|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: Egmont. Consider for what you are answerable if you are wrong. For the
most fatal war that ever yet desolated a country. Your refusal is the signal
that at once summons the provinces to arms, that justifies every cruelty for
which Spain has hitherto so anxiously sought a pretext. With a single nod
you will excite to the direst confusion what, with patient effort, we have so
long kept in abeyance. Think of the towns, the nobles, the people; think of
commerce, agriculture, trade! Realize the murder, the desolation! Calmly
the soldier beholds his comrade fall beside him in the battlefield. But
towards you, carried downwards by the stream, shall float the corpses of
citizens, of children, of maidens, till, aghast with horror, you shall no
longer know whose cause you are defending, since you shall see those, for
Egmont |
