This Month's Installment
As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about.
Even the sky was busy movement. The clouds blew in as if they wanted to say: We are going along, we are---128---mobile! And the sun shone brightly and clearly, as if it showed the way to battle, to victory!In Rodenburg, everything was activity; at the train station, in the depots, in the garages a running and hurrying, a humming and whirring. And the night was like the day: action and pressing forward.Everywhere, one saw soldiers: individually, in groups, in trains. Regiments wandering with resounding play through the streets, volunteer guards of the civil defense, their guns strapped over their soldiers, strode up and down, to the public buildings, the bridges, the water tanks. Everyone had got going with each other, like the wheels of a great clockworks, and in everyone a calm and strength at the same time, as if this work belonged to the daily practice and didn't at all mean something new or strange.Even for Hans these days, there was no less to do than on Sunday. The emergency weddings increased, throughout the whole afternoon, he had Communion distribution, in his study there was an incessant coming and going. He found the right word for every one, and each felt that it imparted love and sympathy.A satisfaction, which all of his activity and work so far had not given him, came over him, he felt that in the great movement that now strode inexorably and violently through the world, he was no useless member. Moreover, the certainty and matter-of-fact-ness with which the mobilization outside was carried out, the courage and confidence that shone out of every word, out of every eye, filled him with pride and admiration for his people.But then came moments when the holy---129---need of the time gripped him deep in his heart, when only with quiet melancholy in his face could he look at the fathers of the families, who had to tear themselves away from wife and child, the young men moving into the field with such a holy desire and burning enthusiasm. The unnaturalness of the war, which destroyed all culture and dealt a blow in the face to all Christianity and to all religion, spoke to his mourning soul in these moments. Then there was a despondency in his soul, of which he felt ashamed, against which he fought with all stubborn strength, but which always came over him anew."I am here for billeting with Pastor Warsow in St. Nikolai!""Fritz!" cried Else and rushed towards the entering man. "How fresh you look, and how your uniform suits you! I haven't seen you in it for a long time.""I also feel very well in it. Now the devil may walk around in civilian clothes and work the fields or fertilize the soil. Now indeed one knows why one is a soldier! And you can probably imagine how it has pleased me that not only did they put me in my dear old cuirassier regiment but have even made me orderly." His eyes shone, holy joy enhanced his manly face."That I can, my good boy! But you have earned it."She had always been very proud of her younger brother. After the early death of their parents, she had helpt to raise him. With Hans was she similarly bound, across from him she felt like a mother."If only our Fatherland had such genuine men!"---130---"It has quite different ones, I tell you!" he parried, in his modesty almost shockt about her words. "You should see them! There is a courage and a circumspection in them, it is astonishing!
Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary
While trying to piece together "Nottrauungen" (emergency weddings), I happened upon the phrase "in der Not frißt der Teufel Fliegen." My dictionary says this is the equivalent to "beggars can't be choosers," but literally, it's something like "in need, the devil eats flies."
This is the end of chapter twenty-five and the beginning of chapter twenty-six.
