Doesn't one find there a wonderful refinement, culture and innate elegance? Unfortunately, our Berlin people are far different. RITZAU Oh, of course. Great! _The tall officer comes out of the door, stepping backward. He heaves a sigh of relief and sits down near the two officers. Takes out a cigar._ VON BLUMENFELD How are things? RITZAU Very well. We were talking of Paris. STEIN Then I am going to smoke too. BLUMENFELD You may smoke. He is not coming out Do you want to hear important news? STEIN Well? BLUMENFELD He laughed just now I STEIN Really! BLUMENFELD Upon my word of honor! And he touched my shoulder with two fingers--do you understand? STEIN _With envy._ Of course! I suppose you brought him good news, Blumenfeld? _The military telegraphist, standing at attention, hands Blumenfeld a folded paper._ TELEGRAPHIST A radiogram, Lieutenant! BLUMENFELD Let me have it. _Slowly he puts his cigar on the window sill and enters the Commander's room cautiously._ STEIN He's a lucky fellow. You may say what you please about luck, but it exists. Who is this Blumenfeld? Von?--Did you know his father? Or his grandfather? RITZAU I have reason to believe that he had no grandfather at all. But he is a good comrade. _Blumenfeld comes out and rejoins the two officers, taking up his cigar._ STEIN Another military secret? BLUMENFELD Of course. Everything that is said and done here is a military secret. But I may tell you about it. The information we have received concerns our new siege guns--they are advancing successfully. STEIN Oho! BLUMENFELD Yes, successfully. They have just passed the most difficult part of the road--you know where the swamps are-- STEIN Oh, yes. RITZAU Great! BLUMENFELD The road could not support the heavy weight and caved in. Our commander was very uneasy. He ordered a report about the movement at each and every kilometer. STEIN Now he will sleep in peace. BLUMENFELD He never sleeps, von Stein. STEIN That's true. BLUMENFELD He never sleeps, von Stein! When he is not listening to reports or issuing commands, he is thinking. As the personal correspondent of his Highness I have the honor to know many things which others are not allowed to know--Oh, gentlemen, he has a wonderful mind! RITZAU Great! _Another very young officer enters, stands at attention before Blumenfeld._ BLUMENFELD Sit down, von Schauss. I am talking about our Commander. SCHAUSS Oh! BLUMENFELD He has a German philosophical mind which manages guns as Leibnitz managed ideas. Everything is preconceived, everything is prearranged, the movement of our millions of people has been elaborated into such a remarkable system that Kant himself would have been proud of it. Gentlemen, we are led forward by indomitable logic and by an iron will. We are inexorable as Fate. _The officers express their approval by subdued exclamations of "bravo."_ BLUMENFELD