The Murder of the Élite
cause; we must have given cause for this hatred; and even in part have justified it.… Let us hope that it will not be the least of the advantages of this war that Germany will turn round on herself, will search out and recognise her faults and correct them." Unfortunately even this article is spoiled by Germanic pride which, desiring a world peace, sets out to impose it on the world. Herein it recalls in some respects the bellicose pacifism of the too celebrated Ostwald.
But another officer (of whom I spoke in my last article) the poet Fritz von Unruh, first Lieutenant of Uhlans on the western front, has written dramatic scenes in verse and prose. These have appeared recently under the title Before the Decision (Vor der Entscheidung). It is a dramatic poem in which the author has noted his own impressions and his moral transformations. The hero, who is like himself, an officer of Uhlans, passes through various centres of the war and remains everywhere a stranger; his soul is detached from murderous passions, he sees the abominable reality until his sufferings from it amount to agony. The two scenes reproduced by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung show us a muddy and bloodstained trench, where German
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