The officer towers up, in a spiked helmet, holding
his sword-hilt in one hand and field-glasses in the other, looking
down at the boy truculently and fiercely. Another officer stands by
smiling. The boy himself is gazing up, nervous and frightened,
staring at his formidable captor, a peasant beside him, also
looking agitated. There is nothing to indicate what happened, but I
hope they let the boy go! The officer seemed to me to typify the
tyranny of human aggressiveness, at its stupidest and ugliest. The
boy, graceful, appealing, harmless, appeared, I thought, to stand
for the spirit of beauty, which wanders about the world, lost in
its own dreams, and liable to be called sharply to account when it
strays within the reach of human aggressiveness occupied in the
congenial task of making havoc of the world's peaceful labours.
The Landsturm officer in the picture had so obviously the best of
it; he was thoroughly enjoying his own formidableness; while the
boy had the look of an innocent, bright-eyed creature caught in a
trap, and wondering miserably what harm it could have done.
Something of the same kind is always going on all the world over;
the collision of the barbarous and disciplined forces of life with
the beauty-loving, detached instinct of man. The latter cannot
give a reason for its existence, and yet I am by no means sure that
it is not going to triumph in the end.
There is every reason to believe that within the last twenty years
the sowing of education broadcast has had an effect upon the human
outlook, rather than perhaps upon the human character, which has
not been adequately estimated.
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