"A FATALIST AT WAR."

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 11 (Supplement)

"A FATALIST AT WAR."

GERMAN OFFICER'S LETTERS. "DRYING TIP OF SOULS." '(By EX.C.W.) LONDON, July 30. The English translation of Rudolph Binding's letters, ■written while he was on active service, published by Allen and Unwin, is entitled "A Fatalist at War." The title gives one a more pessimistic impression than the lettere themselves — they are excellently done into English by lan F. D. Morrow—for he shows a sympathy—which iholde within itself a kind of balm to his spirit—with the natural world around him even in the midst of Flanders mud, where most of his service was done as a cavalry officer, who ,had a passion for the thoroughbred both in men and in horses. Views on Britain. He did service in Galicia too in 1916, where, musing on victories other than, those obtained on the stricken field, he says something to make us sit up, it is so sincerely meant. "This year will certainly remain in my memory as a year of war; but I believe that its main significance for the future, and especially for our future, will be that it has brought the realisation of the power of the British Empire, just like that of the Roman Empire, which used to include the whole world. Even if the individual nations do not exactly render tribute, as they used to to Rome, at least they render service. They provide their quota of soldiers, or ammunition, or ships, or at least lies. Everything for money, but with complete obedience. No imperial sway need go further than that of Great Britain. In contrast to the Old Roman and German Empires, in contrast to the Napoleonic conception, it is based on facts, not on an idea. It is so simple that it must be quite incomprehensible to us Germans. If I attest its existence, will any German believe me? It is questionable whether this power will last for long, but I believe that it will decide our fate. "A world-empire will produce no civilisation, but perhaps civilisations will lie born apart from it, since it will itself be barren in that sense. Maybe the German civilisation will be one of them. I imagine it, of course, simply as the result of the cult of our own existence, our own needs —not based on foreign markets, not to be valued by any ordinary standard, perhaps destined to be despised by the rest of the world, but yet just as wonderful as a God's first attempt at creation, when he takes the lump of clay into his hand and seeks out of his own life to breathe life into it. . ." "Devoid of Grandeur." For a glimpse of the fatalist, a pacifist at heart, turn to his thoughts recorded on March 15, 1917: "It is a fact that speeches about duty and Fatherland are as worn out as broken-down cab horses. At the best only the padres who make them derive any inspiration from them. The war is devoid of all grandeur. It no longer heaves itself up from its depths like the ocean in storm. The human soul is absorbed entirely by the struggle against distress and disaster. With its millstone round its neck it faints and fails. The living are a sorrier eight than the millions of dead. Not a soul is at liberty to make use of his natural gifts, either behind the lines or here at the front. The seat of war is thronged with persons who have no message to give the fighting man, except to urge him to be one; they cannot even offer us the enthusias: t of those first weeks.) The word 'peace' has fallen into disrepute, as though it had become marked with some filthy blight or mould. The forces which the nations are bringing into play. are gigantic, amazing, almost uncanny, but the of them, arouse 9 no enthusiasm. They excite feelings of disgust rather than admiration, such as one might feel for the sea or a waterfall, a flood, or a conflagration. No great name, no personality dominates them. No nation appears really greater than another." Again. "Even the regular officer sickens of war and yearns for 'Ms_ great or little resurrection, each according to his measure. Of the troops themselves Ido not speak. They do their best in war as they did in peace, and their qualities find employment. But the other qualities, the highest of lie idle. Under the morbid conditions governing the human mind, no Helmholtz to-day can invent an ophthalmoscope, no Dalton can discover the laws governing all chemical elements, no Messel can design a building like Wertheim's, no Goethe can write like "Ueber Allen Gipfeln." Can there be- men who look out from their observatories with a telescope into the limitless space to search for new etars, unoppressed by the war? Can there be musicians who explore the harmonies. It does not seem so; no one knows of any. Although this loss may only be a lucrum ceasans, it etrikee me as more- overpowering than anything else, or rather more depressing, because it is quite immeasurable. The loss in crops, in trade, even in human lives, can be made up with, the years; it can be calculated and provided against. The> drying up of the souls of all the nations is a much greater thing, and the season for the fruit which might have been beyond the ordinary may perhaps never come again, because the tree which might have borne it will not be at is full strength when Peace comes." Muddling Through. He does not rate Ins own generals higher than ours. Indeed the astonishing thing about this view of the German High Command is that its faults were as great as those in ours, that far from, being a scientific military machine, it, too, just muddled through. What distinguishes this war, he says "on all fronts, in every theatre of war, is the feeling of insufficiency. No one has strength enough. We have successes, but no success; never a Sedan, a Cannae, a Waterloo, or a Chemulpo. It k certainly remarkable that neither Germans, nor Russians, French, English, or Italians have ever succeeded in overcoming inadequacy anywhere, although there have been hundreds of opportunities."