The Bomb | Page 5

am the mirror in which the reader must see Lingg, and I want him to
feel pretty certain that the mirror is clean at least, and does not distort
truth, or disfigure it.
I was born near Munich, in a little village called Lindau. My father was
an Oberfoerster, a chief in the forestry department. My mother died
early. I was brought up healthily enough in the hard way of the German
highlands. At six I went to the village school. Because my clothes were
better than most of the other boys' clothes, because every now and then
I had a few Pfennige to spend, I thought myself better than my
schoolmates. The master, too, never beat me or scolded me. I must
have been a dreadful little snob. I remember liking my first name,
Rudolph. There were princes, forsooth, called Rudolph; but Schnaubelt
I hated, it seemed vulgar and common.
When I was about twelve or thirteen I had learned all that the village
school had to teach. My father wished me to go to Munich to study in
the Gymnasium, though he grudged the money it would cost to keep

me there. When he was not drinking or working he used to preach the
money-value of education to me, and I was willing enough to believe
him. He never showed me much affection, and I was not sorry to go out
into the larger world, and try my wings in a long flight.
It was about this time that I first of all became aware of nature's beauty.
Away to the south our mountain valley broke down towards the flat
country, and one could look towards Munich far over the plain all
painted in different colors by the growing crops. Suddenly one evening
the scales fell from my eyes; I saw the piney mountain and the
misty-blue plain and the golden haze of the setting sun, and stared in
wondering admiration.
How was it I had never before seen their beauty?
Well, I went to the Gymnasium. I suppose I was dutiful and teachable:
we Germans have those sheep-virtues in our blood. But in my reading
of Latin and Greek I came across thoughts and thinkers and at length
Heine, the poet, woke me to question all the fairy tales of childhood.
Heine was my first teacher, and I learned from him more than I learned
in the classrooms; it was he who opened for me the door of the modern
world. I finished with the Gymnasium when I was about eighteen, and
left it, as Bismarck said he left it, a Freethinker and Republican.
In the holidays I used to go home to Lindau; but my father made my
life harder and harder to me. He was away all day at work. He did work,
that is one thing I must say for him; but he left at home the girl who
took charge of the house, and she used to give herself airs. She was
justified in doing so, I suppose, poor girl; but I did not like it at the time,
and resented her manner, snob that I was. When I had any words with
Suesel I was sure to have a row with my father afterwards, and he
didn't pick his words, especially when he had drink in him. I seemed to
anger him; intellectually we were at opposite poles. Even when
cheating or worse he was a devout Lutheran, and his servility to his
superiors was only equalled by the harshness with which he treated his
underlings. His credulity and servility were as offensive to my new
dignity of manhood as his cruelty to his subordinates or his bestial
drunkenness.

For some unhappy months I was at a loose end. I was very proud,
thought no end of myself and my petty scholarly achievements; but I
didn't know what course to steer in life, what profession to adopt.
Besides, the year of military service stood between me and my future
occupation, and the mere thought of the slavery was inexpressibly
hateful to me. I hated the uniform, the livery of murder; hated the
discipline which turned a man into a machine; hated the orders which I
must obey, even though they were absurd; hated the mad unreason of
the vile, soul-stifling system. Why should I, a German, fight
Frenchmen or Russians or Englishmen? I was willing enough to defend
myself or my country if we were attacked; confident enough, too, in
courage, to believe that a militia like the Swiss would suffice for that
purpose. But I loved the French, as my teacher Heine loved them; a
great Cultur-volk, I said to myself--a nation in the first rank of
civilization; I loved the Russians, too, an intelligent, sympathetic,
kindly people; and I admired the adventurous