The Rushing Feeling of Fraternity

Thesis: Stefan Zweig, an Austrian intellectual, recalls how the outbreak of war is causing a general feeling of brotherhood and fraternity among the people that did not appear before.

• All of Vienna is in general tumult preparing for mobilization.
• Trains are filled with fresh recruits, banners were flying, music sounded, and the people held parades in the streets
• The first shock of the news of war, a war that the people did not want, was now met with enthusiasm
• In spite of his hatred for war, Zweig could not help but enjoy the majestic feeling of the people in those days.
• They felt something they should have felt in peace time, that they belonged together.
• All differences of class, rank, and language were flooded over in this feeling of fraternity
• Strangers spoke to each other in the streets, everywhere one saw excited faces
• Individuals were incorporated into the mass. The petty clerk or cobbler had achieved the possibility that he could be a hero.
• Even mothers with their grief, and women with their fears, were ashamed to manifest their emotions
• The spirit of adventure, almost a Freudian desire to break from the bourgeois world, gave a wild frenzy to the people that allowed their primitive instincts to rage at will.
• The long time of peace has made war romantic for the people; they don't know what they are getting themselves into.
• Recruits think they will be home by Christmas.
• Young people rush off to war because they were afraid that they might miss the most wonderful and exciting experience of their lives.