OPTIMIST Aha, but Reims cathedral was a military observation post!
GRUMBLER I don’t care. Mankind itself is a military observation post — I wish cathedrals could bombard it.
OPTIMIST But I don’t quite follow what you were saying about the German language. You’ve always seemed so engaged with — positively engaged to — the German language, and in your pamphlet against Heine’s influence you gave it preference over Latin languages. You’ve obviously changed your mind.
GRUMBLER Only a German could say I’ve changed my mind. It’s precisely because of my engagement that I think as I do. Moreover, I am faithful. And I know that this war will bear me out, and that victory, which God forbid, would be a total betrayal of the spirit.
OPTIMIST But you do see the German language as the more profound?
GRUMBLER But far below it, the German who speaks it.
OPTIMIST But the other languages, in your view, are far below German?
GRUMBLER But the other speakers above it.
OPTIMIST Are you really in a position to establish a tangible connection between language and war?
GRUMBLER For example, the language which is most frozen in stock clichés also tends most readily, and in a voice ringing with conviction, to find itself totally blameless of what it blames in others.
OPTIMIST And you think that is a quality of the German language?
GRUMBLER Preeminently, yes. It has itself become a ready-made article, and finding a buyer for it gives those who speak it today a purpose in life. Its soul is like that of some petty bourgeois too busy to put a foot wrong because his life is absorbed by business affairs, and if it was too short to wind them up, well then, it’s unfinished business.
OPTIMIST Aren’t such thoughts rather far-fetched?
GRUMBLER Fetched from the most distant source, namely from language.
OPTIMIST Aren’t the others on the lookout for business, then?
GRUMBLER But they don’t live entirely for it.
OPTIMIST The English wage war as a business, and always let mercenaries fight it for them.
GRUMBLER That’s because the English are no idealists, they don’t want to risk their lives for their business.
OPTIMIST “Mercenary” comes directly from merces, pay — there’s your language for you!
GRUMBLER Obviously. But “soldier” comes even more directly from the solidus the soldiers got paid. The difference, it’s true, is that the soldier gets less pay and more honour when he goes off to die for his country.
OPTIMIST But our soldiers surely are fighting for the Fatherland.
GRUMBLER Yes, they really are. Fortunately, they’re fired with enthusiasm, since otherwise they would be forced to do so. The English are no idealists. They’re straightforward in their business dealings, and don’t talk of their “Vaterland”—it seems they don’t even have a word for it in their language; they leave ideals alone when their exports are threatened.
OPTIMIST They are merchants.
GRUMBLER We are heroes.
OPTIMIST Yes, but on the other hand you say that the English, along with all the rest of them, are fighting for an ideal?
GRUMBLER I say that they are capable of doing so under the most realistic pretexts, whereas we find the most idealistic pretexts for doing business.
OPTIMIST Preventing the Germans from doing business, is that what you call an ideal?
GRUMBLER Certainly, it’s what we call commercial envy. In reality, it’s knowing who benefits culturally from the expansion of a business, and who doesn’t. There are peoples who should not overindulge themselves, since their cultural digestion is poor. Their neighbours immediately notice the bad smell and are more embarrassed than they are themselves. Global trade would once and for all isolate the German spirit, with which German culture has long lost all connection. But for that spirit to retain its connection with the outside world, a growth in exports is by no means beneficial. The English are entitled to a growth in exports, without detriment to what we think of as their barren soul. They can safely undertake whatever is necessary while indulging in the luxury of ornament and they go along with business dealings as readily as with their monarchy. In the German character, which aims to set the world to rights, all heterogeneous elements immediately produce some disastrous compound. The English are a cultured people because they know how to keep what little there is of their inner lives strictly separate from the problems of consumption. They don’t want to be forced by some penny-pinching competitor to work more than six hours a day, so they can devote the rest of the time to those occupations for which God intended them: God or sport. As for their commerce with God, it would still be an internal matter, even if mere hypocrisy, to the extent that the mere thought of God distances them from their daily toil. And that’s the important point. Meanwhile, the German works 24 hours a day, and it is at work that he fulfils the spiritual, intellectual, artistic, and other obligations he would otherwise neglect, given how he organizes his time, by turning the content of these obligations directly into fancy packaging and brand names and presentation. Nothing must be omitted. And this mingling of affairs of the spirit with the necessities of life, this focus on the means of life as the ends of life, as if groceries were its goal, and the simultaneous exploitation of life’s higher purpose to promote foodstuffs, such as “Art in the service of commerce”—it is in this inauspicious element that German genius flourishes — and withers. This and this alone, this cursed tendency to be forever making such connections, dressing things up or turning them upside down, is the problem in this World War. We are merchants and heroes combined.
OPTIMIST Everyone knows the problem of the World War is that Germany wanted its place in the sun.
GRUMBLER Everyone knows that, but does not yet know that if Germany did win that place, the sun would set. To which the Norddeutsche Allgemeine would naturally reply that we would then fight in the dark. And fight, moreover, until finally victorious, and beyond.
OPTIMIST You are a grumbler.
GRUMBLER I am, though I gladly concede that you are an optimist.
OPTIMIST Were you not once one of those who used to sing the praises of German organization, at least in comparison with Latin muddle?
GRUMBLER Used to, and still do. German organization — even assuming it withstands unrestricted warfare — is a talent, and like all talents subject to historical variables. It is practical and instrumental, serving whichever personality puts it to good use, by contrast with the muddle in Austria, where even servile types are credited with personality. But how completely the German people must have relinquished their inner identity to be capable of coping so smoothly with externals! To acknowledge as much was never a compliment. Making the choice between different sets of human values that is urgently required, now there’s a war on, the individual must subordinate his psychological needs to the general good. In peacetime, when condemned to lead a miserable life amid Austrian chaos, I yearned for Germanic order. Technology provided a pontoon bridge for explorations of the individual personality, so why concede any rights to those who only stand and wait? Now, in wartime, what matters is the personality of nations.
OPTIMIST And which one will be victorious?
GRUMBLER As a grumbler, I am obliged to take a pessimistic view, and to fear that the personality which has retained its individuality least will be victorious, namely, the Germans. Within the spiritual framework of European Christianity, that is what, in my darkest hours, I see happening. Spiritual starvation comes next.