French postcard celebrating the Allied victory at the Battle of the Marne with the Kaiser tumbling in the river, Germans (in green) fleeing. The French in blue and red advance and tend to German wounded. The British, France's ally, advance in the distance.

Caption:

Dans un élan magnifique, les armées allemandes on passé deux fois la Marne. Tout va bien. Les troupes sont fraîches. (Agence Wolff)



With magnificent élan, the German armies have crossed the Marne twice. All is well. The troops are fresh. (Wolff Agency)



Signs and text:

On demande couturière pour recoudre les boches

Voulez vous que j’écrive a vos parents?

Poudres sèches pour la guerre future 1873

Sucre pastilles caramelle

Baton provisoire de maréchal



We need a seamstress to mend the Boche

You want me to write to your parents?

Dry powder for future war 1873

Caramel sugar lozenges

Marshal’s provisional baton



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"Artistic Caricatures" (1re Série de 6 cartes)

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Wednesday, September 23, 1914

"Lieutenant Janata owed me seven hundred crowns and had the cheek to fall at the battle of the Drina. Lieutenant Prášek was captured on the Russian front and owes me two thousand crowns. Captain Wichterle, owing me the same amount, got himself killed by his own soldiers at Ruska Rava. Lieutenant Machek, taken prisoner in Serbia, owes me fifteen hundred crowns. There are more people like that here. One falls in the Carpathians with an unpaid bill of exchange of mine; another gets taken prisoner; another gets drowned in Serbia; and a forth dies in a hospital in Hungary. Now you can understand my fears that this war will ruin me if I'm not energetic and ruthless. . . .

I'm in a desperate situation. Is this war being waged to put out of the way all who owe me money?"

Quotation Context

A money lender to an indebted chaplain in Jaroslav Hašek's comic novel The Good Soldier Švejk. Švejk is batman — a personal servant — to the Austro-Hungarian chaplain who plans to administer extreme unction — the last rites of the Catholic church — to a victim in a cholera ward the next day. The money lender lost another indebted chaplain in similar circumstances the week before. The lender's debtors are dropping like flies in Austria-Hungary's failed military adventures of 1914. Serbia's northern border is shaped by rivers — the Danube, the Save, and the Drina. By late September 1914 Austria-Hungary had invaded Serbia twice with heavy losses, some of them drowned in the Drina. In the Battle of Rava Russka, Russia had swept Austria-Hungary from Galicia, and threatened to cross the Carpathians into Hungary. The Russians took 120,000 prisoners in Galicia before the end of the year.

Source

The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek, page 149, copyright © Cecil Parrott, 1973 (translation), publisher: Penguin

Tags

Jaroslav Hašek, Hašek, Hasek, The Good Soldier Švejk, The Good Soldier Schweik, Good Soldier Švejk, Good Soldier Schweik, Švejk, Schweik 1914, September, 1914-09-23