New Year

The youth could not help breaking a rule of courtesy towards this heavily burdened and yet, as he felt, noble man by asking: “But tell me, I beseech you, why do you carry on such wars on your star? Who is to blame for them? Are you yourself in part responsible?”

The King seemed angered at this audacity and for a time stared at the messenger. But he could not continue to meet with his dark gaze the bright and guileless eyes of the stranger.

“You are a child,” said the King, “and there are things you cannot understand. War is no one’s fault, it occurs of itself, like storm and lightning, and all of us who have to fight wars, we are not their originators, we are only their victims.”

Hermann Hesse, Strange News from Another Star