The Absolute at Large/Chapter 25
Chapter XXV
The So-Called Greatest War
It is a foible of our human nature that when we have an extremely unpleasant experience, it gives up a peculiar satisfaction if it is "the biggest" of its disagreeable kind that has happened since the world began. During a heat wave, for instance, we are very pleased if the papers announce that it is "the highest temperature reached since the year 1881," and we feel a little resentment towards the year 1881 for having gone us one better. Or if our ears are frozen till all the skin peels off, it fills us with a certain happiness to learn that "it was the hardest frost recorded since 1786." It is just the same with wars. The war in progress is either the most righteous or the bloodiest, or the most successful, or the longest, since such and such a time; any superlative whatever always affords us the proud satisfaction of having been through something extraordinary and record-breaking.
Well, the war which lasted from February 12, 1944, to the autumn of 1953, was in all truthfulness and without exaggeration (on my honour!) the Greatest War. Do not let us rob those who lived through it of this one solitary and well-earned satisfaction. 198,000,000 men took part in the fighting, and all but thirteen of them fell. I could give you figures by which accountants and statisticians have attempted to illustrate these enormous losses—for instance, how many thousand kilometres the bodies would stretch if laid one beside the other, and for how many hours an express train would have to run if the bodies were put on the line in place of sleepers; or if the index fingers of all the fallen were cut off and put in sardine-tins, how many hundred goods trucks could be filled with such a load, and so on. But I have a poor memory for figures, and I don't want to cheat you out of a single miserable statistical truck-load. So I repeat that it was the greatest war since the creation of the world, whether you take into consideration the loss of life or the extent of the theatre of war.
Once again the present chronicler has to excuse himself for not caring very much for descriptions of events on the grand scale. Perhaps he ought to relate how the war swung from the Rhine to the Euphrates, from Korea to Denmark, from Lugano to Haparanda, and so forth. Instead of this, he would far rather depict the arrival of the Bedouins in their white burnouses at Geneva, and how they came galloping in with the heads of their enemies stuck on their six-foot spears; or the love adventures of a French poilu in Thibet; the cavalcades of Russian Cossacks that crossed the Sahara; the nightly encounters of Macedonia comitadjis with Senegalese sharpshooters on the shores of the lakes of Finland. As you see, there is the greatest diversity of material. Bobinet's victorious regiments flew, so to speak, in one dazzling swoop in the footprints of Alexander the Great across India to China; but meanwhile the Yellow invasion swept over Siberia and Russia into France and Spain, thus cutting off from their native land the Moslems who were operating in Sweden. The Russian regiments, retreating before the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Chinese, found themselves in North Africa, where Sergei Nikolayevich Zlocin established his Czardom. He was soon murdered, however, because his Bavarian generals conspired against his Prussian hetmans, and Sergei Fyodorovich Zlosin thereupon ascended the Imperial throne in Timbuctoo.
Czechoslovakia was held by the Swedes, French, Turks, Russians and Chinese in succession; each of these invasions killed off the native population to the last man. In the course of those years services were held, or Mass celebrated, in the Church of St. Vitus by a pastor, a solicitor, an Imam, an Archimandrite and a bonze, none of them enjoying any permanent success. The only gratifying change was that the Stavovsky Theatre was invariably full, being used for the purposes of an army store.
When the Japanese had thrust the Chinese out of Eastern Europe in the year 1951 there arose for a brief space a new Middle Kingdom (as the Chinese call their native land), and chance willed that it should fall precisely within the frontier of the old empire of Austria-Hungary. Once again an aged ruler dwelt in Schönbrunn, the old mandarin Jaja Wir Weana, one hundred and six years old, "to whose consecrated head rejoicing nations turn their eyes with child-like love," as the Wiener Mittagszeitung assured its readers daily. The official language was Chinese, which at one sweep did away with all nationalistic rivalries. The State god was Buddha. The stubborn Catholics of Bohemia and Moravia moved out of the country, or became the victims of Chinese dragonades and confiscations, by which the number of national martyrs was increased to a remarkable extent. On the other hand, several prominent and prudent Czech patriots were exalted to mandarin rank by Most Gracious Decree as a reward for their enlightened adaptability. The Chinese administration inaugurated many new and progressive measures, such as the issuing of tickets in place of provisions; but the Middle Kingdom fell to pieces very early, as the supply of lead necessary for munitions ran out, and all authority thereupon collapsed. A few of those Chinese who were not killed remained in the country even in the ensuing period of peace, and for the most part occupied high Government positions.
In the meantime the Emperor Bobinet, now residing in India, at Simla, learnt that an Amazon Empire of women existed in the hitherto unexplored river-territory of the Irawaddy, Salwin, and Mekong. He set out for that region at once with his Old Guard, but never again returned. According to one version he married and settled there. According to another, Amalia, the Queen of the Amazons, cut off his head in battle and flung it into a skin filled with blood, saying, "Satia te sanguine, quern tantum sitisti." This second verson is doubtless the milder.
In the end Europe became the theatre of furious struggles between the black race, which came pouring out of the interior of Africa, and the Mongolian race. The happenings of those two years are best passed over in silence. The last traces of civilization vanished. For instance, the bears multiplied on Hradcany to such an extent that the last inhabitants of Prague destroyed all the bridges, even the Charles Bridge, to save the right bank of the Vltava from these bloodthirsty beasts. The population shrank to an insignificant little group; the Vyšehrad Chapter died out both on the male and female side; the championship match between the Sparta Club and the Victoria Zizkov was witnessed by only one hundred and ten people.
On the other continents the situation was no better. North America, after the fearful ravages of the murderous struggles between the Prohibitionists and the "Wets," had become a Japanese colony. In South America there had been by turns an Empire of Uruguay, Chili, Peru, Brandenburg and Patagonia. In Australia, an Ideal State had been formed, immediately after the downfall of England, which transformed this promising land into an uninhabited desert. In Africa over two million white men had been eaten. The negroes of the Congo basin had hurled themselves upon Europe, while the rest of Africa was in the throes of the fluctuating conflicts of its one hundred and eighty-six different Emperors, Sultans, Kings, Chiefs and Presidents.
Such is history, you see. Each one of those hundred millions of warring pigmies had had his childhood, his loves, his plans; he was often afraid, he was frequently a hero, but usually he was tired to death and would have been glad to lie down on his bed in peace; and if he died, it was certainly against his will. And from all of this, one can take only a handful of arid events: a battle here or there, losses so and so, result this or that—and, after all, the result never brought about any real decision.
Therefore I say: Do not rob the people of that time of their only boast—that what they went through was the Greatest War. We, however, know that in a few decades we shall succeed in arranging an even greater war, for in this respect also the human race is progressing ever upward and on.