GERMANY AT HOME.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 75, 30 March 1871, Page 3

GERMANY AT HOME.

Concluded from our lad. "A sermon by Pastor Hochnuth in aid of the fund for the relief of the sick." That announcement I humbly opine Las the pro--per ring about it of endurance to the bitter end. It is not a protest by any means, but For remainder of news sec fourth page.

,__ . a kind of official sanctification of the strife Herr Pastor must have already made up his mind that it is lawful for man to get sick in such a cause, or he would not thus undertake to preach in his aid. Well, you read this and you lay your newspaper aside with the consolatory reflection that the ofering was no doubt equal to the urgency of fthe occasion, and there all your concern in the matter ends. But have you actually heard that sermon, or any sermon of the same kind, as I have lately in half a score of villages like St. Goa. Have you seen Herr Pastor walk to his pulpit amid a congregation of bowed forms shaken by oue universal sob. Have you seen the little introductory hymn given up altogether midway in its execution as an impossible thing, by reason of the involuntary and most inartistic quavering of the voices of the singers. Have you witnessed that most generous interruption to Herr Pastor's truthful and feeling description of the horrors of (he last fight, caused by the young girl there by the pulpit stair falling fiat before the altar in a dead faint. Have you heard the discourse as it again moves along after this unfortunate interruption, punctuated — so to speak — with groans, not the revivalist groans of spiritual anguish, but the groans of human sorrow for human suffering and human woe. Aud lastly, have you seen Herr Pastor himself after manfully coughing through some interruptions and silently praying through others, fairly break down in the midst of a telling illustration of his third point, and laying aside the authoritative tone of the spiritual teacher, say in the pleasing broken accents of the soul stricken man. "My children, forgive me. I cannot go on. You must finish the sermon for me in your ov/n charitable hearths." Because if you have not seen and heard all this you will form but a very poor conception of the real meaning of the newspaper announcement that war sermons are being preached from every pulpit in the Fatherland. " A national subscription for the sufferers by the war" has again a most calm, determined, formidable look. The rich giving of their abundance, aud the poor of their need — jellies, lint, surgical bandages, cigars, illustrated periodicals, dressing gowns, and boots and shoe;: —forwarded in splendid profusion to the hospital depots at the front. Very good, but ibis enumeration does not tell all. They meet a ■wonderful variety of wants, those subscriptions in time of war. What think you, for instance, of a little village gathering of groschen " for the supply of widows' weeds" — or what answers to widows' weeds amongst us here. There is a, horrid grimness in a public undertaking of this kind that lends a new aspect of terror to the demon of war. But it is all very natural if you will only give it a moment's thought. "Poor Hans was suddenly marched off from my side, the other day, to go and keep the 'Watcht am Bhein.' It proved a death watch, for him, and I, his poverty-stricken and most wretched widow, besides doing my best to hold him in sweet remembrance by my loving care of all his little household odds and ends, wish to carry about some public testimony of my heart's sorrow for him for all the world to see. To put it quite plainly to you well-to-do gentlefolks, I want a black gown, no matter how coarse the stuff, and if you do not buy one for me I will scrape together and buy it myself, though I starve and my very children cry for food." Have I wearied you by dwelling oj these scenes ? Have I deceived you by asking you to follow me to a smiling village s and then unveiling before your eyes these scenes of woe ? I may have done so, but alas 1 what choice have I in the matter ? It happens to be my duty to give you some picture of the Fatherland, and I can show you nothing else but this were I to take you north, south, east, or ■west. At this present moment of, writing — at this great epoch of this national and ever- to-be-remembered war of 18J0, what I have been feebly attempting to describe is the mighty German Fatherland. " Germany may be thankful," wrote a distinguished military critic the other day ■ — summing up the situation, no doubt, from the comfortable standpoint of his own hearth rug — "that she has been spared the horrors of war." Thankful to whom and for what ? Well, thank you for nothing in any case, Germany might fairly say. Go into her great towns, into Frankfort, Munich, Dresden, and even Berlin, and say if the state of suspended animation in which you find them does not constitute one of the horrors of war. See factories closed, or keeping two machines going whei'e they formerly kept ten ; women doing the work of men, and children the work of men ; the poor fed on rations, and their numbers swelling frightfully from day to day ; the men hurrying in "batches to the front, with here and there the grey hairs of age straggling from beneath the iron helmets, or the weakly knees of ill-grown youths knocking together in the military boots ; the churches many of them deserted for want of pastors, to

officiate ; the theatres playing only pieces in which one man can appear in three parts ; the hotels merely playing at keeping open, with their landlords for customers, or giving up the farce altogether and nailing their shutters up ; the hospitals with raw boys officiating in the operating room, these soon being drafted off daily as every fresh bulletin arrives. This is the real state of Germany to-day. Make live best of it or the worst of it, enemies and friends.