Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

DISPUTES 119

darkest part of the square, the old town wcigh-house, you can find the push-carts and stands of the world reformers. The contours of the old weigh-house, where long ago criminals were hung, stands out against the luminous glow coming from the Red Light District nearby. From there the singing resounds of the band of the Salvation Army, marching out to save souls who do not want to be saved. From further on one can hear drinking songs and in the narrow alleys boys and girls make love. The voice of a reciter drones ewer the market.

"Like a roaring fire in the August sun Storms and dashes the Second Squadron And we stare after it as it rushes on."

It is a poem about the second squadron of the cuirassiers of Canrobert, which was machine-gunned, like all the other squadrons in fact, to the last man. This not only decided the outcome of the Franco-German war of 1870, but was also an argument, used by pacifists, to stop all wars because the cuirassiers of Canrobert might just as well have remained quietly in their barracks. Nobody on the New Market needs convincing that the highest vocation of Man is to be a human being, that is to say, an anti-militarist. They only disagree among themselves about the quickest way to bring about the new society. The dynamiters dream of a bomb under the Royal Palace. The philosophers argue that militarism will cease to exist as soon as everybody will ignore its existence. Others have an in-between view, they want to demolish the barracks, break the guns in two, and chase away the regiments.