OFFICER (from within) Busy.
ALICE SCHALEK Drop whatever you’re doing. (He appears. She begins, almost literally, to extract details from his tightly sealed lips. Then she asks:) Where’s the lookout hole? You must have a lookout, surely? Everywhere I’ve been I’ve been able to use a five-centimetre lookout in the moss camouflage of the observation trench. Ah, here it is! (She positions herself at the lookout hole.)
OFFICER (yells) Duck! (Alice Schalek ducks.) They don’t know over there where we’re observing them from, poking your nose out could give us away. (The male members of the War Press Bureau reach for their handkerchiefs and hold them in front of their faces.)
ALICE SCHALEK (aside) Cowards! (The battery opens up.) Thank God, we’ve come just in time. Now the show begins — so tell me, Lieutenant, could any artist in his art produce a more thrilling, a more rousing show? Let those who stay at home call war the crime of the century to their heart’s content — after all, I did, too, while I was on the home front — but those who experience it firsthand are in the grip of a passion. Am I right, Lieutenant, as someone right in the middle of it, that many of you don’t want this thrilling life to end!
OFFICER No, no one wants their life to end. That’s why everyone wants the war to stop.
(The whistling of shells can be heard: Ssss—)
ALICE SCHALEK Sss—! That was a shell.
OFFICER No, it was shrapnel. Can’t you tell?
ALICE SCHALEK You obviously find it hard to grasp that the various timbres don’t yet sound different to me. But in the time I’ve been at the front, I’ve learnt a lot, and I’ll learn that too. — It seems the performance is over. What a shame! It was first-rate.
OFFICER Are you satisfied?
ALICE SCHALEK What do you mean, satisfied? That’s not the word! Call it patriotism, you idealists; hatred of the enemy, you nationalists; call it sport, you modernists; adventure, you romantics; call it the thrill of power, you connoisseurs of the soul — I call it liberated humanity.
OFFICER What do you call it?
ALICE SCHALEK Liberated humanity.
OFFICER Listen, if only we got some leave once in a blue moon!
ALICE SCHALEK But the constant deadly danger surely makes up for that, doesn’t that feel like real living? You know what interests me most? What are you thinking, what feelings do you have? It’s amazing how easily men at 2,500 metres manage, not only without us women to help them, but without women in general.
ORDERLY (enters) Beg to report, Lieutenant, Sergeant Hofer is dead.
ALICE SCHALEK How simply the common man makes his report! He’s pale as a sheet. Call it patriotism, hatred of the enemy, sport, adventure, or the thrill of power — I call it liberated humanity. I’m gripped by the fever for new experiences! Tell me now, Lieutenant, what are you thinking, what feelings do you have?
(Change of scene.)
Scene 27
In the Vatican.
The voice of Benedict praying.
— In the sacred name of God, our heavenly Father and Lord, and for love of the sacred blood of Jesus, which was the price of man’s redemption, we appeal to you, who are ordained by divine Providence to govern the belligerent nations, to put an end to this terrible slaughter which has now been dishonouring Europe for a whole year. It is the blood of our brothers which is being spilt on land and at sea. The most beautiful regions of Europe, this earthly Eden, are sown with corpses and ruins. In the sight of God and man, you bear the dreadful responsibility for peace and war. Pay heed to our plea, to the fatherly voice of the vicar of the eternal and supreme Judge, to whom you will have to answer. The abundance of riches which God the Creator has bestowed on the lands under your command doubtless enables you to continue the struggle. But at what a price? Let the thousands of young lives which are daily extinguished on the battlefields give answer—
(Change of scene.)
Scene 28
Newspaper office.
The voice of Benedikt dictating.
— And the fish, the lobsters and the spider crabs of the Adriatic have seldom enjoyed such good times as at this moment. In the southern Adriatic they had almost the entire crew of the Leon Gambetta for dinner. In the central Adriatic they subsisted on those Italians we were unable to save from the Turbine, while in the northern Adriatic the denizens of the deep devour ever more opulent fare. The battle cruiser Amalfi now joins the U-boat Medusa and two torpedo boats at the bottom of the sea. The assortment of marine spoils, hitherto limited to “maritime small fry”, has been significantly augmented. The Adriatic, its floor increasingly bedecked with the shattered hulks of Italian ships, must taste more bitter than ever; over its blue waters wafts the stench of putrefaction arising from the late liberators of the karst plateau—
(Change of scene.)
Scene 29
Optimist and Grumbler in conversation.
OPTIMIST You can’t deny that the war, apart from positively transforming those who must daily look death in the eye, has also raised people to a higher spiritual level.
GRUMBLER I don’t envy death having to let so many poor devils look it in the eye these days. They’re only hoisted to that metaphysical level by the gallows of universal conscription — irrespective of the fact that it fails to do even that in most cases.
OPTIMIST Good people become better, and the bad ones good. War purifies.
GRUMBLER It deprives the good of their faith, if not of their life, and it makes the bad worse. The contrasts were great enough in peacetime.
OPTIMIST But haven’t you noticed how the war has raised people’s spirits on the home front?
GRUMBLER As far as raising spirits on the home front goes, it seems to me no different from the dust thrown up by the brushes on the road sweeper, only to fall back to the ground.
OPTIMIST So nothing changes, then?
GRUMBLER On the contrary, the dust turns into slime, for it’s the sprinkler’s turn next.
OPTIMIST So you don’t think anything has got better since the men marched away at the beginning of August?
GRUMBLER The beginning of August, yes, when they were given notice to leave, the day mankind’s honour was terminated. Mankind should have contested that decision till the Last Judgment.