A Little Garrison Part 25

Almost simultaneously, with the acceptance of Leimann's resignation, formal sentence was p.r.o.nounced against Borgert. He was condemned to a jail term of five years, to deprivation of all civic honors for ten years, and to expulsion from the army, brought about by a series of frauds, by desertion and by maltreatment of subordinates in ten cases.

The newspapers published this sentence, and with it came to a close the career of this miscreant, as far as the army was concerned.

Meanwhile there sat in the bureau of a large factory ex-Sergeant Schmitz, busy at his desk with a row of figures.

The other employees had already risen from their places and were taking their overcoats from a rack in the corner, for the large factory bell announcing the close of the day's labor had rung out ten minutes since.

But Schmitz did not allow himself to be disturbed by the loud conversation going on about him. He continued writing as if he were in the midst of silence. The large office-room had almost emptied itself of its inmates when Master Worker Maurer entered.

Maurer was a squat-built man, and his pale, oval face was strangely illuminated by piercing eyes of a forbidding expression. His moustache hung straggling about the corners of his mouth, and there was something indicative of cruelty and meanness about his whole face.

"I suppose you can't tear yourself away from your work again? Aren't you coming soon?" he called over to Schmitz. But the latter did not even look up from his work, and briefly answered:

"In a moment; sit down!"

The two men were good friends.

Only a few weeks before Schmitz had stood amidst the mechanics at the lathe, pushing mechanically one cube of wood after the other into the sharp teeth of the rotating steel. This sort of activity had permitted him to indulge in his own thoughts, for it did not require him to expend his intellect as well as his brawn.

But in a short while qualities had been detected in the quiet, diligent workingman which brought him advancement. His military training and the self-sufficing determination which he had acquired in dealing with raw recruits had given him a knack of controlling his fellow-workers. Thus it came about that Schmitz was promoted to the position of overseer in the machine hall, the same in which he had so far toiled with the rest. His fellow-workers, of course, looked with envy upon this _parvenu_, who had only recently appeared among them and who now played the part of commander. There was no dearth of scornful remarks at his expense, but the old soldier understood very well how to baffle such behavior.

In the morning, after he had seen his men busily at work at their various tasks, he frequently paid a visit to Maurer, who was employed as an engineer.

And during these matutinal chats Maurer discovered in Schmitz a man whom it would be easy to gain for his cause,--the cause of Socialism.

Maurer himself was one of the most notorious local leaders of the Socialist hosts, and he felt sure that this new man would become a valuable addition to the ranks of the forces acting under his supervision.

In this a.s.sumption, indeed, Maurer was not mistaken. Schmitz was still harboring the hatred against militarism and the government, which had been engendered in him by his own experience in the army. A deep-seated, grim feeling fermented in his soul because of the bitter injustice done him. He could not forget that the best years of his life had been frittered away in a service which in the end proved of no avail to him. Thus, he had become a recruit for the Socialist cause, and it had scarcely needed the persuasions of his new comrade, Maurer, to induce him to forswear all allegiance to the ancient cause of king and fatherland, and to vow service with body and soul to the red flag. The loyal soldier had become a strong pillar of the Socialist Party. On the morrow Schmitz was to make a speech before a large circle of men holding similar views, and it was for that Maurer was now waiting for him. He meant to inculcate another lesson or two in his friend's mind, and to talk over with him a few important points in the programme of the evening.

When Schmitz had laid aside his work and locked up his sheets in the desk,--sheets on which the list of names of the men under him and the respective amounts of work done by each were marked down,--he joined Maurer. Both then walked on in silence through the narrow lanes towards Maurer's dwelling.

At a nearby dramshop they jointly purchased a jugful of beer; then took it home, lit the lamp, and began their conversation.

It turned particularly on a new tax bill, which would add another serious burden to those under which the working cla.s.ses were groaning.

The aim was to gain as many opponents to it as possible, so that at the last reading in the Reichstag an overwhelming majority could be secured against the measure, sufficient to bring about its defeat.

The two friends were engaged in eager discussion until after midnight.

When they parted they had reached perfect agreement.

On the day following Schmitz was in a state of feverish agitation. It seemed strange to him, after all. But a short while ago he was wearing the "king's coat." A short twelvemonth previously he had been a soldier of the Kaiser's,--a man sworn to defend the fatherland and to aid and further its interests,--and to-day?--to-day he was one of those who are accused of shaking the foundations of the state edifice, those who are aiming to erect a new commonwealth more in consonance with their own ideas and interests.

But when he on the same evening ascended the speaker's stand, carrying himself erect as a freeman, and when a crowd of many hundreds welcomed the new comrade with enthusiastic shouts, he felt differently. Even before he had said a word to his new friends they saluted him joyously as one of themselves,--as one to bring about the new millennium,--and his confidence in himself grew apace, and a mighty longing to achieve fame in this _new_ army clutched his soul. It was his full intention to please this heterogeneous ma.s.s of men; he meant to force them into the circle of his own conceptions and beliefs, so that all of them should follow him, without a will of their own, as sheep follow a shepherd.

And he began his address. He first described the provisions of this new bill, and then laid bare the consequences to the laboring mult.i.tude that the adoption of such a measure would have.

A new tax, he explained, meant a further step in the pauperization of the ma.s.ses. He showed that this new tax was a superfluity, provided the attempt was abandoned by the government to increase still further the strength of the army.

