.’ ‘I certainly don’t remember it,’ said the candid journalist, for whom truth came first. ‘You were sitting in the train with a Prussian colonel and an Austrian major,’ persisted Friedrich. ‘Quite right,’ said Dr Süsskind, ‘but I never noticed you.’ There was no point in talking to him. As if his primary concern, before embarking on a conversation, was to fathom whether Friedrich was telling the truth, he repeated once more: ‘I certainly didn’t notice you!’ ‘Yes,’ said Friedrich, to jolt the other’s memory, ‘your wife was waiting for you at K.’ ‘Ah,’ replied Süsskind bleakly, ‘that was not my wife, that was my sister-in-law.’ And that disposed of the matter.
It was in no way remarkable to encounter Dr Süsskind’s stubborn matter-of-factness in the realm of this newly hatched diplomacy. The legacy of the career diplomats who had brought about the war through folly, ambition, an unthinking pleasure in the secret game, but who at least displayed the social forms as natural qualities, fell after the war to the bourgeois intellectuals — editors, men of letters, teachers and judges — men who, with an incurable love of sincerity, endeavoured to copy the traditional tricks of international politics, and who could be seen from a mile away as striving to safeguard a so-called state secret. With diplomatic passports, for which they themselves had more respect than the customs officcials, they crossed the frontiers hiding in their sealed bags lace for their wives and liqueurs for their guests, in conformity with the familiar behaviour of the lower middle class from which they sprang. Diplomatic intercourse between the representatives of the old and the new states acquired the cosy aspect of bourgeois family occasions; and it was no accident that beer, the festive drink of sturdy uprightness, became a political intoxicant. Beer evenings were the vogue. The reconciliation of the nations was achieved under the aegis of beer, just as formerly the preparation of the war had been achieved to the accompaniment of champagne. Men had become congenial. The international dominance of the bourgeoisie had only just begun.
Within this petty bourgeois diplomacy only the representatives of the sole proletarian state mastered the old diplomatic forms. A natural cunning, acquired in long struggles with the authorities, a sharp instinct for artifice and dissimulation, a spontaneous desire to deceive friend and foe, all these conferred on the representatives of the Revolution those qualities that an ancient tradition, the inherited experience of aristocratic blood and a training in courteous insincerity had conferred on the diplomats of the vanishing old world. Of all the people Friedrich now had anything to do with — and his occupation consisted in the main of having to talk to them — not a single one seemed to him capable of that kind of impassioned deliberation without which it is impossible to have an overall view of the world. All lay like soldiers in the trenches, knowing only their own section. It was war. And as each had a rank in the services, or at least a well-defined task, each took note of the uniform and insignia of the other; and if one of them were to be asked if the man he had been negotiating with every day for years were good or bad, clever or stupid, enthusiastic or half-hearted, convinced or indifferent, the questioned one would have replied: ‘Mr X, about whom you enquire, only smokes cigars, is married, negotiates with me over the concession at Tomsk and is esteemed by his superiors.’ And it really was as if the so-called ‘human’ qualities had been the characteristic features of a period of human history long past and were now only to be found on tombstones, as inscriptions for the dead. It was as if these human qualities were gradually disappearing, like goods for which there was no longer any demand, and as if they had to be replaced by others that were now much sought after. Friedrich never succeeded in obtaining any other answer to his question as to who this or that person might be than: ‘X. has left the Party, B. is editor of the Democratic newspaper, Y. is Director General of the Z. works.’ And one obtained such answers, not so much because no one cared about anyone else, but because, in fact, an editor seemed to be nothing but an editor and a Director General only a Director General. One of the most intimate peculiarities that could be imparted about a man was that he practised this or that vocation, displayed this or that political opinion. And Friedrich, who had never known a vocation, thought: ‘I am the only one with human qualities. I am malicious, nasty, egoistic, hard-hearted and intelligent. But no longer ambitious. My ambition is extinct. For its aim was to exercise power over human beings, not over Director Generals, editors and party members or those without party. It would have been my passion to see through cunning, chastise evil, buttress justice, annihilate the vicious. I would have identified with a cause. Nothing remains for me now but to look on. For twenty years I looked on, in order to learn. For a single year I fought. I shall remain an onlooker for the rest of my life. “Was it really necessary?” said old Parthagener.’