Читать книгу Banzai! by Parabellum - Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff - Страница 4

As usual, it had begun quite harmlessly and inconspicuously. It is not my business to tell how it all came to pass, how the way was prepared. That may be left to the spinners of yarns and to those on the trail of the sources of history. I shall leave it to them to ascertain when the idea that there must be a conflict, and that the fruit must be plucked before it had time to ripen, first took root in the minds of the Japanese people.

We Americans realize now that we had been living for years like one who has a presentiment that something dreadful is hanging over him which will suddenly descend upon his head, and who carries this feeling of dread about with him with an uneasy conscience, trying to drown it in the tumult and restlessness of daily life. We realize the situation now, because we know where we should have fixed our gaze and understand the task to the accomplishment of which we should have bent our energies, but we went about like sleep-walkers and refused to see what thousands of others knew, what thousands saw in astonishment and concern at our heedlessness.

We might easily have peeped through the curtain that hid the future from us, for it had plenty of holes, but we passed them by unnoticed. And, nevertheless, there were many who did peep through. Some, while reading their paper, let it fall into their lap and stared into space, letting their thoughts wander far away to a spot whence the subdued clash of arms and tumult of war reached their soul like the mysterious roll and roar of the breakers. Others were struck by a chance word overheard in the rush of the street, which they would remember until it was driven out by the strenuous struggle that each day brought with it. But the word itself had not died; it continued to live in the foundation of the consciousness where our burning thoughts cannot enter, and sometimes in the night it would be born afresh in the shape of wild squadrons of cavalry galloping across the short grass of the prairie with noiseless hoofs. The thunder of cannon could be heard in the air long before the guns were loaded.

I saw no more than others, and when the grim horrors of the future first breathed coldly upon me I, too, soon forgot it. It happened at San Francisco in the spring of 1907. We were standing before a bar, and from outside came the sounds of an uproar in the street. Two men were being thrown out of a Japanese restaurant across the way, and the Japanese proprietor, who was standing in the doorway, kicked the hat of one of them across the pavement so that it rolled over the street like a football.

"Well, what do you think of that," cried my friend, Arthur Wilcox, "the Jap is attacking the white men."

I held him back by the arm, for a tall Irish policeman had already seized the Jap, who protested loudly and would not submit to arrest. The policeman took good hold of him, but before he knew it he lay like a log on the pavement, the Japanese dwarf apparently having thrown him without the least trouble. A wild brawl followed. Half an hour later only a few policemen, taking notes, were walking about in the Japanese restaurant, which had been completely demolished by a frenzied mob. We remained at the bar for some time afterwards engaged in earnest conversation.

"Our grandchildren," said Arthur, "will have to answer for that little affair and fight it out some day or other."

"Not our grandchildren, but we ourselves," I answered, not knowing in the least why I said it.

"We ourselves?" said Wilcox, laughing at me, "not much; look at me, look at yourself, look at our people, and then look at those dwarfs."

"The Russians said the same thing: Look at the dwarfs."

They all laughed at me and presently I joined in the laugh, but I could not forget the Irishman as he lay in the grip of the Jap. And quite suddenly I remembered something which I had almost forgotten. It happened at Heidelberg, during my student days in Germany; a professor was telling us how, after the inglorious retreat of the Prussian army from Valmy, the officers, with young Goethe in their midst, were sitting round the camp fires discussing the reasons for the defeat. When they asked Goethe what he thought about it, he answered, as though gifted with second sight: "At this spot and at this moment a new epoch in the world's history will begin, and you will all be able to say that you were present." And in imagination I could see the red glow of the bivouac fires and the officers of Frederick the Great's famous army, who could not understand how anyone could have fled before the ragged recruits of the Revolution. And near them I saw a man of higher caliber standing on tiptoe to look through the dark curtain into the future.

At the time I soon forgot all these things; I forgot the apparently insignificant street affray and the icy breath of premonition which swept over me then, and not until the disaster had occurred did it again enter my mind. But then when the swords were clashing I realized, for the first time, that all the incidents we had observed on the dusty highway of History, and passed by with indifference, had been sure signs of the coming catastrophe.

Parabellum