Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them by Arthur Ruhl
page 102 of 258 (39%)
page 102 of 258 (39%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
|
orders, for team-work, for turning every individual energy into the
common end. One may, however, run across a certain feeling toward war, quite local and unconscious, yet very different from the French love of "gloire" and the English keenness for war as a sort of superior fox-hunting or football. You are, let us say, watching one of the musical comedies which the war has inspired. The curtain rises on a darkened stage, through whose blackness you presently discover, twinkling far below, as if you were looking down from an aeroplane, the lights of Paris, the silver thread of the Seine and its bridges. There is a faint whirring, and two faces emerge vaguely from the dark--the hero and heroine swinging along in a Taube. And as they fly they sing a wistful little waltz song, a sort of cradle song: "Ich glau-u-be... Ich glau-u-be Da oben fliegt... 'ne Taube..." They are thinking, so the song runs, that there is a Taube overhead; it has flown here out of its German nest, and let's hope it will not let anything fall on them. And, as they sing, the young man makes a motion with his hand, there is a sort of glowworm flash, and a few seconds later, away down there among the Paris roofs a puff of red smoke and fire. The illusion is perfect, and the audience is enchanted--that ride through the velvet night, so still, so quaint, so roguish in its way, and the flash far below, that has flung some unsuspecting citizen on the cobblestones like a bundle of old rags. And, whirring gently, the Taube sails on through the night: |
|


