“Who won the fighting this summer?”
“No one.”
“The Austrians won,” I said. “They kept them from taking San Gabriele. They’ve won. They won’t stop fighting.”
“If they feel as we feel they may stop. They have gone through the same thing.”
“No one ever stopped when they were winning.”
“You discourage me.”
“I can only say what I think.”
“Then you think it will go on and on? Nothing will ever happen?”
“I don’t know. I only think the Austrians will not stop when they have won a victory. It is in defeat that we become Christian.”
“The Austrians are Christians – except for the Bosnians.”
“I don’t mean technically Christian. I mean like Our Lord.”
He said nothing.
“We are all gentler now because we are beaten. How would Our Lord have been if Peter had rescued him in the Garden?”
“He would have been just the same.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“You discourage me,” he said. “I believe and I pray that something will happen. I have felt it very close.”
“Something may happen,” I said. “But it will happen only to us. If they felt the way we do, it would be all right. But they have beaten us. They feel another way.”
“Many of the soldiers have always felt this way. It is not because they were beaten.”
“They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is.”