"Gigantic sums of money are annually wasted by the government for the military," said he, in a ringing voice. "Scarcely have millions upon millions been voted for the introduction of new rifles and new guns; scarcely have new regiments been formed and the conformation of existing ones altered, when all these measures are found to be worse than useless. Errors of calculation are discovered when it is too late to retrieve them, and new sums of enormous size are demanded in order to overcome innovations conceived in haste and executed without judgment.

"Germany's reputation and her power in the world have been won by the army, and it is her army which neighbors begrudge us. But have we not arrived on the summit of military power? Must we extend militarism to the point where it smothers and throttles all other organs of the state machine?

"If we but devoted to other inst.i.tutions of the empire a modest portion of the untold money that is swallowed up every year by the army, there would be no necessity for laying tax upon tax upon the citizens until what remains to them of the fruits of their labor hardly suffices for bare needs. If we did that, we should be a wealthy country; the citizen would acquire material wellbeing. Industry would revive and yield to the people all its blessings. But if it is not intended to cease favoring the army to such an unreasonable extent, let them take the money needed from the pockets of those who are spending their days in sloth and wilful luxury. As it is, the wealthy are not burdened any more than the poor laborer, while the latter really has to surrender a portion of the scant bread he has earned for himself and his family to maintain a state of things in which capital enjoys all those advantages which are denied to him.

"Then I ask of what blessing is the army to the citizen, to the people as a whole? It takes away his children; it uses up the best years in their lives,--those years in which the youth ripens into a man, and in which his character matures. It is during those years that our sons are often treated with injustice and brutality, and, as a natural consequence, they return from the army into work-a-day life, as the bitter enemies of a government which dismisses many of them as helpless cripples or as physical wrecks without ever thinking of making suitable award. Then, still more frequently, our sons, after spending the best strength they have in the service of the state, in hard toil, and in exposing themselves to all rigors of a changeable climate, are sent back into the world, dismissed from the army, just because of some trivial offence,--kicked out into the cold as one might a dog, compelling him to hunt for food and to seek a new master.

Therefore, I say, let us compel the government to spend hereafter the money so uselessly wasted for the enlargement of an army that has already overgrown its proper size, rather for more useful purposes, so that the people, the ma.s.ses, will know what they have sacrificed themselves for."

The words of the speaker, drawn so largely from his own bitter experiences, were frequently interrupted by a loud acclaim; but as Schmitz now stepped down from his eminence to mingle with his auditors, the large crowd that filled the hall to suffocation began to rend the air with frantic cheers. They threw up their caps and shouted approval; scores of them cried: "Bravo, Schmitz!"; while others crowded up to him to shake him by the hand. It was an ovation as enthusiastic as Schmitz had never aspired to in his boldest moments, and his natural vanity felt intensely gratified. As to these people, he had indeed gained them over to his way of thinking.

His words had sounded so convincing, they had struck the popular chord so accurately, that many a one in this dense throng who had merely come that night as a spectator, drawn by idle curiosity, had been convinced of the justice of the Socialist cause, and resolved to join the party which espoused the claims of the poor.

And so Schmitz had that night become not only an adherent but a leader of the "red" party,--a party which in this large manufacturing town was becoming more and more formidable.

CHAPTER IX

RESIGNATIONS ARE IN ORDER

Sergeant-Major Krohn, the regimental chief clerk, was leaning against the iron railing which shut off from the vulgar civilian world the edifice holding the offices and administrative bureaux.

He was smoking his morning cigar with considerable zest and reading the _Deutsche Zeitung_, which the letter-carrier had just left for the colonel. He was at leisure just then, for the colonel had gone on horseback to view the regimental drill on the parade grounds, quite a distance from town; and on such days it was the habit of the adjutant to recompense himself by a sound matutinal slumber for the nightly sleep he had missed in attending this banquet or that carousal.

Krohn was deep in the study of the advertis.e.m.e.nts he had found in the paper when his "colleague," Sergeant-Major Schonemann, stepped up to him, dragging his clanking sabre at his heels, and with a cigarette between his lips.

"Morning, morning, Herr Commander!" he addressed Krohn in a jocular spirit. "What is the news?"

The minor dignitary thus addressed smiled pleasantly, and sent a small cloud of fragrant smoke into the air before answering.

"Great things are going on, n.o.ble brother-in-arms. I had almost forgotten about that."

"You don't say! Has H. M. at last sent me a decoration?"

"Not precisely, but something almost as unlikely,--Konig has been placed under arrest."

"What? Konig? Thunder and lightning! What the d.i.c.kens has he been doing?"

"Why, they say he has been putting his fingers into the squadron fund, and that some of the gold has stuck to them. Really, it's a disgrace; a fellow like him, too, quite wealthy, and all that."

"The devil! I should never have supposed that of him; no, not of _him_! And how did they find it out?"

"Haven't the faintest idea. I presume the colonel must have heard something about it. Yesterday afternoon he had him up in his room and charged him with the thing to his face. I peeped through the key-hole, and saw the poor fellow becoming pale under the accusation. He wanted to fetch his books at once; but the colonel wouldn't listen to him, and ordered him forthwith under arrest."

"But these two used to get along so well together!"

"Of course! And I presume there must be some truth to the story, else the colonel would probably have managed the thing otherwise, especially as he himself is in disfavor with the powers that be. This new affair will break his neck."