Gossip from the Forest Read Online Free Page B

was acceptable to speak of military disasters in the house. What he said next the delegates were not quite so accustomed to.
    Erzberger: Our military resources are coming to an end.… The basis of my argument is the danger of revolution. It is no good telling me that the monarchical idea is too firmly rooted in Berlin or Vienna for the monarchs to be overthrown. This war has no precedent. If the monarchs do not make peace in the next few months, our people will do it over their heads.
    What are you? some of the Conservatives whispered in his ear in the Reichstag library. A socialist? Even socialists don’t talk like that.
    A day or so later he moved a motion in the Reichstag: that Germany should negotiate for peace, renounce all her conquests. His party voted with him, and the socialists of all varieties. The motion was carried 212 votes to 126; it sent the Kaiser into dazed retreat at Wilhelmshohe. With his Empress, whose heart was suspect. But the advice of Matthias Erzberger and 211 others was not followed.

ERZBERGER GETS THE JOB
    For this and other reasons, Matthias Erzberger was taken into the cabinet of peace-makers appointed in October 1918 to bring the war to an end. The Chancellor was a quiet Red Cross official who had married the daughter of an English duke. His name was Prince Max of Baden and his nickname was Max-Pax. Within three weeks he caught severe influenza, took too much sleeping draught and did not wake again until Turkey had surrendered and Austria sought an armistice. His ruinous reawakening made him prejudiced against sleep. He avoided it and grew sallow.
    It became clear to him and his cabinet that generals could not go to France to make an armistice. For their very names would provoke the Allies and they might also be unbending on terms.
    On 6th November, in the late morning, there was a meeting of cabinet ministers in the Reichstag library. A secretary from the Chancellery acted as chairman in Max’s absence. Max was trying to telephone the Kaiser, who had fled a month before to Spa, to be with his soldiers. In fact he had taken up residence in the Château de la Fraineuse outside the town and spent his days refusing to take up the telephone.
    At the cabinet meeting in the Reichstag the secretary from the Chancellery opened his dispatch case and took from it the one almost transparent sheet of paper that lay there. Only a few lines of typing stood on it; you could see that much even from the reverse side. The secretary read what was on the paper.
    Secretary: Soviets have seized control of all utilities and communications in Lübeck, Hamburg, Brunsbüttel …
    Erzberger thought of desecrated property and broken tabernacles. Schiedemann and Ebert, though socialist in name, also went numb at the word “soviet.” They were honest trade unionists, like Erzberger himself. Their idea of revolution was to give poor boys a chance to join the middle class. Not Soviets in Hamburg, Lübeck, and God knew where else.
    Secretary: The Chancellor appoints Minister of State Matthias Erzberger to lead an immediate Armistice Commission to the enemy lines on an axis of which Supreme Headquarters will inform him. At the earliest possible moment Herr Erzberger and other plenipotentiaries will be given their accreditations. They will travel to OHL, Spa, by special train. I wish them God speed and pledge them the gratitude of the German people.
    Signed
    MAX VON BADEN
    Reichs Chancellor
    No one spoke. Matthias Erzberger’s stomach got very cold.
    He thought, yes this is what is meant for me. To be told this is like coming on a lover unexpectedly in the dark. Or a murderer.
    Erzberger: Not me.
    A colleague called Trimborn told him he was the youngest.
    Colleague: We others couldn’t take on such a dangerous trip.
    Erzberger: So you admit it’s dangerous? Why me?
    Colleague: It’s your temperament, Matthias. To take on this sort of thing.
    Matthias thought, you can’t have it