The underlying irony is that these officers, who reappear in the opening scene of each Act, are themselves modeled on Schönpflug cartoon characters, reshaped in accordance with the “restaurant/battlefront” paradox formulated by Kraus in December 1912. Their fatuous exchanges now hint at something far more sinister. The Schönpflug drawing they admire might well be that venomous cartoon portraying King Peter of Serbia and Tsar Nicholas of Russia as blood-stained criminals. It is left to our imagination whether the officers are chuckling about that prototype of visual hate speech or some harmless humoresque.

Trivial local responses to cataclysmic events generate a pervasive black humour. As the scene shifts to the Café Pucher, the prime minister, while preparing to issue a communiqué, asks the waiter for a humorous magazine—not Die Muskete but Die Bombe! The tragedy of mankind is indeed being played out by “operetta figures” (as the Preface suggests). Kraus shows an exceptional ear for the rhythms of Austrian vernacular, interspersed with patriotic rant and journalistic verbiage. Each of the five Acts opens in similar style, with crowds convulsed by the cries of news vendors announcing the latest sensation: the euphoria in August 1914 after the ultimatum to Serbia has precipitated world war (Act I); reactions after the Italian declaration of war on Austria in May 1915 (Act II); the Romanian declaration of war on the Central Powers in July 1916 (Act III); and the ultimatum by President Wilson leading to the American entry into the war in April 1917 (Act IV). Within this framework the handling of chronology is flexible (there are already references to Italian treachery in Act I). For Kraus, as he observed in 1917, operates “not with mathematical but with apocalyptic precision” (F 462-71, 171).

The fluctuating fortunes of war on the Southern and Eastern Fronts are most vividly reflected in Act V. Gloating over the rout of Italian forces at Caporetto in autumn 1917 followed by the capitulation of Soviet Russia at Brest-Litovsk, an Austrian parliamentarian declares: “We are the victors, and we demand the spoils” (V, 3). Attitudes in Berlin are even more euphoric as Pan-Germans demand vast territorial annexations at a mass rally (V, 7). But growing pessimism on the streets of Vienna is reflected in rumours that a desperately weakened Austria-Hungary may be seeking a separate peace (V, 17). Finally, the collapse of the Central Powers in October 1918 is dramatized by a grandiose drunken banqueting scene at army headquarters (V, 55).

Kraus’s underlying humanism is reflected in the prominence given to the word “Menschheit” (“mankind” or “humanity”), both in the title and in the dramatic chorus, the scenes in which a naively patriotic Optimist discusses the war with the Grumbler, Kraus’s raisonneur. One of their most striking dialogues, which deals with attempts to legitimize air raids that kill civilians, offers a further instructive parallel between then and now. Although the aerial destruction of urban areas was a rare occurrence when Kraus wrote this play, his analysis has proved paradigmatic. Experience, the Grumbler observes, should have taught the perpetrators of “murder from the air” that “when they intend to hit an arms dump they infallibly hit a bedroom, and instead of an armaments factory a school for girls.” When the Optimist objects that this is not “deliberate”, the Grumbler replies: “No, worse than that: fortuitous!” (I, 29). They can’t help it happening, so they express regret and do it again.

This analysis has a prophetic ring. On 30 July 2014, at the height of the Israeli-Gaza conflict, the Jabaliya School for Girls was hit by shells that killed refugees sheltering inside. The justification offered by the Israeli Defence Force was that militants had fired mortars earlier that day “from the vicinity of the school.”6 Clearly, the issues raised by The Last Days of Mankind are with us still. Since Kraus’s day there has been an exponential increase in the bombing of urban areas and the casuistry used to justify it. The truth identified by the phrase “murder from the air” is now shrouded in euphemisms like “collateral damage.” But even Kraus never imagined a global conflict in which democratically elected governments would intentionally bomb civilian targets like Dresden and Nagasaki, incinerating hundreds of thousands of defenceless people. British politicians of the Second World War spoke of “obliteration bombing” as they set about the task of destroying Germany “city by city”, a policy condemned by one of Winston Churchill’s most principled critics, Bishop George Bell.7

In defending the cause of humanity, Kraus was repudiating nationalistic loyalties and aligning himself with the moral philosophy of the Enlightenment. The overwhelming majority of his countrymen, not least the German-speaking Jews, identified themselves with the Habsburg Monarchy and the German Reich. Leading authors like Richard Dehmel and Hugo von Hofmannsthal eloquently endorsed the German and Austrian cause, but Kraus took a very different line. If patriotism meant supporting the use of poison gas, and if it was treason to repudiate victories gained by this means, then he declared himself to be “one of the greatest traitors of all times” (F 474–83, 43). As his opposition to the war became increasingly vocal, Kraus was denounced as “the leader of defeatism in Austria” (F 501–7, 91).

During one of his wartime public readings in Berlin, Kraus contrasted the fanaticism of Kaiser Wilhelm II with the idealism of Immanuel Kant (F 474–83, 155–56). While German nationalists associated the Categorical Imperative with patriotic duty, the satirist endorsed the programme of international reconciliation set out in Kant’s essay “On Perpetual Peace.” Kant recognized the importance of creating new international institutions. In “Perpetual Peace” he associated war with the state of nature “where no court of justice is available to judge with legal authority.” After arguing for a republican constitution guaranteeing equality for all citizens, he suggested that peace could be secured by “a pacific federation.”8 Implicit in these arguments are the concepts of a League of Nations (with the power to regulate disputes) and an International Court of Justice (to punish breaches of the peace). For over a century after Kant’s death such ideas remained utopian, but in 1918, in the new climate created by President Wilson’s Fourteen Points, it was finally possible to put these proposals into practice. For Kraus, there was hope for humanity, after all.