But Tjaden is quite fascinated.
His otherwise prosy fancy is blowing bubbles.
"But look," he announces, "I simply can't believe that an emperor has to go to the latrine the same as I have."
"You can bet your boots on it."
"Four and a half-wit make seven," says Kat. "You've got a maggot in your brain, Tjaden, just you run along to the latrine quick, and get your head clear, so that you don't talk like a two-year-old."
Tjaden disappears.
"But what I would like to know," says Albert, "is whether there would not have been a war if the Kaiser had said No."
"I'm sure there would," I interject, "he was against it from the first."
"Well, if not him alone, then perhaps if twenty or thirty people in the world had said No."
"That's probable," I agree, "but they damned well said Yes."
"It's queer, when one thinks about it," goes on Kropp, "we are here to protect our fatherland.
And the French are over there to protect their fatherland.
Now who's in the right?"
"Perhaps both," say I without believing it.
"Yes, well now," pursues Albert, and I see that he means to drive me into a corner, "but our professors and parsons and newspapers say that we are the only ones that are right, and let's hope so;—but the French professors and parsons and newspapers say that the right is on their side, now what about that?"
"That I don't know," I say, "but whichever way it is there's war all the same and every month more countries coming in."
Tjaden reappears.
He is still quite excited and again joins the conversation, wondering just how a war gets started.
"Mostly by one country badly offending another," answers Albert with a slight air of superiority.
Then Tjaden pretends to be obtuse.
"A country?
I don't follow.
A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France.
Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat."
"Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?" growls Kropp,
"I don't mean that at all.
One people offends the other–––"
"Then I haven't any business here at all," replies Tjaden, "I don't feel myself offended."
"Well, let me tell you," says Albert sourly, "it doesn't apply to tramps like you."
"Then I can be going home right away," retorts Tjaden, and we all laugh,
"Ach, man! he means the people as a whole, the State–––" exclaims Muller.
"State, State"—Tjaden snaps his fingers contemptuously,
"Gendarmes, police, taxes, that's your State;—if that's what you are talking about, no, thank you."
"That's right," says Kat, "you've said something for once, Tjaden.
State and home-country, there's a big difference."
"But they go together," insists Kropp, "without the State there wouldn't be any home-country."
"True, but just you consider, almost all of us are simple folk.
And in France, too, the majority of men are labourers, workmen, or poor clerks.
Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French shoemaker want to attack us?
No, it is merely the rulers.
I had never seen a Frenchman before I came here, and it will be just the same with the majority of Frenchmen as regards us.
They weren't asked about it any more than we were."
"Then what exactly is the war for?" asks Tjaden.
Kat shrugs his shoulders.
"There must be some people to whom the war is useful."
"Well, I'm not one of them," grins Tjaden.
"Not you, nor anybody else here."
"Who are they then?" persists Tjaden.
"It isn't any use to the Kaiser either.
He has everything he can want already."