Chapter Twenty-Five

I'm unsure about the italicized word.

     Feverish days followed, days full of fervor and energy, full of hot pressure and anticipation.  The war went through the country.

     It had always been there, but it had been sleeping.  Sleeping under the fields, which yielded their fruits in their time, under the rising crops, which the sun swept across with a soft, warm hand, which the storm bent and lifted again.  Sleeping in the heat of the days, in the refuge of the cool nights, under the songs of the birds that announced the spring, under the falling leaves that the autumn spread over the fragrant ground like a rich gold blanket.  So soundly sleeping that they all had forgotten it, wrapt up in their tiny joys and small sorrows, busy with their worries and their plagues, without which they simply couldn't live, and Christmas after Christmas sang thanklessly their "Peace on earth," as it had to remain, forever, without any end.

     Now, however, it had awakened.  It stretched its bony members, it took its powerful scythe and lifted its snake-haired head.  It tore the iron horn from its fleshless ribs and blew with its bloodless lips until its lowest depth that rang and cried through the whole world:  "The war has arisen!  Prepare yourselves!"

     And they prepared themselves.  It was as if the whole world rumbled with the footsteps of deploying troops, with the hoofbeat of saddled horses.  Through the forests and fields went the frenzy of the important time.  In their formidable strength stood the trees, the slender trunks neatly in a row, as if ready to march.  Even the sky was busy movement.  The clouds blew in as if they wanted to say:  We are going along, we are

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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

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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.