lm of powerful but very painful
impressions, not, it is true, to be compared with those which the
battlefields of 1866 had made on him when an unformed youth. The war
unveiled to him the foundations of human nature ordinarily buried under
a covering of culture, and his reason, marveled over the reconciliation
of such antitheses. On the one hand one saw the wildest struggle for
gain, and love of destruction; on the other hand were the daily
examples of the kindest human nature, self-sacrifice for
fellow-creatures, and an almost unearthly devotion to heroic
conceptions of duty. Now it appeared as if the primitive animal nature
in man were let loose, and bellowing for joy that the chains in which
he had lain were burst, and now again as if the noblest virtues were
proudly blossoming, only wanting favorable circumstances in which to
develop themselves. Life was worth nothing, the laws of property very
little; whatever the eyes saw which the body desired, the hand was at
once stretched out to obtain, and the point of the bayonet decided if
anything came between desire and satisfaction. But these same men, who
were as indifferent to their own lives, and as keen to destroy the
lives of others as savages, performed heroic deeds, helping their
comrades in want or danger, sharing their last mouthful with wounded or
imprisoned enemies, who returned them no thanks; and after the battle,
in the peasant's hut, cradling in their arms the little child, whose
roof they had perhaps destroyed, and possibly whose father they might
have slain. These impulses, as far apart as the poles, occurred hour
after hour before Wilhelm's eyes. He was not a born soldier, and his
nature was not given to fighting. But when it was necessary to endure
the wearisome fulfillment of duty, to bear privation silently, and to
look at menacing danger indifferently, then few were his equals, and
none before him. This quiet, passive heroism was noticed by his
comrades. The officers of his company found out that he did not smoke,
and never drank anything stronger than spring water. They noticed also
that dirt was painful to him, even the ordinary dust of the country
roads, and that he was dissatisfied if his boots and trousers bore the
marks of muddy fields. They thought him a spoiled mother's darling, a
"molly-coddle," and their instructive knowledge of human nature found a
name for him, the same name his schoolfellows had already given him.
They called him the "Fra