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Read Ebook: Makers of Madness A Play in One Act and Three Scenes by Hagedorn Hermann
Font size: Background color: Text color: Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev PageEbook has 669 lines and 13651 words, and 14 pagesMy helmet. Damn it! Where is my helmet? I am going to dig at the plans once more. If God lets me lead the armies in such a fight, the devil can come when I'm through and fetch away the old carcass. PRIME MINISTER Where's your Secretary? MINISTER OF WAR Secretary, here! PRIME MINISTER To the telegraph-operator with this. It is to be sent to every news bureau in the city and to all our embassies abroad. MINISTER OF WAR Tomorrow, the mobilization! CHIEF OF STAFF Tonight! I need those twelve hours for my plans. SECRETARY Your Majesty! CHIEF OF STAFF My King! KING I trust I am not breaking in upon a matter that does not concern me? PRIME MINISTER There is nothing that the King's servants may do that does not concern the King. KING True. But sometimes the King is kept in ignorance nevertheless. What paper is that you have there, if you please? SECRETARY Here, your Majesty. MINISTER OF WAR Get out! PRIME MINISTER It is the report of your Majesty's interview with the Ambassador. KING My message has been altered. It was conciliatory. It is a challenge now. Who did this? PRIME MINISTER Your Majesty sees the culprit before you. KING Are you trying to make war? PRIME MINISTER I am trying, your Majesty, to save the country from the results of your Majesty's indiscretion in calling the Ambassador to your palace without consulting your Ministers. If we do not strike now we lose our prestige as a great nation, our national honor is dragged in the dust. We have to fight. We cannot afford to back down. KING But this is unholy, barbaric--this deliberate concoction of a great, terrible war. I saw clearly this evening as I was talking with the Ambassador how utterly without inner necessity this war-scare is. It is a made thing from beginning to end, and I refuse absolutely to sanction it. CHIEF OF STAFF Your Majesty is an idealist. We are practical, and, I may say, far-seeing men. And we are the three men, perhaps, who have given your Majesty the chair you sit on and made your kingdom what it is. KING I think I have not been ungrateful. But my people come first, and I will not have my people plunged into misery for no valid and inevitable necessity. PRIME MINISTER Your Majesty, I have served you for fifteen years and I served your exalted father for twenty. You are right. This war may be avoided. In two days this war-cloud could be so utterly dissipated that men would laugh here and in the great Republic that for a day they had talked so hotly of war. Dissipated. For a year, for two years. For always? No. The war must come sooner or later. It is a matter, in the first place, of prestige, of national honor. But, more emphatically, it is a question of mathematics, birth-rate, death-rate, revenue, taxes, industries, imports, exports. There is a map of the world, your Majesty. This stretch of land there we need as a safety-valve. If we get that we are safe. If we fail to get it we explode. Not at once. But sooner or later. Our army and navy have never been in better shape. These two gentlemen can give your Majesty their word for that. But you can take mine, too. The enemy's army is politically rotten, and enfeebled by sentimental peace propaganda. Their defenses are inadequate and their navy likewise. Those things will change. Strike today--and they never raise their heads again. Wait--and it is you who may be crushed. KING That is a theory. Not a fact. Ten years may change the aspect of things entirely, particularly if we use those ten years in preparations not for war but for peace, honest at home and abroad, just, open, civil, to our neighbors. PRIME MINISTER Your Majesty, I look farther than ten years, farther than ten times ten years. And I have wrought for this moment, prepared for this moment, this moment of our strength and our enemy's weakness. I have a right to insist that I, who have brought your kingdom thus far, shall not have my hands tied when the moment for stern action arrives. KING PRIME MINISTER Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page |
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