Chapter Twenty-Six

As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about.

    "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!  Until yester-day, I workt in the command headquarters in Königsberg.  How everything went well and was in good form!  It was a joy."

    "And even now you are come to us!"

    He laughed: "Oh, you mean to dismiss me solemnly!  No, my good little old lady, as laudable and proper as that would be, the war leaves us no time for that.  I am, of course, here on official business.  Last night, I took a train of soldiers from Königsberg, we are billetted here until to-morrow.  You will also receive yet an-other man."

    "It should be good to have your people with me!"

    "I want to believe that.  They are splendid guys!  But when they have to wait so long for a snack, like their captain..."

    "I didn't think of that!  Pardon me, I just want to fetch Hans, then I'll make everything ready."

    But he called back to her again.  "How is it with Hans, then?" he askt.

    A shadow flew over her face.  "He has had a very difficult trip home."

    "I heard about the story.  Unbelievable!  That's how they do it!  But after all... we are living in a war now.  And a thing like that forces itself."

    "Then he arrived here quite exhausted just an hour before the mobilization and without any break had to throw himself into a breathless activity.  Everyone came to him.  One saw rightly what love and what confidence they showed in him."

---131---

    "That is nice and must have lifted him up."

    "So it did.  He preached like I have never heard him before.  Then it went from one official act to an-other, I barely saw him at meals."

    "Good for him, who now has something to do!"

    "But you know how all of that touches him internally.  It was always his weakness and his strength at the same time, good for others because he gives to them from his whole soul, consuming for him."

    "Now we all must more or less consume ourselves, we owe it to the Fatherland."

    "He said the same thing.  And everything was going very well - until England's declaration of war came."

    "Why the devil does that band of grocers worry him?"

    "That's not it at all.  It's something else.  He doesn't talk about it, but I know it.  His whole philosophy of life, the Christian foundation on which he built until now, has begun to waver.  Two worlds are wrestling in him:  the old, which he built on the foundation of his spiritual activity in long times of peace that has now collapsed in ruins, and the new, in which he should find himself."

    The maid came and said that there were soldiers downstairs in the hall who showed a billeting note.

    Now Else had plenty to do.  But she did it all quickly, she was not allowed to lose any of the precious time that she could still be together with Fritz.

    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.  Bad enough that one could not go out at least as a chaplain to encourage the soldiers,

---134---

and to comfort and take care of the wounded.  I was at the town hall yester-day-"

    "You wanted to come too?" askt Fritz, full of amazement.

    "Certainly I wanted to.  But they absolutely refused it.  I would be indispensable here, I had to be content with that."

    "You will do good here too.  I'm completely sure of it."

    "I will not be idle.  That is the only comfort that remains for me."

    This day a completely new agreement between the two brothers was sealed.  Quite wonderful, said Hans to himself, what everything enables to-day.  They give new meaning not only to the matters but also to the people and our whole relationship to them.

    In the early morning of the next day, Fritz moved out with his soldiers.  For Hans, however, the hours that Fritz stayed in his house were become hours of incomparable benefit.  I had never previously thought I would ever go to school with him, he said to himself, and now he is become a good teacher for me!

    And it became again happy and free in him.