WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field cover

Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field

Chapter 10: MONARCHICAL ATAVISM
By Henry W. Fischer
Open in WeRead

About This Book

A travel-writer recounts his time with two well-known American humorists while they lived and circulated in European cities, presenting a series of anecdotal sketches and recollections. The pieces capture their conversation, mannerisms, and responses to social customs, language, royalty, art, and contemporary personalities; they mix light-hearted episodes, reflections on fame and temperament, and brief critical remarks about literary and political topics. The arrangement is episodic rather than continuous, offering vivid vignettes that illuminate public and private behavior abroad.

MONARCHICAL ATAVISM

One day in Berlin, speaking of General Grant, Mark said, “I did not admire him so much for winning the war as for ending the war. Peace—happiness—brotherhood—that is what we want in this world.”

“Here comes the Kaiser,” he continued, “and sends me tickets for his September review. Of course I will go. But I don’t care for military spectacles, or for militarism. Tolstoy was right in calling army life ‘a school for murder.’ In Germany to-day there are ten million men drilled to look upon the Kaiser as a god. And if the Kaiser says ‘kill’—they kill. And if he says ‘die for me’—they go out and get themselves shot. The blame and shame rest with the big and little war lords. As to the German people, mere subjects, they have eighteen or twenty centuries of monarchical atavism in their blood.”