The Bomb | Page 6

English. Race-differences
were as delightful in my eyes as the genera-differences of flowers.
Wars and titles belonged to the dark past and childhood of humanity;
were we never to be breeched as men simply and brothers? We mortals,
I thought, should be trained to fight disease and death, and not one
another; we should be sworn to conquer nature and master her laws,
that was the new warfare in which wisdom and courage would have
their full reward in the humanization of man.
Thoughts like these lighted my darkness but the shadows were heavy. I
was at odds with my surroundings; I detested the brainless conventions
of life, the so-called aristocratic organization of it; besides, my father
did not care to support me any longer; I was a burden to him; and in
this state of intolerable dependence and unrest my thoughts turned to
America. More and more the purpose fixed itself in me to get money
and emigrate; the new land seemed to call me. I wanted to be a writer
or teacher; I wanted to see the world, to win new experiences; I wanted
freedom, love, honour, everything that young men want, vaguely; my
blood was in a ferment. . . .
It was a sordid quarrel with my father, in which he told me that at my
age he was already earning his living, which made up my mind for me,

that and a sentence of Hermann Grimm, which happened at the time to
be singing itself in my ears:--
"An all over-stretching impulse towards equality, before God and the
law, alone controls today the history of our race."
That was what I wanted, or thought I wanted--equality--
"Em ueber-Alles sich ausstreckendes Verlangen nach Gleichheit vor
Gott und vor dem Gesetze. . . ."
Not much in the phrase, the reader will say, I'm afraid; but I give it here
because at the moment it had an extraordinary effect upon me. It was
the first time to my knowledge that a properly equipped thinker had
recognized the desire for equality as a motive force at all, let alone as
the chief driving power in modern politics.
A few days after our quarrel I told my father I intended to go to
America, and asked him if he could let me have five hundred marks
($125) to take me to New York. I fixed the sum at five hundred because
he had promised to let me have that amount during my first year in the
University. I told him that I wanted it as a loan and not as a gift, and at
length I got it, for Suesel backed up my request--a kindness I did not at
all expect, which moved me to shamefaced gratitude. But Suesel
wanted no thanks; she merely wished to get rid of me, she said; for if I
stayed I should be a drag on my father.
I travelled fourth-class to Hamburg, and in three days was on the high
seas. I was the only man of any education in the steerage, and I kept to
myself, and spent most of my time studying English. Still, I made one
or two acquaintances. There was a young fellow called Ludwig
Henschel going out as a waiter, who had worked for some years in
England, and regarded America as Tom Tiddler's ground. He loved to
show off to me and advise me; but all the while was a little proud of my
acquaintance and my scholarship, and I tolerated him chiefly because
his attitude flattered my paltry vanity.

There was a North German, too, called Raben, who was by way of
being a journalist, though he had more conceit than reading, and his
learning was to seek. He was small and thin, with washed-out, sandy
hair, grey eyes, and white eyelashes. He had a nervous staccato way of
talking; but he met one's eye boldly, and though instinct warned me to
avoid him, I knew so little of life that I took his stare for proof of frank
honesty, and felt with some remorse that my aversion wronged him.
Had I known then of him what I learned later, I'd have--but there! Judas
didn't go about branded. I think Raben disliked me. At first he tried to
make up to me; but in an argument one day he blundered in a Latin tag,
and saw that I had detected the mistake. He drew away from me then,
and tried to carry Henschel with him; but Ludwig knew more of life
than books, and confided to me that he would never trust a man or a
woman with light eyelashes. What children we men are!
Another acquaintance I made on the steamer was a Jew boy from
Lemburg, Isaac Glueckstein, who had no money and knew but