They refer to “well-placed sources”, but where and how they are placed they don’t say. Of course, it’s the things you’re not told that arouse your interest. The gaps in the news are the interesting bits.

So what happens now in the newspaper reader? How will he react to what he has not read? Is he pleased to learn about the false bills, or upset, or is he even from Budapest himself? Surely he may be numbered among the great horde of the morally indignant, who feel vicarious anger at any news of criminality. All the fuses that were slowly burning in him reach the point at which they cause an explosion. Not visibly, of course. Heavens, no! But one that is contained in itself, more an implosion . . .

In any case, it may be seen that the reports are toying with his delicate soul, even while he imagines he is toying with the news. If he weren’t so utterly bespectacled, it might almost be that the news is reading him. Perhaps he imagines his mind is toying with these half-reported things, filling them out. But these special reports take it out of him. A leader’s shallow scoop would do him in. Everything there is so agleam with shiny common sense that the reader can’t but be dazzled.

Now he stands up, the reader, fully in the picture, older, wiser and possibly sadder. With his left hand he smoothes away any unevennesses that may have occurred in his beard and changes his glasses. (For an instant he has shy little mousy eyes.) Then he snaps open a coffin containing a different pair, and heads outside, equipped for the street.

The feuilleton remained covered. He leaves it to less manly natures than his own.

But if it should happen that one day, quietly, out of boredom, he should read it, then he would not like it one little bit. Because what I write is not to his taste . . .

Frankfurter Zeitung, 11 January 1926

I

Germany

 

 

2. Of Dogs and Men

To the many scenes of war misery in Vienna a new one was added, a few days ago.

A man returned from the war in the form of a hinge—invalid with shattered spine—moves almost inexplicably through Kärntner Strasse, selling newspapers. A dog sits on his back.

A clever, well-trained dog, riding on his own master, and making sure he doesn’t lose a single paper. A modern fairy-tale being, combination of man and dog, thrown up by the war and set down in the misery of Kärntner Strasse.

A sign of the times, in which dogs ride men, to protect them from other men. A memory of those great times when men were trained like dogs and were barked at as “Schweinehunde” and so forth, by others who were themselves bloodhounds (though heaven help you if you called them that).

An outcome of patriotism that makes the upright likenesses of the Creator dependent on four-footed creatures who lacked the spiritual distinction to become heroes or cannon-fodder, and at the most did odd jobs in the ambulance service. On the invalid’s chest dangles an Emperor Karl Troop Cross. On the neck of the dog a mere dog-tag.

The bearer of the Troop Cross is a victim. The one with the dog-tag is active. He guards the suffering of the invalid. He keeps the man from further harm. His Fatherland and fellow-beings could only hurt him. He has them to thank for being watched over by a dog. Sign of the times! Once there were sheepdogs who watched herds of sheep, and guard-dogs that guarded houses. Today there are mandogs who watch invalids, mandogs the logical consequence of submissive men. The scene struck me with the force of a revelation: a dog seated on a man. When he remembers what happened when he relied on other men, a man is happy to put his trust in a dog.