This Month's Installation
As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about.
As she sat down to breakfast with him, Hans came, who had had work to do in the church and then had made a hospital visit. His joy was no less affectionate when he saw Fritz in the gray cavalry uniform before him.---132---"I had already given up on being able to shake your hand again, but now here we are. How happy I am about it!"With a splendid appetite, Fritz ate the beautiful Bärwalder sausage that the Hutemach had sent just to-day."What do you think of the situation, then?" Hans askt."Good. The Russians will make us work here. But we will force them. It is, however, a pleasant duty now, with the sword in hand, to be able to defend these East Prussians, who have come to mean so much.""We have many enemies.""Certainly. But they fight because they must. With us, the simplest train conductor knows what it's about. That's the difference."Hans glanced over at Fritz. He had always liked him, yet sometimes he had probably not assessed him highly enough. There he sat across from him and was of such great confidence and of such cheerful courage and ate his sausage and his ham without any scruple and thought, like his best days in Bärwalde. And yet he was about to go into battle and give his life into death.Finally, Fritz was finished with his breakfast. He gave a few instructions to an under-officer who waited outside and then stept back into the room. Else was gone into the kitchen to make arrangements for the billeted squad's meal. The two brothers were alone."Things haven't been going well for you, Hans?" Fritz askt, and the old, heartfelt concern that he had always had for his older brother spoke out of his words."It's not worth talking about. It was more so---133---a sort of spiritual pressure, too much was rushing at me. But that is long past.""I have often thought about you now. It was perhaps not so untrue what Edith once thought.""Edith?" replied Hans, and something irritated was in his question. "What did she think?""That it would be one's own thing to build his life completely on the spiritual.""Indeed she must know that well! Only through the spiritual are we become what we are.""Quite right. In the soul lay characteristics through which one wins or loses battles, a great general from 1870 said something like that. Now we will see whether that which was sown in it during the long peacetime will bring the fruits that we need out there: the act of will power and the strength for victory that flow only out of a pure conscience."Again, Hans lookt at his brother. And for him it was as if he saw him now with completely different eyes, yes, as if he saw him for the first time in his life. What he spoke then sounded so clever and thought through, it was the same thing that he said over and over to himself now in many a sleepless night, it was the new and overwhelming knowledge that came to him during these few days. And with what delicate consideration and care he expressed it to him! With that certain respect that he had always shown for his older brother and his actions and that even now, where he was of a different opinion, he did not deny. He stood up and gave Fritz his hand: "You are right, dear man. The time of thinking and brooding is past, that of action is come. You who are setting out are the heroes.
Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary
I couldn't find an exact translation for "Schlachtenlenker," but it's obviously a combination of "Schlachten" (battles) and "Lenker" (ruler or pilot), so I translated it as "general."
