Even someone as experienced and worldly as old Peter could not see through a nation's will. That showed just how successfully Germany had handled this matter; amid truth and falsehood, no one could easily guess Germany's real intentions.
France was now caught between two possible answers.
Such large-scale military movements along the German-French border could not possibly be concealed from France's intelligence agencies. Even civilians near the French border could detect a few clues.
But who could completely guarantee whether Germany was doing this to guard against France, or to invade France?
Old Peter sighed helplessly. "I hope we are worrying too much! Peace has not come easily. More than ten years ago, I watched with my own eyes as so many people perished in the flames of war."
"Now, in Germany's ledgers, they are no more than a string of numbers. Nearly twenty years have passed—who still remembers those people, or the cruelty of war?"
Unlike Germany's young people, old Peter had clearly passed the age of hot-blooded fervor. Looking back on his own youth, he had been just like the young Germans of today, with no real understanding or experience of war.
But after witnessing the horrors of the First World War firsthand, old Peter had paid the price his generation deserved for its ignorance.
He had counted himself relatively lucky. He had been able to work in a position relatively far from the front, and because the war had greatly needed railways, he had avoided the cost of going personally to the battlefield and survived by sheer luck.
Yet he could not forget that miserable era. One vivid life after another vanished amid artillery fire, while wounded soldiers returning from the front bore crippled limbs that spoke of the unbearable agony of an unjust war.
Those numb,