Achmed Abdullah

“ Hurrah!" came the alcoholic chorus and steins were drained, then brought down on the wooden table with a crash.
The students smiled at each other. They had settled that little war.
"An experiment in racial biology," Professor Sachs said to his class at the university, "and the old German sword will prove that the experiment is right. It will wipe out forever that cursed and unnatural, that most ungodly heresy called Democracy, that ominous, new superstition of the Western peoples, those diseased, cowardly degenerates. War! A fact! A moral fact! A German fact! ”

“ Men, strangers, stopped each other on the street, faces just a little pale, eyes just a little haggard, hands just a little shaky. They produced blue bits of paste board—the summons to the Bezirkskommando, the inspection headquarters of the military districts where they resided.
"They're calling the second reserves to the colors. Another fifty divisions. I wonder why."
"Oh, just to make doubly sure. That's our German way. Anyway, we're past thirty-three, you and I, we won't have to fight. The war will be over in a month, before they'll have time to muster us in." ”

“ Under the cloak of national necessity we will dip our fingers into their swollen pockets. We will confiscate their millions—and that will help the East-Elbian Junkers, the flower of the land, the salt of the earth! ”

“ For the value or the non- value of an action can only be inferred from its consequences, and we shall dictate these consequences in Paris, as we did in Seventy, with a sword dipped in blood!"
"It will give a knockout blow to foreign competition," whispered chosen, well-primed speakers among the socialistic workmen. "It will raise our wage standard. It will help us to invade new markets. Beer will be cheaper, also wool. Meat will be more plentiful." ”

“ It is love which dominates, love which rules. And ..."
Once more her words were clear and distinct:
"You want my help, don't you? To help you and Bertha to get out of Germany, out of the Eagle's clutches?"
"Yes," murmured Tom, "I want you to ..."
"Do not tell me," she interrupted. "I could not listen to you. It would be treason. I am a German. But"—she put her wrinkled old hand on Tom's arm—"it may interest you to hear that I have decided to join my son at Metz and that Bertha is going with me. You, too, are going there, with your regiment. Metz is but a few miles from the French frontier. ”

“ The English won't fight. India would rebel, Ireland, Canada, South Africa ..."
Yet, for all their brave boastings, they were beginning to get nervous. The war was becoming a personal issue as, hour after hour, more reservists were called to the colors, by letter and telegram and telephone and newspaper advertisements and big placards pasted on the walls and those advertising columns, typical of Berlin, called Litvas-säulen. ”

“ For, of course, the whole thing would be a military promenade, breakfast in Brussels, lunch in Paris, back in Berlin for a late dinner and theater. The fighting would be over in a few weeks, meanwhile life at home would run in the same smooth channels.
"Yes. A military promenade, meine Herren Commilitonen," said the red-faced chairman of the Borussia fraternity of students who had met as usual over their morning Schoppen at the Pschorr Restaurant. "We will take Paris and Calais. France will cede us the rest of Lorraine. Belgium will submit peacefully. Russia? ”