Edgar Saltus: Soldiers and houses

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

American writers on peace and against war

Edgar Saltus: Soldiers and no farmers; imperial sterility…and demise

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Edgar Saltus
The Philosophy of Disenchantment

Even in its most pleasant season, Berlin is not a pleasant city; a lounge of but half an hour on the Unter den Linden results through unconscious imitation in an enforced quickstep; to begin with, there are too many big houses, and then there are too many big soldiers; and while the soldiers present to the stranger an appearance of arrogant hostility, the houses, not to be outdone, try to look as much like the soldiers as possible, and loom up in alert unbending aggressiveness; indeed, I have now in my mind a certain street which, when I looked down it, almost got up and threatened me.