PRUSSIAN COLONEL (humming and nodding) I’m captured by your charms. How sweet!
CHIEF SUPPLY OFFICER (singing)
Nor did she fear — the raging war—
But even that doesn’t compare with the third verse when a year later the little bambino appears, with peepers as black as its mama’s and curls just like its dad once had. A chubby wee bairn!
PRUSSIAN COLONEL A bairn? Charming! And who was the father, eh?
CHIEF SUPPLY OFFICER A lieutenant in our elite Kaiserjägers — a natty dashing devil! A bit like Wowes. Let’s have another song from Wowes!
PRUSSIAN COLONEL Say — who’s that wonderful song by?
CHIEF SUPPLY OFFICER It’s one of Egon Schubert’s.
PRUSSIAN COLONEL Ah, of course — should have known. Your immortal Schubert! That’s one thing you Viennese beat us in, no question. And Vienna in general — glorious city! Oh, yes! Your Viennese cabby, what a character, and his cab with rubber tyres, whisking you out to a tavern among the vineyards in the Prater for the latest vintage — nothing to beat it! And your Viennese laundresses — oh, yes — we know all about them! Done that! Kept singing the whole time — (he sings and claps his hands) “I’m up all night carousing”—or something like that. That was Papa Strauss’s heyday, with his — what d’you call it? — Schwammerl — Schrammel quartet. Good old Johann! Probably seen some changes there, though! (The noise from the artillery grows weaker.)
DUTY GENERAL STAFF OFFICER Pardon me, but at Tolmino—
GERMAN GENERAL STAFF OFFICER But that was ages ago. We’ve gassed far more in a single day than you have in a whole year! Smoking out the last pockets of French resistance, the white and coloured Englishmen and so on. Oh, yes — our famous gas grenade mark B! The poison sprays out everywhere and produces suppurating wounds with secretions exactly like a fully functioning dose of clap. (Laughter.) Well, so what? It’s undeniable — been scientifically proved! The buggers don’t kick the bucket until the next day.
THE BAND (plays and sings along)
We’re happy
As the day is long!
It’s in our blood!
So sing this song!
(The officers repeat.)
GENERAL (mumbling) It’s in our blood! So sing—
(The noise of gunfire falls silent.)
VARIOUS VOICES Hey! What’s happening? What’s happening?
WAR CORRESPONDENTS What does that mean?
GENERAL (face ablaze, jumps to his feet, bangs on the table) Jesus Christ! I specifically ordered—! It could only happen here — What — did I tell that rabble? (Roaring.) If anyone fails to fire, I’ll eat ’em alive! Why aren’t you cheering and hurling yourselves at the enemy? — get up close, let one off under his nose, then bayonet straight in the ribs! — Anyone hesitates, cut ’em down without pity! Hand grenades — machine guns — for all that, your rifle’s still the infantryman’s best friend! — Officers must be ruthless and get the best out of everyone! And what did they do — those front-line swine, those gutless bitches, those — those (wailing) they screw it all up — Wottawa! — those scribblers—“It was not the enemy, it was starvation!”—starvation — that’s where it all started — (clenching his fists) the undermining, the sapping — string ’em up! — I was the one — I always predicted — the misfortune of our army — will drag down even my men! — This crass, wanton frivolity — ineradicable — they think of nothing but feasting and whoring — total demoralis — (he breaks down.)
DUTY GENERAL STAFF OFFICER (jumps up) It’s all those shirkers’ fault — out there — those front-line swine—
AUSTRIAN COLONEL (awakening) What’s happened?
LIEUTENANT Nothing! Shooting is reported from the suburbs of Vienna!
GENERAL Where — where were the machine-guns to drive them back? — What about our superior artillery?! — Villains!! — After an unparalleled struggle for four long years — against — exemplary superior numbers — our exemplary — our glor — (he falls into his seat, whimpering) — and at the end of it all — they’ll come — marching in—
PRUSSIAN COLONEL No, no, Excellency, chin up! Gentlemen — we must not, we cannot let our spirits sink — now, before our final victory — we can and we may hold our head up high — rest assured, gentlemen, what we are seeing is merely the typical initial success of every enemy offensive — it’s bluff, that’s all! Nothing to fear! Now we undertake a strategic withdrawal — a strategic withdrawal always succeeds! (A few cries of “Hurrah!” and scattered cheering.) And I have been certain from the start that the enemy will not prevent the manoeuvres we have envisaged for years and now been implementing for days. Our operations are being carried out according to plan. We have simply disengaged from the enemy and now we are drawing him after us! Then we’ll give ’em a kicking! The men’s morale is sky-high! Gentlemen, we shall be as firm as a rock and we shall never yield! The more opportunity we give the enemy to push forward, the more chance we have to wear him out! That is the tactic we put to the test on the Somme. That is the tactic which will also succeed on the Piave. So, let’s have no defeatist talk! God is on our side! We’d pull it off — against a world full of devils! The enemy — be assured, gentlemen — the enemy will shatter against us as against a bronze wall of flame—
The horizon is a wall of flame. Panic-stricken sounds. Many of those present are lying under the table. Many are rushing or staggering towards the exit, some come back, their faces distorted with terror.
CRIES What’s happened? — What’s — what’s—
GENERAL (mumbling) They’ve — broken — through—! Go on — playing!
All the lights have gone out. Tumult outside. Bombs dropped from aeroplanes can be heard exploding. Then silence reigns. Those present are asleep, lie in a somnolent stupor or stare blankly at the wall on which the painting In This Age of Grandeur hangs, and on which the following apparitions rise up, one after the other.
Narrow mountain path leading to Mitrovica. Driving snow. Between thousands of carts an enormous mass of humanity, old people and women, children, half-naked, holding the hands of mothers, many also holding a baby. A little boy at the side of a peasant woman from the Morava valley raises his little hand and says:
Tschitscha, daj mi hleba — Mama, give me bread—
The scene is supplanted by another tableau. The Balkan Express is racing through the countryside. It slows down. The two war correspondents are leaning out of the windows of the dining car; they appear to be toasting their mirror images in the banqueting hall. One calls out:
There’s something splendid about war, all the same—
The first tableau returns. The exhausted refugees, now almost dead from the cold, are lying on stones that are covered with ice. The morning light falls on pale, sunken faces which still bear traces of the horrors of the previous night. A cry: a horse plunges over a precipice. Another cry, even more piercing: its driver has plunged down after it. At the edge of the path a horse, almost dead from exhaustion, a little further off an ox, its intestines hanging out, a person with a crushed skull. The straggling procession begins to move off. Enfeebled animals at the end of their tether are left behind. They stand motionless. Their gaze of deathly sadness follows the procession. A peasant woman, her face deathly pale, sits leaning against a fir tree — it is the woman from the Morava valley — in her arms a tiny lifeless body, by its head the flickering light of a little candle.