Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy, Stephen Leacock [best mobile ebook reader TXT] 📗
- Author: Stephen Leacock
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“I should like to read you what I say about neutrality, and how England is certain to violate our strategical right by an attack on Belgium and about the sharp measures that ought to be taken against neutral ships laden with contraband,—the passages are in Chapters VII and VIII, but for the moment I fail to lay the thumb on them.”
“Give me the book, General,” I said. “Now that I understand what you meant by it, I think I can show you also some very funny passages in it. These things, for example, that you say about Canada and the colonies,—yes, here it is, page 148,—‘In the event of war the loosely-joined British Empire will break into pieces, and the colonies will consult their own interests,’—excellently funny,—and this again,—‘Canada will not permanently retain any trace of the English spirit,’—and this too,—‘the Colonies can be completely ignored so far as the European theatre of war is concerned,’—and here again,—‘Egypt and South Africa will at once revolt and break away from the empire,’ —really, General, your ideas of the British Colonies are superbly funny. Mark Twain wasn’t a circumstance on you.”
“Not at all,” said Bernhardi, and his voice reverted to his habitual Prussian severity, “these are not jokes. They are facts. It is only through the folly of the Canadians in not reading my book that they are not more widely known. Even as it is they are exactly the views of your great leader Heinrich Bauratze—”
“Who?” I said.
“Heinrich Bauratze, your great Canadian leader—”
“Leader of what?”
“That I do not know,” said Bernhardi. “Our intelligence office has not yet heard what he leads. But as soon as he leads anything we shall know it. Meantime we can see from his speeches that he has read my book. Ach! if only your other leaders in Canada,—Sir Robert Laurier, Sir Osler Sifton, Sir Williams Borden,—you smile, you do not realize that in Germany we have exact information of everything: all that happens, we know it.”
Meantime I had been looking over the leaves of the book.
“Here at least,” I said, “is some splendidly humorous stuff,—this about the navy. ‘The completion of the Kiel Canal,’ you write in Chapter XII, ‘is of great importance as it will enable our largest battleships to appear unexpectedly in the Baltic and in the North Sea!’ Appear unexpectedly! If they only would! How exquisitely absurd—”
“Sir!” said the General. “That is not to laugh. You err yourself. That is Furchtbarkeit. I did not say the book is all humour. That would be false art. Part of it is humour and part is Furchbarkeit. That passage is specially designed to frighten Admiral Jellicoe. And he won’t read it! Potztausand, he won’t read it!”—repeated the general, his eyes flashing and his clenched fist striking in the air—“What sort of combatants are these of the British Navy who refuse to read our war-books? The Kaiser’s Heligoland speech! They never read a word of it. The Furchtbarkeit-Proklamation of August,—they never looked at it. The Reichstags-Rede with the printed picture of the Kaiser shaking hands with everybody,—they used it to wrap up sandwiches! What are they, then, Jellicoe and his men? They sit there in their ships and they read nothing! How can we get at them if they refuse to read? How can we frighten them away if they haven’t culture enough to get frightened. Beim Himmel,” shouted the General in great excitement—
But what more he said can never be known. For at this second a sudden catastrophe happened.
In his frenzy of excitement the General struck with his fist at the table, missed it, lost his balance and fell over sideways right on the point of his Pickelhaube which he had laid on the sofa. There was a sudden sound as of the ripping of cloth and the bursting of pneumatic cushions and to my amazement the General collapsed on the sofa, his uniform suddenly punctured in a dozen places.
“Schnapps,” he cried, “fetch brandy.”
“Great Heavens! General,” I said, “what has happened?”
“My uniform!” he moaned, “it has burst! Give me Schnapps!”
He seemed to shrink visibly in size. His magnificent chest was gone. He was shrivelling into a tattered heap. He appeared as he lay there, a very allegory and illustration of Prussian Furchtbarkeit with the wind going out of it.
“Fetch Schnapps,”—he moaned.
“There are no Schnapps here,” I said, “this is McGill University.”
“Then call the janitor,” he said.
“You killed him,” I said.
“I didn’t. I was lying. I gave him a look that should have killed him, but I don’t think it did. Rouse yourself from your chair, and call him—”
“I will,” I said, and started up from my seat.
But as I did so, the form of General Bernhardi, which I could have sworn had been lying in a tattered heap on the sofa on the other side of the room, seemed suddenly to vanish from my eyes.
There was nothing before me but the empty room with the fire burned low in the grate, and in front of me an open copy of Bernhardi’s book.
I must,—like many another reader,—have fallen asleep over it.
XV.—THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
A bell tinkled over the door of the little drug store as I entered it; which seemed strange in a lighted street of a great city.
But the little store itself, dim even in the centre and dark in the corners was gloomy enough for a country crossroads.
“I have to have the bell,” said the man behind the counter, reading my thought, “I’m alone here just now.”
“A toothbrush?” he said in answer to my question. “Yes, I guess I’ve got some somewhere round here.” He was stooping under and behind his counter and his voice came up from below. “I’ve got some somewhere—” And then as if talking to himself he murmured from behind a pile of cardboard boxes, “I saw some Tuesday.”
Had I gone across the street to the brilliant premises of the Cut Rate Pharmaceutical where they burn electric light by the meterfull I should no sooner have said “tooth brush,” than one of the ten clerks in white hospital jackets would have poured a glittering assortment over the counter—prophylactic, lactic and every other sort.
But I had turned in, I don’t know why, to the little store across the way.
“Here, I guess these must be tooth brushes,” he said, reappearing at the level of the counter with a flat box in his hand. They must have been presumably, or have once been,—at some time long ago.
“They’re tooth brushes all right,” he said, and started
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