Thursday, November 13:
R. did not have a bad night, and the doctor does not seem at all worried. At lunch R. is very cheerful, and at coffee bubbling over with good spirits.
In the afternoon he works on his score, that is to say, he continues ruling it, and when I go to him to ask whether he is sufficiently cheerful and well for me to wear my Parsifal dress, he says yes and he wishes me to. He comes back to Othello and Desdemona and says that in her and her fate he can discern the world’s woes, but Othello is interesting only from a pathological point of view; he says he did not read the final scene: “it requires a brute like Shakespeare to write something like that!”
In the evening the presence of our friend Gersdorff leads us to the subject of war, and R. remembers how astonished Garibaldi was to see the Germans advancing in passo di scuola [“marching in step”] under shellfire: “He must have thought to himself, ‘You can’t wage war on such donkeys - they’re not a bit nervous!’” R. says it might well be asked whether this showed the privates’ heroic courage or just fear of their sergeants. He says he has always supported the organization of the army, and he is also convinced that our officers have heroic courage, but the present state of affairs - an exhausted nation, constant new taxes, and the army’s being constantly reinforced - that is barbaric. Conquering new territories and not waiting to inquire how they might be won over, never stopping to think how to make friends with Holland, Switzerland, etc., nothing at all but just army, army! Another speech by the preacher Stoecker provokes from R. the exclamation: “Oh, it is not the Jews - everybody tries to further his own interests - it is we ourselves who are to blame; we, the nation, for allowing such things to happen. The same with the stock exchange, a free and good institution to begin with, and what have we let it become?” And he talks of the present loan the state is making, which will just give further rein to this evil speculative urge.